Podcasts about four kitchens

 "We have real responsibilities not just to ourselves but to people and to our clients who are increasingly reliant on the work that we do." - Todd Nienkerk The finer details of this episode:Adoption of brand guidelines and templates within the team Rebranding process of Four Kitchens, including working with a branding agency and defining company valuesImpact of rebranding on external and internal communicationsEpisode resources:Summit Virtual CFO by Anders website – https://www.summitcpa.net/Email us with questions or if you'd like to be a guest on the show – vcpasuccessshow@anderscpa.comFour Kitchens - Websites made with love. For good.Todd Ross Nienkerk | LinkedIn

Four Kitchens cooks up some of the best sites on the internet with its content expertise, technical excellence, and affinity for mission-driven organizations. The agency partnered with Focus Lab at a critical time; from its roots in Texas, Four Kitchens had grown into a global company. After a recent merger and ahead of an acquisition, Four Kitchens found itself expanding — and in need of a brand custom-built to grow. Shortly before their rebrand launched, Focus Lab CEO Bill Kenney sat down with Four Kitchens' Todd Ross Nienkerk to discuss their work together. See more of our work with Four Kitchens at focuslab.agency/work/four-kitchens and visit Four Kitchens at fourkitchens.com.

Do you want to grow your agency through an acquisition? Would what it would look like to merge with an agency offering complementary services? What if you could expand your team by acquiring another agency's talent?  An acquisition might feel impossible, but done right can be an amazing growth strategy. Today's guest never thought he would acquire not one but two agencies. He saw acquisitions as an impossible growth strategy that required enormous amounts of cash. In the end, it was just about finding the right partners. He is on the show to share his experiences buying out his partners and eventually making two acquisitions. Todd Neinkirk is the co-founder of Four Kitchens, a digital agency that makes websites for organizations that educate, advocate, and reform. Their team builds digital content platforms, design systems, and apps for ambitious organizations. After nearly selling his agency and then growing back stronger and expanding his team and offering through acquisitions, he shares some of the changes he made to get to this point, as well as some of the unexpected challenges of the acquisition process. In this interview, we'll discuss: Taking a big risk to rebuild after a failed acquisition. 3 big structural changes to grow your agency. Why acquisitions aren't an impossible strategy. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Darby Copenhaver is the Agency Scale Specialist at the Agency Mastery 360, which provides agency owners with the coaching, community, and tools needed to scale and find their freedom. He helps agency owners scale through a proven framework for growing their agencies faster and connecting with other amazing agency owners. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show.   Taking a Big Risk to Rebuild the Agency After a Failed Acquisition Todd started the agency with several partners he met working for a student publication. With over 16 years in the business, they worked with large media companies and small non-profits, education reform groups, and universities. Over the years, however, his other partners wanted out of the agency. At the start of the pandemic, he still had one partner left. They were coming out of a rough year and Covid affected the agency much earlier than other organizations in the US and Canada. The agency kicked off 2020 with a massive gap to fill with clients, with things only getting worse later that March. Luckily, they didn't have to adjust to remote work, since they'd made that transition years before. However, they weren't at all sure about their chances of pulling through. They started looking for a way out and reached out to an agency that could acquire their business. The acquisition didn't work out and with PPE loans starting to take shape, it suddenly seemed there was a way out. Todd took a risk and made his business partner the same acquisition offer in order to assume 100% ownership. It was a bold move at such an uncertain time but he is thankful he took the risk. It took a lot of readjusting, rethinking the way they did business, and making pretty significant changes in early 2020. However, he got his investment back by the end of the year and went on to have a very successful 2021. Not only did Todd and the team manage to get the agency profitable again, but in 2022 they acquired several other agencies to expand the business. He is the sole owner of the agency which is the largest it has ever been. 3 Necessary Structural Changes to Grow the Agency When it came to the agency's second chance, Todd didn't have a magic formula. In fact, much of what he did were necessary steps for growth (niching down, building a leadership team, etc). However, it took hitting bottom and almost selling the agency for him to be ready to face the hard truths. For starters, Todd focused on the key people in leadership positions. He knew the ultimate outcome for the agency would largely depend on the mindset of the people at the top. It's not even about what they do, but their approach and attitude can change the tide and really influence people's commitment to the work and overall enthusiasm. Taking the risk to assume full ownership of the agency and commit to its success reinvigorated Todd. It motivated him to put in the extra effort to make the agency as successful as it could be. With this in mind, he dared to address 3 fundamental issues he'd avoided: Leadership changes. Some people in the leadership team weren't in the right role. They had gotten the agency to where they were, but weren't the right person for the next stage of its growth. Marketing. The agency's marketing strategies just weren't working. Fortunately, they kicked off a marketing engagement with an outside agency in 2019. It was a big investment Todd had avoided but it started to show results in mid-2020. Niching down. It was very important to be really specific about where they spent their time. This meant focusing on what they did best. In order to do this, they deprioritized leads that did not fit their expertise. Building a Culture of Trust with Over Communication and Transparency  The start of the pandemic was not an ideal time to make serious changes in any business. However, for Four Kitchens, it was necessary. The team needed reassurance Todd would empower the right people and make necessary changes.  Most importantly they needed to understand the vision of what success looks like. Of course, at this point, everyone was paying close attention to these changes. To address the team's concerns, he committed to communicating next steps, pipeline, and what else is on the table at least once a week. Ultimately he gives his team credit for rallying around the agency and showing enthusiasm about the new things they were trying. Not everything worked; some of the people they hired for leadership positions weren't the right fit, for instance. In one case, they had 100% turnover in one team and had to rebuild. However, the commitment to over-communicate with the team established a culture of trust. The degree of transparency they had at the time about the agency's finances is not necessary now. They have scaled back on these open-book meetings. If they get to a similar situation in the future, the team knows Todd will be forthcoming with information. Why Mergers and Acquisitions Are Not Impossible with the Right Partner Todd used to look at acquisitions as an impossible strategy for his agency. He had always assumed it required an enormous amount of cash on hand to even consider an acquisition. From a business standpoint, it is a great growth strategy. However, it seems overwhelmingly complex, and expensive. This changed in early 2021, when a friend and fellow agency owner decided to retire, and reached out to let him know she was looking for the right partner to take over. Fortunately, they structured a deal that worked financially for both parties. The two agencies complemented each other as partners should, so they ended up forming a true merger. This success gave Todd the courage to approach an agency in Costa Rica less than a year later in order to acquire their team. A merger that helped reduce turnover. The Costa Rica team was part of his vision for international expansion but it also ended up being a good investment to reduce employee turnover. Like many agency owners, Todd had regularly lost developers to tech companies offering up to 50% salary increases. How to fight this? A friend recommended hiring developer teams overseas and really investing in their compensation. Most people who hire international teams are just hiring cheap labor to feed bottom-line growth. However, if you really invest in those employees, you'll end up with the same level of talent while also creating loyalty with a competitive salary. How Different Acquisitions Present Different and Unique Challenges After going through two acquisitions, one of the things that surprised him the most was how they differed from each other. With the first acquisition, it was a very small but very efficient and integrated team. The merger's influence on his agency's structure was unexpected. Todd's existing agency had much better ways to do things like technical strategy. In this sense, it was truly two equal organizations coming together to form a much better agency. The challenge was making sure they didn't change anything the smaller agency was doing really well. Their processes were so efficient they heavily influenced how his agency would work from then on. On the other hand, the second acquisition posed different challenges, mainly because it was an international organization. They had to create a separate entity to acquire that agency. Todd found doing business abroad is very different. Even simple things like opening a bank account proved to be very difficult and the process took several months. Thankfully, they had proper guidance and everything worked out. Don't Let an Acquisition Deal Take a Life of its Own For those considering an acquisition as a means to grow, Todd advises not letting the deal take on a life of its own. Don't lose sight of the fact that you're not just trying to make the deal work. Ultimately, you're trying to improve your existing agency. It's very easy to slip into a mindset where you just think about the transaction as the thing you're chasing. It should never be like this. The main focus should always be the outcome of the transaction. That outcome won't be immediate, it may take a year or two and you should prepare for this. An acquisition will fundamentally change your organization and you have to be prepared for this. Work with both your existing team and your incoming team because they will be the key pieces of that transition. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

