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Dans cet épisode de Ta Face B, tu découvriras que Tina a pratiqué différents types de danse jusqu'à 20h par semaine, qu'un sorcier célèbre se retrouve parmi ses lectures et films préférés, et qu'un séjour d'un mois et demi pour redécouvrir ses origines reste son voyage mémorable. Support the Show.Listen to all the episodes, rate and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts!--Écoute tous les épisodes, laisse nous une note et un commentaire partout où tu écoutes tes podcasts!Contact: Instagram (EN) Instagram (FR) TwitterLinkedinFacebookEmail: your.bside.podcast@gmail.com Credits: Jazzy Abstract, by BeatComa-Media

One of the first places voice actors often look for auditions is on Pay to Play sites. For a fee, these sites let you audition for jobs from potential clients all over the world. But these sites can have downsides, including unethical business practices. Controversy over these sites has been highlighted at voiceover conferences and throughout social media. In this episode, the BOSSES delve into navigating online casting platforms and cultivating loyal client relationships outside of these sites. We discuss the investment of time and resources needed to be successful and the importance of evolving with the industry to avoid getting left behind. Ever-evolving AI technology challenges us to redefine our roles and strategies, and we tackle this head-on sharing insights into how we can adapt to remain indispensable. 00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey VO Bosses. Ann Ganguzza here. Are you struggling to market that boss voice of yours? Well, let me tell you about the VO Boss Blast. With a custom vetted list and personalized emails, we can help you get your marketing message out to those who hire. Find out more at vobosscom and let's blast off together.  00:24 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, everyone welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and we are here with the Real Boss series with my good friend and guest co-host, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom Dheere.  00:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Hello Anne Ganguza.  00:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tom Dheere, it was so awesome to see you at VO Atlanta. I have to say.  01:01 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, the drive-by hug Right.  01:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I know and I saw you for like a split second, but still it was good for that split second to get the hug in. Absolutely, I know the two of us were insanely busy but getting back together since VO Atlanta. There was a big bomb dropped at VO Atlanta with the Drama, bomb.  01:17 Yeah, with the online casting panel, which began with an apology from the CEO of Voicescom. And so, hmm, let's talk, shall we? Let's dish, let's dish, let's, let's, let's fill some tea. So what were your initial? Were you surprised and what were your initial thoughts? And actually we should just recount for the bosses who were not there at VO Atlanta, the very first thing, on a panel of online casting with J Michael Collins, j Michael asked the acting CEO of Voicescom was he prepared to apologize to the voiceover community for the actions on behalf of Voicescom in the past few years, now that David Cicerelli has stepped down and indeed there was an apology. So, tom, were you there, present in the audience?  02:07 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, yes, I was there. I was asked to be there actually. Me too, me too Okay so you were part of that little group of people that were asked to make sure that we would be present at the online casting. Because then we could talk about it like this so then we could talk about it, or we could step up to the mic and ask some pointed questions.  02:23 But to give everybody a little bit of background is that Voicescom has had a pretty bad reputation for a good 10 years, Because I think the first great resignation was in 2014, which is when the interview with Graham Spicer came out and the article that somebody wrote showing how, you know, the same casting notice was posted on Voice123 and Voicescom, but the Voicescom was thousands of dollars lower. So they were caught kind of red-handed doing what many would consider some unethical practices.  02:53 Double-dipping, triple-dipping, Right so Jay O'Connor, who is the acting CEO of Voicescom, is also the son of the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice, sandra Day O'Connor, and he also works for Morgan Stanley.  03:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And Morgan Stanley was the company that put $17 million investment into Voicescom, not a voiceover company.  03:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Not a voiceover company. They invested that roughly six, seven years ago. So I'm assuming that David Cicerelli stepped down because he didn't come through on his promise to make their money back. So that's why they put one of their own people in there. So I'm assuming Jay's job is very simple make their money back. So that's just kind of the background. And JMC who I just had him on my Ask Me Anything said that one of the conditions of Jay appearing at VO Atlanta was that he apologized for the past business practices and behaviors. So it made me think about the word responsible. Jay was not CEO of Voicescom when all the interesting stuff happened. However, if you break down the word responsible, it's response able able to respond.  03:57 Oh, I like that Well yeah because, if you think about it, Jay is not guilty of the stuff that Voicescom did under their previous administration, but now he is able to respond to all of that stuff. So you know that late last year Voicescom signed the Fair Voices Pledge and altered their terms of service, the Fair AI.  04:19 Thank you Nava and Tim Freelander and Karin and all those wonderful people there. So what was extra funny is I was sitting next to Miranda Ellis, who's our buddy, who helps run VA for VO, and we were talking about it. We're wondering who's that guy up there? And then I was telling her about the whole Jay O'Connor thing and then JMC said and here is CEO of Voicescom, jay O'Connor, and we're like oh okay, there he is.  04:47 And yes, he did apologize. He gave them an F for how they handled the situation, but they said they're going to be working on moving forward and a lot of pointed questions were asked. I was surprised that he was there. I was surprised at the apology. I think he handled most of the questions from the audience pretty well, pretty professionally.  05:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I wasn't surprised at the apology. I mean, j Michael basically said are you prepared to apologize? And when you are a CEO of a company, I mean at some point, like I imagine, you're going to work that out politically correctly in front of an audience of thousands, knowing that we would be talking about this. What was he going to say? To be quite honest, I mean, I wasn't surprised that he apologized. I wasn't surprised that he took Jay Michael on it, because, guess what, there's business for him sitting there in the audience.  05:33 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh yeah, potential customers. There was a sea of potential customers in there and ones who had left the platform who now could be persuaded to return to the platform as well. I did make it a point to talk to him afterwards. I as well. I did make it a point to talk to him afterwards. I first said I'm sorry about your mother's recent passing.  05:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, thank you.  05:47 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I say thank you on behalf of I know he's a person.  05:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) He is a person, yeah, Like he's just a guy.  05:52 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) He probably didn't know Voicescom existed, right? So, like he doesn't know about this stuff and we have to give him the benefit of the doubt, of course of the doubt, we have to assume he's an ethical, response-able person and I said hey, if you need some insight from boots-on-the-ground people, let me know. I gave him my card. He said thank you, he was very kind. So am I optimistic about Voicescom? Cautiously pessimistic? No, yeah, cautiously optimistic. So I'll say cautiously pessimistic. But you know what? I'll tell you something, anne. I rejoined in September of 2023 because they did change their terms of service, they did sign the Fair Voices Pledge and also, as the VO strategist, I have students who want to understand what's going on and if it should be used and how it should be used Yep.  06:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) completely agree with that. So if nothing else.  06:39 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I wanted to create an account to understand how the platform functions, how to feed the algorithm.  06:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If we are going to be working with students I mean myself included. I mean honestly. I mean we have to know about these platforms so that we can talk about them and recommend them or not to our students. So I feel like I'm a member of Voice123. Now I will say that I was not able to stay for the full session at VO Atlanta because literally they scheduled that right in the middle of my X session, so after 20 minutes I had to leave and so I did not get a chance to speak to him myself personally. But I know a lot of people that I've talked to did, and Mark Scott also did a nice recap on his podcast about the conversation and his conversation with him as well, and myself and Law had a discussion about it as well on a podcast. So I think it's good that we're talking about it. But I'd like to go further, tom. I'd like to talk to you about pay-to-plays in general, what part they play now in the voiceover industry and where you might see them going in the future.  07:36 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's funny because maybe 15 years ago they were a disruptive force in the voiceover industry, not unlike AI right now, which is currently a disruptive force in the voiceover industry. And, like I've said about AI and you and I talked about this a couple of episodes ago when it comes to disruptive technologies or business models, you can fight it, you can ignore it, you can adapt to it or you can embrace it. So everybody has their own journey and their own path on how to define success as a voice actor and what they need to do. You want to do all high-end cartoons and video games. You need representation. You need to join SAG-AFTRA. You may need to move to LA or New York or Dallas and do a boots-on-the-ground thing. If you want to narrate audiobooks, that's a different track. If you want to narrate e-learning modules, that's a different track. The best way that I can illustrate this is talking about my journey on Voice123. I joined Voice123 in 2006.  08:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) no-transcript.  08:49 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, I joined it the first year that I went full-time as a voice actor. I learned a lot on there.  08:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It wasn't my first year as a voice actor, but it might've been my second or third, and it was an opportunity. It was a new opportunity to get work, and I remember at the time. How else did you get work outside of if you had an agent? I did not have an agent at the time. I was working on the online platforms like Freelancer back in the day I mean, it was Freelancer, I don't know if it was Odesk.  09:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Odesk Elance, Elance.  09:23 - Intro (Announcement) I was on all those too.  09:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I was on all of those too, and then Voice123 came out and I joined in 2006 as well, and actually it worked well for me Although you have actually created a record of how well you've done on that platform throughout the years, and so I'm eager to hear about that.  09:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Sure. So for those of you who are listening to this, I'll just read this to you as best I can, but I've got a little slide up here. So I joined in 2006. There was only one tier, it was $200. That first year, I made $1,100. So a great return on investment. Next year, rejoined, made $2,750. So that was great. 2008, it went up to $300. I made $2,650. 2009, made $1,. I made $2650,. 2009, made $1950,. 2010, I made $13,000.  10:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What changed.  10:09 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I got better at auditioning and I also landed a big textbook like a science textbook. So that was a big chunk of that $13,000.  10:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So let me ask you, in those years, in those early years, how many auditions were you doing? Were you doing 10 a day, 20 a day, as many as possible?  10:26 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I was doing a lot less than that. I was doing a handful a day, but also my direct marketing strategies were working pretty well, so it was complementing. So I was blogging and doing social media and posting on Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that, so it was part of a balanced breakfast, absolutely. 2011, made almost $8,000. 2012, I renewed, but I only made $350. Now what happened in 2012 is that my voiceover career turned the corner. I went full-time in 2006, but late 2011, all the seeds I'd been planting for all those years started to bloom. So I found myself auditioning a lot less because I was just booking a lot more as a result of my direct marketing strategy.  11:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right and then also probably repeat clients at that time were starting. I was also getting repeat clients.  11:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So yeah, so that was happening too. Now, in 2013, I did not renew. I made only $300 just from a legacy client. But the main reason I didn't renew is because there was a cultural thing going on in voiceover where a lot of voice actors were saying that if you are on a pay-to-play site, you are contributing to the lowering of rates, you are a bottom feeder, you're enabling predatory practices, and I made the dumbest decision in my voiceover career, which was I stopped auditioning on Voice123. It was a huge mistake. So, 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, I made virtually nothing because I didn't have a paid account.  11:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But also what happened in those years. Had you gone more to direct methods of marketing? Yes, okay.  11:57 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, direct marketing was my main jam. 2014 was, to be totally honest, and that was the year I made the most money as a voice actor. And then in 2015, 16, 17, 18, my income started fluctuating wildly $20,000, $30,000 rises and falls year over year. One of my top 10 clients replaced me with AI back then too.  12:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) In what year was that?  12:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That was 2018, I think, A top 10 client. I was replaced by AI and then 2019, I made nothing. 2019 also, there was like a major downshift in my voiceover revenue because I noticed almost all of my direct marketing strategy stopped working. So did I all of a sudden become a lousy voice actor? Maybe Did industry trends change and my voice was out of fashion? Definitely not. It was becoming even more in fashion more young, energetic, friendly guy next door sound, which is still in demand. So, after contemplation and talking to friends and professionals, I rejoined for $888 in 2020. And now there was a tiered plan.  12:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, exactly I was going to say at this point bosses, pay-to-plays evolved. They used to be just one fee and it was usually around $200 to $300. I remember when Voicescom came on the scene it was the cheaper of the two, for $200, when Voice 123 was at $295, I believe, or something like that. And so then there was a bunch of people that joined Voicescom because they kind of undercut the competition, so to speak, which maybe we should have looked at that in the beginning and said, oh, look at that Now there's competition in the online community and online casting community because Voicescom was the second, I would say, largest platform to come out and they grew fairly quickly, I think because of that lower price point.  13:42 And they also did a bunch of good marketing, I would say, on Google. I think they did a bunch of Google ads and they had a bunch of. Seo that they were working on, and so they became really, really popular around that time.  13:58 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So what happened in 2020 when I rejoined? So I rejoined like it was a Black Friday sale. Basically, I had one month and in one month I made $1,300. But here's what I noticed. Well, I made my money back immediately. But the other thing I noticed is that when you're on Voice123 and you can click on the client number, sometimes you can see an email address associated with that client profile and often it's the extension of productioncompanycom and I started noticing production companies that I used to work with or that on Voice123. So I was like oh, interesting. So apparently there has been a migration of ethical, well-paying production companies making quality content that had been slowly making their way to Voice123 and probably Voicescom too, because it's easier to curate a roster, it's easier to post an audition.  14:51 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, yeah, you have hundreds and thousands of people of different voices on these platforms and it can be a little bit cheaper. I know that was the whole thing, because here you're not necessarily saying how much will it cost, right, when you have a direct contact, versus specify your budget, right? A lot of these pay-to-plays asked you to specify a budget and so if you specified a lower budget, you could still have hundreds of people responding to this, because it was like freelancer Odesk. It started to become the lowest bid, wins almost.  15:23 - Intro (Announcement) Yes.  15:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like kind of thought, and especially when you're talking after the many years of online casting, it just then became a thing where, oh, I can get cheaper voiceover, and for a business, right, I can have lots of different voices I can choose from and it's probably cheaper. And so for a business, I mean really, where's that business decision, unless you've caught them right and you've become like a valued voiceover actor for them, that you've given them value over and over and over again. Now, all of a sudden, they have hundreds of thousands of people they can choose from that are credible, right, and they're cheaper. So business decision, tom?  16:00 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, here's the thing about that too is like since 2020, since I rejoined, my gigs aren't $100 or $200. They're $4, $5, $6, over $1,000.  16:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Because you can specify that.  16:15 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Because I can specify that and that also tells me that there are ethical, well-paying production companies on Voice123 in addition to bottom feeders. So in spring of 2021, the algorithm changed All of a sudden. The auditions there was a lot less and they were a lot lower paying, so I didn't renew.  16:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, they redid their platform a couple of times completely. So that caused a lot of commotion in the voiceover world.  16:35 And, interestingly enough, tom, I just want to bring this up who else was sitting on that stage at VO Atlanta but Rolf Veldman, who was always the one from Voice123 that got a lot of heat from these conferences. But I love Rolf. I think, rolf, he took it year after year after year right as a person who was not necessarily in the voiceover business either, but he would show up and he would respond and he was, I believe, transparent, which then I gave him my respect for that Because, if nothing else, he was transparent.  17:11 He finally was on the stage and probably going wow, the guy from Voicescom is getting all the heat this year.  17:18 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh, he was grinning from ear to ear. He was eating it with a spoon. He loved it. So 2022, I rejoined again, but this time I joined on the $2,200 tier. So this was late March 2022. In that year, I made $12,000. And then 2023, which is my first full calendar year of being under the $2,200 tier, I made almost $19,000.  17:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's a definite return on investment. So.  17:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, and as of this year, 2022, and today, as of literally today, April, I have made $6,200.  17:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Now is the majority of that from new clients or clients that are coming back to you.  17:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, that's the thing, it's a combination. So there's two sets of clients, you know, there's your audition and pray clients, and then there's your legacy clients.  18:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Audition and pray Yep, absolutely Right.  18:06 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Commercials tend to be audition and pray. Cartoons, video games tend to be audition and pray. E-learning, corporate explainer, more of the audio book. Often those tend to be non-audition and pray because often you join an e-learning roster or you join a telephony roster and you don't audition, they just send you work. So with Voice123, there's a lot of them. One particular one comes to mind I auditioned for a corporate, short, three-minute, corporate industrial about bananas in a grocery store. If you work in the produce department, how do you handle the bananas to make sure they don't bruise, how to display them properly, quality check and all that stuff. It was a gig. Three minutes directed session, $550. So I'm like okay, that's like right in the sweet spot for that. That's like perfectly fine For three minutes directed session, great. And then they sent me nine more without auditioning.  18:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.  19:00 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) So an audition in Prey see, that's what people think about Voice123 is that it's an audition in Prey machine. It is if you suck, and it is if you can't audition well, and it is if you can't deliver the goods once you audition and book the spot. So I do have a lot of new clients, but a lot of them, a lot of them, have come back for more.  19:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And with Voice123,. One of the big differences of the platforms is that you can take the client off the platform. They have never intercepted and I don't believe that they will, because I think that's Rolf's claim to fame and how they lasted right through the turmoil of people being angry at them was that you could always take the client off the platform. Now, voicescom does everything in their power to make you not take the client off the platform, and that is where they get into people labeling them as double and triple dippers.  19:50 So not only are you paying for that yearly membership fee and they also have different levels. But when you have a managed job or any job you cannot disclose, you won't know their email address, you cannot work with them off platform and people have been threatened if it's found out that they're working with them off platform. So thoughts on that business policy. Tom, what do you think about that?  20:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I'm going to answer that question with a question. Do you think voice actors should pay to audition for anything?  20:22 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, you know, yeah, that's a really, really good question. I mean, I don't think so.  20:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I don't think so to a point.  20:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think they should pay for a platform that gives them opportunities. So that's a tough one, right? I mean should they pay to audition.  20:38 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, I think of it this way If you told me 20, 25 years ago that I would have to pay to watch a Yankee game on television, I would have said you're out of your mind. And now they have the yes Network, where you have to pay to have access to get the quality content that you want. That being a Yankee game and auditions are quality content and that's a subscription model of a lot of businesses today.  21:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Right, and even I've considered it for this podcast, right, all right, so you can get a certain amount of listens free, but there is quality content or maybe more in-depth content that you would subscribe to.  21:13 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And you do keep it with subscriptions, like Patreon pages do, and things like that. Yes, it's a common business model. Here's another question Do you think voice actors should get paid to do auditions?  21:24 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that's a good question. Not necessarily. It depends on if that gets used right, If their audition gets used for the job, if you're getting paid.  21:32 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Is it a demo or a scratch track?  21:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. But now, okay, let's just say you pay for the option or you pay for the opportunity to get auditions. Should then there be an escrow fee? Right, and that's what a lot of people have the problem with an escrow fee. And should there be a managed services fee? And should there be a managed services fee? Now, anybody that manages a job, right that project, manages the job. A manager takes a percentage, an agent takes a percentage, but then on top of an annual fee right to audition, plus an escrow fee. Now, if you remember, tom, in the beginning Voicescom's escrow fee was an option and I believe is it still an option. If you want to do, because escrow was an option back in the early days, you could choose to have them hold the money or say I'm going to get my money guaranteed if I put it in escrow, and then you paid a fee for that.  22:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I think it's mandatory now.  22:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, so that's triple dipping to a lot of people right, Get rid of one of those fees, I mean do you feel that's right.  22:40 - Intro (Announcement) I mean, I think it's fair that it's either you pay to be on the site and there's no additional fees or being on the website is free and then they're taking a percentage of it, not both.  22:48 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Now, you weren't there for the Q&A. Our friend, miranda Ellis, who I was sitting next to in the audience, got up and she said I have a problem with the fact that one of the casting spec options is broadcast in perpetuity. And she said that's a big problem for a lot of voice actors because that can create permanent conflicts. She asked are you going to get rid of that? And he said no, because we would lose a lot of business that way. That's not a good answer. That's the only thing I was truly unhappy about with his answers, but he owned it.  23:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, honestly, I think that it's a responsible action for an online platform like that to like lead the way. Right, because here's the deal. Right, you're talking about consumer mentality. I mean in voiceover jobs, I mean if people are not used to. If you're a small company, you're not used to hiring a voice artist and you're not sure, like, how does that work? Right, I mean in perpetuity. I mean if you work for a company, right, and they hire you, you sign a contract, you're working full-time, everything you do for that company is property of the company, and that just became that same mentality. Right for the freelancers Okay, I'm going to pay you.  23:53 Work for hire yeah work for hire and I pay you and that's it, and that's where the mentality stayed for a lot of companies. I think if you are a large service provider to a voiceover, you should take the lead and do what's right and do what's ethical, and that to me would be like start it and say no in perpetuity. There's not an option for in perpetuity.  24:14 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Right.  24:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And that would be a nice thing. Otherwise we sit here and we fight, and we fight, and we fight like we've always fought right To get rid of in perpetuity. Do you think in perpetuity will ever go away, tom?  24:24 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I think it will always exist in some form yeah, I agree.  24:30 The thing that concerns me the most about it is that, like, if there's a casting notice and it says erotic, there is explicit sexual content. Everybody knows what that means. They know what they're getting into. If it's a casting notice for a political ad Democrat, republican or whatever you look at the script and you go oh okay, do I feel comfortable with this? You know what you're getting into. You can make a value decision. If it's these text-to-speech things, some of these casting notices, or if it's an online perpetuity, a lot of the voice actors don't know what that means. They don't know what they're getting into, and that's where SAG-AFTRA, nava and other organizations that's where the onus is on them to educate, to make sure that people are aware of what these things mean. That should not be the case. Voicescom should not have that option or the ability to modify the option.  25:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly. You know what I mean Exactly.  25:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Because there's genres and sub-genres. You know like, if you want a public service announcement forever to technically broadcast and have that be in perpetuity, you can make a case for that.  25:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know what I mean.  25:27 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) But it's too broad and it isn't explained. There should be like a little button or a little like question mark or a little thing next to it. You click on that and it's like this is what this means.  25:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And voice actors should have been educated many, many, many years ago, right? And what does it mean when you deliver an audio file, right? This is where, okay, we're creatives, we're good at what we do, but we also this is where the business sense comes in. Right, here, have my audio.  25:53 And usually what happens is something bad has to happen for us to like say, oh shoot, I probably should have a terms of service or a statement of work or a contract for all our non-broadcast stuff. So all our non-broadcast people are like, yeah, sure, give me a hundred dollars or give me $500, give me a thousand, that's perfect. And then all of a sudden, they find that their voice is out there on TikTok, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that that was Bev, but things like that happen, right. Or it even happens today with agents that are looking after our best interests, where sometimes you'll find a commercial that was supposed to only be regional which is now in a different place. And how do we know about it? Not until somebody tells us about it. And so we should. Now, with the technology, there should be a way to voice print and tag our audio so that we know if it's not where it should be, and it's being used.  26:41 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) And they're working on that? Yeah, exactly, they are working on that, exactly.  26:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Wow, I really feel as though we should have a part two and a part three and a part four with this conversation. But wow, tom, good stuff. Thank you so much for sharing. I love that you shared the real numbers. I mean, anybody that knows me knows how much I love talking numbers because it really brings a level of realism to the bosses and I think that we all need to really see those numbers and it really helps to educate us on making good decisions for our businesses. So, thank you, tom, it was wonderful talking to you again and I look forward to the next podcast. Bosses, I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network like bosses real bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. All right, have an amazing week, guys, and we'll see you next week. Bye.  27:33 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

"Logika ne mora da se uči na računaru." U 224 epizodi podkasta Pojačalo, gost Ivana Minića je takođe Ivan. Stanimirović. Inženjer, programer, 2D i 3D animator, a danas klikeraš. Dva Ivana pričaće nam o tome kako se su se u programerske vode upustili uz pomoć BASICa, kako su bili gladni znanja i kako su ih neki divni ljudi, profesori i nastavnici tokom školovanja usmeravali i nesebično delili svoja znanja sa njima. Prvi posao je dobio još u srednjoj školi, od svog strica fotografa, pravio je najavne špice za snimke sa svadbi, zatim je to preraslo u studio za presnimavanje sa VHSa na DVD, a zatim je otišao na studije u Niš. Ivan Stanimirović je završio Elektronski fakultet u Nišu i smatra da je to bio pun pogodak. Na fakultetu se opredelio za tada eksperimentalni smer Multimedijalne tehnologije. Kasnije, kad je završio fakultet i vratio se u Smederevo, sa stricem je otvorio digitalnu štampariju i to je lepo funkcionisalo neko vreme, dok Ivan nije poželeo da se bavi nečim novim. Tako je prešao na lokalnu televiziju na kojoj se zadržao pet meseci, a zaitm sa devojkom iz Niša prešao u Beograd. Početak u Beogradu je bio težak, ali je izrodio još jedan poslovni poduhvat. Znajući da mora nešto da promeni, otvara nalog na tadašnjem Elance-u i polako dobija poslove za veće pare koje ne može sam da završi, što dovodi do razvoja animatorskog studija, koji je na vrhuncu imao 30 saradnika. Životni put sa tadašnjom devojkom se razilazi, njoj ostaje studio za animaciju, a on se vraća u Smederevo sa idejom da napravi nešto drugo, veliko. U pitanju je franšiza za Kliker IT, koja je zamalo propala zbog dolaska korone i lockdowna. Mada je izgledalo da će zbog prelaska na online nastavu ovaj projekat biti kratkog daha, bolja epidemiološka situacija dovela je i do razvoja ovog poslovnog poduhvata. Ivan se tada koncentriše na digitalni marketing, pomaže i svojim drugim kolegama iz drugih gradova i cifra dostiže oko 400 polaznika. Danas je Ivan jedan od uspešnih franšizera Kliker IT koji pomaže deci da lako i na zanimljiv način uđu u svet programiranja. Teme u epizodi: - Uvod - Kad porastem biću - Inspiracija tokom školovanja - Kako se Ivan opredelio za faks - Prvi posao - Kada je sve počelo više da ima smisla - Najinteresantniji projekti - U kojim gradovima su sve postojali centri Podržite nas na BuyMeACoffee: https://bit.ly/3uSBmoa Pročitajte transkript ove epizode: https://bit.ly/3JWFxsI Posetite naš sajt i prijavite se na našu mailing listu: http://bit.ly/2LUKSBG Prijavite se na naš YouTube kanal: http://bit.ly/2Rgnu7o Pratite Pojačalo na društvenim mrežama: Facebook: http://bit.ly/2FfwqCR Twitter: http://bit.ly/2CVZoGr Instagram: http://bit.ly/2RzGHjN

In this episode of B2B Marketing: The Provocative Truth, Benedict sits down with Steffen Hedebrandt to discuss what B2B marketers really need to know about the buyer journey and data analysis.While it may seem that B2B marketers are masters of data, the reality is that very few actually understand what's happening at any given moment in the buyer journey. This mostly comes down to marketers not having precise tools and accurate analysis methods to get a clear picture of what's happening. Marketers need to invest in the time and resources to quantify the full buyer journey, but what can marketers do to truly understand the process?Steffen Hedebrandt is the CMO and Co-Founder of Dreamdata, and as a marketer, he is driven by data and specialises in maximising growth and scaling businesses. Prior to co-founding Dreamdata, Steffen held several other senior marketing roles including Head of Marketing at AIRTAME and Country Manager, Nordics at Upwork as well as roles at Elance, Ambidextrous, and more. In addition, Steffen has also worked as a Lecturer for the DJØF, in which he taught Microsoft Excel for students of Aalborg University.You can find Steffen Hedebrandt on Linkedin.You can watch full video versions of the podcast on our YouTube channel.Ready to provoke the truth? Get in touch at alan-agency.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beerud Sheth is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 30K+ developers and handles over 4.5 billion messages per month. The company has raised more than $480M from marquee investors such as Helion Venture Partners, Tiger Global, CRV, White Oak among many others. He was previously the co-founder of Elance (now Upwork), the world's largest online services marketplace, which went public in 2018. Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and before that at Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning software agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology & a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. Episode Notes: What made Beerud an entrepreneur? (3:48) A Retrospective on the entrepreneurial journey (13:13) Unpacking the drive of serial entrepreneurs (20:15) The evolution of Beerud's entrepreneurial career (23:23) Navigating the pressures of entrepreneurship (28:30) Insights and guidance for first-time founders (32:40) The distinctive traits of exceptional founders (40:52) The founder's role in business pivots (43:50) Words of wisdom for his younger self (51:11) . . . Social Links: Gupshup on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gupshup Beerud Sheth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/beerud Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash Podcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivc Akash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash

In this Marketing Over Coffee: Learn about Hosted Demos, Sales vs. Marketing, Building, and more! Direct Link to File Brought to you by our sponsors: LinkedIn and Trust Insights Beginning at Elance, BuzzAgent, and Hubspot Starting Insight Squared – Because time series reporting is a problem in most native applications Reprise – elimating the headaches […] The post Talking Demos with Sam Clemens appeared first on Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast.