We were thrilled to welcome a special guest to Three Kitchens Podcast this week, Julie Strauss, host of the Best Book Ever Podcast. She's also an author, a mom, and an avid home cook, and she fit right in so well we should call this episode Four Kitchens. We all cooked two recipes this week. We asked Julie to share one of her favourite go-to recipes for a busy week night for us to try and we shared one with her as well. We made Julie's go-to choice of Crockpot Carnitas and also Sarah's go-to General Tso's chicken. These are two very different recipes, but they're both delicious and worth trying if they're new to you. Listen to this fun episode and learn how to make and serve these recipes. Maybe they'll become one of your go-to meals! And don't forget to check out Julie on the Best Book Ever Podcast where she gets to know interesting people by asking them about their favourite books.  Episode Links~~~~~ Best Book Ever Podcast~ Julie's Crockpot Carnitas Recipe ~ Sarah's General Tso's Chicken Recipe~~~~Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking showCheck out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes, and find recipes on our blog (psst! there are even some extra recipes never discussed on the podcast!).www.threekitchenspodcast.com~~~~Or join us on our socials!Instagram @three_kitchens_podcastFacebook @threekitchenspodcastPinterest @threekitchenspodcastYouTube @threekitchenspodcast~~~~Drop us a comment or give us a like - we'd love to hear from you! Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking showCheck out our website where you can listen to all of our episodes, and find recipes on our blog (psst! there are even some extra recipes never discussed on the podcast!).www.threekitchenspodcast.comYou can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you! Or join us on our socials!Instagram @three_kitchens_podcastFacebook @threekitchenspodcastYouTube @threekitchenspodcastDrop us a comment or give us a like - we'd love to hear from you!

David Strauss is a long time Drupal community member, attending his first DrupalCon in Boston in 2008. Since then, he has been a regular contributor to Drupal performance enhancements, the https://www.drupal.org/project/bakery (Bakery Single Sign-On System), and a major Drupal distribution - https://www.pressflow.org/ (Pressflow). During his time, he also was a co-founder of https://www.fourkitchens.com/ (Four Kitchens) and later, also a co-founder of https://pantheon.io/team-member/david-strauss (Pantheon). His focus has been, and continues to be on ensuring the performance and scalability of websites - especially Drupal websites. In this installment of our https://tag1consulting.com/20years (20 years of Drupal series), David joins Tag1 Managing Director Michael Meyers to talk about his experience in making contributions - not just up front contributions like Bakery, but the ones he considers even more important - the behind the scenes performance enhancements and integrations that have helped make Drupal what it is today. David's leadership in modules at the forefront of as well as critical back-end improvements show all the ways that people can add to the community.

Jamie Mackie pops in as part of a lively podcast as David, Paul and Chris are joined by James Evans and James Norris. The boys discuss the Preston defeat, the Bournemouth draw and other happenings at the KPF this week

“We work with the agencies who are culture driven, meaning that, yes, we can make more money, but we'd rather make a little less money and put culture first, because we understand that it's a marathon, right? Like, we understand that if our employees are happy, it's going to make our situation a lot better.” Kaleem Clarkson This week on the Control the Room Podcast, I’m excited to speak with Kaleem Clarkson, COO and Co-founder of Blend Me, Inc., a consulting firm that cultivates remote employee experiences from onboarding through off-boarding. He has a particular interest in culture-driven organizations. Kaleem is also the COO of RemotelyOne, a members-only community on a mission to end remote work isolation by connecting and building relationships between location-independent professionals. Kaleem and I speak about the different types of remote work, why some companies are struggling to transition to remote work, and why it’s so important for a job posting to accurately represent your organization’s culture. Listen in to find out how Kaleem’s experience as a member of a college metal band led to his career as an employee experience expert.   Show Highlights [2:43] Blind Melon, Slick Rick, & Warped Tour [13:43] The Teleworks Big Three [20:16] The commonality between organizations struggling to work remotely [28:56] Company culture clubs [34:48] Handling employee anxieties during COVID-19 layoffs   Links | Resources Blend Me, Inc. RemotelyOne Kaleem on LinkedIn   About the Guest Kaleem Clarkson is an employee experience expert and remote work advocate helping organizations build intentional employee lifecycles that begin at initial job postings and end after off-boarding. He is the COO and Co-founder of Blend Me, Inc. a remote employee experience consultancy. He is also the COO of RemotelyOne, a members-only community for location-independent professionals. About Voltage Control Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.  Share An Episode of Control The Room Apple Podcasts Spotify Android Stitcher Engage Control The Room Voltage Control on the Web Contact Voltage Control   Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. Douglas: Today I’m with Kaleem Clarkson, co-founder and chief operating officer of Blend Me, Inc. He is a remote-employee-experience professional, and developing RemotelyOne, a community for location-independent professionals. Welcome to the show, Kaleem. Kaleem: Douglas, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I hear this crowd applause in the background. Let’s get that in post-production. I love it. Douglas: Awesome. So, Kaleem, I'm really curious to hear how an employee-experience professional gets their start. How do you find your way on this path?  Kaleem: That's a good question. I probably should have this ready by now. But I guess I'll start my origin story. I guess this is my origin story. So born and raised in Bangor, Maine. I’m going way back. Bangor, Maine, represent. I always love to throw it out. My home state, I love it. But I ended up going to college in Massachusetts. Got a chance to play at Western State University. Got a chance to play some college football there. And during that time, we all had a very good time. Let's put it that way. I enjoy having beverages with people, making sure that everyone else is having a good time, and we ended up throwing a good amount of gatherings, should you say, in college. And started getting into a metal band, believe it or not. Just got into a metal band and started rocking out. Love the stage. Love that whole feel to it. And that led me to starting a nonprofit organization called Concerts for Charity, which I think we started in ’99. And we started putting on different concerts with different charities across New England. We got our 513(c) status and started donating to different charities, and we got to work with a lot of cool bands in different areas—you know, a lot of jam bands, a lot of hard-rock bands. We worked with—jeez, I'm trying to think of some bands that we booked in the past. I think we booked Blind Melon on their comeback tour, which was pretty cool. Chk, Chk, Chk out in Sacramento, I remember back in the day. I think we booked Slick Rick, a rapper. If you don't know, some of the old-school folks. Douglas: Colleague of Doug E. Fresh, if I'm not mistaken.  Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah. You know, what's funny is we went and picked him up at the airport or whatever, and he gets in the car, and total British accent. You know? So, you don't think about that, like, dude's been living in England all these years. And gets in, and he’s like, “Hello.” Horrible British accent, by the way. That’s horrible.  But anyway, yeah. So I got a chance doing that, and that was really kind of my first experience with dealing with virtual volunteers. VolunteerMatch at the time, we ended up connecting with the Warped Tour, and were able to register people to vote through a group called HeadCount as well. Anyway, it was great. It was a cool experience. We got to do a documentary that featured Trey Anastasio from Phish, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones—really big artists in the jam-band scene. And we got to debut it at HBO. So it was cool. I was probably only, what, 21 years old, 22 years old? I really got my first taste of putting on events and just kind of sitting back and watching everybody having a good time. And I think that's the common theme, right? Everyone was just having a good time. Everyone has that cup, that Red Solo Cup, and that really cheap beer. But everyone's having a good time, generally.  And yeah, so I kind of move on. Moved to Atlanta, my partner and I, and get a job at Kennesaw State University at Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. And that's like a faculty-development center. They basically teach faculty how to teach. I don’t know if you knew that, you know, a lot of people may not know this, but college professors, they graduate with a PhD, and they put right in the classroom, so they don't go through any teaching training or anything like that, a lot of them. So, yeah, yeah, it was cool. I got to put on a lot of international conferences there. Again, I'm putting on parties again, right, except in a different setting. That was the kind of interesting, or educational piece to me. I didn't realize faculty also enjoy having a good time, and they do.  So, yeah, all these professional conferences, got a chance to put some of those on, and really kind of just didn't even realize that—I was there for 10 or 12 years. And I would have to say in 2012, I believe, during my work at Kennesaw, I got heavily involved with the Drupal community, and Drupal’s an open-source website-application tool, kind of like WordPress, build websites with it. So kind of got involved with that community. And again, that was another experience of being with like-minded people. It was outside of my previous experience of concerts and the entertainment industry, and then getting in the higher ed around faculty in the higher ed industry. Well, now I'm around other computer digital marketers and digital professionals, you know, developers. And yeah, I got heavily involved with Drupal and started building websites, and I kind of became a Drupal developer. And last year, or probably a year and a half ago, yeah, a year, I left higher ed and decided to get involved with a company called Oomph as a UX engineer and started doing some front-end development work. But the cool thing about Drupal and open source is, again, the networks of people that you meet. And during that time, it was 2012, that I was at a conference in Denver, DrupalCon Denver, and I heard a talk by, his name is Matt Westgate from a company called Lullabot. They’re a big development firm. I think they did the Grammy’s website and some other big ones. But anyway, yeah, I went to that talk, and he was talking about how to run a virtual organization. And he talked about why they weren't using the word remote and why they were using the word distributed and how those words, what those words actually could mean to people. And I recall him saying remote felt like you were distant from something. Douglas: Mm-hmm. Kaleem: You were away from a group of people. So it was fascinating. Like, at that time, 2012, it seems like 100 years ago, but there weren't very many people talking about how to work remotely. So I came home, and my partner, she had graduated two years before that, in 2010, with her master's degree from Yukon in organizational development. And she actually wrote her master's paper thesis on virtual volunteerism, because my charity had hooked up with the Warped Tour, and we had virtual volunteers all over the country. So I came home from that, and I was talking with Jen, and I said, “I think we found something. I think we should do our own thing,” and she was all about it.  She was looking for strategic HR jobs, and there weren't very many. People love those jobs, by the way. I’ll use VP of people and CHRO of people; they don’t really leave those jobs, because those jobs, they’re great. Strategic HR’s obviously a much bigger thing now. So we just decided to create Blend Me, Inc. I kind of took care of the marketing, and then she would take care of the engagement, and that's how we kind of came up with the name.  So she worked for a while at a company that was all distributed. And, you know, we kind of did some consulting on the side with some diversity inclusion. And at the end of the day, you realize all of your experiences are kind of what, together, are who you are, and I was very fortunate in that I had been at companies for—I was at Kennesaw for a very long time, 11 years, and it was because we had a great time. And now, if I'm looking back, you asked me the origin question of how you become an employee-experience professional, you just look back and think about all of the situations and the moments you had that were special with a special group where you accomplished big goals. We accomplished a lot of great things there, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were all having a really, really good time.  