When Korean Hyunjin, or ‘Jenna' as she's also known, met her American husband, she moved to be with him and needed to find work in small town USA.Whilst blogging tips about international relationships, Jenna found readers started to approach her for help with their own written English requirements like cover letters and applications. Her freelance journey had begun.Years later she joined Elance, that became Upwork, and worked her way up to be one of the top 1% professionals on the freelancer job site.Her blog meanwhile spawned what is now the largest community for Korean/international couples. Currently based back in South Korea, along with regular clients on Upwork, her free community brings her plenty of opportunities as her members recommend her too.Maybe Upwork doesn't have to be a race to the bottom after all. Hear Jenna's story. And her cat.You'll find full show notes and transcript for this episode at beingfreelance.com This episode is sponsored by AXA Business Insurance.Get cover for your work, your tools, your reputation. It feels better being protected, being freelance.Work hard, insure easy. Check out their site or Search AXA Business Insurance.AXA Insurance UK plc is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation AuthorityThis episode is sponsored by IPSEThe Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed -  support for UK freelancers.Advice, networking, events, perks - and sort your pension, insurance, legal, tax..There's a lot to think about when being freelance, and IPSE have your back. New to freelancing? The Being Freelance course is made for you!Steve's rolled up everything he's learnt from over 6 years of conversations with more than 250 freelancers.There's no ‘one way' to be a successful freelancer, but this course will help you avoid the many mistakes that most of us make. Learn from our experiences.Find out more about the course. FREELANCER MERCHGet Being Freelance merchandise at beingfreelance.com/shopLooking to learn from and connect with other freelancers? Check out the website beingfreelance.com, and be part of the Being Freelance Community!Like VIDEO? - Check out the Being Freelance vlog - YouTube.com/SteveFolland 

Randy Wolters is a 32 years old professional football player thas has played for FC Utrecht, Go Ahead Eagles, NEC, Ado Den Haag, Dundee FC and many more clubs. During this episode Randy talks about subjects that many proffesional athletes can relate tho, including mental health & stress. Randy also talks about his entrepreunerial endevors such as the clothing brand "Elance" & the watch business "Horlogekluis". Together with Randy we have an open conversation about all the good & the bad that professional football players experience during their carreer. Randy Wolters: https://www.instagram.com/randywolters11/ Our Production Team: https://www.derommusic.nl/ Younes Belguebli: https://www.instagram.com/younesbelgu/

Randy Wolters, 32 jaar en profvoetballer van onder andere FC Utrecht, Go Ahead Eagles, NEC, Ado Den Haag en Dundee FC. Randy vertelt over zijn mooiste momenten, hoe stress zijn gezondheid beïnvloedde en hoe hij hiermee heeft leren omgaan. Zijn relatie met zijn zaakwaarnemer was hier leidend in. Daarnaast is Randy (mede) eigenaar van kledingmerk “Elance” en verkoopt hij exclusieve horloges met zijn merk “Horlogekluis”. Het is een persoonlijk en open gesprek, waarbij de luisteraar wordt meegenomen in het leven van een profvoetballer en alles wat daarbij komt kijken. Instagram: https://instagram.com/randywolters11?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Horlogekluis: https://instagram.com/horlogekluis?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Elance clothing:https://instagram.com/elanceclo?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

This week's Misfit Entrepreneur is Andy Mowat. Andy has helped build 3 $1Billion+ companies, Upwork, Boc, and Culture Amp. He is a serial entrepreneur who knows how to build a scalable company that gets results. His specialty is building successful sales and marketing organizations. But, at the core, he's a great entrepreneur. He knows how to spot a trend, create the vehicle to capitalize on the opportunity, and make it go. Most recently, he is doing that in his latest company, Gated, which is a unique twist on how people can access you. I want to discuss all of this with him today and squeeze all of the wisdom I can from him on how to start, grow, and build a brand. https://www.gated.com/ Andy's path was not a straight line. He went to college on the East Coast and ended up in finance and banking. He took Czech while he was in college and ended up going into private equity in eastern Europe. He ended up running the finance function for every grocery store chain in Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. It was early in the days of coming out of Communism and was eye opening. He then went to business school but came out in 2001 and things were slow. He found a family office to work for and they tasked him with finding a new business to buy and get into. He suggested health clubs and ended up building high end athletic clubs throughout the west. He knew tech was where it was at, so he then reached out Elance and others and cold called the CEO's ending up working for Elance. He ran sales and marketing operations. He then went to work for a company as a co-founder outsourcing administration assistants. He then went to work for BOCs running all their post-sale operations and then leading marketing. He then went to work for CultureAmp taking it from $5 mil to $80m. Along the way, he noticed the need to need to better guard a person's email, so he built Gated. At the 7:30 mark, Andy shares what Gated is. It is an email management system that keeps people from getting to your inbox unless they are willing to give a donation to charity. It helps to make sure you are communicating with people that genuinely want to communicate with you. What elements are needed to build a unicorn – a billion-dollar company? Product/Market fit Brand If you don't have those 2 things, it's almost impossible. Andy gives an example of ow this happened with CultureAmp. Talk to us about Go to Market Machines. How do you build a successful, scalable business? It is a custom fit each time. It is not “cookie-cutter.” Andy starts with marketing because you must have the demand generation. Pattern recognition is important, but a marketing strategy must be customized to each company. Andy has a 6-part article series on his LinkedIn that lays out how to build the Go to Market engine. Any specific part of the 6 that you feel is most important? The team is the most important aspect of a growth engine. What are the key elements to building a successful sales team and growth engine? Read Jason Lumpkin's stuff around hiring and building sales teams. Invest deeply in sales-enablement vs. throwing people at the problem. From a sales enablement standpoint, the managers are your customers, not the reps. If the managers aren't deeply invested in the training and asking for what is needed to make their people better, it won't do well. Invest in good managers and support them well. What should business owners and entrepreneurs do from the start to avoid some of the common mistakes in building a sales organization? The classic mistake is that founder's hire a salesperson thinking they can figure out how to go to market. The founder needs to do that and figure it out. The founder needs to be selling the first half million to a million of ARR. You need to be able figure what the repeatable sales process is before you bring someone into to sell. At the 17 min mark, Andy talks about being a non-technical founder…. What type of data should people be looking at to maximize the impact of a sales team? Systems that are good are Hubspot for smaller organizations and Salesforce for larger ones. Look for all the ways you can scale and find leverage. Key metrics to look at include: Client retention Funnel conversation Time for the sales process. (How long it takes from lead to sale) Lead flow. MQL to Opportunity conversion. The opportunity to win conversation. Customer acquisition costs. What does it take to build a great brand? Brand starts with what you name your company. Naming matters. Being very clear around what your company does and what you stand for is critical. People should understand very clearly and quickly your value to them. Product marketing and differentiation is very clear. The last important piece is the experience people have when they interact with your brand. Most unexpected thing that you have found on your entrepreneur journey? Andy shares how Gated has surprised in that people give more than required and how much people want it. Routines or best practices you do every day to help you maximize your success? Andy writes down his Top 3 things he has to do on a notepad each day. He spends each evening reviewing what he needs to do and accomplish the next day.   Best Quote: The classic mistake is that founder's hire a salesperson thinking they can figure out how to go to market. The founder needs to do that and figure it out.   Andy's Misfit 3: Have a career thesis. Get clear around the path that is most likely for your career. Don't worry about the steps you make in your career. You can always tell a good story about your career. Don't take too many steps at one. Take one step and pivot, then the next and so on. Have a side-hustle to give you an outlet.   Show Sponsors LinkedIn Jobs (Free Job Posting) www.LinkedIn.com/Misfit 5 Minute Journal www.MisfitEntrepreneur.com/Journal  

“As you grow as a company and have hundreds of employees, the only way to communicate effectively is through documented or codified company cultural values making it very important to establish these things early on in a company's journey”. - Beerud Sheth, Founder of Gupshup and Elance.We spoke to Beerud to get his thoughts on his journey building two successful businesses, his leadership mantra, and his learnings from entrepreneurship on Kalaari's #PayItForward Series. The Pay It Forward series, hosted by Vani Kola, MD of Kalaari Capital, focuses on conversations with founders and CEOs who have built businesses that have transformed the landscape of the Indian start-up ecosystem. For more updates on our sessions, follow Kalaari on Clubhouse: bit.ly/KalaariClub If you have any suggestions, please reach out to us at podcast@kalaari.com. We would love to hear from you.For more podcasts, visit our website- https://www.kalaari.com/resources

Flowster Live Demo https://flowster.app/live-demo/ Episode Highlights   [02:35] — Andrew introduces Marknology Seven years ago, Andrew founded Marknology, a company that helps brands evolve and compete in the Amazon accelerator. He started out freelancing on Upwork and Elance and eventually quit his day job to build his agency. Marknology has grown to a team of 25 through bootstrapping.  [09:05] — What's the difference between hourly billing and retainer? Andrew struggled with hourly billing since it put his interests at odds with his clients'.  This model also ties you to the belief that you must get paid for the hours you work. After many iterations, Marknology ended up with the retainer plus commission model.  Andrew found it advantageous, as he could count on the retainer to plan for hiring and scaling.  When the commission hits a certain level, the retainer falls off and from there, it's just a straight retainer or a straight commission.  [18:25] — Venturing into international markets Marknology is now big enough to handle the international market; In fact, they're already in 13 different Amazon marketplaces around the world. One of Andrew's early wins was getting brands into a less saturated market. He advises paying attention to whatever Amazon's focus is, so you can leverage it and bring more value to your clients. [20:39] — How to attract clients Content marketing and partnerships are Andrew's bread and butter. He's created a YouTube channel, opened blogs and speaking events, and started a podcast as a trust-building effort to win over clients. [24:41] — The advantages of creating content Explaining Amazon's new releases from a commentator's perspective is Andrew's strategy on YouTube content creation. Through that, he helped brands in a more casual rather than formal way. He wanted to talk about things that could help companies, such as SEO and tracking organic growth. People usually hear about him or watch his videos, leading them to connect with him. [28:34] — Why Andrew hates hard selling Andrew hates the salesman's approach to selling a product or service. He prefers building on his expertise in the field to reflect his credibility rather than convincing someone to hire him. [33:03] — Challenges and solutions in running Marknology Cash flow isn't an issue for them anymore, although it used to be a great challenge. People are both the best part and the hardest part because of needing to build relationships, communicate effectively, and be aligned in the workflow. Moreover, managing the team and continuously learning to be a leader has also been quite the challenge. Partnering with Flowster has helped him overcome those challenges. Albeit a new user, Andrew's excited about partnering with Flowster to get more processes in place. [36:18] — Andrew's diverse team Andrew's workers are distributed between Colombia, Kansas, Florida, and India. His workers in India are focused on data researching and SEO. Andrew is also looking into hiring from Romania because of the amazing branding of barbershops, restaurants, and small businesses. He finds that outsourcing talents from all over the world adds value to his business.

Tracy Lamourie Founder LAMOURIE MEDIA an Award Winning Publicist has been featured in Rolling Stone, NBC, CBC, HuffPost and here with us today to talk about how Self confidence can lead to success. Ari Gronich0:03Welcome back to another episode of create a new tomorrow I am your host Ari Gronich. And today I have with me Tracy Lamourie. Tracy is a PR expert who I'm going to not even read her like her normal intro, I'm gonna let her tell you about it. But this woman made her career by taking about 20 years or so of her life, and setting free an innocent man who was on death row. So hey, you know, I'm gonna let her tell you a little bit about that story. And then we'll get into an awesome conversation that hopefully will help you create a new tomorrow for yourself, activate your vision for a better world, do something big in your life, like Tracy has. So Tracy, let's uh, let's get into it. Tell us a little bit about you.TLTracy Lamourie0:47Hi, there. So yeah, I'm based in Canada, I'm Canadian girl working usually internationally around the world, when it's not the middle of COVID. We're on the other side of that level. So our borders are a little slow and opening up. So I've been here, no basement doing my magic. So I'm an international award winning publicist, working across borders and across industries. And for people who don't really know what that is, is basically getting people in the news getting people elevating their profile, whether they're entrepreneurs, executives, musicians, creatives, authors, all that. But this just happened for me because of a natural kind of, I should never say natural. But what I started doing it for 20 years, I ended up here. And so all the VIP parties and all the travel and all the super cool, amazing things that go with being a publicist, were in my original plan, I was originally an activist in my 20s with my husband, Dave, Markinson, married 26 years now we've done all this together, starting with a little radio show in Toronto a long, long time ago to college radio. And then when that was no more was the early days of the internet, we still wanted to have a voice, you know, to change the world, to, you know, make things more equal, like you know, all those things that you're passionate about in your 20s. But I'm still passionate about today. And we found out just in a little curved corner of the early into the early interwebs. About a man named Jimmy Dennis would aid for this little add on line. And he's with being a I'm on death row. I'm not looking for a pen pal, I'm not looking for a girlfriend. Because a lot of those preserving unpolished Western, I'm innocent, and I need help. So my husband and I, we wouldn't be like I want it to be. And if people asked us what made you actually write, we actually wrote a letter we wrote to him and said to tell us more. And I think partly because obviously we were activists, but also we had that radio show not long before, we were still in that information gathering. And so we put pen to paper and we said tell us about it. And we wrote a letter into death row. And he wrote back with a 28 when we were 28 years old, and he was 27. Even back with a 28 page letter on both sides. And all the legal documents that was in the cell breaking down the hope is that there was no brochures or pamphlets or websites or anything. And we got this and what do we do? People said Don't you know, how did you? Why did you do what you did? But again, why don't we write that letter? We wrote the letter. And then once we did, here's a person who wrote back, you know, 28 pages, who's clearly desperate and needs help. So what do you do with that? You just say it was a fun read, you know? So obviously we like, Oh, well, gee, what are we like? We have to do something about it. We had no money we had no, I wasn't a publicist, we certainly weren't lawyers. But we thought, Well, if we're this upset, reading just this much, you know, maybe we can put it on these interwebs and somebody who has the ability, somebody who has money, maybe somebody will buy a lawyer as we originally thought. So we started doing that. And ultimately, we ended up being disturbed by the death penalty in general in America through looking at that case. So there we were 28 years old. This is how I learned to write a press release. I literally went to the AltaVista precursor to Google and learn you know, for immediate release out of right that it was really hard to get attention for a case that was you know, someone was still convicted in America and in those days it was before making a murderer or was before all the wrongful conviction, serial and all those podcasts before all that so we had the internet we had the you know, email and everything but it wasn't easy. So the way that we decided to address that because it's like we were little mini publicist before we even knew PR was well if we talked about the death penalty in general as opposed to just this case and use this case as an example then maybe we'll get a more media. So we did that. We wrote up press releases for immediate release. And literally there were 28, 29 years old on CNN again we have no legal experience no PR experience not very much Media Group. And then we were on CNN on MSNBC on port TV on panel. With lawyers being interviewed by Katherine Grier, by Nancy Grace, by lay Oh my god. So it will took another 11 or 12 years, that was just, you know, not for profit, volunteer. By the way, Jimmy Dennis was freed in 29th 2017, we talk almost every day in these amazing things going on with him. He's an R&B artist now. So that's when your listeners should check that out, because the whole other story, but, you know, in terms of it another 11 years before I thought, Hey, hold on a second, because I was just in telesales, I could probably, you know, not have a life I hate, I could probably not to sit here doing sales reps were like, the skills that I built, dealing with media are actually valuable skills. And then I thought, that's my thought, like the transition and you know, help people who don't understand how to get into media, get into media, and that's when I was 41, 10 years ago, it became a business.AGAri Gronich5:55Nice. So I'm going to unpack this a little bit. Am a unpack for you a little bit. So first of all, you know, I love this story, because it reminds me of one of my favorite stories, which is the story of Hurricane Carter. And I don't know what it is about you Canadians coming down here thinking you're going to save, you know, all the American people, but I do. I mean, I appreciate the thought, you know, it's just, it's funny to me that, exactly, exactly. But here's the question, what is it that Canada breeds into the people that makes them say, Go read it, you know, say a book of Hurricane Carter's or a little post on a little website on a brand-new thing called the inter-webs, with Bolton board services. I mean, what it wasn't like you had google it was bulletin boards and things. I mean, what made what is it that makes you do that? And that's anybody I'm joking about the Canada America?TLTracy Lamourie7:05Well, I think what I always say to that, because I mean, you can't tell the story, I know when other sounding heroic and epic and all that stuff, right. And so I always bring dial that back because I'm not heroic or epic more than anybody else's. And this is where I say that like, even though I did that thing, right? I think that more people would do stuff like that all the time. Canadians, Americans, whoever, everybody would, instead of watching Netflix, whatever, if, if, if they actually believed they could, but people don't think how do you know, maybe I was we were naive. We were a bit when I was that kid. In hurricane you, I was privileged to meet Ruben several times, towards the end of his life, he moved to Canada, right. And so and I didn't even TV, that connection in those days about how the Canadian like, I didn't even see that even though we were watching the movie and stuff. But I think more it's a matter of feeling empowered, you know, whether you're too dumb to know, you can't make a difference or feel that you know, you can, because you've been you've done it before in other rounds. That's what I think it all comes down to self-belief and that, you know, and not like, Hey, I can do this. But to think we'll wait, you know, I can do my little part, I can take a step I can make the difference. If I do this, maybe somebody else to pick it up and do this. I never thought at 28 years old, I was going to be able to free that guy from death row. But I kind of did. I kind of did think so I thought that the world would free and I thought if we if we made it known, if we did our little part, which was words, people would find out and then it didn't go quite that way. Because a lot of opposition, they don't want to be bound up. They don't really want unraveled the truth once you start, you know, but so there's a lot bit it was a bigger beast than we thought. Right? We thought we just have to pointed out and then we were fighting a bigger battle that we even knew we were. So those things intimidate people and you don't feel like you can make a difference, right? But same reason people don't start a business or they dream of going to travel but they never do it. It's because they ultimately thought that they don't see themselves doing it. It's easy, easier to not do it. You know what I mean? Like it's not, it's just because I'm better. I was dumb enough or like hubris enough where to be like, you know what we can do we can do here and then you see that you can make a difference. And as you do those things, you're like, Whoa, look what we just did. And that gives you the confidence and the whatever to keep doing it.AGAri Gronich9:24Yeah, absolutely. Um, I was gonna ask you how being an activism how being an activist is akin to capitalism. Because I think that a lot of people think that they're opposing forces. And I think that they're marriable, right, that they have that the two things go together really well. Doing good, makes a lot of money when done right kind of thing. And so you've been able to in your career pivot from activism into capitalism a bit. And that was, the next thing I wanted to unpack with you is that transition, you started it with belief in self. And I just want to, like, I want to emphasize that for people right, you have to do the work on yourself. So that you have belief in yourself so that you have blind faith, that what you are doing is going to make a difference in the world. And so I just wanted to emphasize that and then have you unpacked in it. TLTracy Lamourie10:37Once you do that, you do it, right, because you're when you're like, Okay, I can do that. Why wouldn't you I really, truly believe that people, you know, people are good, like I am, Frank said, I still believe good in people. And it's true. You know, most people will help you know, if there's someone in front of them that starving, you're gonna give them a sandwich, most people that are you know, they're going to, so it's just that they don't feel like they have the power to make an impact. So we don't even try to make an impact. And that's the same as in our own personal lives and doing these other benefit ourselves as it is, you know, why don't more people be the starving children or help this whatever. So I always say that because like, it's hugely epic, you know what I mean? Like, I know, you can't, like how can you tell that story without and people want to applaud you and be like, awesome. Oh, my God, you thought that I was gonna know. But the point of it, the whole point of it is not the applauded point of it is for you guys to realize this dumb ass girl with no, I'm a brilliant blah, blah, blah, strategic publicist, you can see my list of you know, whatever behind me and my alarm, right. But when I was 20s, you know, there, I'm just basic yo with the red hair. When I said to myself do what can I do? I don't have any money. I don't have any. But doesn't matter. I had the passion. And I had this, you know, an out of that, look, I built this. I never even met you. Now this weird rear is developed, which I you know, wow. You know. But again, it took a long time for me to think of that. Yeah, that was part of the strategic this. It wasn't like I went from that goal of not button this high profile, I'm not going to turn it into money. We were doing that for like, it was like a decade after we did TV that I was still doing all the sales, still doing all that we just really focused on getting a better death row. And then it wasn't until like, a couple years before we got out when we realized, yeah, it's happening. That's like, wait a minute, when they literally booked to make another phone call for my crappy job. And I'm thinking I wish I could remember what I was thinking the minute before that, like, clearly remember that Revelation where I'm like, wait, wait, wait, I think that's the publicist. I'm not doing this anymore. And then from that moment, I literally went and looked into how can I get freelance work as publicist, because I have this history of doing that I get paid. I wish remember what I was gonna, what I was thinking the moment before that. AGAri Gronich12:48You're probably thinking, I've got to make another call. It's the breath at the end. You know, nobody can see the breath on the audio. But if you're watching the YouTube, you can see the breath, right? alright. You know, it's funny, I, you know, the revelation moment. I know, for me, being a healer, being in my industry was I was dead. And then I woke up in a hospital and I sat up and I said, I think I need to be a healer. Right. That was my, it was a pretty freakin' clear revelation moment. But I have no idea what was happening in my head before that.TLTracy Lamourie13:39I really wish because I mean, so clearly, I remember that going. Nowhere. And from that moment where I remember it is I didn't make another call. I might have made one more call, by the way. I remember it is I was like, Oh, yeah, no, no, I started searching. And I found Elance. That's how I first started Upwork. Now, I first started, I used to get flipper lines on that until I just started getting transitioning to your LinkedIn. But yeah, so from what I remember, is that literally with no, I'm not doing that anymore. And then was and then I was like, I think they call that a publicist. Okay. Now I'm a publicist. And then pretty quickly, I got a client and one of them was there, like I think I told you before, Angela Sadler Williamson when Rosa Parks cousin. Who wrote the book, like, oh, sorry, that movie, my life is rosy for adults, which is on amazon prime. And this week, was like nominate was nominee, whatever it is, for me. And that was my first you know, one of my first proceed and that's when I was like, Okay, I guess I'm in the game. You know, me. AGAri Gronich14:43So, here's something. You've been saying. I want to unpack that too, is you thought of it and then you did it. Right. You, you thought of it and then you started doing actions. You thought I can do this. And then you started making actions towards it. A lot of people think I could do something, I have this great idea. I wanted to do this, oh, man, I saw that I created this thing I'm seeing out now I created that 10 years ago. Why didn't I do it? Why didn't I do it? So all of those things, you know, go through my mind when I hear you saying, well, I just did this. And then, and then I started writing. And then I went on to Upwork, or, you know, Elance, and I put my ad out, and then I, these are all action steps that you're doing. Right? So people like, I used to get really upset at the law of attraction, because I felt like they missed this step, the action step. And so people were like, “Well, I made my vision board. And nothing.”TLTracy Lamourie15:47Such way I always say you can do all that then act in a chord.AGAri Gronich15:59Act in accord. Exactly. So this is where, where the thing you want to do becomes live becomes alive right. So let's.TLTracy Lamourie16:09How I know how people say fake it till you make it. I hate that because I'm very genuine. I don't like fake it till you make it as this wrong message. But I get what they're trying to say with that. And so what I would I say with that is from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is don't dream it, be it? Have you ever heard anybody talk about Rocky Horror Picture Show in a business? Because you know, I can't afford No, but seriously, it's just a life lesson. But I always love that don't dream it be it. So it's the same as I get you know, it's the saying. If you want to make it you don't fake it till you make it. Be it. Started it, do it. Take a step. Now you're in, you want to write a book, don't just think about write a page. Oh, look at me writing. Now you're ready. You know what I need? Like me? Well, I took that step. I made that freelance or whatever upward page. And then I you know, put myself out there. And then I got a reply. And oh my god, I got that one client, that one like I got and just started Williamson. And actually a Kennedy person, one of the crazy, one of my first client on Upwork. Back then, which is not even touched now was like a member of Academy can remember that story of the Kennedy, brother or cousin or somebody that had murdered the girl in Connecticut in the 70s. As about 10 years ago, there was something going on with the legal situation. And because of my history and the death penalty stuff, right? When I had my contract there, they saw that until we were looking for somebody to write the words for a web page for Michael's Skakel. So I worked and it was Kennedy family member and I've you know, ever the name right now. But it was legit, on Upwork and great. People are on that Upwork by the way. Like, I mean, I've literally got Rosa Parks cousin and the Kennedy hired me on that. And so that was just like a little short project at the time. Like it was like a what? But I mean, you know, so then I'm like, Okay, hold on. You can do it. That was not easy. I was a freelancer. I didn't even have all these accolades. I had, I was good at what I guess I did plan on the history of what I'd done for the, you know, I had been on CNN, media messaging and got us on CNN. It wasn't just like it was pointed successes. But still, that's very quickly on to your point. And I said, I was gonna do it. I went on there and did it. All of a sudden, I worked with Rosa Parks cousin, Emma Kennedy.AGAri Gronich18:24Crazy, isn't it? Yeah, well, just do it. I go back to the risky business, you know, movie, and the line that Tom Cruise is famous for saying, which is every now and then you just gotta say what the fuck. Do it? And you know, it's funny, because here's what here's what the audience is. Forget, you know, not hearing right. Is that the thing that's stopping us from just doing it? There is a thing that is an actual thing stopping us from doing stuff. Right. Now I call it trauma. And then the resulting behaviors and automatic patterns because of the trauma, fear, you know, distrust, not feeling good enough, not feeling worthy, all those kinds of things. Right. Sounds to me, like you act beyond fear, right? In some level, even though you're experiencing it, possibly. So how did you get to a place where you could act despite maybe the fears and the traumas and the things that were possibly coming your way? Because a lot of what people want to do these days is go up against the systems like I do, go up against the systems as they are. This is going to spark a lot of their fear barrier, right from just doing it. So why don't we talk a little bit about that?TLTracy Lamourie20:09Yeah, I don't know if I have a perfect answer for that. That's a really good question. I think I'm, you know, trying to think as you asked, where, when I started being like that, but I think about I mean, I've always been, it's funny, I think back to the conversation I had when I was 15, and my best friend, Jennifer, and we, cuz I was gonna say, I've always been super confident. But at the same time, I've always been like, anybody not confident I was, you know, the fat, fat girl, you know? So with all of that, that's, you know, I always see that now. But I never want to even use those words here a couple years ago, because I was so like, if I don't say anything, maybe nobody will notice. You know, it was, like, if I would come up with a TV show, I leave the room because I didn't even look at it. You know what I mean? It goes, so that shows you I was hugely unconfident about that in my presence in a room and all that. And yet, in spite of that, even at 15, I was like, yeah, whatever, you know. So I remember a conversation, my friend about this kind of thing at 15, which teenagers are more, you know, smarter than you think they are really resonant and smart to me Even now, right? I don't remember when Jennifer or me that said this, but when we were talking about this, you know, in the conversation, and we were talking about how like, we're insecure, she was like, mean that we were insecure, we know, we're secure in our insecurities, like, you know, whatever. Like, I don't care and in some way, you know what I mean? Like, like, Is it because maybe because of that, you know, thinking people are gonna judge me, whatever. And we see time I'm smart, and strategic and whatever. And that the confidence was inquisitive, confidence, or lack of confidence. And let me say, Oh, I don't care anyway. I'm just gonna do it. You know what I'm saying? Was that super confident? Or was it that I wasn't confident? I figured that they, you know, I wouldn't be accepted or wouldn't be like them, I wouldn't be where I couldn't be the pretty blonde girl, like, you know, anyway, so whatever. So this is what you get. And then I became super confident than that. And that's been everything because like, like, people who knew me back then, when I say, I wasn't confident as a teenager, they're like, oh, if I say I was shy as a teenager, like, you were never shy. I'm like really, Oh, that's interesting. So it's like, I think I always just, you know, whether it was natural to me at the time, or whether it became natural, because now it's super natural born and even, whatever, I don't care, you know, and that is a free and you know, it's funny, I read recently, a 50 Click way after this is my personality in Psychology Today, not long ago, or maybe it was the New Yorker, but it was something and it was it was saying that there was a point you know, like, it's almost like you know, that old What are they used to call people? like they would say they're not neurotic. Eccentric. AGAri Gronich22:49Eccentric. Okay. Right. Well, they only said that about the wealthy people.TLTracy Lamourie22:54I was just gonna say that when you add a certain level, whether it was wealth meal days, or even now I would like now it could be in your socials or your that what? social welfare, the credit, whatever, your that all of a sudden, what looks weird. Oh, like when you walk, when I'm 21 walking, run off the crazy red air, how she thinks she's gonna get hired, you know, whenever a little girl go, what looks weird, then, when you got this credibility behind you and you're able to, even if they don't know that, at that certain point, they start to think, Oh, Jesus, that person who carries them stuff like that with that confidence. But that's like, my husband's got crazy, long curly hair, like a rock star, right? And then I got the bright red. Here we go places where people don't even know about, like, they don't know why the publishers they don't know whenever. And they're looking at us. And we walk in the room. And it's funny, because I guess because it But the interesting thing is we carry ourselves now the following combination of the crazy Look, the red hair and the curly hair. But now that we're 50 and have all this stuff behind us, even if you don't know that we carry ourselves with a confidence that you know, you wouldn't maybe expect from the crazy red haired girl or the guy with the curly hair. Right? So that right there has, I think, happens all the time that we're like, that's so weird. Like, they don't know what we do. They don't know about Hollywood, they don't know. We just literally walk somewhere and like some rubbing be like, Oh, you guys, what do you do? We're like, we have that vibe now. Like, I don't understand. But I think that's what it is. Because we look up. We don't look at the average 50 year olds. So clearly, and we're clearly not bums. So then clearly you're somebody because otherwise why would you just have a suit and tie and look like you know what I mean? So it's a weird, like, backslash.AGAri Gronich24:34I think 60 something years old is the age of I don't give a shit. Right. But I mean, in just in general amongst the crowd, like, they'll, you know, I hear them talking, so to speak, and they're whispering Oh, yeah, I could toot in public now. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like the age where just Ah, Let it all you know.TLTracy Lamourie25:02Maybe just a confidence thing when you realize no you know what all that was just stupid with me sitting there worrying about everybody. Maybe you finally realize what I tell people what just stop being so stressed out when you walk into the room you think that everybody in the room is thinking about a little Oh, you Well, that's a lot of arrogance and clapping. Am not arrogant. Sure you are! People sure you are you just think that everybody's thinking about you, you know, realize that everybody's roosting with their own crap their own worry their own, you know? And if there's some asshole, and they're just thinking about tearing you down, then that's good to know that you don't want to deal with them. Anyway, that's Thanks for letting me know about you what you like.AGAri Gronich25:35Right. So deconstructing the societal norms is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. So I don't, I didn't tell you any of this stuff on our pre interview because I wanted you to go. Alright. Okay, so deconstructing social norms, because here's the thing. There's this guy is in your industry way, way, way long before you were. He's called the father of spin, Doctor Bernays. He was the cousin to Freud. And he's the guy who created propaganda. Okay. Yeah, he created propaganda. In general, he was the guy that created mindcom after. And like said, his psychology was his cousin was Freud. And he basically said that people are sheep and there's a select few that know what the people need and then the publicity and advertising industry was born, to tell people what it was that they needed to direct them in to a direction like sheep, right. So that was the father of your industry. As publicist. There's a lot of manipulation of people's societal norms. So I want to know how we can manipulate people societal norms, so that they are fearless in the face of fear so that they act beyond their belief maybe in themselves, like you did. So I just wanted to like, surprise you. It's a little.TLTracy Lamourie27:14No, I think that's true. And I'm glad you mention that, because I always think I always love that kind of PR. I do needs PR. Because it's true when you say PR, even me when I say when you say public relations. Like that's my call my when I rebranded incorporated, my company was called the Maury PR and media, which was originally my PR and marketing when it started with Kimbo marketing. And I was like, oh, what if I don't get that PR club, but I never even did any marketing. So when I was incorporated, I change it to Lemori media, because there was like, Well, you know, I never went public relations. And so you know, and also we're media content creation company, and we're gonna be doing more of that, but also public relations, I think it's a bad fit. Because when you think about it, you think about like, the Spin Doctors., the guy that stand up in front of, you know, for politicians, or whenever, or for a company that's done something wrong, or they you know, had a big bad media thing,AGAri Gronich28:16O you know, the president of secretaries or, you know.TLTracy Lamourie28:21With the language or you know, immediate or like, maybe non various example, click on TV, it would be like a public health campaign, you know, where they need to get much information out to where that is the situation where you're talking about, they specifically want people to act in a certain way. So they're putting up a news, ask, you know, like, what you see with COVID is a perfect example.AGAri Gronich28:46I didn't, I didn't say anything about COVID at all. TLTracy Lamourie28:49And I don't like to go into that either. Because I'm not even I don't have a strong opinion about it, because I like to have a need to please what I know a lot.AGAri Gronich28:55Yeah. And I like having my YouTube channel. TLTracy Lamourie28:58You know, so, no, yeah. And I'm not even going either direction on me personally, I have it. Because, again, in general about the world, I like to know a lot of things before I start spouting off, I like to really be confident, and when it comes to all that I have not coffee, I don't know anything on either side. But just strictly as an example of not what would that would be true, not none of that just like, you know, or let's make up let's not call it COVID. Let's say there's a public health be, you know, a public health emergency. See, everybody's gonna This is gonna happen if people do that, you know, so they want to get into massive information or something like that. Yeah. But what are the what I reinvented for the PR school, I didn't even meet a publicist till recently. I never read a book on PR. I started messaging to get the word out about that one. So to me what I have done in my career, what I call PR with, you know, in the services that I provide for my clients, I don't you know, it's funny because LA clients intimidating fire, their Hollywood publicist, for me on whether to work together like this. You do things that no other publicist does. And I'm not saying that you say I'm better because I invented this in my head, you know what I mean? I didn't go to school and learn with the perimeters of what a publicist does for their client is, to me if your public image, it's always what I would do for myself. I want to get you an award shows I want to get you needy, I want to get your message out there, right. So I call it I do elevating and celebrating some PR, good PR spin day. But actually, that literally came out of me in a podcast, we were having a conversation like this. So podcasting was like I'm really wanted you to know, I normally wouldn't have otherwise gone, because my show is all about the jet. But I really liked your vibe, and I listened. He was just he was saying the same thing. And I was like, but really, it's more about elevating everything. I just talked about that. But that's true. That's what I like people already doing amazing things, whether they're creatives, whether they're entrepreneurs, whether they may not even realize how amazing the things they're doing are and I'm like, why aren't you getting quoted about that? Why are you so literally my job is what I do is I find people writers who deserve to be heard and find ways to get them heard people that aren't looking at and I find ways to break that barrier for them so that they can we can get into media. I wasn't surprised I used to be a punk Ari, but you know, Jello Biafra. You know, from Dead Kennedys? No punk days. Oh, my God. Kennedy's came up twice in this conversation. What's?AGAri Gronich31:26In there all the dead Dead Kennedys, the dead and the Dead Kennedys,TLTracy Lamourie31:30Right in. Jello Biafra said if you don't like the mean, don't hate the media become the media in the 80s. They rave for all this? And I was like, yeah, so I am the media. We are all the media. In some ways. That's the problem these days. Because, you know, some people are just starting off and whenever That's it, but but you know, in through the mainstream media, what I find is that, like, I stay away from that stuff, specifically, because I don't like to work. You know, when I used to be a township, Politico, because I was an optimist. I thought, you know, I'm passionate about something that I thought were gonna change things, I would use my skills for politics, in the days before I was getting paid for stuff. Now, I really don't want you and I won't say never, because maybe somebody will follow me, I will. They'll convince me that they're God's greatest gift to you know, activists, and they really do mean, but I like to stay away from politics, not because people are bad, because the system is so corrupt, there's an even though you know, the best person going into that shitstorm, they're not going to be able to do what they want to do, they're not going to be able to so it's very, I don't want to sell my professional reputation. But I'm an activist, and I came from this, you know what I mean, I didn't come from, like, I want to always, I want the activist that I was in my 20s to always be proud of this corporate chick in my 50s. Like he said, at the beginning that different you know, I even recently I came from that mindset, I still have to convince myself sometimes I get Oh, yeah, it's funny our people we have doesn't mean your evil hate. Because it's true. Like the corporate is always like, you know, Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, or whenever in a dark, it's always you know, that. So as an activist, you think anybody in business, clearly, they're just money oriented. They don't care about all this stuff. It's almost been a revelation continues to be revolutionary, as I am, you know, higher and higher in business, and my circles and wider and wider, more people with money, you're in my circle, and more big people with bigger money and all that. And then I tell my story of podcasters are a huge, huge, you know, corporate business guys. And they're like, almost crying during them as well, if you actually do care, but they weren't listening before. How can they listen? So now I'm like, now I'm at a place. So I learned so much doing this, you know, like, what stuff you said, to the perceptions that were wrong about you what they thought was wrong, but actually what I thought was wrong with people. So really, we are all really confused about each other and our motivations, whether it comes to like, the right and the left and you know, people I think are bad because I'm a hardcore anti race, that would not have been my table and all that. Even though I have to remind myself people are people and they're not always working on the same motivation that we think they're working on to them. It's like you said fear, or misunderstanding or whatever. And if you prefer and break those things down, so that since it is important to break things, into the PR, like, truth, it's communication, people management, for sure. It's contacts, communication, and people management, for sure. But I don't look at it as a fairies. We have not tried to find ways to convince people of things that are true. I do try to find ways to convince to use my words that people can hear what I'm saying. different audiences can understand what I'm saying and hear me without their own barriers going up before they can even hear me,AGAri Gronich34:46Right? No, I guess what I was what I was getting at was not selling you or your profession. What I was saying is totally what I was saying is, is how do we get the profession in general, because a lot of people, obviously they don't trust the media these days. And so how do we get the profession in general? To understand that truth messaging is as powerful if not more powerful than fake media and false messaging? And how do we get the people to understand what the differences are, when we clearly have a complete lack of cognitive dissonance right now, or critical thinking and be able to understand that nation? So, you know, how do we bring people back to a place where they can really, truly know what's real, so that they can act on it so that they can feel like they can do something so that they have the faith and the confidence and all those things that we've been talking about beforehand? Right. Yeah, I'm leaving it all together. How do we bridge those gaps? These are the conversations I at least want to have in general, and have you have with all of your media people, right? How do we do that as a community of media people so that we can really change the industry together.TLTracy Lamourie36:19Out of people think I mean, number one, I mean, you know, honestly, it's you that cognitive dissonance is so true. It's hard, maybe hard for people to do, but you have to really understand like, well, no matter when you hear information, who is giving me this, like, where is this information coming from? Who is giving me this information? And why do they want me to believe it must be someone who benefits from me believing this? You know, like, honestly, I asked him stuff, like when I watch everything, like even if, because something might sound good. If it fits your mindset, if it fits your belief system and fits your whatever, then you're going to want to believe it. Whatever you hear whatever information like that's nasty, but that guy's gonna always question question everything I swear button as, as a little punk rocker. That's a question authority. And I still, you know, say that question everything, question all the information, question the information I give you do it because you should be questioning all information. You know, who benefits from this? Well, you know, Tracy's quiet better than me hearing but then that's not nefarious, or whatever, you know, but ask yourself, Is there you know, who benefits from this? And is there another side to it? Always question your own thinking. Edit your own thinking, make sure to read other stuff. That's the number one way I read everything. I read the right way. I wait. I mean, I'm a lefty, obviously, even though I always say a bird Can't I mean, in terms of I, you know, most of the things that you would line them up with agreement, but not always. I mean, like, I'm not a radical on anything. A bird can't fly with only one wing. You ever noticed there was huge bird tried to fly? So like, really? I'm not a lefty or righty. I like I'm an ideas, girl. I'm tired of all this. Like, what side of you? And I've got ideas? I don't know, let's talk about the specific thing we're talking about. It's all here. Both ideas that maybe well..AGAri Gronich38:09This is part of why I like having you on because I so agree. This is what I talk about so often is critically think each individual issue each individual thing in your life, in your business, in your politics in your community. It's like ask good questionsTLTracy Lamourie38:30Of yourself. Hey, why am I Why do I believe that? Why is it because all my friends say that? Oh, well, you know what? Look, honestly, like I literally read every everything that Sports Illustrated, I read them. Like, there was all the mainstream stuff, right? And I watched whatever. And then I read if I can get my hands on some crazy left-wing stuff on Wait, like, I mean, radical, crazy, right wing stuff. I'll read it. And I'm shaking my head at both. You know, and I you know what I'm saying? So like, I understand that I'm reading what people are saying, I'm hearing, not just the argument of people that think my way. But all that I'm like, Yeah, yeah, like, you know, you don't I'm saying so that way. I'm not not because I think I'm gonna even be convinced. But just if you don't understand the way people are thinking, and this isn't just so that I can do the messaging. This is so that I can be discipline activist me, because he are me developed out of activists, me and we would shouting me and my husband, Dave, which I like men, we were in fact, we've begun back in our 20s. You know, we started a campaign because we were basically worked out we wanted to bring in a union. We didn't know any unions. We weren't radicalism that we just didn't meet them. We were being treated at work. One girl said, Hey, I think you can go to any union. We were like, really? Let's look. Let's look that up. And we looked it up. We made a couple of calls. And then all of a sudden, we were in the Globe and Mail Canada's biggest, you know, financial paper at once. Before this, he said to me before, it's definitely I forget this stuff. At 25, 26 years old, me and my husband and one girl. We unionize the first call center in Canada and that what again We were not like big union activists. We were just doing whatever, you know. So with of always a matter of like, you know, oh yeah, why start bringing that up, we were always really good to be we're not mess, you know, like we were publicists, but uh, 25 years old, we, you know, the company was trying to silence and talk about new needs. So they came in bought everybody pizza one day. So we wrote it literally, we weren't a marketing, but I look back on our really good PR piece. It's what the union will give you more than just pizza. And then it had a whole big thing breakdown. We went with a 99%, both the union, which I wasn't even a part of right. Never seen a vote like that week, because we again, we did the work. We called all of our fellow workers, if you have any questions, call us. We put the time in, we care, you know what I mean? But it was really good. When I look back on it. After 20 years of doing this, I couldn't have done a better campaign now than I did as a dumb as 24 year old activist, because we were just, it was the same thing. It was just messaging to see what the situation was really believing in it right? And say, we're going to tell people and we're going to tell people in a way they can hear it within, you know, and that's what it all is. So, buddy with his 90 the only thing I think the guy that you're talking about, the only thing I admire about him is funny. I read about it in the New Yorker, it was hilarious. They said he was in his 90s I believe it's the same guy because they said he was the father of PR. And they mentioned that he worked for like, Come, you know, countries, right? And they said he was in his 90s he still went to work in his office in New York City, like literally every day, you know, and they would tell him, it's like, it was some crazy thing. Right? And I was reading it going. Yeah. He's a publicist. So that was the only thing. I felt like at a residence there. I was like, yeah, I'll be juniors at 108. But we do. But other than that, yeah. So I don't agree. You know, I, I don't think that's like, I don't believe in STEM. I certainly don't, I did not know that things are mine clump. That's really informative and interesting. Because Yeah, there is definitely a dark side, which is called, you know, that was used to be called dark PR. And I'm sure a lot of you actively do that. And that's what they do with politics and everything where all they're trying to do is dig, you know, that hole, dig up the right key and digging all that stuff up. And I don't want to be part of that.AGAri Gronich0:26Right. And that's literally I guess, what is going on right now, at least in the US. I don't know about how the news looks in other countries at this moment. I know how it looked like in 2004. During the elections, when I was in Greece, I could see the news and the differences between what's being aired on us TV versus Greek TV at the time. But I know in the US this massive thing about fake news, and we just don't really know what is true and what's not true anymore. And all the resources to you know, you Google something, and you get a completely different set of answers. And you do if you Yahoo something? Or if you do something, and it's like, okay, who's pushing which agenda? And is there? Is there any kind of, you know, independent search that doesn't the preconceived algorithm to send you to where they want to send you.TLTracy Lamourie1:28That's interesting, too, because even the more when you search, you know, Google knows your search history too, right? like Facebook, they give you which is so we're getting in this weirder weirder, like the circle for who knows? How can you find like it's getting worse and worse. And in five years public is even worse. Because Where are we hearing only are like those echo chambers, echo chambers, right. And then there's those new social media platforms, people who've been kicked it off the Twitter and Facebook and whatever. And they're super echo chambers, where like, it's only so odd. It's like, it's all it's, all of a sudden, everyone around you is talking about whatever, you know, in a certain way, that starts to seem like your reality. It's a cults work. That's how governments work when you're in a government not even meaning do, but you're in a government. And that's what I call everything in cult, because I understand the way your mind works, I call the political parties that I used to be in a cult, you know, the NDP, which is the lefty lefty party, and I left them because I was like, you know, what, even introduce both of you to one of social and I'm not listening to the roll like this, you know, there's supposed to be the one of social justice bla bla bla, in line with all the people that are like me, you care about this, that the other, when it comes down to it, it is an entity in a party, and it's working inside and out. Part of what it does is Jake just itself, we're activists, we're always on those issues, looking for a partner that's going to help locals political parties aren't ever because they can't be there. Once you get in there. There's all these different other things going on. As people whenever around us sounds good. You know, like, you know, you relate to the people around you, you start to like, so then those other people, they go, Oh, those people are crazy. They don't mean Well, you're not realizing you just see in your little part of the elephant, like those activities seem they're part of the elephant, or the finance people sitting there part, thinking everyone else is crazy. But this within all of it, maybe. But in terms of the media, oh god, I don't even know just so much. The fake news thing is, like this expression, fake news is just so annoying, because I mean, like everything, anybody can call anything that now, no, but at the same time, it's true. Like they're there that that did address originally the you know, propaganda side of news. So yeah, you know, it's a shit show now.AGAri Gronich3:34It's really fun, it's really entertaining, but not if you actually want to know something about what's happening in the world. And I think that was the point is when the deregulation happened, and they started making news for profit. It used to have to be the only it was that had to be not for profit division of a corporation to deliver the news, and then they deregulated it. And they allowed for a 24-hour news cycle that had advertising and all of a sudden, and that's the news. At least as far as Walter Cronkite. I think.TLTracy Lamourie4:15That trusted that's true, and there used to be a clear, like a deli-a-nation like 100% between the editorial and advertorial where like an editor would shoot themselves in the head before they let any advertorial content come like 100% but now that's actually changed even like I'm still shocking even in new in newspapers even were like, and to their great regret. Like I've talked to business press, for example, where they're like, Oh, my God traced, but the editors and financial posters that were there like, that's a great story. I myself have 18 spoolie 18 stories. I'm editor to financial 18 business stories, I want to quit. My business press has been you know, cut from like, six pages 10 pages two to three to two and Half ages One, two, only with one and a half of the editorial content going to people who placed ads, and I was like, Oh my god, and that's in a newspaper, oh my God. And he was like, just telling me this truth. Right? And I was like, because you see some of that, like, I guess the reality of the newsroom now, like economic, you know, crazy. But that's the kind of thing that ruins like that, you know, you used to be like, you come to me for like earned media, there is no like, I don't you pay to play. I don't put quite when you pay me, you don't pay it, I don't come to you later and say, pay to get into this, that's advertised. Right? I find opportunities where you are respected source, and you're quoted as an expert source. And that's why it's valuable. Because it's not advertising because you can't buy your way into that it's me presenting, you know, that's why it's valuable. If they keep doing this is gonna be like, as seen on TV is to have cachet to people, you know, when it was like, bought purchased ad until people figured out Oh, wait, that's just an ad, you know. And now we it still has the cache, like, if you're on the news to TV or whatever, because you're not supposed to be able to buy it. But now they're starting to be that like, that style thing at all.AGAri Gronich6:11Yeah, absolutely. So here's, you know, I like to play with you. In some of those mind things. You said, I know the mind. I know the consciousness. So here, where I like to go. Right? I want to create a new tomorrow, I want to activate people's visions for a better world activate is an active thing that you have to actually actively do. And in my opinion, that is activism. Because you're doing the thing that you're passionate about that is going to move people forward. So that's an activism thing. So creating an active movement, creating people who are actively doing and collaborating with others who are like minded. How do you move the mountain? How do you get people to come along with you? How do you get people who want to be the leader, to step up to be that leader so that they can then bring the people in?TLTracy Lamourie7:13I think is really showing people that you can do it. Like, that's what I think people always tell me that I've inspired them and all that. And I think it just they're looking at that like oh, well, even my daughter when we you know, we met her at 15 sweet adopted, and she was already awesome activist minded, all kinds of you know, but like when she came into our family and saw the newspaper articles on the thing, about, you know, us with the death penalty, and you know, you know, all these, it newspapers all over America, from the bottom of cat, you know, from Canada and our basement, you know, there we have a cover of the Houston Chronicle that like, and she said to me years later, not then because she started doing her own activist if not around the duck, obviously, or other stuff, you know, a lot of Aboriginal rights stuff early on, it was animals now it's, you know, First Nations and stuff. And so she, I remember, she literally said, like, you know, I thought I was always coming back to this mind, but I looked at all this literally, I thought, well, you guys can do that. It just made it really well. Well, cuz it's, true, like, you know, like, seriously, we elevator stuff so much, you know, without it wasn't about us whenever it was about getting the message out that somebody had to be speaking the message, and all of a sudden, were there people look, you know, so like, we never should have been able to do that stuff. But we just didn't think we thought we should be able to. So we did, you know. And so she was inspired by that. So I think people see that it's not that hard. It's hard. But it's not. But anything. It's not nothing is hard. Nothing, maybe brain surgery. I've never done that. That's probably hard. But I mean, other than that, like, most things in life are not hard. If a human can do it, you can do it. If a person can do it, if you can conceive of it, if you can, you know. And if you take that first step, again, you're a lot closer, like a lot of these things. When you know when we say that people think oh, yeah, yeah, but then a million times before, but it's so it's true. Just do it. If you take a step. Now, you're not where you were before, you're one step closer. And then you realized you did that. And then maybe you take one more step, you're gonna get an serotonin boost a little bit of goal, you know, whenever, and you're like, Whoa, yeah, Matt, you know, like, so I'm lucky and like, I don't know what it was a push me on path. And like, I just didn't have fear. And so like you said, the fear, and I did stuff. And every time I did stuff, you know, again, back in those days, it wasn't a money reward at all. Like now it's, you know, money back that we weren't thinking about that way. But I mean, the reward and it wasn't even about ego wasn't about getting the article. It was about a client we were like literally in it to accomplish that thing. Oh, my God, we're in that article, not like a great trick is not an article. How many people read that how people can hear that. I'm gonna give a Jimmy Jimmy like, it was really about that. And when you're actually doing that, that's when you get hurt when you're doing something.AGAri Gronich10:00Right, you know, awesome. Thank you so much for all of that. Is there anything else that you feel like you just need to give to the audience that you you're like aching to share with them?TLTracy Lamourie10:15Well, I usually end on this on a positive note for people who aren't feeling so positive. Because I think we always talk about all these accomplishments and blah, blah, blah, you know, like, looking at people on vacations on the internet. And clicking will feel pretty bad about themselves. But I again, want you to real I want to realize, so there's Jimmy who spent 25 years on death row, he's always saying Never Never give up. Which, you know, for real, but how he got through it. And then even now, when he's out, and we you know, when everyone has trauma, whenever he's talking about stuff, and he's having a bad day, I'll be like, yeah, you know, what, we didn't get this far to only get this far. We just found on Facebook. I saw that on Facebook once. And for him, I'm like, you know, Grammys on the way you already did the hard stuff, you've got those doors open, and no one would have thought do we didn't get that far, it's not, you know, get rest of your dream, this is the easy part for you like to get the Grammy compared to what we've done already, is easy. That's possible. That wasn't, we did that, you know, so that. But, but more even more importantly, for people who like maybe don't,for people who are feeling good about themselves, you can get inspired only get inspired, there's more to go. But really, more importantly, the people who don't feel good about themselves, who are like who feel like they're a loser who feel like they're not winning, who feel like, you know, they just don't feel that they want to jump off a bridge, they feel like everybody's doing that to sell this No, Oh, you didn't get this far to only get this far, you're absolutely a winner if you're listening to this, because this is a hard, shitty, we're hope sometimes great world, I love that. It can be shitty, it can be hard for people, especially if you don't know how to get out of that negative feeling. And everybody has people that are treating them badly. you've all had struggles. But literally, if you got here, you got through all those struggles, you beat all those people who wanted to bring you down and you won. So you're still here. And there's only tomorrow, you know, to do more. So you have to literally realize he didn't get through all that he didn't deal with all those idiots he didn't deal with all that should be feeling this way today, you gotta like, applaud yourself for where you got and keep on going. So that's, I think, super important.AGAri Gronich12:18Yeah, that was one of the things that I thought of earlier in the conversation when you're talking about celebration. And I think that people forget to celebrate their wins, they're definitely ready to experience their failures, you know, emotionally, but celebrating their wins is, and being grateful for that win each time it comes even if it's tiny, tiny, tiny steps, is an amazing thing for people to do to keep moving them forward and feeling good about it. Even in those moments of hardship, right and struggle. I mean, you went through a lot of years of hardship and a struggle on that path to get that person. And I'm sure that part of what you were thinking is nothing that I'm experiencing as much as what he's experiencing, being in that space. And so using that as part of like cross motivation. And I tell people, you're not done until you're dead. You know, you can't fall off the wagon, there is no wagon. If you're not dead, you're not done. Like, literally at any moment in time, choose to do something different. So move, to fly away, to go on a vacation to rest and breathe and not pick up your phone to do any of these things you are more than capable of because you're a human being. And so I really appreciate you being on and sharing your story, your wisdom, all of the things that got you to a place. And I hope that this that the audience listening really gets that they can do something to activate their vision for a better world and create a new tomorrow today. And it doesn't take a whole lot. It's just one step at a time. So thank you so much for being here. And this has been another episode of create a new tomorrow. I'm your host Ari Gronich. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.  