So this year, with COVID, I decided that it's time to go full time, that we no longer had that obstacle of proving to people that remote work, you can be productive. That has always been an obstacle. And honestly, what we decided from day one, 2012, when we're writing our mission statement, we said we did not want to work with agencies that wanted us to prove that remote work was the right answer. We didn't want to get into that type of work, because trying to prove to somebody that, no, you could do this, it’s just not really in our—we want to help people that have already kind of gone over that hump or already believe that it can be successful, because if there's not a belief from the very top all the way through the organization, it doesn't come through as authentic.  So what's interesting is for all these years, there's been a very small market. But I firmly believe, and I think we can all agree, that from March of 2020 on, I don't think any manager—well, in certain industries, I shouldn't say that—but I'm going to say in 90 percent of jobs today that we have behind a desk or in an office, it's going to be very difficult for managers to say that you're not productive.  So, yeah, that's the whole origin story. I think I got it in, like, eight minutes. I got to work on cutting it down a little bit. But, yeah, that's how we kind of came to this point. Douglas: Yeah. And I really want to dig in on the definition of remote versus distributed. And, you know, even virtual is kind of mixed in there as well. I ran into this when I was first venturing out of my own and kind of exploring this kind of concept of fractional CTO. And at first I was calling myself a virtual CTO, and someone asked me—it was a junior developer—they said, “So does that mean it's all in the cloud?” And so I thought maybe this word virtual is not a good fit here.  That story or that notion of misinterpretation of the word virtual is I know exactly what you're getting at around remote versus distributed. And I think that a lot of those notions really held us back. But now that everyone's been thrust into this experience where they've been forced to grapple with it, to wrap their hands around it, they're starting to understand that there are some benefits, and things maybe aren't as bad as they might imagine. Kaleem: Absolutely. And you know what really the difficulty with our industry—and when I say “our,” I just mean remote work or telework industry—is that we don't have an association now. I know Laurel Farrer has just created the Remote Work Association, and I give her kudos to that. And I believe—what’s her name from FlexJobs?—Sara—can’t remember her name, but she started FlexJobs. They created the one-million-person march campaign. There’s been different, like, spin-off campaigns. But one thing that I've learned from higher ed is when you have the National Society for Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics, you know, that's an organization that spits out all the knowledge. When you have SHRM—Society for Human Resource Management—or you have these major-field associations, there is research. There's guidance. There are definitions. There are thought leaders.  And for me and for us when we were trying to talk to clients about the different types of “remote” work, we just always got stuck. Me, having that thought of, well, let's find the history, and realizing that, oh, okay, well, outside of the U.S., a lot of countries use the term telework. The government agencies use the word telework. You know, there's telework guidance guidelines for the government—well, before, but I'm pretty sure that they still exist somewhere. So then we were struggling with that.  So for us, we just figured, okay, we need to come up with our own definitions for when we're working with clients. And we wanted it to show homage to Jack Nilles for coming up with the word telework in 1973. It's kind of a little outdated definition, but we just kind of thought, like, okay, all of these different things of telework, and when we're thinking about the different types, we realized that a lot of the terms are related to a central workplace. So for us, what we decided to do is come up with our own definitions.  Here we go. We call them teleworks big three, right? So we kind of go with, all of it’s telework work, but a distributed company doesn't have a centralized workplace. So when we’re talking with our clients, we’re like, “Oh, yeah. We’re a remote company. We don’t have an office.” We’ll say, “Okay, well, for our purposes, when we’re in our meetings and when we’re talking about the programs that we have, we’re going to refer to your agency as a distributed company because you don't have a centralized workplace.” So employees, they work from wherever they're the most productive and the most comfortable. So that's distributed.  Then we came to the common word of remote. And what drove us to this was back to that 2012 talk of the reason why they don't use the word remote was that it felt like you were away from the centralized workplace. Well, Lullabot was 100 percent distributed. They didn't have a central workplace. But remote employees are away from a centralized workplace. So to me and to us, when we're talking to—not to me, but internally speaking—remote employees are people who work away from the office. So you have a centralized office, there are people that are going into the office every day, but you also have some remote employees. So that's how we kind of label that.  And then our last one is kind of like the telecommuter, telecommute. You know, telecommute employees share their time between a central workplace and working wherever they feel comfortable.  So to us, that's kind of how we've broken it down. I’d be awesome if everybody out there in the whole remote workspace would say, “Hey, this is great. Let's all agree to this.” As far as posting social media, remote work is very popular, the term remote work. And we’re kind of still in that space as well, so we understand. But when we’re internal, I kind of feel like there are definitely differences. Another word that we've seen before to replace kind of remote employee is maybe hybrid. You know, we've heard people talk about a hybrid setup and a hybrid setup means half the people are in a central workplace and half the people are not.  So I do feel like it's really important. I wish, I hope somebody steps up and maybe the Remote Work Association will be that governing body for all of us, where we can all post our research too and be a place. For right now, I guess we'll use the term remote work when we're talking to the rest of the world and just try to clarify the differences between the different types, because there's a major difference in communication facilitation and how you're going to manage your team based on the types of telework that you’re implementing. Douglas: Absolutely. And I would imagine that the tactics would be quite different and maybe even the programs which you might use to address the concerns or the needs.  So when you think about these three, this taxonomy, when you're working with clients, is there one category that you find is most popular? Kaleem: Yeah. There's no doubt that what we call remote or “hybrid” is the most popular, especially like today—you know, so it's kind of a difficult question because it's like, well, are you talking about before or after? So before; let's just talk about before. Before, and I'm saying just so the world knows I'm talking about before COVID-19, okay? Before COVID-19, I would say there were definitely more hybrid companies or remote companies where they had people working in a central workplace and some people working remotely. Telecommuter, it's kind of, you know, I would say a lot of agencies allow their people to work from home a couple of times. So I would say definitely between telecommuting agencies that lets you work from home a couple of times a week and the hybrids were by far the most popular. Douglas: And what do you think folks are learning as they're shifting a bit, as far as their ability to set the frequency at which people were remote? They went from being a part-time, somewhat sometimes kind of thing to being a full-time thing. And I'm sure you've seen them kind of struggle from—because I would imagine some of the practices and approaches they were using, let's say the weaknesses maybe started to show more once they started to lean more heavily into it. So I'm curious what you noticed. As folks have been forced to be more remote, what have they noticed that broke down? What was no longer working for them? And I’m interested from a pattern standpoint. Like, what's been consistent across most of your conversations? What are you hearing that’s like a...kind of a very common issue that's been breaking down for folks as they have become more remote? Kaleem: There's no doubt it's been communication. We kind of used to brand ourselves as an internal-marketing agency, and we still do a lot of internal marketing. But there's no doubt that the communication has been one of the biggest breakdowns, because you weren't set up to do this. One of the things that we talk about when you're designing your employee experience is you have to look at it from the day they look at your job ad to the day that they are departing. And if you don't have a plan—and you know this with meetings—if you don't have an agenda, right, or you don't have a set of goals that are intentional, then your product’s not going to most likely be as good. And then that goes for the same thing with internal communication and doing remote work.  The ones who are struggling are the ones who did not have good internal-marketing practices in place. The organizations who are struggling are the ones who don't trust their employees. The ones who are really having a tough time are the ones who did not take on the responsibility of providing enough resources, enough training, enough documentation to allow you to be distributed now.  