Servaes Tholen (Grove, Thumbtack, UpWork, eBay) is a financial operator with a wealth of experience leading cross-functional teams. After holding various financial positions at eBay, including CFO of the North America business unit, Servaes moved on to work with smaller, dual-purpose startups with social missions. In today's episode, Servaes joins Catherine Jhung to discuss his transition from eBay to the startup world, his untraditional route from applied physics to finance, how companies like Grove and UpWork are making a difference in the world, and much more.Topics Include:Growing up in the Netherlands. How living abroad before moving to the US influenced Servaes and the work he does today. Working as the VP and CFO for eBay's North America business unit. Key takeaways from his time as a consultant for McKinsey. The marketplace demand for companies with social purposes. The immediacy of climate change, and our social responsibility to respond. Long-term career aspirations. And other topics...Servaes Tholen is the CFO of Grove Collaborative where he oversees Accounting, FP&A, Corporate Finance and Business Operations. Prior to Grove, Servaes worked at Thumbtack where he served as CFO and COO for over four years. Prior to Thumbtack, Servaes was CFO of Elance and Upwork where he was primarily responsible for Finance, Human Resources, Analytics, and Data Science, before, during, and after the merger between Elance and oDesk that created Upwork. He holds an MSc in Applied Physics from Delft University of Technology, as well as an MBA from INSEAD with a focus on finance.Want to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website – https://www.htgc.com/LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/hercules-capital/

In this Episode, I (@Jivraj Singh Sachar) speak with Beerud Sheth, Co-founder and CEO of Gupshup. Gupshup is defining the way businesses leverage conversational messaging to interact with their consumers. It is by far the market leader in its category and it recently turned a profitable unicorn with back-to-back funding rounds. This is Beerud's 2nd startup and he earlier founded Elance, now known as Upwork, which is a public company at the heart of the global gig-economy. Beerud's depth of experiences as a founder having built successful companies for more than 20 years is very reflective through his words of great wisdom. Through the Episode we discuss the following: 1. (1:56) : How can founders "stay ahead of the curve" and how has Beerud done that with Elance & Gupshup? 2. (5:12) : How should founders time the market and deal with uncontrollables? 3. (10:00) : When should founders Pivot and How? 4. (13:48) : Learnings from building in the Valley through the last 20+ years!! 5. (19:46) : What is Gupshup and How has it evolved through when it first started in 2005? 6. (24:48) : What is the secret to great Enterprise Sales? 7. (28:15) : What goes behind the scenes of expanding internationally? 8. (30:27) : Learnings for Hiring & Culture!! 9. (35:15) : How does Beerud prioritise and make decisions? 10. (37:13) : Tackling the downsides of Experience ~ Intellectual Humility! 11. (40:36) : What keeps Beerud going even after 20+ years of Company Building? 12. (45:06) : What is the Steady State for a Founder? 13. (48:58) : Conclusion Here is the 63rd Episode of the Indian Silicon Valley Podcast - Experience is a Virtue! That was it from this Episode, thanks again for tuning in! :) We're available on Instagram & Twitter. Feel free to drop in your feedback! Do not forget to Subscribe to our WhatsApp Newsletter. Do share the Episode with your friends if you liked the content :) I, Jivraj, am reachable on LinkedIn & Twitter! "If you never try, you never know" Stay Tuned, Keep Building.

We're lucky that we chose a profession where confidence beats knowledge. Before I dive deeper into that, we first have to look at what confidence is. According to disctionary.com, Confidence is the belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities. Confidence is what's center stage when you say, “I can do this.” Confidence is what's driving you when you say, “I can figure this out.” Confidence is the ladder you climb when you say, “I can succeed.” Without confidence, your goals, your intentions, your ambitions might as well be called dreams. Because that's all they'll ever be if you don't believe in yourself and your abilities. I fully believe that without confidence, you cannot succeed as a design business owner. I'm not talking about being a designer. Many designers lack confidence in themselves. I know and have worked with designers who fall into that category. I'm talking about running your own design business. Being a freelancer if that's what you want to call yourself. But I digress. Confidence. If you want to succeed in this business, you need confidence. But what about knowledge? Don't you need knowledge to succeed? That's a trick question. The definition of knowledge, according to dictionary.com, is an acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation. Acquaintance. What an interesting word to use. Most of the time, when you think of acquaintances, you think of people you know of but don't necessarily know. I consider Betty, the cashier at the grocery store I go to, as an acquaintance. She knows me by name, and we exchange pleasantries whenever I'm in her checkout line. If we run into each other in town, we'll smile at each other and say hi, but that's the extent of our interaction. We're acquaintances. Merriam-Webster defines knowledge as The fact or condition of being aware of something. Being aware of something? According to this dictionary meaning, that's all that's required to have knowledge. So, according to two reputable sources on the meaning of all things. Knowledge doesn't mean intimately knowing something. It just means being acquainted or aware of something. When you think of the definition in that way, you realize that you don't actually need to know something to succeed. What you need is confidence in your ability to seek knowledge. And that's why confidence beats knowledge. Now don't get me wrong. There are plenty of times when knowledge trumps confidence. If I'm about to have surgery, yes, I want a confident surgeon, but I hope their knowledge of the procedure they're about to perform supersedes that confidence. If I'm about to take a trip, I'm less interested in how confident the pilot is and more concerned that they know how to fly a plane. But when it comes to design or to run a design business, confidence beats knowledge. You probably don't remember, but there was a time in your life when you were very young when you didn't know how to walk. You crawled around on all fours. Or maybe you were one of those butt dragging babies. Regardless, one day, after spending your entire life so far on the ground, you got up and walked. At one time, you didn't know how to ride a bike. Then one day, you did. You didn't know how to swim. Then one day, you did. This applies to hundreds, or should I say thousands of accomplishments in your life. You didn't know how to do something until you did. I remember when my kids were young. Any time they would get frustrated and say, “I can't do it,” I would calmly correct them by saying, “It's not that you can't do it. You just don't know how to do it yet.” And once they learned, I would remind them how they felt before their accomplishment. But what does Confidence beets Knowledge mean? It means that you don't need to know how to do something before taking on the task of doing it. You just need to be confident that you'll figure it out. I admit I didn't always feel this way. Back in 2006, I was approached by our local library to design a new website. They had heard good things about me from several people and had decided I was the one they wanted to work with. This was going to be a huge project. In fact, I was a bit intimidated when I found out their budget for the website was $50,000. That was more than I made in a year back then. The library wanted their new website to be connected to their catalogue of books. They wanted visitors to the website to tell what books they carry, if they were available for loan or already checked out. And if the latter, when they would be back. They also wanted members to be able to reserve books for pickup and put holds on books. All the typical things you expect of a library's website today. But in 2006, not many libraries had integrated catalogues on their website. I knew enough about websites to know that it was way beyond my capabilities. At that time, I was hand-coding websites in HTML and CSS. However, this website would require a database and therefore PHP and MySQL. The problem was, I didn't know PHP or MySQL. And even though I tried to learn it in a hurry, I just couldn't wrap my brain around the concept. Where HTML and CSS were so easy for me. PHP left me stumped. No matter how many books I read or courses I took, I just couldn't grasp it. Maybe it was the pressure I was under to learn it quickly to start on the website. I don't know. But in the end, I gave up. Now you may be thinking, you gave it a good shot, Mark, but at least you could hire someone to do the coding for you. Well… I kick myself to this day for not thinking of that. No, that's not right. I did think of it. I just didn't have the confidence back then to follow through. I didn't know what to do. I realized I didn't have the skills required for the project, but I didn't know how to find someone to help me. I knew what I needed to do but not the confidence to follow through. Upwork's former halves Elance and oDesk were around back then, but I wasn't aware of them or any other online platform I could turn to. So, backed into a corner, I did the only thing I thought I could do. I contacted the library and told them I couldn't take on the project. I turned down a $50,000 job. Several months later, their new website was up and running, I talked to my contact at the library, and he told me who they had hired to do the job. I was taken aback. I knew the person they hired. And I also believed their knowledge of web design wasn't much more than mine. So how did they pull it off? I ran into them shortly after that and asked them. You guessed it, they created the design look for the site but had hired someone to do the actual coding. It cost them $12,000 to hire a developer to complete the site for them. Presuming they were being paid the same $50,000 I had been offered, that meant they made $38,000 just for designing the look of the website. And I lost out on that money because of my lack of confidence. That lesson taught me a lot. 1) I was an idiot for not thinking of hiring someone myself. But most importantly 2) I lacked confidence from the moment I was presented with the website project. I figured I didn't have the knowledge and, therefore, couldn't handle the job. If I wanted to succeed in this business, I would need to rectify that. I would need to be more confident in what I could get done. Since that fateful day, I have never turned down a job for lack of knowledge. When a client asks me if I can do something that I'm unsure of or flat out don't know how to do. I answer them with confidence that I can get the job done. And then I figure out either how to do it or who to hire to do it for me. Confidence beats knowledge. Be your own guinea pig. It's great to be able to hire a contractor when you need one. We're lucky that there are so many options with good talented people available to us. But nothing beats learning how to do something yourself. You know that old saying, give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime. Providing he likes fish, that is. But the same concept applies to us as designers. I love hiring contractors to help me. But given the opportunity, I would much prefer to learn the skill and do the job myself. There are ways you can do just that while working on client jobs. Not sure how to do something the client is asking for? Chances are there's a blog article or YouTube video that will walk you through it. But sometimes, it's a good idea to be your own guinea pig. If you've been following Resourceful Designer for a while, you know that I design websites in WordPress. Specifically using the Divi Builder from Elegant Themes. However, I just told you how I was hand-coding websites for clients. I remember in the early 2010s, fellow web designers telling me I should try WordPress. But I had a strong aversion to WordPress. To me, the fact that WordPress used predesigned themes was an afront to designers. There was no way I would build a website for a client using someone else's design. But in 2013, I was getting into podcasting and was told that I needed a WordPress website to generate the RSS feed for the show. Very reluctantly, I installed WordPress and bought a theme called Evolution from Elegant Themes. This was before they came out with Divi. In fact, the friend who was helping me get started in podcasting had an affiliate link to Elegant Themes. Hence, as a way to repay him for his kindness, I bought a lifetime deal through his link, even though I only needed one theme and had no plans on building any WordPress websites beyond my own. That decision to buy the lifetime deal may have changed the course of my life—more on that in a moment. So I built my WordPress website and had to admit that there was a lot more flexibility in it than I originally believed. The theme did restrain me somewhat, but at least I could control how each part of it looked, even if I had no control over the layout itself. That was in June of 2013. December of that same year, Elegant Themes released Divi. And it changed my view of WordPress. Since I had a lifetime deal with Elegant Themes, it cost me nothing to test Divi out. I installed it on a dummy site I didn't care about and really liked how it worked. Divi was a game-changer. Here was a theme that gave me full control over how each element of a website looked and how each element was placed out on the screen. I could make a website look like how I wanted it to look. Not like how some theme designer wanted it to look. The next time I had a client website project to work on, I used my newfound confidence in my ability to make WordPress work for me and switched to WordPress and Divi. And I haven't looked back. If I hadn't used myself as a guinea pig and tested out WordPress on my own website and then Divi on a dummy site, I probably never would have made the switch to what I do today. Since then, there have been many times when I used myself as a guinea pig to test things and build my confidence. Be it new software or new features in existing software. Offering services I had previously never offered. Taking on projects I had never done before. Working on stuff for myself gave me the confidence to then use those skills on client work. Even today. I recently started building a website for a personal project I'm doing. And even though I've been a devoted Divi fan since day one, I decided to build my new website using Elementor. Why? Because I know the day will come when a client will ask me to take over a website built using Elementor. So why not get my feet wet on a project of my own choosing. So When the time comes, I'll have a better understanding of what I'm working with. So all of this to say, without confidence, I don't believe you can get very far as a design business owner. It's nice to have the knowledge, but confidence in yourself and what you do with that knowledge will propel you. Look at any successful freelancer you know, and you'll see that they exude confidence. That's the secret to their success. Confidence always beats Knowledge. Or at least, almost always. Tip of the week Let me ask you a question, is an email a contract? Last month, a Mississippi court took up an interesting case looking at what it takes to make a contract by email. Spoiler Alert: Not Much. As you know, a contract is just another word to describe an agreement. So when you exchange emails with someone and come to terms on a deal you both agree on, you ARE making a contract. In the Mississippi court case, the two parties had done just that... agreed on terms for the sale of some equipment in a series of emails. Now here's the tricky part. One of the parties, Jordan, had proposed the initial offer from his computer's email, which included his name and contact details in the signature. The other party, Parish, then countered the offer. But when responding to the counteroffer, Jordan used his iPhone to seal the deal with a “Let's do it.” reply.  The trouble is that the message had no signature from his iPhone other than “Send from iPhone.” Jordan later sold the goods to another buyer at a higher price. Parish sued for breach of contract, but Jordan claimed that there was no valid signature to his email and, therefore, the exchange was not enforceable as an agreement. The trial court agreed, and an appeals court affirmed. But the Mississippi Supreme Court found the state's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) permitted contracts to be formed by electronic means such as emails. Then, the Court stated that the determination of whether an email was electronically signed according to the UETA was a question of fact that turned on a party's intent to adopt or accept the writing and is, therefore, a question for the finder of facts. So, because there exists a genuine factual question about Jordan's intent, the Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. Anyway. That's a lot of legal talks. But the takeaway is. Emails can be the basis for an enforceable contract. So be careful in wording your messages. Even something as simple as “sounds good” could be deemed sufficient to bind you. If you consider your emails merely preliminary to a formal, written contract on paper, SAY SO. Add something to the signature of your emails, such as “this email message is preliminary and shall not constitute a binding agreement, which may only be made in a formal, written memorandum executed by all parties.” Adding a simple line like this can save you a lot of trouble should a client ever try to hold you accountable for something mentioned in an email. It makes you think.

 108: 21 Lessons On Launching An International Platform And Make It Profitable Part 1Today I want to talk about the 21 Lessons from launching Soul Rich Woman, doing our membership programs, and I would love to share them with you.The Biggest Lessons (1:31-1:49) Here are some of the biggest lessons from our biggest launch ever. Number 1, Life happens so get prepared- Life always happens. During the month we launch Soul Rich Woman we have lots of stuff going.(2:00-2:03) It's really helpful to do at least some stuff in advance(2:05-2:16) Because let's face it, life doesn't stop just because you are launching your business or launching a podcast. Don't leave everything to the last minute.(2:16-2:21) Number 2, Get support. Now, you don't really have to do it all by yourself.(2:25-2:43) I mean whether it's your podcast or your book or your business, whether it's a product-based business or a service-based business, I want to tell you this: Outsource as much as possible because it will multiply your output.(2:51-3:08) You can get people from Fiverr or Elance if you don't have a big budget because there are so many… so much moving pieces to launch a business or podcasts or everything or otherwise go check out https://www.instanttribeleader.com/ (3:35-3:36) Number three,(3:37-3:40) Sales pages take forever!(3:42-3:51) When you build a sales page to launch either your business, your podcasts, your products, or your services, sometimes it will take 10x or a hundred times longer than you will think. (4:02-4:07) Even with an existing sales page, making tweaks take so much longer than you think. (4:15-4:33) Good sales page can take hours and hours of your time. So do it early and take some time to sometimes take a breathe off and away from your sales page so that you can come back with a different perspective and continue working on them. So never ever do it last minute.(4:33-4:38) Number 4. Email cannot be your only marketing channel (4:39-4:57) Don't assume that everyone reads your emails. And honestly, deliverability over the years since I started going online since 2013 has gone down because of stronger spam filters, promotional folders, and email fatigue.(4:58-5:11) You have to promote on all your marketing channels. From your podcast to your Facebook, to your LinkedIn, to your Instagram, to your Tiktok, to your emails, to Facebook ads, wherever.(5:31-5:41) It is important that email can't be your only marketing channel. And also people are often decluttering their inbox and even their FB feeds with apps.(6:39-6:46) Number 5. Spell stuff out for your customers. You see people don't always read too closely. (7:03-7:18) We have so much problems with people who just don't read at all even though they're provided step-by-step instructions like arrows pointing here, arrows pointing there, to tell them the really obvious stuff. (7:38-7:43) Sometimes, no matter how many times you say it, you'll still get emails or WhatsApp.(7:54-8:09) When actually, everything is done automated. All you need to do is just fill up the form for the Make It Happen micro podcast show and record on the phone itself. Just submit a voice note or voice recording of 3 to 5 minutes recording using your phone.(8:11-8:12) You don't need a fancy microphone.(8:15-8:18) People are just busy. They don't read at all.(8:19-8:23) Number six. Pretty doesn't necessarily sell.(8:40-8:58) To be frank, don't try and get too cute with design in your materials logo, no problem. But honestly, sales page can be really simple. Don't let your Buy Now button or Sign up now button get lost in the crowd of beautiful images.(8:59-9:00) Number seven. Track your conversions.(9:05-9:15) Now if you don't understand that 1 to 2% of people will buy over time the statistics will play out. Unless you are doing more high-touch selling, then YES you can convert higher.(9:16-9:20) Number 8. Book in self-care. Take care of yourself. Have self-love.(10:04-10:14) So really, it's important to put them together and put yourself together so that you can care for yourself while building and launching your business. (10:31-10:36) Number 9. Track and celebrate every success.(10:56-11:04) Number 10. Deadlines, bonuses, and incentives work. You really need to build up your deadlines, your bonuses, and incentives.(11:10-11:16) Humans need scarcity and deadlines to motivate them. So get it done.Key Takeaways: Life happens so get prepared. Get support. Track your conversions. Have self-love.  Track and celebrate every success. Key Resources:Subscribe to Genecia's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/SoulRichWomanVisit SRW's website: https://www.soulrichwoman.comFollow Genecia on Instagram : (@Geneciaalluora)Follow Genecia on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/geneciaalluora/Check Genecia's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genecia/Free Resource: "Soul Why: Soul Rich Woman Blueprint" and "How to Delegate 80% of your to-do list" ---> https://be.soulrichwoman.comSecrets of Manifesting Money Quickly Online Course ---> https://shor.by/moneymindset

How to take six weeks off without stressing even a little bit. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back the Marketing Secrets podcast. Right now, I'm at Lake Powell. I've been on the boat, the houseboat and jet-skis, and we did a waterboard, it's a type of Flyboard where you literally feel like Ironman flying through the sky. We just got done wake surfing, our kids have been wake surfing. It's been an insane week and I'm here with my friend, John Jonas. I'll introduce you guys here in a second. And for me, it was a lot to take a week off. I had no cell phone access for a week and John hasn't worked in eight years, 12 years. Just kidding, he's basically taking six weeks off. He is the person in my life who somehow has figured out a systemized entire life. So he can just do whatever he wants whenever he wants. And so that's what we're talking about today is systemizing outsourcing and whole bunch of other stuff when we come back from the theme song. All right, so I'm back here. We're on top of the houseboat and I'm talking to John Jonas. Some of you guys know John, if not, he is the founder of onlinejobs.ph, which... Actually, do you want to tell them what it is and tell them about you? John Jonas: Yeah, thanks man. So when I was early on in my business, I just realized I needed help and finding help sucked. It was so hard. And everybody talked about outsourcing, outsourcing, outsourcing, and I tried India and it sucked. It did. Russell: The entire country. John: Well and then it's like, dude, I have nothing against the country. But outsourcing there was really hard and there's some really big cultural reasons why, and I won't get into it, whatever. And then you have Upwork, which was Elance and oDesk at the time, which is fine, except the whole system is based around 100% turnover. And as a small business owner, 100% turnover guaranteed in your business, that sucks, hiring a contract worker, that's so stinking hard. So one day I'm talking to John Brizzy, the owner of backcountry.com. And he says to me, "When you're ready to start outsourcing some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines with it." And I was like, "Huh, really?" And he gave me some reasons why, and more than just like, "Oh, this is amazing," it gave me hope that maybe I'd find something different than what I had experienced before, because that was really the thing was there's so much loss of hope in outsourcing because it's just a babysitting job and people that you're outsourcing to suck and they can only do menial tasks. And so I hired this guy in the Philippines full-time, which he gave me a reference to hire someone full-time and I didn't know if I could do it. It took me two months to hire someone because I didn't know if I could keep someone busy full-time I didn't know if I could pay them I didn't know if they could do good work. It was the most liberating experience in my life. This dude's full-time job was doing anything I asked him to do. And yeah, dude, that was amazing. I taught him how to systematize this whole system that I had completely failed with on Upwork. It was Elance at the time, but I hired this guy to write articles and he wrote these articles and sent them back to me. And I was like, "Yes, I got these articles done," this was on Elance. And then I realized, "Oh, now the burden falls on me to do the rest of the work." And that's where most stuff breaks down is when it falls on you to do the rest of the work. So when I had this guy in the Philippines, I realized, "Oh no, he can write the article and then he just worked full-time for me. So I can teach him to do the posting and the headers and the resource boxes and the links and I can teach them how SEO works and he can do all the SEO." And this was like 2005. So since then, I've realized oh yeah, you can hire amazing people, programmers, designers, social media people, content writers, data entry people, lead generators, whatever it is, copywriters, you can hire a really good people. And in the Philippines, I was paying the company, this is 2005, I was paying them $750 a month they're paying him $250 a month for full-time work. So today that same person's probably going to be like $450 a month straight from you to them because of what online jobs is. Russell: Because you guys created a platform. Because prior to, so the first time I hired someone from the Philippines, there was a company I hired and they... I can't remember name of it. Agents of Value, yes. Agents of Value, yes. And I was so excited because it was like 700 bucks you get a full-time employee, which I was paying American wages prior to everyone and I was freaking out. And then yeah, like you said, you find that they're only making $250, $300. And so what John built is a really cool, I wouldn't call it a directory, it's more than that, but it's a place you go, you sign up for it, and then there's how many Filipinos are listed there right now? John: There's over a million Filipino profiles there. Yeah, so what I created was what I wanted for myself. So after a couple of years of hiring people through this agency, I went to them and they said, "Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster?" I was like, "I want a content writer." "Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster," was their response. And agencies, generally, this is how they are. They're going to three times mark up the salary and then they're going to give you the same person. They're going to go to online jobs today and try and find the person... They do, I know they do. So I created what I wanted, which was I just want to recruit some people on my own and I want to hire them and I want to pay them directly and there's no markup, so there's no salary markup. And there's no middleman telling me who I need to hire, giving me someone crappy who doesn't know anything, which is what Agents of Value did multiple times. And so now I can go and find someone, find the exact person I want. And it's crazy. I hired a programmer who was working for IBM and he's so dang good. Or I found a copywriter, actually, I hired a copywriter who wrote some ClickFunnels emails. And it's amazing what you can find on onlinejobs.ph. And the crazy thing about the Philippines, I had no idea at the time. This is why this guy's advice was so dang good. And he obviously knew, and I had no idea. So in the Philippines, there's a culture of honesty and loyalty and hard work and make people happy. So my guys in the Philippines have my credit cards, they have access to my email account, they have access to my servers. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people hire people in the Philippines and have seen very, very few people get ripped off. And almost every time when they do, it's because they tried to get the person to do some work and then not pay the person. And obviously, yeah, they're going to try and get paid. And then there's the loyalty thing. So the Philippines, their culture is loyal almost to a fault. So when you hire them, they'll never stop working for you as long as you gain their trust. So the first person I hired in 2005 still works for me today. Yeah, and he's amazing. He can do anything. When I hired him, he knew nothing. Today, he can do anything I want. So the culture makes such a difference of the Philippines versus elsewhere, especially for a small business owner. Russell: All right, so I want to tell a story and I'm not embarrassed, maybe a little bit. So you and I had a chance to go to Australia to speak at Mal Emery's event. Do you remember what year that was? John: 2012. Russell: Dang. So 2012. And for those of you who know me and know I wrote a book about the perfect webinar as my things I'm really good at closing people and selling from the stage and all that kind of stuff. So John and I fly down to Australia, we both speak on stage and you destroyed me. It was really embarrassing. I only sold a handful and John sold everybody in the room literally bought his... It was insane. But I'm telling you this because there was a story you told in there that I'm going to mess with the details, but I want you to share the story with people. Number one, they'll get to know you a little better. But number two, it's also I think a lot of you guys have probably heard me or other people talk about outsourcing and you're like, "Oh yeah," and maybe you hire someone here or there, but for you, there was something in your life that happened that made forced you to do it and then that ended up giving you the freedom that literally we've been here this week, everyone's stressing out. No one's got cell phone access and John's just having the best time ever. And you have six weeks in a row vacation time. What week are we on right now? John: Four. Week five. Russell: Week five of six and I'm like one weekend. I'm like, "Well, I'm good." So anyway, I want you to hear this story because it's powerful, but also I think I'm hoping you guys hear and realize that you don't have to wait for something tragic or scary like this to happen. But if you kind of try to force it in your mind, you can have something like this happen and give yourself freedom earlier. So with that said, here's John. John: So I've worked about 17 hours a week for the last 13, 14 years. And here's what happened. So my wife is seven months pregnant with our third child. This is 2007. We went to the doctor, he's run some tests and he says to my wife, "You have preeclampsia. And if you don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks, you're going to have a seizure and you're going to lose this baby." And to me, obviously, I was there with her and it was a shock. And on my way home from the doctor's office, I was just thinking, "I'm working full time and I have to two other kids and she has to be on strict bed rest. I'm not about to lose a baby over money." So I was thinking, "What am I going to do?" So when I get home, I sent an email to two of my guys in the Philippines. I had two guys in the Philippines at the time and I sent an email to them. And I just want you to know, as I tell you this, they had been with me for about 18 months. These were not guy. I pulled off the street. You're not going to hire someone new and this is going to work for you. It's going to take some time. But I told them, "Hey guys, here's my situation. I can't work. Here's why. I need you to take over everything I'm currently doing in my business." And so I... Everything, everything. For the next three weeks, I literally worked one hour. And that one hour... So after that day, when I got home, I sent them all the instructions I could, that one hour was just responding to their questions. And they took over my Google AdWords account and they took over my blog and they took over the marketing that I was doing. They took over the SEO that I was doing. They took over customer service. They took over everything I was currently doing. Three weeks later, my wife has the baby, this beautiful little girl Bailey, who just turned 14. And for the next two months, my wife struggled with postpartum depression. And so I just kept not working. It was a little bit more, it was one hour a week because she was allowed to get out of bed now. And so I spent three months not working basically. And it's expected to have a disaster with my business and came back to find my business had grown. And I'm not going to tell you it's because these guys were running the business. That's not the case. But the point here is that I had had the right help and my business didn't crash when I wasn't there. So from there, this is where you'll really recognize I hope what the possibilities of outsourcing are. So after these three months, I was like, "Well there's only so many times in a day you can take your kids to the golf course," and you get bored. Because that's what I was doing. I was taking my kids to the golf course twice a day. And so I started designing a business based around how far can I take this outsourcing thing? Because I had only had these guys doing menial tasks up to that point. And now I realized like, "Whoa, they're way better than I thought they were. And so can I build a business based around them doing all the work and me just being the CEO?" So I started designing this business. I'll tell you what it was. We were going to write reviews about products and post them on our website and then drive traffic to them and put affiliate links on all the reviews. So I record myself talking for 45 minutes explaining this whole thing. And I bought a domain and I sent the domain and my recording to this guy in Philippines. And again, he had been working for me for a while and he takes the domain, sets it up on my hosting account, sets up WordPress and changes the theme according as I've described and sends it back to me a couple days later and it was horrible. And I was like, "Oh crap." So I went back and described it better and better again. And we did this for about a week until we got it right. He got the website how I wanted it. It was amazing. So then he wrote the first review and it was terrible. And I was like, "Oh yeah, this outsourcing thing isn't as good as I thought it was." Russell: You're like, "No, I'll take it all to myself." For me, that's what I've been using. Like, "Well I'm done. I'm just going to myself." I give up usually at that point. John: That's not what I did. And because that's not my personality. I want to see if I can make this thing work really. So I worked with him through the review. I was like, "Okay, we've got to change this and this and this. And we've got to get more data from here. And we've got to do this." So we worked for a couple of weeks, got the review right. And I never wrote another review. So he had already done some SEO, but I start teaching him more SEO and he starts doing SEO and he starts doing some social marketing, even though social media wasn't really a thing. But we started doing Craigslist stuff. And we started doing RSS feeds and we started doing everything that I knew to do at the time, I did. Everything I knew to implement, I did. Which today all the things you know to implement would be build your funnel and start your Dream 100 and run Facebook ads to it and start doing some SEO maybe and get on a podcast or start a podcast. All these things that you know you should be doing I was doing, except I wasn't the one doing them. So that business in the first month made me about $200. Within three months, it was making three to $500 a month. Within six months, it was making a thousand dollars a month, within a year is making me 10 to $15,000 a month. And this dude in the Philippines, who, again, I told you they're super loyal and super honest, he built the whole thing. He joined the affiliate programs. He starts running Google AdWords on it. Because I taught him how to do it. He sends me a report every month. "Here's how much money we spent. Here's how much money we made. Here's what I think I can do to improve the business and make more money." And that was where I realized like, "Oh yeah, these aren't just dummies that can only do menial work. They can only follow exact instructions." No, he read between the lines so many times he figured out so much stuff. And I don't want you to think that he built this whole business for me and I didn't do anything. Because I did. I was the CEO. I knew what was going on. I knew what had to happen. But I never touched it. I don't touch WordPress. I don't write content now. Russell: So let me ask you, so I know that there's people listening right now who are thinking, "Well why doesn't the guy just make his own blog and then just do it himself? And then he'll make the 10 grand a month for himself and not have to just cut you out of it." And I've thought of that as well. I'm curious why specifically Filipinos, why that's not an issue for you. John: So yeah, because in India, that's the first question they ask. And that's our experience with outsourcing is, "Well what's your business model here?" I explained to him the business model. In the Philippines, they're not entrepreneurial. They don't want to steal your business. They don't want to steal your idea. They don't want to do it on their own. That's too risky for them. They are really job oriented and they want a job. They want a long-term stable job that they can take home and reliably take care of their family. And I've seen that so, so many times. I have people that have worked for me since 2005 and 2006 and 2008 and nine and 10. And they also work with me. Russell: Awesome, okay, my last question for you then is I think we had this conversation last year. So John's my Lake Powell buddy. And it's our third time renting house boat together, fourth time on the lake together. But anyway. Last year we had this conversation, I'm not sure if you remember it, but it was impactful to me because for me, those who know me, I'm a perfectionist, especially comes to my funnels and copy and design and everything's going to be reviewed by me because anyway, I'm super annoying that way. But our stuff does really well. And so I'm always thinking it has to be perfect to go live and get shipped out there and actually be a live thing. And last year was talking to you about it. And your philosophy is obviously different than mine. You were more, do you remember this conversation we had? And you were talking about how you're like 80% is it's fine. The extra 20% is... Do you remember this conversation at all? I'd love to get just your mindset on that because it's something I could use, but probably other people as well where it doesn't have to be 100% to make money. It's got to be close. John: So there are some things where it needs to be 100%. But most things, it's more important to get it done than to get it done perfectly. And so for me, my philosophy is ship, get it out there. So just before we left, we're driving down here and I checked my project management and saw that they had completed this big long piece of content that we had. And I said to them, "I'm not going to review this, but publish it because I'm sure it's good enough. You guys are good and publish it." And when I get back, maybe I'll review it. Maybe I won't, I don't know. Maybe the task will be gone and I'll never see it. But to me, just getting it out there and having people see it is more likely to tell you the problems with it than I am to tell the problems by reading it myself and to creating a bottleneck myself to let me give you 16 more things that I don't think are perfect. Even though you guys think it's perfect, there's three other people that have seen it, and I don't think so, but they do, which tells me maybe I'm wrong. I also don't have, and this is a personality thing, I don't have the design eye that you do and I don't care as much. I want people to see it and I want people read it and ship it, get alive. We ship software with bugs all the time because then it's live and then people will instantly tell you, "Oh, this is a problem." "Oh, okay. We'll fix it. Sweet." Russell: As opposed to figuring out all the problems, mistakes on your own. Oh man. Well I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, it's a little different, but I don't normally interview. I don't even know John, you're like the second person to ever be on my podcast besides me. But I think it's good for everyone to understand. So for those who are in some part of their business where they're trying to think of if they can use outsourcing more, join Online Jobs, and this is not a paid ad. I get nothing from this other than as long as online jobs keeps making money off of a boat buddy at Lake Powell, otherwise I've got to pay for this whole thing by myself. But there's no advertising, but let them know how Online Jobs works. Because it's different. It's not like Agents of Value. You're hiring and paying them and could you walk them through how it works and wants to get the count and how to set it all up and everything? John: Yeah, so Online Jobs is kind of like indeed.com, but for the Philippines. So you go on and you post a job and it's free to post a job. And then depending on your job, you'll get a few or hundreds of job applicants. And if you get hundreds of job applicants, that's a problem, you can't go through hundreds of applicants. That sucks. But you'll get a bunch of applicants. And then you can see the applications for free. You can do all that for free. You just can't contact anybody. You don't get anybody's contact information until you pay. And it's $69 for a month and then you get to contact as many people as you want, really. Or you can reply to everybody who sent you a job application, if you want. And then you just interview them, you're going to use their Disk profile. Russell talks about Disk profiles. And I think it's amazing. Almost everybody on there has a Disk profile and you're going to send them emails and ask them tons of questions. And here's a little bit of advice, don't do a Skype interview right off the bat. That's the first thing everyone wants to do is get on the phone with them. And that's the last thing you should be doing when you do interviews with people in the Philippines. They don't want to do it. So do that at last when you've narrowed it down to three. You can give a test task. You're completely on your own. Every application will come to your email inbox if you want. It's your Gmail inbox. They'll also be in your online jobs inbox, but then you interview them and you hire them and you pay them. And we don't take a cut of any of that. If you're interested in more, I have, very similar to Russell's one funnel away, I have the one VA away challenge. So I will walk you through the hiring process and I guarantee you'll find a great person if you go through my process at one VA way. It's my process of how I hire great people. I never think, "I don't know if I'm going to find someone good this time or not." I'm going to find someone good. I know I am because I've done it so many times. Russell: So onevaaway.com? John: onevaaway.com Russell: Awesome, all right. And I'm going to product this. So obviously I have click funnels that whole business and there's support and there's team and everything. But we started building some of these side businesses and some fun projects I was working on and all of them have customers coming in now and customer support and all these things. And I was like, "Aaaa!” and so I asked John, I'm like, "Hey, what would you do if you're me?" He's like, "Dude, you're an idiot. Of course go to Online Jobs." So we did, sent them to the count, we hired three new Filipinos, they're on a Slack channel with us and they have access to our help desk. Our help desk has all these little sub companies we're building and they're cross-training on all the different products and they're awesome. Every morning they check it on Skype, like, "Good morning, we're here." And then they check out at night like, "We're done," and they have questions asked in Slack, and then they're just cross-training all of our products. And so we'll just keep adding more products in there and they're supporting all of them and it's amazing. And we've got three right now. We'll probably have more as we start growing and stuff like that. And I'm getting really excited about bringing in more to do more tasks. Everybody can do funnels. You guys are training now on a lot of them are doing funnels, a lot of them are doing copywriting, a lot of them are doing a lot of other stuff too. So anyway, it's exciting. So go to onlinejobs.ph or onevaaway.com. And with that said, hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Get your mind thinking about outsourcing and the Philippines and a whole bunch of cool things like that. So in fact, one time you gave me... So I've done this four or five times. We build up huge scenes. At one time I had this guy named Mateo we hired from the Philippines and he built a team of like 30 writers for me, back when we were doing SEO really, really hard. We were cranking on it. Anyway, it's fun to do and fun to learn and to get to know some really, really cool people. So anyway, hope that helps you guys appreciate you all and we'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye.

Knowing at least one attribute that is shared by everyone in the organization is critical to nail down before you start hiring. This one thing becomes the cornerstone of your corporate values which shapes the company culture, attracts the right people and fuels growth.  Ask yourself, what is the one trait that is critical to the organization? Write it down, start talking about it and encourage it to grow.  Allow it to be the compass by which you will evaluate the right fit. Our guest today: Beerud Sheth, Co-Founder & CEO of Gupshup Gupshup is the global leader in cloud messaging and conversational experiences. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy. Beerud has built world class organizations and hired hundreds of talented people throughout his career.  Today we discuss: Minimizing the difficulty in hiring the right people How to identify your one thing to enable you to make the right hiring decision Challenge today in finding & hiring the strongest people?  Putting the jigsaw puzzle together The right set of people Hyper growth  don't rush into the hire Make due with what you have, be opportunistic Collaborative Negotiation Why is this important to the company? Very jr, part time roles were able to demonstrate grit & hunger and have evolved to very senior roles in the organization People who get stuff done Rick's Nuggets It starts with leadership! What is your most crucial attribute Define it Live it How do we solve the problem? Find Highly flexible people Goal oriented Sense of humor; not take themselves too seriously Missionaries, not mercenaries How they negotiate is key Right people, right seat Give broad opportunities *collaborative negotiation is key Constructive conflict resolution Teamwork is all about negotiation Empower them within the role Expand the scope of the opportunity Personalities aside Flexibility, teamwork, focus on the big picture Rick's Nuggets Referral network Content Evaluate people for Value Alignment Do they live your value?? Key Takeaways -Value: Business requires flexibility Collaborative Negotiation enables flexible execution and innovation Flexible teams win Guest Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beerud/ Websites: https://www.gupshup.io/developer/home Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gupshupbots Twitter: https://twitter.com/gupshup   This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/

In today's episode of Tales from the PROS, I talk with Beerud Sheth, who is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and Founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading messaging and bot platform. It is used by over 30K+ developers that handle nearly 4 billion messages per month.  Gupshup also developed Teamchat, a smart messaging app that introduced structured templates to messaging. Beerud also founded and led Elance, the pioneer of online freelancing and which is now known as UpWork and is a publicly-traded company. In this episode, Beerud talks about his entrepreneurial journey, shares his experiences and challenges of building and scaling a SaaS company, how to acquire VC funding and what he is up to these days.   Don't Miss: 1. Beerud's inspiration behind growing a startup to a publicly-traded company - 05:13 2. How to scale a SaaS company - 19:15  3. Overcoming the struggles of running a SaaS company - 29:25   Listen and Subscribe on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tales-from-the-pros/id1371067192   Topics We Discuss: 1. Beerud's inspiring story of how he got to where he is today 2. How Beerud grew eLance (UpWork) and why he started Gupshup 3. Beerud talks about what it's like growing a SaaS company with some of the challenges and successes he's had in scaling 4. What it's like to acquire VC funding with its pros and cons 5. He describes his thoughts and advice on how to truly succeed as an entrepreneur 6. The common difficulties that entrepreneurs and business owners are going through and how to overcome them 7. Beerud defines his story in “one-word.”   Follow Beerud Sheth Website: https://www.gupshup.io/developer/about Twitter: https://twitter.com/beerud Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beerud/ Follow Me and Subscribe: https://linktr.ee/mgeorgiou22

About This Episode: Allie Bloyd is a business owner, small business advocate and award-winning marketer. She's passionate about writing, serving her community, and starting meaningful conversations on important topics. When it comes to writing, inspiration comes from all directions; her family, faith and the important issues facing our country and world today. There are no shortage of topics to discuss, but her goal is to write about these controversial issues in a way that allows readers to draw their own conclusions, expand their horions and challenge their preconceptions. This can be a challenge, but one she feels is worth the effort! After achieving success through her own business and positively impacting small business owners all over the world, she hopes to now use her voice and God-Given talents to spread a message of hope, encourage her readers to think for themselves and question the world around them. Her advice for writers young and old is to share the truth in whatever format comes most naturally to you, even if you aren't sure others will want to hear it. We all have a voice and the opportunity to make a real impact in the world - so go out there and use them! Find out more about Allie at: Uncensored America: Thought-Provoking Poetry on Family, Faith and Freedom - https://www.amazon.com/Uncensored-America-Thought-Provoking-Poetry-Freedom/dp/1949813134/ Allie's website - https://alliebloydmedia.com/ Facebook - https://m.facebook.com/alliebloydmedia/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/alliebloydmedia Check out our YouTube Channel: Jeremyryanslatebiz Make Extraordinary a reality: jeremyryanslate.com/extraordinary See the Show Notes: www.jeremyryanslate.com/883 Sponsors: Options Trade King: TAKE YOUR TRADING TO THE NEXT LEVEL: https://optionstradeking.com  Gusto: This episode is sponsored by Gusto. Run your payroll the easy way, the same way we do at Command Your Brand. You'll get a. $100 Amazon Gift Card just for running your first payroll! http://www.jeremyryanslate.com/gusto Audible: Get a free 30 day free trial and 1 free audiobook from thousands of available books. Right now I'm reading "Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy" by Andy Ngo, about building real wealth. www.jeremyryanslate.com/book  

About This Episode: Beerud Sheth is the founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading messaging and bot platform, which is used by over 100,000 businesses and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance, the pioneer of online freelancing. Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. Find out more about Beerud at: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beerud Gupshup - https://www.gupshup.io/ Check out our YouTube Channel: Jeremyryanslatebiz Make Extraordinary a reality: jeremyryanslate.com/extraordinary See the Show Notes: www.jeremyryanslate.com/880 Sponsors: Gusto: This episode is sponsored by Gusto. Run your payroll the easy way, the same way we do at Command Your Brand. You'll get a. $100 Amazon Gift Card just for running your first payroll! http://www.jeremyryanslate.com/gusto Audible: Get a free 30 day free trial and 1 free audiobook from thousands of available books. Right now I'm reading "Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy" by Andy Ngo, about building real wealth. www.jeremyryanslate.com/book  

About This Episode: Beerud Sheth is the founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading messaging and bot platform, which is used by over 100,000 businesses and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance, the pioneer of online freelancing. Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. Find out more about Beerud at: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beerud Gupshup - https://www.gupshup.io/ Check out our YouTube Channel: Jeremyryanslatebiz Make Extraordinary a reality: jeremyryanslate.com/extraordinary See the Show Notes: www.jeremyryanslate.com/880 Sponsors: Gusto: This episode is sponsored by Gusto. Run your payroll the easy way, the same way we do at Command Your Brand. You'll get a. $100 Amazon Gift Card just for running your first payroll! http://www.jeremyryanslate.com/gusto Audible: Get a free 30 day free trial and 1 free audiobook from thousands of available books. Right now I'm reading "Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy" by Andy Ngo, about building real wealth. www.jeremyryanslate.com/book  

Beerud Sheth grew up in Mumbai, India, and attended undergrad in Bombay. For graduate school, he came to the states to study at MIT, and then did a short stint in Wall Street before moving into the entrepreneurial world. He lives in the Bay Area, and enjoys hiking, working out and spending time with his family. He loves the Bay Area for these things, but also because of the community of ideation. The way he puts it, someone is always doing something interesting, and he really enjoys that. Besides business books, he leans towards reading biographies and books about the history of tech and business. Previously, he founded Elance, which is now Upwork, pioneering online freelancing. Twelve or so years ago, he noticed a key insight, in that the mobile revolution was happening all around. Within this, the lowest common denominator was text messages, in that not everyone had a smart phone. This got him asking the question - how interesting can these experiences be? This is the creation story of Gupshup. Sponsors * Grindology ( https://grindology.com/ ) * Morgan Page Game Dev ( https://morganpage.teachable.com/ ) Links * Website: https://www.gupshup.io/developer/home * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beerud/ * https://www.upwork.com/ Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts ( https://ratethispodcast.com/codestory ) Amazing tools we use: * This podcast is hosted on RedCircle ( https://redcircle.com/ ) , a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. * Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast ( https://squadcast.fm/?ref=noahlabhart ). * Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain ( https://clipgain.io/?utm_campaign=clipgain&utm_medium=episode&utm_source=codestory ) , sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREE * If you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fm ( https://transistor.fm/?via=code-story ) Credits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts ( https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/code-story/id1466861744 ) , Spotify ( https://open.spotify.com/show/0f5HGQ2EPd63H83gqAifXp ) , Pocket Casts ( https://pca.st/Z1k7 ) , Google Play ( https://play.google.com/music/listen?pcampaignid=MKT-na-all-co-pr-mu-pod-16&t=Code_Story&view=%2Fps%2FIcdmshauh7jgmkjmh6iu3wd4oya ) , Breaker ( https://www.breaker.audio/code-story ) , Youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgjZsiUDp-oKY_ffHc5AUpQ ) , or the podcasting app of your choice. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of the IoT For All Podcast, PubNub’s CEO and Founder Todd Greene joins us to talk about some of the needs and challenges in developing in the consumer and industrial IoT spaces.As an entrepreneur who has founded and successfully sold companies across the software spectrum, Todd now shapes PubNub’s vision of revolutionizing the way people interact and connect with each other, virtually. Before PubNub, Todd most recently was CEO of Loyalize, an audience participation company successfully sold to Function(x) (FNCX), a Robert F.X. Sillerman company, where he designed the first-ever massively multi-user social TV mobile and web applications licensed to companies like Viacom and Yahoo. Todd previously was founder and CTO/VP Products of CascadeWorks, a company providing services procurement solutions to Texas Instruments, Charles Schwab, and ABN Amro, and acquired by Elance. After working with companies like GE, SGI, and Quantum while a consultant at Price Waterhouse, Todd joined NetDynamics (sold to Sun Microsystems in 1998) to help create a truly game-changing product: the first application server built for the internet.Interested in connecting with Todd? Reach out to him on Linkedin!About PubNub: PubNub powers apps that bring people together in realtime for remote work, play, learning, and health. Thousands of companies use PubNub’s Realtime Communication Platform and its APIs as the foundation for online chat, live events, geolocation, remote control, and live updates, at massive global scale. Since 2010, PubNub has invested in the tools and global infrastructure required to serve customers like Atlassian, Hasbro, Peloton, and RingCentral, delivering SOC 2 Type 2 security and reliability while meeting regulatory needs like HIPAA and GDPR. PubNub has raised over $70M from notable investors like Sapphire, Scale, Relay, Cisco, Bosch, Ericsson, and HPE.Key Questions and Topics from this Episode:(00:33) Intro to Todd(01:43) Intro to PubNub(08:11) If the goal of IoT is to allow us to leverage data and control devices seamlessly, how close are we to that goal? What do we need to do to get there?(11:50) What are the needs for consumer products vs. industrial IoT products?  How do you approach those different needs?(14:18) How have you overcome the challenge around supporting new and old hardware?(17:00) When working with customers, what’s their comfort level with API/web knowledge? How do you approach that?(19:16) What have been the greatest challenges in growing PubNub, and do you have any advice for companies starting that journey?(21:27) How do you see edge and 5G potentially changing IoT products?