So it's really interesting to see the companies who haven't even missed a beat. A lot of the Drupal companies in the web-development space, I'm learning a lot of this, the culture and the practice and stuff, from some of these companies. They’re going on—you know that talk that I’m telling you about is 2012. Another company, Four Kitchens, I mean, they’re another Drupal company. They’ve been distributed now for, jeez, probably eight years. And the company I work for, they've had distributed people.  So the organizations who are not having a challenge at all are the ones who are already prepared to be remote already. So, you know, just to kind of re-emphasize, the ones who did not have their internal-communications strategy set up are the ones who are struggling the most. There's no doubt.  Douglas: Yeah. And so what are the hallmarks of a good internal-marketing program? How do we bolster those communication plans? Kaleem: Whew, yeah, that's a deep one. That's a deep one. So just not just internal marketing. I probably shouldn't say the ones who didn't have the internal-marketing plan, but more along the lines of, you didn't have your whole employee experience planned out, because you can have the best internal marketing set up, but if you haven't explained how your culture works or what your culture’s like, a remote employee can't feel that. So I guess I should say, you know, yes, internal marketing is critical because it's part of communication. That's a huge piece. But in the whole employee experience, there are a lot of steps.  And I would say Gallup, for all you researchers out there, Gallup, we've been quoting Gallup a long time for all of the awesome research they've done on remote work: how many people work remotely? They're one of the best that have been producing it. They kind of came up with this great diagram of what the employee experience is like. I'll just kind of go through those different spaces, because internal marketing kind of fits kind of within these things, right? So their first thing that they talk about is attract. How is your job description written? Does it reflect the type of people that work at your agency? And are you attracting the type of people that you want to be at your agency? So what's your culture statement look like? Do you have a page that talks about your culture? Do you meet every single day? Is it more of a Netflix—work-90-hours-a-week-type culture, or are you more like work whenever you feel comfortable? So that's important that your website’s set up right.  Then, you got to hire. Is your hiring practice matching what you’ve already talked about? Are you interviewing with multiple people on the teams? Are you meeting those people? Do you have a chance to talk to the culture club or people outside of your team instead of just your team?  Then, you have to onboard the people. So now you're only at step three. Onboarding and onboarding alone are very, very thorough. Onboarding program can be up to 18 months. You're talking about, okay, you’ll get 30-, 60-, 90-day reviews, and you have to kind of establish what your goals kind of were. And so onboarding can be long. Then, you have engagement. You got to make sure your employee’s engaged. So you have engagement pieces.  Then, you have to set up and go to performance. You got to make sure your performance evaluations are set up correctly. Make sure that everybody understands what is expected of you to be successful at that organization. And then you have to develop them, right? And then they depart at some point.  So this huge step of, like, seven steps of the whole employee experience, what we’ve realized from remote work is that you have to have trust. Trust is even more critical. Trust is even more critical because, you know, are you an agency that is going to try to have a piece of software that takes snapshots of your individuals every 90 seconds? Or are you a results-only-type agency that cares more about the results and understands that, hey, with school the way it is in some places, people may not be able to work all day. You know, people may have to work at a different time. So trust is critical.  And then, we kind of talked about responsibility earlier. You have to have this—you know, to work remotely, there's a sense of responsibility both on the employee and on the employer. It's a very two-way street.  So, like, this whole, whole thing is kind of what is the pillar of the remote-employee experience, kind of something that we're kind of labeling as “tree”, trust and responsibility. In order for you to get that set up, you just have to start at the beginning, and you have to be intentional of what it is that you're trying to accomplish in each step.  So, I know I didn't answer your question specifically about, like, what are some of the pillars in establishing a good internal-marketing strategy? But, you know, I just kind of wanted to really emphasize that you need to think about this whole thing and not just the internal-marketing side. You have to think about this whole thing, because now we don't have those office places that people can talk to and interact with. You know, now people are distributed behind a computer. So you really do have to think about the whole spectrum.  Douglas: Yeah, that makes sense. What is that journey the employees taking, and how can you meet them at various moments in that journey with intention? Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah. And we're just seeing it right now. The groups who really, really, really care about their employees, that are—what we like to say is we like to work with agencies who are culture driven. And to us, what that means is, listen, we all want to make money. I kind of feel like people trip sometimes when you talk about we care about people. Even nonprofits, people—look, nonprofits make money, people, just so you know this. And I used to tell people about this all the time. A nonprofit, a 513(c) is an IRS designation. All that means is that entity does not have shareholders. Charities make profits. Your business has to make profits to be sustainable. So with all of that said, we work with the agencies who are culture driven, meaning that, yes, we can make more money, but we'd rather maybe only make a little less money and put culture first, because we understand that it's a marathon, right? Like, we understand that if our employees are happy, it's going to just make our situation a lot better. So I think one thing I like to talk about is culture-driven agencies. Douglas: Yeah, I like that, this notion that that's a priority and a focus for the leadership.  So I want to talk a little bit about some tactics. And something that we talked about, or that I noticed, in some of our preshow exchange was around the use of Google Docs and how you can, as a remote tool, use that to focus the team into a common task. So I’m just really curious around what are some things that people can go do today, whether it's, like, use Google Docs in this fashion, if you want to elaborate on that, or it could be any other tactic or approach, but what's something that they can just go literally try out and improve their employee experience?  Kaleem: All right. That's cool. I like that. I like that. So I'm just going to kind of go through each one of them. I think that kind of will make a little bit more sense in my brain.  So the first thing that you can do to attract the type of employees that you want, I learned this, actually, with Oomph, inc. is they created a culture club, which I thought was pretty neat. Get some of your team together, make it voluntary, and say, “Hey, you know what. We want to kind of rewrite what our culture statement is like to better fit who we are today. And we want to kind of better illustrate what it's like to be a part of this team.” I like to use team instead of family. Sometimes families…you know. So, yeah, “What is it like to be a part of this team?” so that you’re attracting the right people.  The other thing, too, is to kind of attract some of those people that you're looking at, get outside of your normal bubble and market yourself, but—we love to say, and now I’m going to kind of talk about engaged—look for people that are going to add to your culture instead of culture fit. So we like to use the word culture ad versus culture fit. Culture’s great, but we all talk about why is culture great aside from the obvious reasons from a personal and emotional level.  Back to business, you want as many different people on your team so that you have different perspectives. Like, if you want to just talk about “Straight cash, homey,” T.O. quote, it's more about having people, more variety of people, on your team so that you have different perspectives. You know, just think of Corn Pops. If Corn Pops would've had maybe more people on their marketing team, they wouldn't have sent out that Corn Pops box years ago, where the only brown Corn Pops person as the janitor. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's a huge gaffe, right?  So that's attract. So that's one thing that you could do. Maybe get a culture club together, try to rewrite your culture statement. With hiring, I would say a good one is—oh, yeah. This is a simple one. This is more probably along the lines of in your wheelhouse of facilitation—do not, by all means, do an interview with—and I'm sorry to say this, Owl Labs, because you have an awesome product, but it feels awkward—don't do an interview with your team at a conference table and the employee remote. I understand—I think Owl Labs cameras are the best. Now I can't get it out of my head. It's an unbelievable product, in my opinion. You know, it kind of jumps around to the person that's speaking, and the camera shows the whole room, and it kind of goes back and forth. It's super cool. Like, I would suggest it for any agency that has multiple board rooms in different places that are meeting and talking. But when you have an interviewee, their first impression, and they're trying to talk with you and you're at a conference-room table with eight of your colleagues side by side, there is already an us-versus-them experience. So it's already a “I'm here, and you're there.” So my suggestion is just get everybody on Zoom or whatever video system you're using. Equality, it's about the same. So put everyone on the same call, the same platform, the same camera. Everywhere the same.  Douglas: Yeah. You know, I’ve said that for years. Like, if we're facilitating and someone's remote, everyone should be remote because we want to level the playing field. Otherwise, it's going to be hard to empathize if we're not all experiencing what everyone else is or what those few individuals are experiencing. And it reminds me of all-hands meetings years and years ago, where people would dial into it. And then I thought to myself, what is it like to actually dial into one of these things? So I dialed into one, and it was—I mean, I couldn’t hear anything. It was [muffled]. And then you’d hear people talking like that, and you’d think, oh, I don’t know. I don’t even know what anyone’s saying. And maybe every now and then you could make out a few things the CEO said but definitely didn't hear any questions or any dialogue. And it's, like, really not great. And so I love that point of, like, let's level the playing field.  Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah.  So then for onboarding, so you're kind of talking about Google Docs and stuff. But for onboarding, simple solution, like, you got to have a place where someone’s going to learn about the organization. Believe it or not, a lot of companies don't have a moment to hear the origin story. Like, we talked about my origin story earlier. And to a lot of people, they may fast forward, but, like, hey, I love to rep Bangor. You know, there's an emotion to why a business got started. You know what I mean? There's something outside. There's a story. And if people don't know that story,  then they may not understand what it is, you know, what are the values that are driving the organization?  So to me, I know onboarding is not the initial, it's not the first interaction with the agency. It's not even where first opinions happen, because it's in the third step. We’re in the third step, right? I mean, we understand that your first impression is definitely the job description. I mean, when people look at the jobs, their first impression is the job description, and then they go on your website. But when you’re onboarding, this is kind of like the first time that employees get to interact or participate. This is the first time that the individual’s participating. So this is a really, really, really crucial moment to let them know what that origin story is and let them know what values are driving your organization.  So one of my first recommendations is just record a video of the founder. I mean, it doesn't even have to be crazy. Just record a video of when the founder got the idea for the business and why the founder started it, and then maybe a little bit about what drives the company. Because right now, COVID-19, if you have to let go of 20 people, or maybe you have a staff of 100 and you got to let go 20 or 30 people, those other people that are there, they go through all sorts of emotions, never mind the people that you let go. But the people that are staying there are going through some stuff. They lost some friends that are no longer employed. There’s a little bit of uncertainty about the future. If all your employees know what drives you even during uncertain times, a lot of these anxieties that make people nervous and get people looking for other options will be erased.  So onboarding is so critical, and I can't give away all my secrets.  Douglas: Sure, sure. Kaleem: So I would say the video is something simple. If you don't have a quick little video that somebody can watch or even, like, a couple paragraphs, how you got started and why you got started and then what drives you. And I know people use the word values all the time. I’m trying to use different words than mission and vision and all that stuff. But what drives your company? Douglas: Yeah. And a couple things I would add there. It’s like so many companies talk about values, and even in the job description, they'll describe things that are aspirational and not necessarily—they're not really conveying the fact that we are that culture that's working 60, 80 hours a week. And if you plan to retain people and you’re doing that, you should be pretty honest about it up front, right?— Kaleem: Right. Yes, be honest. Douglas: —rather than tricking people into coming in. And then the same thing with values, right? If they’re just some words that we adopted because they sound like stuff that, you know, you put on values— Kaleem: Hardworking, go-getter. I mean, like, what is that? Douglas: Yeah. And integrity.  Kaleem: Yeah. Like, what is that? What is that?  Douglas: So if you can make them authentic, then I think people are going to resonate with those. And if they’re shared values that they hold, then it can get people really excited. So I think that's really great.  Kaleem: Yeah, yeah. Douglas: And one thing that I saw a company do here in Austin I've always been a fan of is they created a scavenger hunt, and, essentially, new employees were given this scavenger hunt. And the cool thing about the scavenger hunt was that it included different aspects of the company's history. The way that they got to the answers or found these things, they would have to go talk to other employees in other departments. And so they got— Kaleem: Nice. Douglas: —to know so much about the way the company worked, the way the company— Kaleem: I love this. Douglas: —had evolved over time, and they made friends and connected. And it was very participatory. So I love it because it’s like a facilitator's dream to do those kinds of things. And so if more companies could institute these types of more participatory onboarding practices, I think you’d start to get into what we talk about as facilitator leadership. Kaleem: I love that idea. You’re definitely going to have to send me some—maybe you can remember the company and send me some stuff on that. I think that's a great, great idea.  So then, yeah. So then you have engagement. And there's a million different ideas for engagement. One thing that I love for remote work that—I don't know, maybe this is more in performance—so engagement, you've got to keep your remote workers engaged. So do you host an annual retreat? Do you host a quarterly retreat? You know, how many—do you have—I don't want to say happy hour, but that's no good. The link to—Zoom happy hours have been pretty tiring of late.  Oh, on engaged, this is my tip for engaged. Something very simple. Ask your employees how they're feeling. Like, literally, you could not imagine how many companies just don't send a very simple employee engagement survey out to their employees. Like, all of us consultants in H.R. are like, “Yo, stop talking, Kaleem.” But the fact that you just don’t do that, it’s so easy. Just write, like… And the other thing that I would suggest is if you’re going to use a survey, if you’re going to have a survey, you got to have a plan of what you’re going to do with the data. So come up with a very simple survey. And I would say ask that question, ask that survey, the exact same time next year so that you can have some sort of benchmarks. You know, doing a survey for no reason, you need to be able to have some data. And  I actually suggest surveying people frequently. There's a lot of great survey software out there. Like, I don’t know. Was it Officevibe? Culture Amp? All of these softwares that send random questions to employees. You may not have that software, the budget for that, but you can come up with a very easy SurveyMonkey or Google Forms with four or five questions and ask your employees every quarter. And they could be the same questions. Maybe you’ll find out that in the fall this one question’s being answered, and they’re lower in this for some reason. So for engagement, that would be my one tip is you got to ask your employees how they’re feeling. Douglas: Awesome. We've definitely covered the gamut, from starting off with a good impression on job descriptions; making sure we're thinking about that human connection in the remote landscape; the taxonomy—making sure we think about what bucket we're in, what is our style of remote work, and how can our approaches and tactics be tuned to be appropriate for our style—all the way through to making sure that we are engaging folks and even understanding how they're feeling, especially in this time of a global pandemic that can be damaging morales and stuff. So, wow, covered a ton, and it's been a blast thinking about all this stuff, Kaleem. And I know that the listeners are probably curious how they can connect with you, learn more, maybe end with a little bit around how they can find you. Kaleem: Yeah, sure. You can find me personally anywhere: kaleemclarkson. So I’m @kaleemclarkson on Twitter, LinkedIn. And you can find our company at blendmeinc.com. And also Remotely One. If you are a remote location, independent professional, and you’re feeling the pains of isolation and loneliness and you want to still kind of build your network, come join Remotely One. We’re a members-only community for location and independent professionals. So you can find us at remotelyone.com or @remotelyone.  And yeah, I guess if there was something that I wanted to kind of sign off on, I guess that would be, let's not all go back—if there was a piece of advice that I could give to organizations out there, don’t go back to the way it was before COVID-19 “just because.” So let me repeat that. Don't go back to business before COVID-19, don't go back “just because.” And what I mean by that is take this time as an opportunity to further develop your organization to be prepared for other disaster contingencies. They’re going to happen. If you're up in New England, you deal with the snow. Midwest, you deal the snow. I mean, there are disasters all the time. Hurricanes. Remote work, as you all have noticed, can help you make it through those times. So take this time to figure out how you can be better when you go back, when we go back, to the “new normal,” and maybe think about how you can reuse your space or reuse some of the things that you used to do before. So let's just not go back to the way it was before COVID-19. Douglas: Kaleem, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for joining. Kaleem: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me on. Come back anytime. Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