Steffen Hedebrandt is co-founder of Dreamdata.io. Transcripted borrowed from here.For a deep dive into attribution see this article.Phil Gamache:What's up, guys? Welcome to the Humans of MarTech podcast. His name is Jon Taylor, my name is Phil Gamache. Our mission is to future-proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing.Phil Gamache:Today on the show, we have a super special guest. We're joined by Steffen Hedebrandt. Steffen got his start in the world of marketing doing some SEO and some growth consultancy in the startup world. And he moved to Oslo in Norway to work in sales/BizDev for a company called Elance, which would eventually become Upwork after the oDesk acquisition. And he stayed there for three and a half years and moved back to Copenhagen and took a position as Head of Marketing at Airtame, a wireless HTMI product startup which John and I know very well. And at some point during your time at Airtame, you solved some pretty cool big attribution problems with some custom engines, and you started to get this itch about starting your own company.Phil Gamache:In the summer of 2019, you, Ole and Lars, both former SVPs of Trustpilot made the plunge and started DreamData. So today the main takeaway is going to be that, gone are the days where enterprise companies are the only people who can solve multitouch B2B attribution and tools like DreamData are solving this for startups and SMBs. So Steffen, thanks so much for being on the show, man.Steffen Hedebrandt:Thanks a lot, Phil. Really looking forward to it. We've talked a lot about this topic before. I'm sure we'll get pretty deep pretty fast.Phil Gamache:Like myself, I've evaluated DreamData quite a bit, so I'm super familiar with the platform itself. John, I don't know how much you know about it, but I wanted to kind of start off with your journey a little bit and go back to when you were working at Upwork basically, this big tech role and how different was that from your previous role in the startup world and what did you like most about both roles?Steffen Hedebrandt:From the get-go out of university, I joined the Vintage and Rare, which is basically, or I don't know if they exist anymore, but it was a platform for selling vintage instruments where kind of gathering shops and the shops would then put their instruments up there. And the first craft that I really learned after studying was really SEO because if you have 10,000 instruments, then you really want to have those instruments on top of Google instead of your competitors there. And, I just got super fascinated by actually how big an impact you can have when you understand that Google algorithm and how to friendly manipulate a little bit towards your own business.Steffen Hedebrandt:But, that was an almost bootstrapped kind of project which led me to reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris and dipping my toes into places like Elance and trying to hire people from India and try to connect them with the other freelancers you had in Europe and other freelancers you had in the US and then suddenly you have this web of people all over the world that you have to make work and that's quite a challenge.Steffen Hedebrandt:Fun story, my first job was, I put up a job for a person to add people on Myspace that's set with a guitar in their profile image. Super non valuable, but it was just to test down. So our vintage and rare profile had more followers. I learned a ton there and we didn't make any money, but we were greatly successful on Google and having been there for I don't know how long the was, three years or so. I actually got approached by Elance as they were setting up their European office and asked whether I wanted to join that and try to promote Elance in Europe. And, me being a big fan of the platform, I thought, okay, well, I haven't made any money in the last three years, so, let me go get a real job for a period.Steffen Hedebrandt:So, the music instrument platform was really fixing anything digital, this ads, SEO, et cetera, where Elance's and Upwork was much more the traditional business development like doing PR, doing events, handing over a list of keywords that you would like to have targeted. And so it's a much more you can, say hands-off than the nitty gritty of running your own a platform, but it was really interesting to try to be part of this classical California tech company and see that from the inside. It also got big so I think we were 70 when I started at Elance. And then, when it was Upwork, it was maybe 500. I think my true love lies around the smaller companies where it's bigger from thought action, and you see the impact of your work much faster.Phil Gamache:Something we talk with so much about on the show is the value of small companies. And well, just knowing what you like and the environment that works best for you. You touched on the SEO front. I think, as we talk more and more about attribution in this episode, SEO and attribution that they go together like peanut butter and salty water. It just is such a hard combination to get right.Phil Gamache:How many times in SEO land are you talking to an executive and your trying to explain like the value of SEO and you're like, hey, well, you know that dominating search rankings and owning thought leadership and the brand space that you have there. But then connecting those dots, I think, a lot of SEOs end up thinking attribution a lot because they want to really tie things to that revenue. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how your journey has brought you from SEO into the attribution?Steffen Hedebrandt:Yes. It's like super critical spot on topic for attribution. And I think we also showed some of you, some of this stuff still when we pitched Dreamdata. The main attribution challenge is that there's so few things that we purchase the very first time we experienced it. I'd buy an ice cream on a hot summer day right away. But even just a pair of running shoes you'd go to a couple of sites. You'd maybe switch between your computer and your phone, et cetera. And if we're then talking B2B, which that's what we address with Dreamdata, then we're also talking maybe multiple months, multiple stakeholders, even your teams has multiple touches with the customer as well. And then, very quickly it gets really complex.Steffen Hedebrandt:Just before I go to kind of how we solve it, what we really can see across all our customers is that all the organic traffic works really well to start journeys, but they're so rarely the last step of the journey. So that's where you end up in this disconnect between all the value you actually create by driving a lot of search traffic to the website. But then the sales people is the ones that convert the traffic, and then they get all the reward for closing the deals. But the deals might never have gone there if you hadn't brought in all the traffic.Jon Taylor:And, we go to this data-driven path where we want to see direct lines and businesses becoming so data-driven that we almost detach ourselves from thinking through the real marketing picture. You're right. You come in through SEO and then you download and nurture, you get a couple emails, a campaign, and then you purchase, and then it gets credit to sales call. You're like, "Wait a minute, marketing was involved in this."Jon Taylor:I saw this in my consulting life. I saw a really bad analysis that proved that accountants were the number one customer that we had. But we were an engineering firm. They were just purchasing the product at the end like, "We need more accountants." We do to pay our bills, but this wasn't the actual journey.Steffen Hedebrandt:It's so interesting. What we are after all of us, it's really just knowing the truth about what is going on. Because, when there's transparency into what's going on, then we can also do much more valid conclusions on what to do next and what to stop.Phil Gamache:That's the big word there, like trusting, having the transparency of the data, but also having buy-in from the rest of the folks in the company that they also believe in that data, attribution has such a dark reputation because a lot of folks just say that, a lot of offline purchases are never going to be tracked in this online world and attribution for B2B and for B2C isn't a real thing. So when you were at Airtame and you were trying to solve this, and you built up some custom solutions for this, talk us through like that journey and how you solved those internally and how you convinced folks in the company to believe in the data that it was like legit.Steffen Hedebrandt:I think that was a really interesting journey for me. And I actually have to correct you Phil, because we actually didn't solve that attribution problem. Not before I met my two now partners. They were pitched by our local VC for me to talk to them just to hear them out. I replied the VC saying, "I don't really think they can solve this, but I'll talk to them anyway. Now we're here.Steffen Hedebrandt:So I started out joining this company Airtame that came out of a crowdfunding campaign. So, a day we're spending several money on ads when I started there. And, over the past three years, we ramped that from zero euros a month to around $150,000 a month in ad spend. And what'd you see, is that in your initial spend, then you can kind of okay, do the gut feeling, okay, I turned that up and now we see more money. But as all low hanging fruits are gone, you're firing on all cannons, then it gets really hard to understand whether adding another 10,000 Euros a month is worth it or not.Steffen Hedebrandt:I found myself in... My practical solution was that, as long as I can prove that I'm not wasting money, then I can spend more money. Meaning that, you purchased the device and the website, so if the money I spent equal the money that we made through the ads, then it cannot be totally bad, but I had no clue about what was going on. I judged my marketing spend in the same month as I made the spend, which is completely stupid because, you know the journeys are like three or six months or so, but that was all I had. And that's obviously not a smart way to do it because the dollar you put out today takes six months to kind of... You plant the seed until the sales guy closes the deal. And that's why it's so critical to have some kind of clue on how those dots they really connect.Steffen Hedebrandt:And then, I met these two guys Lars and Ole who had been pioneering you can say, segment the CDP, almost like he was been pioneering it in Europe. He was the third ever enterprise customer at segment. And so at Trustpilot where he worked before, they had been storing all the data of the users on the website, in a database. And Trustpilot also had this problem of, it's a review platform where companies set up a profile and then it took an average 12 months from the set up of the profile until they saw revenue. So they wanted to understand what happened in the period in between, sign up to revenue.Steffen Hedebrandt:And as they solved this problem with the help of a CDP, then you could also start to ask questions. Is there a difference in the channel that they came in from? Is it better to be paid or organic or outbound? Who churns more, who has to hire LTV and so forth? We've been using segment as well and then we plugged in our data into this rough prototype that Lars and Ole had from Trustpilot. And what I could see there was actually, a good example is that, in the beginning of that year, I set up a content team with two writers, a videographer, a designer, and an editor for the team. And I've just been looking at [inaudible 00:13:33], looking at, our rank went up or we're getting more organic traffic. But, the CEO would be like, but I can't pay my salary [crosstalk 00:13:44] takes you guys have. But what we could see with that DreamData prototype was that for example, we had an alternative game, so Airtame versus another product, and we could see that those articles were actually massively valuable because ultimately, they ended up becoming into deal [inaudible 00:14:03] closed one.Steffen Hedebrandt:The only thing you can see in Google analytics is that those pages were visited. So the conclusion out of Google analytics would be to say stop that project, fire those people don't do it anymore. But in fact, one article started journeys for $60,000 within a year. So that's why it's so extremely important that you're able to connect those dots all the way from the first touch all the way through to revenue.Phil Gamache:I think you were describing a situation that I'm sure most of our listeners are very familiar with, that tangle of attribution and proving the value. One of the things I'd like to talk a little bit about is, where does Google analytics fit in the journey. It's almost table stakes for digital marketing, but you're right, it could lead you to some very poor decisions if you're not looking further down the funnel. How have you helped other people, or how do you approach the maturity curve from Google analytics into a segment, into a DreamData.io, into a HubSpot and connecting all these dots?Steffen Hedebrandt:This is one of the biggest challenges we have at DreamData is, kind of educating the market, meaning that telling people that Google analytics is close to useless in a B2B company.Steffen Hedebrandt:Let me start like this, do your customers purchase the first time they see something or do they need to do multiple research? Yes/No. Would they be using multiple devices in this journey? Yes/No. Would there be more people involved in taking this decision? Yes/No. Would your salespeople also be involved in this journey as well? And as you start to list all these bullets, then Google analytics starts to crumble quite severely.Steffen Hedebrandt:So to answer the question, I think it's also like an educational path and kind of an internet maturity thing. Because, now CDPs are blowing up and which helps people understand that you can actually have one person that then owns two devices that you can then start to understand if that one person, the next step is then to associate these people with for example, an account as you do in B2B. Does that make sense, Jonathan?Jon Taylor:Absolutely. Absolutely. It describes the universe that I occupy all the time and other organizations. It's also the technical issues. You described a scenario that even if you were a hundred percent aligned on everything, you're saying there's a technical issue. So I'm curious about the technical problems that you see. And obviously I'd love to hear more about how DreamData could solve that problem.Steffen Hedebrandt:But it's also kind of, it is almost like a consultancy expression, like change management process, because, man, now the CEO, he learned the Google analytics 10 years ago and it was actually okay 10 years ago because people only have a few devices.Jon Taylor:There's nothing more dangerous than a CEO and in Google analytics.Steffen Hedebrandt:But you basically have to tell a lot of the organization that you have to unlearn what you know right now and think about stuff in a different way. That is one of the biggest challenges selling our tool. It's kind of a new category, so there's not a natural spot in the budget for software for it. So that's kind of what we're trying to carve out.Phil Gamache:Yeah. Where that budget fits in is really interesting because, one thing that you've told me Steffen that really changed the way that I pitched attribution solutions internally is that, this isn't a marketing problem to solve. This isn't just on marketing to prove is content driving this, or where trials starting from.. This is a company problem and we're trying to figure out where the company is driving growth and we want to double down on those things and we want to figure out, what is driving trials? And so instead of it just always being marketing have to like come up with this battle and we need budget for this, it should really be more of this holistic approach. We need to solve this as a company.Steffen Hedebrandt:When you talk B2B, I think what this one is all about is actually being able to collect data of a full journey, meaning that you gather every single touch point then it's an opinion about what was important afterwards, but it starts with you actually storing your data and putting every single touch into a timeline. And then it can be kind of opinionated, whether which attribution model or so to use, but it starts with you actually getting out of a habit of having these cowboy salespeople with a phone that just like all the people and getting them into kind of air coal or something else. Taking every single touch you have and make sure that it's digital and make sure that it's stored somewhere so you can actually start to model it at a later point.Phil Gamache:It's super cool. So we touched on a little bit like the analytics maturity path that some of these companies go through. We talked about GA and, we throw shade at GA, but for a lot of companies that are in that startup stage that are less than 10 people or less than 20 people, an end-to-end multi-touch attribution solution isn't at the top of their list of priorities. They will just be using GA maybe they're like upgrading and relying on some UTM codes to track and see last touch and first touch. But, the end-to-end model where you can have all those touch points in the middle and then aggregate all those to a domain level, that's that's where the sophistication of needing to set up the data infrastructure, or a data warehouse where you can combine all of those touchpoints together.Phil Gamache:So why don't you touch a little bit on the service side of DreamData, the Google big query service type of package that needs to get done before you can get to the Nirvana of attribution that the visualizations kind of present.Steffen Hedebrandt:What we're trying to do with our product is incredibly ambitious because we holistically want to have every single touch that any account has any place. So, the way we do two things you can say, and then we glue those two things together. One is that we have a script that you put on your website, and this script starts to assign anonymous IDs to every visitor. And then we start to record what is this anonymous ID doing? If that anonymous ID at some point identifies themselves through a form of demo call or download depo et cetera, then we ask for permission to go look at what they did while they were anonymous. And now, as we know who they are, we can also associate them with an account. So you have this multitouch profile of just one individual that it's then put into the timeline of what does everybody from one account doing.Steffen Hedebrandt:And this is all stored in Google big query. So, you build your history off every single visitor on your website. Where did they come from, where did they go and what did they look at and so forth. So you have those touch points component.Steffen Hedebrandt:And then the other important component is what takes place everywhere else in the organization, meaning in your CRM, in your automation system, in your outreach software, in your customer success software, in your calling software. Because those are also touches that is going towards one account, and you actually want to mix all of that up to find every single touch that is part of an account journey and then map that into a nice clean journey. And with all that in place, you can start to do this analysis that we as marketers like to do, meaning that how's the ROI on Google ads? How's the ROI on a specific Google campaign? You can do that because all the campaigns arrives with a click ID, and then we can look up the click ID and see if it was part of any one journey or not.Steffen Hedebrandt:Same methodology applies to organic search as well. We use the tool ourselves a lot to do a business development because we can see which accounts are active and we can see who was it and what did they do from that account. So when your salespeople call them up, they will have something relevant to say, or when they send them a mail, they will know which campaign they actually reacted to and so forth. How does that answer?Phil Gamache:That's super cool. I think that there's a ton to unpack there, for sure. One of the things I want to highlight there that I think DreamData does better than a lot of your competitors in this space is this kind of company level sort of aggregation. You mentioned so many touch points in the B2B world, there's the end user who's going to go on your website first and he's going to look at a couple of blog posts, and then he's going to send a blog post to his technical implementer. And then that person's going to need to get the buy in from the director. There's so many people in the company involved in that. And if you're only looking at the purchaser and their journey, you're not getting the full picture of who is that first person in the company who was on the website.Phil Gamache:Can you touch on that, like super quickly? How does DreamData accomplish that? How are you able to aggregate those multiple touch points from different people all into one account and how are you doing this with reverse IP, everyone working from home now and not being in the same IP. How are you guys solving that.Steffen Hedebrandt:Let me try to remember all the questions in that one question, otherwise remind me. If we start with the script on the website and the way we link users to accounts, we have a hierarchy assess CRM where we would look you're up. So, normal CRM being obviously the first CRM, but you might also have HubSpot and you might also have Intercom and so forth. So, we get with the customer define what is the primary CRM, and then we'd say [inaudible 00:24:41] at a close IO and look to see in the CRM if we can find a connection there, then it's sorted.Steffen Hedebrandt:And if Jonathan comes along and he's not in the CRM, but he actually started to sign up to HubSpot so he receives some emails, in there we then discovered that Jonathan is also associated to close IO. If that doesn't work, then we can start to just look at the domain and say, okay, that domain is close IO. If that doesn't work, then we have an access to an IP database that we look up as well. So we do all of these things simultaneously all the time.Steffen Hedebrandt:And then, as we connect the user to to the company, then one user might have touch or in the timeline, touch one, three and five, and the other user would have touch two and four. So we organize it by timestamps, which activities took place. And that's kind of how we overcome this burden of you putting your ad spend on one person and then his boss comes with the credit card afterwards and pay you.Phil Gamache:Gotcha.Jon Taylor:One of one of the things that I observed when I did a stint as a Marketo consultant and marketing automations consultant, everyone's talking about ABM. One of the things that there's a little graphic that we're all looking at here, we should tweet this out when we do the episode. But in my opinion, you also start to see this type of attribution unlocking other capabilities. You have the ability to then, hey, now I can do account based marketing, because I actually know what works. I have a buyer cycle that's more sophisticated than just one ad for one person.Jon Taylor:I also feel like you start to get permission to do things internally within the organization. Hey, let's do some brand. We know that these things are working well, let's do some brand advertising. Something small companies don't always get to do. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you see this with your customers? You reach this Nirvana state, what starts to happen beyond just knowing more?Steffen Hedebrandt:Let's say that we are providing the best data set available to explain what's going on. Still, then you need humans to act on what the data is telling you. And, sort of the best of the cases we have, people go out and act afterwards, meaning that, hey, this, a Google ads campaign is actually thriving. Deals, let me turn up the spend on that campaign and try to make similar campaigns even as well. Or it could be to say, discover those pieces of content that drives deals. Let's do more of those. But we do also have customers who's not kind of acting enough on what the data is actually informing them. So what we're looking at now is to do some... Can we recommend stuff? This is like an outlier in terms of positive performance, do more of that. This is outlier in terms of negative, you should probably do less of that.Steffen Hedebrandt:Somewhere down the line, as we pitch to VCs, we also talk about revenue automation. Whereas, we believe that this data set is the data set that knows the most about like the commercial bit of your business. Some, given we know this, then we should also be able to buy more of your ads, depending on early signals of how those ads are performing or not.Steffen Hedebrandt:It could also be like stuff like what if scenario so say, we do a data model where you... You act like you set a budget to double, and then you predict how much revenue would come out of it. But that's further down the line of stuff that you can do. But the data is only as impactful as the people who react to the afterwards, I think.Jon Taylor:You touched on this earlier, and I think that was such a good point. You're educating the market as much as you're doing, you're solving a technological problem. Marketers exist at this interesting intersection, the skillsets that marketers have often put us direct contact with the pain points, but sometimes technically, the problems are very hard to solve. I know I'm not a data analyst by any stretch of the imagination, so the idea of, I don't know, predictive or alerting, or some sort of notification that helps to take some of the thought and some of the debate of these conversations. You're sitting at the CEO table and you're trying to figure out how to position this data. And, you're also in your own head thinking, am I really the expert here? You kind of have that self doubt. How does a vision of your platform, I think, jive with that type of marketing future?Steffen Hedebrandt:I think actually, we like to think of ourselves as almost the CTO for the CMO or kind of, let's take care of all this really hot stuff for the marketing people so they can just skim the cream and then do more of what works and stop doing what didn't work. But the truth can also be painful sometimes. If we thought to tell people, look, this is actually not driving revenue, then that can also be a problem. That's a cool thing here would be to kind of celebrate these lead ad campaigns that gathers a ton of emails, but when you look them up, there's no connection to one deals at all, but the marketing agency would say it was a success, but because you got a 100 new emails or something like that.Jon Taylor:Enter in hand wave brand-building right?Phil Gamache:So, with kind of several customers now that are set up using DreamData, what insights can you share for our listeners on trends that you've seen across customers kind of on an early basis? I know when a customer gets set up, it's probably a X amount of months until they start seeing data kind of populate. And, once the data warehouse is set up, share some insights on things that you're seeing so far, what's the typical time to revenue or what models do you see customers using the most?Steffen Hedebrandt:I'll try to say a couple of things. I think first of all, people are surprised by how long the research phase is or the phase where people are anonymous. People normally tend to understand from the moment we got that email into sales, then we converted within two months or so. But, the research phase is easily three or four months before that, which means a ton in terms of if you're trying to hit budget in the last quarter and you haven't done your marketing investment, then it's too late actually to start the journeys. So, the ramp time of the seeds you plant are actually longer than you expect.Steffen Hedebrandt:Then, I would say, all the stuff you can do that is focused on high intent is the stuff that actually kind of works. What I mean by that is, low funnel stuff is really where you should start. For example, an example is these alternative articles. Even though the volume is small, they're insanely valuable because if you're searching for an alternative to an already established brand, the intend you arrive to your website with is super big and I can't probably make money on it. Where a lot of companies, they try to go for volume, or volume at the cost of your going wider as well. And a ton of those stuff is just waste of money.Steffen Hedebrandt:And then, the overall trend is really that people have no clue about how valuable their organic and paid efforts are, because it's not connected from when you are anonymous to close one deals. A lot of people are under investing in this stuff because they cannot prove it. So they are growing a lot slower than what they actually could be if they could see like five X, the return of what they're seeing today.Phil Gamache:You touched on so many interesting points. As an SEO as well, we often get a bit of a rap for always going after a quote unquote, big keywords, high volume keywords. But when you see it at the end of the day, you're always grounded back to, "Hey, you got to do more stuff for the customer." They're asking salespeople's questions. We can answer them in a top of or bottom of funnel kind of posts. How do people react to some of this news when they start seeing, Oh crap, this isn't working. I thought this was my... My ego is attached to this work as well.Steffen Hedebrandt:Actually, what I was just about to say is that across our customers, Facebook really doesn't seem to work. There's components to that. One thing is that Google ads out of the box, that's the clique ID, whereas on Facebook, you need to actually set a click ID manually, which makes it harder to attribute. But across the board, Facebook is really not driving a lot of B2B revenue compared to Google.Steffen Hedebrandt:And yeah, as you said, Jonathan, that also leads to debates kind of, "Hey, I used to regard this as a success, but you're saying it's not a success. I don't trust you."Steffen Hedebrandt:Another problem is that we will never get to 100% without an attribution tool. So kind of people sometimes freak out if they know one data point that should be in the journey that it's not there. And they're like, okay, good. I'm not using it then. Whereas, you should think about it more as a statistical framework that takes you from knowing 10 or 20% to knowing maybe 70 or 80% as to kind of when you act on the data, it's still leading you towards a good place. But, they tend to freak out about, if they remember one single touch that, "Hey, I saw him at that place and he's not in that journey." And then obviously we need to do everything we can to get the data quality super high, but you're just never going to get to 100%, not even with the perfect tool.Phil Gamache:Yeah. There's podcasts like this one, there's no intent attribution on podcasts. There's no attribution on sending a text to your buddy who's using this platform and asking him for a candid review on it. There's always going to be these offline sources that a tool can track for every company.Steffen Hedebrandt:100%. We only do, you can say deterministic attribution, stuff we can prove happened. Like old school, what's it called, the old school marketing guys that would do TV ads or radio ads. They would do these guesstimates of... I guess it's causality that they say. I spent this money, now we make this money. And, whereas we're in the business off, we can actually prove it. That was click, that was revenue, whereas the others, did you hear this Freakonomics podcast that came out a couple of months ago?Phil Gamache:No, I don't think so.Steffen Hedebrandt:That was fun. But, they found out that for some companies, even though the best day was kind of Thursday or Black Friday or something like that, but it's because it's like correlate, then you spent more money on ads, but it actually is just because it's correlates with this is the time of year when people spend more. There's no impact [crosstalk 00:36:21].Phil Gamache:Well, that's crazy. Maybe we can end on this question. One of the things I see a lot about like debates around attribution is the modeling around it. When companies are building these custom solutions internally, they're forced to pick one model. So a first touch or multitouch, or like W shape. What I think that DreamData does super cool is this ability to just quickly on the fly change your attribution model when you're looking at a visualization. So can you touch a bit on why you guys went around that routes and, are customers loving that?Steffen Hedebrandt:I think this is actually kind of just out of the box. One of the biggest revelations that we give to people is that we help them compare attribution models. So say for paid, we'll show you five different attribution models for the paid channel right away. So we'll show you the first touch next to the last touch next to a dog reshape next to linear next to U-shaped. The answer is that depending on how you look at it, it's true that the ad started the journey, but it's also true that the ad was not the last touch. The essential bit is that you have all the information available, meaning you have the full journey and then you can then have different kinds of analysis purposes that you're trying to solve.Steffen Hedebrandt:Meaning that, if I want to understand which ads to buy more of, I think actually a first touch model is fairly legit to look at because you just want to see where the journey starts from. And then you want to do more of that. Whereas if you're looking at it from an ROI perspective, maybe you want to do a W shape, meaning, so it's touch first, conversion last conversion, et cetera. So my answer is always that you should look at all the attribution models before you decide on doing something because they all represent different parts of the truth.Phil Gamache:I love it. We'll end on this last question before we let you go,. We like to ask all our guests how they stay happy in their career and in their professional lives. You're a super busy guy. You're CRO of a company just founded a of years ago. You just got a nice big round of funding. Congrats on that, you're talking to VCs, how do you manage all this stuff? How do you stay happy in your life?Steffen Hedebrandt:Good stuff. I think I'm a little bit gifted also by being naturally motivated to continuously improve. But I guess by being in a startup, I'm just constantly motivated by, "Hey, here's an idea. Let's try and build it." And then unfolding creatively is so rewarding for me. And then seeing the result, Oh, fuck that worked or that didn't work, let's try to do more. Can we beat last month and so forth?Steffen Hedebrandt:I think because everything is so transparent in a startup, it, matters a lot whether you show up or you don't show up. That really, really motivates me. I just had a kid 20 months ago. I used to have a lot of time to then run or do CrossFit or something like that, which was a great outlet for me when you kind of feel, Oh fuck, I'm a bit full now. If you have time to do exercise a lot, because there's a lot of natural chill coming after doing so, now with a kid that's kind of... I think getting a kid has actually made me a lot better at prioritizing kind of like you've default to what drives revenue.Steffen Hedebrandt:Also, I kind of thought you would spend time on, got to get this small thing right. Nowadays, does this correlate with more revenue in the SNL and then I stay focused on those tasks.Phil Gamache:It's such a good answer. I love the aspect around the kids as well. There's this change in mindset once you start having children. As somebody in a fast paced startup you... One of my colleagues always says, I love this line actually. She says, "I'm super lazy."What she means is that she's not going to spend an ounce of effort on anything she doesn't think is going to provide return. I love that perspective and I love the perspective you shared on happiness. I think there's so much wisdom to unpack in what you just said.Phil Gamache:Steffen, thanks to you. Tank you so much for being on the show, man. We'll add in the show notes the website, DreamData.io where people can go check it out. I know you're active on Twitter and LinkedIn, so we'll drop links there, but thanks a lot for your time and really appreciate it.Steffen Hedebrandt:I really appreciate the invite, thanks. --Intro music by Wowa via Unminus

Episode 172: Beerud Sheth co-founder and CEO of Gupshup and founder of Elance (now Upwork) talks about building businesses, money, and the positive power of entrepreneurship.  Guest Biography Beerud Sheth Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Beerud is the cofounder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 30K+ developers and handles over 4.5 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy. Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal. In this episode, you'll learn: The scarcity mindset of an immigrant versus an abundance mindset -- and the importance of having both. Why Beerud is betting on text messaging and how he evaluates what type of businesses to start. Why the best way to make the world a better place might be to have more entrepreneurs!    Show notes: http://www.inspiredmoney.fm/172 Find more from our guest: Gupshup Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Mentioned in the episode: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Gupshup messaging platform wins prize backed by Gates Foundation, others Kleiner Perkins Pequot Ventures New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Thanks for Listening! To share your thoughts: Leave a note in the comment section below. Share this show on Twitter or Facebook. Join us at the Inspired Money Makers groups at facebook and LinkedIn To help out the show: Leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser.com, or wherever you listen. Your ratings and reviews really help, and I read each one. Email me your address, and I'll mail you an autographed copy of Kimo West and Ken Emerson's CD, Slackers in Paradise. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Special thanks to Jim Kimo West for the music.

“Always make more mistakes but make sure to recover quickly & learn from them.” In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the journey of Beerud Sheth, Founder and CEO of Gupshup, the leading smart messaging platform. He previously founded Elance (now Upwork), which pioneered the gig economy and went IPO in 2018. Throughout the podcast, Beerud shares his experience of over 22 years as an Entrepreneur building Elance and Gupshup. Listen to this podcast to learn about: Notes - 00:30 - His journey from IIT Bombay & MIT to founding Elance & Gupshup 05:21 - Transitioning from a Wall-Street trader to an entrepreneur 07:55 - How did the idea of Elance come up? 10:02 - Key pivotal moments during his early days of entrepreneurship 13:57 - Scale at which Upwork was operating when he left & why did he leave? 22:56 - How did the idea of Gupshup come up? 26:50 - Growing Gupshup to $100 Million ARR and plans of taking it to IPO 30:41 - Highlights of the recent partnership with WhatsApp Business 45:09 - Grit, perseverance & mental fortitude necessary for an entrepreneur 47:23 - Learnings from his mistakes from over 22 years as an entrepreneur 49:33 - Looking at resume value vs other soft-attributes while hiring

139: 21 Lessons On Launching An International Platform And Make It Profitable Part 1. How you can launch your business and make it profitableToday I want to talk about the 21 lessons from launching Soul Rich Woman, doing our membership programs and I would love to share them with you. Here are some of the biggest lessons from our biggest launch ever:Life happens. So get prepared. 02:29- 02:34  During the month we launched Soul Rich Woman, we had lots of life stuff going. Willow our toddler started daycare and potty training for the first time. 02:45-03:00   It's really helpful to do at least some stuff in advance because let's face it – life doesn't stop just because you're launching your business or you're launching your podcast. Don't leave everything to the last minute. Get support.03:03- 03:08 You really don't have to do it all by yourself. And I'm telling myself this constantly.03:20- 03:29 I want to tell you this, outsource as much as possible because it will multiply your output, it will 10X your output.03:36- 03:48 You can get people from Fiverr or Elance if you don't have a big budget because there are so many moving pieces to launch a business or podcasts.Sales pages take forever.04:32- 04:37  Sometimes, it will take 10 x or 100 x longer than you think.04:46- 04:52 Even with an existing sales page, making tweaks takes so much longer than you think.Email can not be your only marketing channel.05:25- 05:41 Don't assume everyone reads your emails. And honestly, deliverability over the years since I started going online in 2013 has gone down because of stronger spam filters, promotional folders, and email fatigue.05:42- 06:08 Therefore, you have to promote on all your marketing channels. From your podcast to your Facebook, to your LinkedIn, to your Instagram, to your TikTok, to your emails, to your Facebook Ads, wherever. I just heard that someone big did a launch and I had no idea. I only follow her on Instagram and I never saw her mention it once. Spell stuff out for your customers.07:24- 07:28 Spell stuff out for your customers.07:29- 07:39 People don't always read too closely. And this is very true even for us who launch Soul Rich Woman, people don't even know what it is. It's not obvious to them.Pretty doesn't necessarily sell.09:25- 09:42 To be frank, don't try and get too cute with design. In your materials and logo, no problem. But sales pages can be really simple. Don't let your “buy now” button or “sign up now” get lost in the crowd of beautiful images.Track your conversions.09: 43- 10:00 Track your conversions. It's easy to think “nobody wants to buy my stuff!” if you don't understand that 1-2% of people will buy. Over time, the statistics will play out unless you're doing more high-touch selling, then yes, you can convert higher.10:01- 10:05 Number eight: Book in self-care. Take care of yourself, have self-love. Track and celebrate every success.11:16- 11:39 Track and celebrate every success. I literally mean that. Every success. It's true that most of the sales come right at the end, so it's easy to get discouraged. Get excited about every single sale – someone has believed in you and you can help transform their lives.Deadlines, bonuses, and incentives work.11:50- 12:00 It's not being too salesy. People are just like sitting on the fence, we don't why. And humans need scarcity and deadlines to motivate them. So get it done. 12:13- 12:21 In part two, I will continue to share with you my lessons learned so that you can be aware even before you begin your journey.Key Takeaways:  Life happens so get prepared. Get support. Email can not be your only marketing channel. Pretty doesn't necessarily sell. Track and celebrate every success. Key Resources:Subscribe to Genecia's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/SoulRichWomanVisit SRW's website: https://www.soulrichwoman.comFollow Genecia on Instagram : (@Geneciaalluora)Follow Genecia on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/geneciaalluora/Check Genecia's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genecia/Free Resource: "Soul Why: Soul Rich Woman Blueprint" and "How to Delegate 80% of your to-do list" ---> https://be.soulrichwoman.comSecrets of Manifesting Money Quickly Online Course ---> https://shor.by/moneymindset

This episode of Flashback Friday was originally published: February 20, 2014 The tables have been turned on Jason Hartman during Episode #362 of The Creating Wealth Show. Normally Jason asks the questions, but today, host Kerry Lutz of the Financial Survival Network sets the agenda. What transpires is a nuts and bolts crash course in the exact reasons single family residential properties are Jason's preferred form of investing, bar none. Better than the stock market or gold by a long shot, and safer than apartment complexes or commercial properties. If you have an interest in a better understanding of the kind of investing that creates actual wealth for the long term, don't skip this show. About Kerry Lutz Kerry Lutz has been a student of Austrian Economics since 1977. While attending Pace University, he stumbled upon an extensive cache of Austrian Economic Literature in a dark, musty, abandoned section of the school's library. After graduating from The New York Law School, he became an attorney and life-long serial entrepreneur. His diverse career has included: running a legal printing company, practicing commercial law and litigation and founding a successful distressed asset investment company. In 2010, Kerry gave up most of his other interests to pursue his long held desire of becoming a radio show host. Thus the Financial Survival Network was born. Its mission, much like that of Jason Hartman's, is helping you to survive and thrive in the New Economy. He has done hundreds of interviews with such financial luminaries as Peter Schiff, Harry S. Dent, Martin Armstrong and Peter Grandich. Kerry now appears on 1230 WBZT, in West Palm Beach, FL, every Sunday from 9am-10pm EST. In This Episode, Jason Addresses: Is the dollar collapse real or fiction and why it might not matter Why math math is irrelevant when it comes to the economy Where Chinese millionaires want to live Why residential property investments beat multi-family and commercial How you can tell if your real estate portfolio is diversified What's wrong with most real estate gurus' and their promises much, MUCH more… Don't miss Jason's monologue, which leads off this episode. He discusses the recent merger of eLance and oDesk, the scam of life insurance as an investment,why college no longer makes financial sense, and what Steve Jobs told President Obama about creating more jobs. Links: The Financial Survival Network Check out this episode!

Doug has made a million dollars on Upwork working as a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) specialist. He worked as bartender and retrained himself to be a Google Ads specialist and is now able to support his family solely working on Upwork. He's been on the platform since Elance days and shares a lot of his insights such as attracting clients, setting pricing, getting first gigs, managing failures and handling bad reviews. (Apologies for audio problems, not much I could do in post-processing)

EP46: {Beerud Sheth, Founder of Elance & Gupshup} On this episode I speak with Beerud Sheth, who was the co-founder & CEO of the poplar freelancing work platform Elance in 1998, that is now Upwork. Beerud went on to found Gupshup a could messaging platform that has seen its share of twists and turns in the messaging and communications space since 2004 and now processes over 4 billion messages a month. Beerud joined us from his home in California for this chat. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — → Don't forget to subscribe to the Newsletter via stars.substack.com so that you can receive future podcast releases delivered to your inbox! → Full episode of the podcast is available on my YouTube Channel — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Elance was co-founded by Beerud who moved to the US after graduating from IIT Bombay, to pursue his Masters at MIT followed by a stint in investment banking on Wall Street. Elance was the poster boy of the freelancer economy. Beerud was the CEO and top executive till 2007 and later a board member until the merger with Odesk in 2014. Gupshup is among the cloud messaging platforms in the world with revenue upwards of Rs. 600 crore and has over 39,000 businesses including Ola, Flipkart, Zomato, HDFC, Google, Paytm. Processes over 4.5 billion messages a month and recently expanded their services to South East Asia, Middle East and Europe. Hope you enjoy the episode! Stay tuned & stay Safe! - V @varunvummidi Timeline: 00:00 - Introduction 05:08 - Founding Elance 08:00 - Solving for supply 10:33 - Managing challenges building a marketplace 12:45 - Solving for Remote Work 14:20 - Took 6 months to build the business case for Elance 16:02 - Meeting co-founders & raising money 17:51 - Stock Markets were irrational in the 2000s that helped with fund raising 18:23 - Raising over $ 62M for Elance & the Odesk merger 19:50 - Transitioning out of Elance 23:28 - Reasons Gig Work is gaining popularity & the moment is now 27:23 - Gupshup - messaging & communication 30:21 - Messaging is the original super app 36:01 - iMessage Vs RCS 38:45 - Gupshup IP messaging 40:51 - Resident Message apps on OEMs 45:40 - Next phase of Messaging 48:30 - Mobile SPAM 51:25 - Plans & Hiring

The Millennial generation is still retail's most coveted demographic, but Generation Z isn't far behind.  Both cohorts grew up as "digital natives" with computers, game consoles, and mobile phones.  It's no surprise then that being online is second nature to them, and increasingly, chatbots is where Millennials & Generation Z can be found interacting online with retailers & other businesses.  Conventional marketing wisdom has long dictated that you have to meet your customers where they are.  Our guest on this episode argues that means chatbots are where marketers should go.   As Co-Founder and CEO of Gupshup, Beerud Sheth knows quite a bit about chatbots.  His bot-building platform is already being used by over 30,000 businesses worldwide, and was selected by Amazon as one of two preferred bot builders for their .bot registry services. With bots increasingly automating many tasks & activities currently done manually, Beerud also has interesting insights on how they may disrupt the labor market, another topic he's well-versed in having previously co-founded eLance which kick-started the gig economy. Beerud shares his vision with us about the opportunities that lie ahead, and the steps businesses must take to maximize their return from automating this growing customer touchpoint.

John Jonas has helped thousands of entrepreneurs succeed in their business by doing outsourcing differently. He created and runs OnlineJobs.ph, the largest website for finding Filipino virtual workers, with over 1,000,000 Filipino resumes and over 300,000 employers from around the world using it. He works about 17 hours per week, choosing to spend his time with his family rather than working.   Most passionate about The thing I’m always working on is helping people to outsource their businesses. I love it; I see so many people succeed with it. I see so much good in it, from both sides, the employer and the virtual assistant. John’s career and story I’m a terrible employee. Out of college in 2003, I had a job for eight months, and my only goal was to quit my job. Because I hated it, and it took me eight months to make a little money online, and then I had an opportunity, and I took it, and I’ve been making money online ever since. In 2004 when I was making money, I didn’t get rich, but I saw how things are working. And I was good with websites; we were ranked on Google, and we were having ads on our websites and were getting money when people clicked the links and so on. I realized that there is a business online. Still, the business models of AdWords wouldn’t work for long, so I started learning other things regarding online - like copywriting, marketing, SEO, and the like. I started my online business, and very quickly, I got overwhelmed, I was overworked; there were so many things to do. I thought it’s going to be easy and obviously I was wrong. I tried different outsourcing solutions; I Tried to hire people locally and to hire someone from India, then I tried Elance, which today is UpWork - and all that didn’t work for me. Then I had a conversation with someone very successful in Internet business, and he said to me, ‘when you ready to hire outsourcing, make sure to go to the Philippines’. And he gave me a reference so I can hire someone full time, and I didn’t do it, but it gave me some hope. But after a while, I realized I couldn’t keep working 60 hours a week without getting enough done. And I hired someone through the agency he gave me, and it was the single most liberating experience of my life! This employee was doing whatever I taught him to do, and after like a month, I realized that there is like two of me… I replaced myself in my business. That guy is still working for me today. Since 2005…! What I didn’t know about the Philippines is that they are loyal almost to a fault. That changed my life, and since then, I’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people do that, and it changed their lives as well. In 2008 I directly recruited a programmer to build a simple Job Board for direct interaction between companies to job seekers. In the first month, we passed a couple of hundreds of profiles, last month we passed a million profiles. The VA sets the terms, and we don’t take a cut of their salary, so they get all the money you pay them. We get paid $70 by employers for access to the database. John’s best advice for entrepreneurs I have two pieces of advice. The first one is to make sales! That’s where entrepreneurs fail. Many of them think that ‘if I build this, or if I have just one more feature - than it’s all going to work. No. It’s not. You need to make sales. The second piece of advice is to make sure you add value; meaningful value to your customers. Biggest failure with customers My biggest failure is entering a market where I don’t understand the marketing plan. If I don’t understand what they are looking for and what the offer should be, then I usually fail. Six or seven years ago, I paid a realtor for creating training for other realtors for giving to their VAs. And I didn’t understand how to get this offer in front of other realtors. Biggest success due to the right customer approach My best success is my platform, onlinejobs.ph, but within onlinejobs.ph, the best success...

Gary Swart is a tech and healthcare investor at Polaris Partners and a former executive with experience in general management of all size organizations, including leading sales, operations, staffing, and strategy. Up until April 2014, Gary was the CEO of oDesk (UpWork now), the world's largest online workplace. He guided the company to industry leadership and through a merger with eLance, while serving as a leading voice for the future of work and the emerging online work industry. Gary is passionate about helping entrepreneurs build their businesses, where he regularly shares his knowledge and provides mentorship on how to craft a successful path with fellow business people and anyone building their career. His past positions included: -VP of Sales and Operations at Intellibank, a SaaS collaboration platform -Business Unit Executive (SMB Division), IBM Rational Software -Director of Corporate Sales, Rational Software -Western Region Sales, Pure Atria Gary is an expert in the future of work, fundamentals of management, effective interviewing and staffing methods, entrepreneurship, online marketplaces/platform strategy and sales/go-to-market During this interview we cover: Going through a merger and getting  acquired by IBM Leaving IBM and Gary's career path criteria Growth and development not to steep that you go off of the cliff Turning down an offer on Netflix as employee #3 Why you should consider merging with a better business model (oDesk & eLance merge) User Experience as the best marketing tool. Insights on the Future of Work and the landscape after COVID-19 Hiring talent criteria as a SaaS founder Investing trends surrounding Healthcare and Technology Adding value to a company post-acquisition Productivity and effective leadership habits advice (Hint: ABR) Book Recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/That-Will-Never-Work-Netflix/dp/0316530204 (That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea) Links and mentions: UpWorks Website Polaris Partners Website Get in touch with Gary: Gary's LinkedIn Profile More about Akeel:

Mike Lalonde is the lead audio editor for Pro Podcast Solutions. I’m happy to have Mike on the show to talk about sound quality, what makes a great podcast, and tips for beginning podcasters. Mike is in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where it snows, gets cold, and is the perfect base for someone who works from home. Mike shares how his love for music and being in a band sparked his interest in audio production. He decided to pursue that passion and started freelancing and working on audiobooks.  I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Mike through an email he sent me. That was four years ago and now he is the lead audio editor for PPS. Every new show goes through Mike as he tweaks it, gets the sound perfect, and creates a template for moving forward. We have a great conversation talking about what beginners can do to get good audio quality. Hint: It starts with a quiet recording environment and the right microphone. Mike gives tips on how to record in a quiet area, things you can do to get better sound quality from your microphone, and microphones for beginners. We also talk about why you might want to hire an editor.  We geek out on audio software, plugins, and tools that can help produce a great sounding podcast. We also talk about things hosts can do to make their show stand out, unique questions to ask, and calls-to-action. Mike gives a lot of examples and shout outs to some of the hosts that we’ve been fortunate enough to work with. I am so fortunate to have Mike as a lead part of the team. He talks about the example and work ethic of his parents. This definitely shines through with Mike’s work ethic, skill set, and passion for audio. We also talk about the Canadian band that was the beginning of his inspiration.  Show Notes: [03:42] Mike has been with PPS since February of 2016. His first project was an audiobook for PPS then he began working on podcast audio. [06:05] Mike was one of the first PPS editors.  [07:04] Mike handles all of the audio, sound, and templates for new clients. Once everything is worked out and established then another audio editor on the team may take over.  [08:52] He began in music. He and his friends started a band. That's when Mike got into Audacity, Cubase, and Logic. They also had a lot of outboard gear for EQ etc.  [09:42] They also helped other bands out with music recordings. Mike enjoyed audio production and started looking for gigs on Elance. This is how he found his first audiobook gigs and a couple of podcast gigs.  [10:59] He enjoyed audio work, and after sending a cold email to Darrell, he started doing audio for PPS. [11:02] The first podcasts that Mike listened to were about video games. [11:48] Mike plays guitar, bass, and drums.  [13:14] Mike's in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where there's snow. That's one of the reasons he works from home. [15:19] The first tip Mike gives for new podcasters is to record in a quiet space. Close your windows and reduce as much noise as possible. Get comfortable and don't shuffle around. Also, do some test recordings with your microphone. [18:27] Learn basic microphone etiquette. Don't put the microphone right in your mouth. Make sure you're not wearing bulky clothes or jewelry that will rub on your microphone. [19:35] A sock or a windscreen will help disperse air and get rid of the plosives.  [20:36] USB microphones are great for beginners. If you have an audio interface you may need a microphone with a preamp like a condenser microphone. A lot of people have had good luck with SM 48s or SM58s.  [23:11] One podcast misconception is people are seeing it as a hobby or a niche industry, but the podcast industry is huge today.  [26:19] You can use a podcast to grow a huge community. You don't have to be famous to become a host. [28:27] Mike and Darrell talk about calls-to-action. Amy Porterfield is great at this. Jen Briney has a lot of community engagement. She does entire episodes reading messages from her fans. Kasey Bell gives away freebies in every episode. She also encourages community engagement with community questions. [31:39] Stephen Spencer breaks down his episodes into a checklist. At the end, he gives a one-sentence call-to-action inviting people to check out the show notes. [32:31] They all put in the time and effort to provide extra content for the listeners. [36:20] We talk about things that make podcasts stand out. For example, Sip, Suds, & Smokes has fun sound effects. Jen Briney's show is community supported. Things like music breaks can help with the flow.  [39:41] Stephan Spencer always asks guests, before the interview, what would make this the best interview that they have ever had. Mike shares this and other unique questions that some of our shows ask.  [43:50] Watch plosives if you want to get your sound as clean as possible. Get a good stand and use a pop filter. Talk into the mic.  [45:15] Darrell uses an Audition plugin called Kill the Mic Rumble.  [47:58] It's a good idea to remove pets before you record. [49:17] Mike shares software tools and plugins that he uses.  [50:45] Try sitting in silence when you first record to have a recording of room tone. Also separate tracks for the different speakers.  [51:48] Most people start with Audacity and then move on to something like what we use which is Adobe Audition. [53:45] There are so many tools you can use for audio editing, but the easiest way to make it easy on yourself is to hire somebody to do it for you. [54:16] Having someone edit your audio is like paying to get YOUR time back. You can focus on what you do best. You also get access to a team of professionals.  [56:44] Mike had his first job when he was 14. He learned from his hard-working parents that if you want something you work for it. [57:58] Mike shares his favorite Canadian band. He has seen them live and got a book signed by Geddy Lee. Geddy is why Mike started playing base.  [01:00:21] Darrell's takeaways: Find a quiet space when recording and do test recordings. The microphone we recommend is the ATR2100X. It's important to create an engagement piece. Get your guest comfortable before hitting record. What benefit will hiring someone allow you to have? Hiring someone can save you time. You also get expertise and wisdom. Links and Resources: Pro Podcast Solutions Libsyn Use promo code ProPod to get your first month free Tips for Launching a Successful Podcast with Launch Specialist Jodey Smith Audacity Cubase Logic Pro X Foam Microphone Windscreen  ATR2100-USB Microphone Shure SM58 Shure SM48 Joe Rogan The Pat McAfee Show Amy Porterfield Podcast Congressional Dish with Jennifer Briney 80% of Being an Entrepreneur Is What You Think and Feel with Amy Porterfield Using the Value for Value Model to Earn a Living, Travel, and Do Good in the World with Jen Briney Shake Up Learning Stephan Spencer Sip, Suds, & Smokes Talk of 12 Oaks How Talking About Everything Good in Life Turned Into an Award Winning Podcast and Radio Show with Good Ol’ Boy Mike Stellar Life Podcast Seeing Business as a Creative Act and Focusing on What You Do Best with Andy Kushner Adobe Audition RX 7 Plugin Pack Garage Band Hindenburg Pro Tools REAPER Rush

Echeruo's new venture is called Love and Magic, a startup studio that helps companies of all sizes maximize their ability to innovate. For anyone that has an idea they have been hoping to turn into a startup, Echeruo and his collaborators just introduced the Startup School of Alchemy. It's being taught at WeWork and Princeton University. It offers a six-week curriculum designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs find product-market fit.Apply with the code "stackoverflow" and you get $1000 off the course, a 40% discount.Echeruo says his time working in finance and with Microsoft Excel was what gave him the ability to think of how data from maps could be optimized by an algorithm and built into a useful mobile app. For those who don't know, our co-founder and Chairmam, Joel Spolsky, was part of the team at Microsoft that built Excel. Here is legendary 2015 talk, You Suck at Excel, where he organizes a spreadsheet to keep track of what he pays his Pokemon, ahem,I mean, uh, employees. You can take a deeper dive into the backstory of how Chinedu built HopStop below, related in his own words.I've always had difficulty with directions. When I grew up in Nigeria, I remember getting lost in my own house. It wasn’t like it was a mansion, it was a four-bedroom house. So you can imagine how I felt when I got to NYC and had to get around with the subway and bus system! I remember walking up once to one of those blown up maps in the subway station. My nose was a feet away from the dust laden map. The subway lines looked like tangled noodles. Complexity galore! New Yorkers used to walk around with these pocket guides—Hagstrom maps. I was going on a date in the Lower East Side. It doesn’t have the grid like the rest of the city. I got lost and was very late getting to the bar.I can't remember how, the date went but I remember what I did first thing next morning. I walked over to the subway station, grabbed a subway MAP and laid it on the floor and tried to figure it out. There’s driving directions. But there weren’t subway directions. So I was solving my own problems. I was looking for the complete directions—leave your house, turn left, go into this particular entrance, get on this train, get off at this station, use this exit. Because I was, in a lot of ways, the ultimate user, we ended up building a product that solved the complete problem—get me from where I am now to where I need to be. I was non-technical, I worked for a hedge fund. I may have been thinking algorithmically, I knew that this was computationally possible. But I didn’t know how to make it a reality. In conceiving the problem, I threw all the data into spreadsheets. I interned at this company when I was in college, where I learned about spreadsheets. I found the work very tedious, but I learned how to think about data, to think in tables. It allowed me to conceptualize complexity. To conceptualize the first subway data as a spreadsheet, I started by staring at the subway map laid on the wood floor of my apartment. The most obvious features were colors, lines, and stops. So those are the tables I typed into Excel first. Then I realized the lines also represented two train directions so I redid the spreadsheet. Then I realized the stops served multiple subway lines, so I redid the spreadsheet. Then I realized some of the stops would only be active during certain periods, so I redid the spreadsheet. We kept on learning and adjusting. It took us a long time before we had a data model that robustly described NYC's subway system. We even figured out how to automatically account for the frequent weekend NYC subway diversions.To build the first version of the app, I went to eLance, described to these computer scientists the data set in Excel, routes, stops, exits, entrances, and I sent it in. This developer in Siberia, Russia, emailed me, came up with a solution. But he turned out to be a complete genius, he built the core of the first version of Hopstop. Here I was, a Nigerian, sitting in my apartment using messenger, email, on a laptop. And I never met Alex for four years. We built Hopstop over four years without ever meeting each other.We ran very lean. Alex did all the coding. I did the subway data and user experience. I'd have to ride to different subway stations to note each subway entrance and exit, etc. When we added the bus system, Rajeev and his data team in India helped input the bus stops and schedules. And four years later, we were purchased by Apple, so quite the ride.