Four Kitchens' Randy Oest joins Todd Nienkerk to chat on the growing complexities of content in the world of role-playing games.

Hello Everyone! This is a re-airing of Episode 21 with Suzie Nieman. Girl Develop It was just awarded $50,000 at the WeWork Creator awards, so we thought it was a great time to showcase Tiffany's interview with Suzie, the co-lead of Philadelphia's Girl Develop It chapter. • https://technical.ly/philly/2018/09/18/girl-develop-it-wins-50000-at-wework-creator-awards/ • Tiffany speaks with Suzie Nieman, a rock-star woman with her sights set on increasing inclusivity in tech. Suzie works as a technical project manager for Four Kitchens, a digital agency, and volunteers as co-lead for Girl Develop It Philadelphia, the local chapter of a national non-profit providing education and support for women entering tech. They speak at length about Suzie's unusual journey into coding and project management, how she overcomes challenges, and how she's at a point in her career where she is gaining confidence. Links:• https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzie-nieman-931978148/ •• https://www.suzienieman.com/ •• https://twitter.com/fourkitchens •• https://www.fourkitchens.com/team/suzie-nieman/ •• https://t.co/WJX5AdNu7R •• https://www.girldevelopit.com/ •• https://twitter.com/suzienieman •• https://www.facebook.com/TECCDC/ •• https://twitter.com/PhilaTEC •• https://www.instagram.com/westphillyfoods/ •