Echeruo's new venture is called Love and Magic, a startup studio that helps companies of all sizes maximize their ability to innovate. For anyone that has an idea they have been hoping to turn into a startup, Echeruo and his collaborators just introduced the Startup School of Alchemy. It's being taught at WeWork and Princeton University. It offers a six-week curriculum designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs find product-market fit.Apply with the code "stackoverflow" and you get $1000 off the course, a 40% discount.Echeruo says his time working in finance and with Microsoft Excel was what gave him the ability to think of how data from maps could be optimized by an algorithm and built into a useful mobile app. For those who don't know, our co-founder and Chairmam, Joel Spolsky, was part of the team at Microsoft that built Excel. Here is legendary 2015 talk, You Suck at Excel, where he organizes a spreadsheet to keep track of what he pays his Pokemon, ahem,I mean, uh, employees. You can take a deeper dive into the backstory of how Chinedu built HopStop below, related in his own words.I've always had difficulty with directions. When I grew up in Nigeria, I remember getting lost in my own house. It wasn't like it was a mansion, it was a four-bedroom house. So you can imagine how I felt when I got to NYC and had to get around with the subway and bus system! I remember walking up once to one of those blown up maps in the subway station. My nose was a feet away from the dust laden map. The subway lines looked like tangled noodles. Complexity galore! New Yorkers used to walk around with these pocket guides—Hagstrom maps. I was going on a date in the Lower East Side. It doesn't have the grid like the rest of the city. I got lost and was very late getting to the bar.I can't remember how, the date went but I remember what I did first thing next morning. I walked over to the subway station, grabbed a subway MAP and laid it on the floor and tried to figure it out. There's driving directions. But there weren't subway directions. So I was solving my own problems. I was looking for the complete directions—leave your house, turn left, go into this particular entrance, get on this train, get off at this station, use this exit. Because I was, in a lot of ways, the ultimate user, we ended up building a product that solved the complete problem—get me from where I am now to where I need to be. I was non-technical, I worked for a hedge fund. I may have been thinking algorithmically, I knew that this was computationally possible. But I didn't know how to make it a reality. In conceiving the problem, I threw all the data into spreadsheets. I interned at this company when I was in college, where I learned about spreadsheets. I found the work very tedious, but I learned how to think about data, to think in tables. It allowed me to conceptualize complexity. To conceptualize the first subway data as a spreadsheet, I started by staring at the subway map laid on the wood floor of my apartment. The most obvious features were colors, lines, and stops. So those are the tables I typed into Excel first. Then I realized the lines also represented two train directions so I redid the spreadsheet. Then I realized the stops served multiple subway lines, so I redid the spreadsheet. Then I realized some of the stops would only be active during certain periods, so I redid the spreadsheet. We kept on learning and adjusting. It took us a long time before we had a data model that robustly described NYC's subway system. We even figured out how to automatically account for the frequent weekend NYC subway diversions.To build the first version of the app, I went to eLance, described to these computer scientists the data set in Excel, routes, stops, exits, entrances, and I sent it in. This developer in Siberia, Russia, emailed me, came up with a solution. But he turned out to be a complete genius, he built the core of the first version of Hopstop. Here I was, a Nigerian, sitting in my apartment using messenger, email, on a laptop. And I never met Alex for four years. We built Hopstop over four years without ever meeting each other.We ran very lean. Alex did all the coding. I did the subway data and user experience. I'd have to ride to different subway stations to note each subway entrance and exit, etc. When we added the bus system, Rajeev and his data team in India helped input the bus stops and schedules. And four years later, we were purchased by Apple, so quite the ride.

The challenge of finding consulting projects is not one you should overlook.  However, the first is the hardest.  Once you have a couple of projects under your belt, you will find it easier to win additional work. We will cover the ways to grow existing business in another episode.  For now, let's look at some ways to find prospects that are the easiest to convert into customers. Finding Consulting Projects on the Internet This problem is so common that a large number of sites have been created to solve it.  That is not going to make your task a slam dunk.  Although there are countless project sites out there, they are not all created equal.  Start with the options that have a strong history and a substantial number of users.  They may cost a little more, but the reliability is worth it.  I have used Guru and Upwork (formerly ELance) for well over a decade and found some excellent clients.  It has not been easy as I have responded to over one thousand requests over the years.  Some of those were short, but over half were at least a page or two of proposal content. These sites are an excellent way to find small and medium-sized projects.  Therefore, you should try them out and get comfortable with them as soon as possible.  You may be able to stay busy without them.  On the other hand, we all hit dry spells where these sites can help you survive them. Go With Who You Know The best way to find business is to go with people who know and trust you.  That leads us to past employers and even co-workers.  When you are looking for work, it is easiest to start by reaching out to places you have worked and the people you worked with.  They know you, know how you work, and you will have a level of comfort with them as well.  This is the perfect recipe for a successful project.  That existing trust goes a long way in navigating the obstacles we often come across in IT work. Do not overlook your current employer.  Sometimes there are projects that are available for a side hustle in your current job or with other departments.  There may be some legal or employment restrictions related to these potential customers.  Thus, you should take a good look at the political climate and your employment contracts before going down this road. Learn more in the book written for Develpreneurs at any stage in their progress:  https://www.amazon.com/Source-Code-Happiness-Finding-Success-ebook/dp/B07MKZBF6R  

Jason Hartman talks with Beerud Sheth, founder of Elance and his new project, Gupshup, about the changing nature of working with freelancers and how AI is going to change our work habits and customer interactions forever. Key Takeaways: [4:48] How many people utilize all of Beerud's platforms? [10:04] The profile of typical Elance/Upwork's freelancers [12:24] Beerud's newest venture, Gupshup [17:09] How AI customer service agents are changing the landscape [20:35] The perception of online anonymity has brought out the worst in some people Website: www.Gupshup.io www.Twitter.com/Beerud

Domingo treina y tres en tiempo ordinario

Joey Kissimmee says that he's not techy, but he has created iPhone apps, SaaS products, WordPress themes, and is now working on WordPress plugins. He says that he has always been a hard worker. His first job was washing dishes in a beat up old sandwich shop in Chicago when he was twelve. In 2000, he started working at Walmart and doing a little business online to make some extra money to have fun with his wife and kids. “At first,” he says, “it was just selling junk on eBay.” But he found some mentors, he listened, he learned, and he implemented the things he learned. He created a few tools that he couldn't find and then turned these tools into products. Somewhere around 2008 or 2009, he realized he was making some pretty good money from his online business and decided to take it seriously. By early 2010, he was able to retire from his job at Walmart to work his online business full-time. Please see Disclosure* (below) concerning affiliate links on this page. Key Segments [03:00] Joey is not a developer, so how did he get into the SaaS world? He says he's not techy. Joey wasn't even sure what SaaS meant until long after he was creating SaaS products. [03:55] He didn't set out to become an entrepreneur; he just wanted to sell some junk on eBay. [04:25] When he first started to get involved with marketing, his mentors were creating little tools to perform tasks. [05:05] He started creating iPhone apps in 2011, and that's where he really learned to hire people to create things. [06:25] Anything he had to do repeatedly, he would pay someone to automate for him. He systematized his processes and created tools for himself. [07:00] In about 2010 a buddy in the affiliate marketing world told him: “Dude, you could sell this stuff.” [07:40] He was a good listener, and he took action. He just implemented what worked. He created TubeSlicer.com as a tool to do the five things he knew how to do with Photoshop for creating YouTube thumbnails and then turned this into a product. He did the same thing to create Image Ad Creator a product to create images for split testing Facebook ads. [09:15] Every product he created was to solve his own problems, and then he figured out a way to turn it into a viable product. He created Tube Slicer, Image Ad Creator, TimelineSlicer, and Podcast Artwork Slicer out of his own needs. Appendipity, his premium WordPress theme, was created the same way and turned into a huge success. [10:00] “I don't care who says what, outsourcing is an art form.” When you're outsourcing you don't have to know coding, you have to know the lingo. [11:30] Rule #1: Know how you want to use the product. The coder doesn't really care about or understand the Ux (user experience). Your problems aren't unique. There's a good chance that a dozen other people have the same problem; so if you can figure out how to solve it for yourself, you just solved it for a dozen other people. [12:14] Rule #2: Know the lingo. [13:00] To communicate Ux to the designer for his WordPress designers he draws on a legal pad and then scans it and sends it to them. For iPhone apps, he used Balsamiq to do wireframes. 14:30 Once it's working the way you want it to work, fiddle around with the look of it. Once the mock-up's done and you've got a working prototype, send it to the designer. [16:00] His go-to place for designers was oDesk. He also used Freelancer and eLance. (Note: oDesk and eLance merged in 2015 and formed Upwork.) [16:40] You could get hosed in many ways. The developer and the designer could overcharge you. People could also steal your ideas. One way Joey protected himself was not to give too much information on the job posting. [17:00] Joey gives an example of how he does a job posting and then explains his filtering process for hiring. [18:50] Once he has filtered out the best candidates, he shares more detail privately with them. If he has a good feeling about an individual, he does a live Skype session with them. You have to trust your gut. No matter how qualified someone may seem, if you don't feel right about it, and there's just something off, forget it. [21:55] For design work, he now goes to 99designs but uses a slightly different process because of their crowd-sourcing-like model. [23:00] Now, he can also put the word out to his email list that he needs people and use a survey on Google Forms to collect responses. Requirements are in a question format. He doesn't use a code word in these surveys, but the rest of the process is the same. [24:50] Joey has developed four different types of software products but uses one well-refined process to find people in all cases. Joey picked these things up by paying attention, listening, being connected to a few good people, and doing it. [27:40] Joey recommends The 4-Hour Workweek, The ONE Thing, and Influencer (see Resources Mentioned below for additional details). [29:00] Joey takes the end of one year and beginning of the next to spend with his family and to reflect on his business. He reflects on how things have gone in the past year and what he might want to try in the next. [32:15] He is fortunate to be able to take himself out of the equation. He learned to create evergreen businesses that don't need his name or his face to make money. Create brands that can stand on their own. [35:15] Don't become brand dependent. Don't become the brand because you won't make any money if you take yourself out of the equation. Build the product as the brand. [35:45] You can create a SaaS product, and you don't have to be the actual product. Be behind the scenes. Let the product breathe. Build the product into a brand. Make it the best thing possible. [36:55] You don't have to make it the best thing possible at the beginning. The beauty of SaaS is the ability to release versions. Build a working prototype, release it for free or dirt cheap, and then get feedback from the customers. Let the customers build the features into it then package it up, raise the price, and sell it. People will buy it because it's customer driven. They built the product. [38:20] You will get a lot of crazy requests from guys who think so far outside the box, they lose the box. Filter by the majority of requests. [41:15] “You just gotta go out there and do it. I always tell people, and I preach this off the rooftops: ‘You must listen. It doesn't matter where you're listening from. You have to listen to everything that they say. Learn as much as you can. There's no possible way you can learn everything that they say and jot everything down. Just jot down and take mental notes of the things that resonate with you. Then when you're done listening and learning, go out there and implement it. That's the freakin' key thing right there. If you don't implement, if you don't take action, the only guaranteed results to zero is if you do nothing. You might as well do something. If you're gonna get zero anyway by doing nothing, you might as well go ahead and try to do something so you'll get some kind of result.'” [42:05] “Do something. That's the way I go about it. You know, hey, it's gonna be zero anyway if I do nothing. So I might as well get a zero by doing something. ‘Cause at least, I gave it a whirl.” [42:55] “If you can use your own product, you've got something good to share with people.” Resources Mentioned 99designs – web-based service for design freelancers. Appendipity – premium WordPress theme created by Joey Kissimmee. Appendipity is particularly well-suited to podcasting. This site uses Appendipity. Balsamiq – wireframing app. Freelancer – web-based service for freelancers of all kinds. Google Forms – online form app from Google. Results transfer into a spreadsheet. Image Ad Creator – app created by Joey Kissimmee “that allows you to create beautiful and professional looking image ads to use with your Facebook advertising.” IncomePress.com – Joey Kissimmee's primary personal website and podcast. Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition – book by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler about making change happen. Photoshop – SaaS for processing images. Podcast Artwork Slicer (server move in progress) – product by Joey Kissimmee to create inexpensive album artwork for iTunes. The 4-Hour Workweek – book by Tim Ferriss free yourself from as many tasks as you can so that you can live differently, doing only the things that you alone can do. The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results – book by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan describing a simple, powerful concept to focus on what matters most. TimelineSlicer (server move in progress) – app created by Joey Kissimmee to “create custom cover photos for your Facebook Timeline.” TubeSlicer.com (server move in progress) – app created be Joe Kissimmee to create thumbnails for YouTube videos Upwork – web-based freelancers of all kinds. *Disclosure: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you purchase through these links. These commissions help to cover the cost of producing the podcast. I am affiliated only with companies I know and trust to deliver what you need. In most cases, affiliate links are to products and services I currently use or have used in the past. I would not recommend these resources if I did not sincerely believe that they would help you. I value you as a visitor/customer far more than any small commission I might earn from recommending a product or service. I recommend many more resources with which I am not affiliated than affiliated. In most cases where there is an affiliation, I will note it, but affiliations come and go, and the notes may not keep up.

Daniel J. Lewis discusses his SaaS product My Podcast Reviews stressing the importance of talking to people before developing your product.   Introduction   Daniel J. Lewis is an entrepreneur, an award-winning podcaster, and the founder of My Podcast Reviews. My Podcast Reviews is a subscription-based SaaS product for aggregating podcast reviews from 150+ national iTunes stores into a single deliverable report. Daniel stresses the importance of talking to your customers during development to find out what their pain points are. Daniel also shares how he monitors Twitter for niche-specific keywords and combinations to do marketing.   Key Segments   •     [01:50] Who is Daniel J. Lewis? •     [03:00] How long has Daniel been a podcaster? •     [03:15] Daniel talks about his flagship podcast The Audacity to Podcast. •     [03:30] Daniel discusses the Noodle.mx Network, his podcast network. •     [04:40] Daniel is passionate about enabling people to share their message. •     [05:05] What is My Podcast Reviews? •     [08:10] You can monitor your competitor's podcast, and why you should. •     [09:35] Daniel wishes he had done more research among other podcasters before launching My Podcast Reviews. •     [10:50] A little marketing trick of monitoring Twitter for keywords and combinations. •     [12:40] Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference)? •     [14:45] Using Apple's iTunes API. •     [16:05] My Podcast Reviews uses Ruby on Rails for a back end with a WordPress front end. •     [16:45] Learning from a dataset of 40,000 podcast reviews. •     [18:15] Daniel found great developers on Elance (now Upwork) who challenged his concept. •     [18:50] In what ways did Daniel's developers challenge him for the better? •     [20:45] Was there any downside in dealing with developers in India? •     [22:10] Daniel discusses project management. •     [24:05] How is the product documented? •     [24:55] Daniel talks about hosting on Vultr. •     [28:15] Daniel does a deep dive on the Ux (user experience) for My Podcast Reviews. •     [31:35] SaaS owners should have an email list and segment the list (send email based on what plan the customer is on). •     [34:00] What does he do for analytics? •     [35:10] As an artist, Daniel looks at the human side. •     [36:40] The best resources are people. Ask your users what they want. What are their pain points? Connect with people. •     [37:50] Be helpful and connect with the community before you promote yourself. •     [38:50] Thinking of podcasting? Go to TheAudacityToPodcast.com and checkout MyPodcastReviews.com.   Resources Mentioned   •     SaaS Business Podcast •     My Podcast Reviews  •     The Audacity to Podcast •     Noodle.mx Network  •     Daniel's blog  •     Apple Worldwide Developers Conference  •     Asana project management •     Elance freelancers •     Vultr -  high performance SSD cloud servers •     MailChimp  •     AWeber  •     Infusionsoft  •     Google Analytics     

Oringally aired as CW 362   The tables have been turned on Jason Hartman during Episode #362 of The Creating Wealth Show. Normally Jason asks the questions, but today, host Kerry Lutz of the Financial Survival Network sets the agenda. What transpires is a nuts and bolts crash course in the exact reasons single family residential properties are Jason's preferred form of investing, bar none. Better than the stock market or gold by a long shot, and safer than apartment complexes or commercial properties. If you have an interest in a better understanding of the kind of investing that creates actual wealth for the long term, don't skip this show. About Kerry Lutz Kerry Lutz has been a student of Austrian Economics since 1977. While attending Pace University, he stumbled upon an extensive cache of Austrian Economic Literature in a dark, musty, abandoned section of the school's library. After graduating from The New York Law School, he became an attorney and life-long serial entrepreneur. His diverse career has included: running a legal printing company, practicing commercial law and litigation and founding a successful distressed asset investment company..In 2010, Kerry gave up most of his other interests to pursue his long held desire of becoming a radio show host. Thus the Financial Survival Network was born. Its mission, much like that of Jason Hartman's, is helping you to survive and thrive in the New Economy. He has done hundreds of interviews with such financial luminaries as Peter Schiff, Harry S. Dent, Martin Armstrong and Peter Grandich. Kerry now appears on 1230 WBZT, in West Palm Beach, FL, every Sunday from 9am-10pm EST. In This Episode, Jason Addresses: Is the dollar collapse real or fiction and why it might not matter Why math math is irrelevant when it comes to the economy Where Chinese millionaires want to live Why residential property investments beat multi-family and commercial How you can tell if your real estate portfolio is diversified What's wrong with most real estate gurus' and their promises much, MUCH more… Don't miss Jason's monologue, which leads off this episode. He discusses the recent merger of eLance and oDesk, the scam of life insurance as an investment,why college no longer makes financial sense, and what Steve Jobs told President Obama about creating more jobs. Links: The Financial Survival NetworkCheck out this episode!

In today's Q&A, we are helping Zach figure out how to make a video and landing page for his online course he's releasing. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "You're not gonna make a dime if you don't create some kind of sales page"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Leadpages Fiverr 99 Designs Odesk Elance Podcast 21 on Landing pages Let's dive into this week's question! JOCELYN: Hey y'all! You're listening to a Q&A with S&J. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started. SHANE: What's going on guys, welcome back to the Q&A with S&J. We are on the road traveling right now and we are in a hotel room, and we thought we would go ahead and record some podcasts. We do not have our normal microphones with us, so we're using the internal microphone on our MacBook Pros. So that is why the audio sounds a little weird in this episode of the Q&A podcast. Today's question comes from Zach Lazarus and he writes, “How the heck do I make a landing page for my video course? I am on a bootstrapping budget and I need to make a sales page. I don't have enough money to buy one of the tools like Lead Pages, so what should I do?” JOCELYN: Hey Zach, we really like Lead Pages because they do show you the conversion rates for each type of sales page and I think that that makes it a little bit easier for people who are new at making sales pages because you don't have to guess and wonder if the sales page actually coverts. However, if you don't have the budget for Lead Pages right now, you can also have someone make a sales page or a landing page for you and there are a variety of different places that you can have this made. You can do it on Fiverr, you can go to 99Designs I think is one that does that, oDesk, Elance, all of these places, you can probably find somebody to make a sales page for you for less than your monthly cost of Lead Pages. However, just like I said before, you may not be sure about the conversion rates. But don't stress about it too much because I had, pretty much, the most terrible landing page on Earth on my Elementary Librarian site and it was very successful for a very long time. I have since changed it to a Lead Page and it has increased my sales even more since then. But what I'm trying to say is that don't stress about having the exact, perfect, landing or sales page on your website. Just get something up there to promote your product and tell people about its benefits. SHANE: We actually did a podcast about everything that you can include in a sales page or a landing page and that was flippedlifestyle.com/podcast21 and that'll kind of go through all the elements. I'm not gonna get into that right now about what you need for a landing page, for your digital product or any kind of product that you create. But it's like Jocelyn said, you don't have to use a tool like Lead Pages. It saves you a ton of time to do that, so the cost may look high but you're saving so many hours of your life creating things like landing pages that it's actually really, really worth it and you're actually, probably saving and making more money in the long run by using a tool to create your landing pages. But if you ever have a WordPress site, all you have to do is create a page and put all of the information about your product on that page and put a button to buy it. It doesn't have to look perfect like all the gurus say, it doesn't have to have all these specific, little buttons and bells and whistles and checkpoints and you know, you don't have to have the three columns that are side-by-side. We have made thousands upon thousands of dollars before we upgraded all of our stuff...

In today's Q&A, we are helping Sarah feel comfortable trusting her virtual assistants with usernames and password for different accounts they'll need access to. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "You have to roll the dice a little bit if you are going to make it in online business."] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Tropical Think Tank Event Fiverr Elance Odesk LastPass Let's dive into this week's question! JOCELYN: Hey y'all! You're listening to a Q&A with S&J. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started. SHANE: What's going on guys, welcome back to today's Q&A with S&J. You probably noticed immediately that the audio was a little funky on this episode of the podcast and that is because we are using the internal microphone on my MacBook Pro. We are on the road, we are in a hotel room right now, we are traveling to the Philippines to see Chris Ducker and go to his Tropical Think Tank event. We did not bring our microphones. We do have digital recorders but we do not have that out right now and we had some extra time so we thought that we would go ahead and record a few Q&As to make sure we could keep rolling out the content while we are on the road. JOCELYN: We're actually in a hotel room and I'm sure our neighbors are not too thrilled about this podcast recording but – SHANE: It's 1:00 AM by the way where we are recording this. JOCELYN: Yeah, we're trying to flip our schedule little bit because we are going to the Philippines and it is a 12-hour time difference from us. So, we are staying up all night, or attempting to and recording some Q&A podcast for you guys. SHANE: I thought we can sleep on the airplane on the way there. So, let's jump into today's question; today's question comes in from Sarah and she writes, "I am an attorney working full-time in my own practice and trying to build up my website where I plan on selling digital products to other attorneys. I utilize sites like Fiverr and Elance.com to outsource certain tasks. But I'm a little leery of hiring someone from one of those sites to help me with my website issues. If I provide a freelancer with my username and passwords, so that they can do whatever they want with them, they will also have access to my financial information that I have stored on those accounts. So long story short, what do you do in situations like this? Do you have any recommendations for outsourcing these kinds of projects involving giving someone else either access to your private or financial information, or your username and passwords on WordPress?" JOCELYN: All right Sarah, this is a good question and one that has concerned me as well. But there are ways to give people your information without giving up all of your password information, or your financial information. The first thing you need to do when you are in online business is definitely separate your business and personal financial accounts. That way, in case something does happen, you don't have to worry about all of your personal money being wiped out. SHANE: And you can do this too by setting up just two separate bank accounts or two separate PayPal accounts. Anything like that but what you do is basically anything that anyone would have access to, don't ever keep a lot of money in that. We have accounts where we immediately have money moved every day whenever there's sales made. That way, if someone were to ever get a hold of that information, there's probably only a couple of thousand bucks or a few hundred dollars in that account anyway and everything else is moved by us to an account where they cannot access it so easily.

Gary Swart is a Venture Partner at Polaris Partners, an 18-year old venture capital firm. Gary is also the former CEO of Odesk, the world's largest online workplace with over 1 million clients and 5 million freelancers. He joined the company as its CEO in 2005 and has guided the company to industry leadership and through their recent merger with Elance. Links & Resources Mentioned ODesk Polaris Partners Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to the podcast Leave a rating and review Follow Omer on Twitter Need help with your SaaS? Join SaaS Club Plus: our membership and community for new and early-stage SaaS founders. Join and get training & support. Join SaaS Club Launch: a 12-week group coaching program to help you get your SaaS from zero to your first $10K revenue. Apply for SaaS Club Accelerate: If you'd like to work directly with Omer 1:1, then request a free strategy session.

Curtis McHale is a returning guest on the Matt Report. In this return appearance on the Matt Report, Curtis shares how and why his rule of no weeknight TV watching, reading business books, finding clients that view hiring a WordPress developer as an investment, and being candid with clients about understanding software bugs has helped double his income. Communication is the essential factor to having a successful local or remote outsourcing relationship. If you decide you want to use a source from a place like Elance or oDesk, you need to set up a solid process to find the qualified individual. As an experienced developer Curtis has a sweet spot for plugin documentation. A plugin with great documentation is a valuable gem. While auto-generated documentation is not enough. Listening Options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport Viewing Options (Enjoy the unedited intro! ★ Support this podcast ★

 Lisabeth Mackall is a speech-language pathologist with 19 years of experience treating adults and children with head injuries and neurological impairments. She has managed multiple rehab teams throughout Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and has developed many training tools used to educate families, therapist and other medical professionals. Lisabeth is married to a Minnesota Police Officer, and they have four children ranging from 8-17 years of age. In January of 2012, her husband was involved in a critical car accident leaving him with a traumatic brain injury. Lisabeth now devotes her time to writing and educating families about caregiver fatigue, critical injury recovery, and brain injuries. She manages her own blog, is a public speaker and educator, a freelance writer for Elance.com, and she just published her first book entitled 27 Miles: The Tank's Journey Home, a journal based story about her husband's accident, and the subsequent 84 days in the hospital and his recovery. To know more about Lisabeth, visit her website or follow her on Twitter.

Online Marketing News 18th Dec - FB Video Ads, T&C Summit 2-for-1 Tickets, OptimizePress & LeadPages Updates, Gmail Image Serving, YouTube Live Events, Google + Ads, Twitter Promoted Accounts and Odesk/Elance Merger (and More)