In this episode, we interviewed Todd Nienkerk. He is a digital strategist and open-source advocate. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of @FourKitchens. Four Kitchens develops apps and websites for organizations with a lot of content. Four Kitchens is a fully remote company with 38 team members distributed across the globe. In this episode we talked to Todd about, transitioning from a co-located to hybrid, to fully remote. We also discussed about the benefits of remote work, relocating “remote work” resources, maintaining culture, communication, in-person retreat and collaboration, team building, lack of laws and resources for remote work. Show highlights? The transition from collocated, to hybrid to fully remote, took about 3 years. Today (as of 2018), Four Kitchens is a fully successful remote office. What they learned on the process? That it is actually more expensive to run a fully distributed company, and how to relocate resources to remote work environment.

Tiffany speaks with Suzie Nieman, a rock-star woman with her sights set on increasing inclusivity in tech. Suzie works as a technical project manager for Four Kitchens, a digital agency, and volunteers as co-lead for Girl Develop It Philadelphia, the local chapter of a national non-profit providing education and support for women entering tech. They speak at length about Suzie's unusual journey into coding and project management, how she overcomes challenges, and how she's at a point in her career where she is gaining confidence. Links:• https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzie-nieman-931978148/ •• https://www.suzienieman.com/ •• https://twitter.com/fourkitchens •• https://www.fourkitchens.com/team/suzie-nieman/ •• https://t.co/WJX5AdNu7R •• https://www.girldevelopit.com/ •• https://twitter.com/suzienieman •• https://www.facebook.com/TECCDC/ •• https://twitter.com/PhilaTEC •• https://www.instagram.com/westphillyfoods/ •

Cecy Correa is a tech enthusiast and Director of Business Development at Four Kitchens, a Web design and development consultancy firm.

Todd Nienkerk, (BS, Radio-TV-Film) and Aaron Staunsh (BS, Advertising) are partners with the Austin, Texas-based web design and publishing company Four Kitchens. Their company has produced websites and interactive online spaces for a wide variety of companies in and around the media industry including Entertainment Weekly, NBC, and TWiT.tv. The event took place at the University of Texas at Austin on November 30, 2015. Host: Alisa Perren Producer/Editor: Kyle Wrather

Personal assistants can come in handy when developing, but how much user information do they need to access, and why? Plus, David Diers from Four Kitchens talks to us about the creation of the TWiT API. Hosts: Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ and Louis Maresca Guests: Patrick Delahanty and David Diers Subscribe and get Coding 101 automatically at https://twit.tv/code Follow @PadreSJ and @LouMM on Twitter. Bandwidth for Coding 101 is provided by CacheFly. Sponsors: digitalocean.com - promo code: C101 lynda.com/c101

Personal assistants can come in handy when developing, but how much user information do they need to access, and why? Plus, David Diers from Four Kitchens talks to us about the creation of the TWiT API. Hosts: Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ and Louis Maresca Guests: Patrick Delahanty and David Diers Subscribe and get Coding 101 automatically at https://twit.tv/code Follow @PadreSJ and @LouMM on Twitter. Bandwidth for Coding 101 is provided by CacheFly. Sponsors: digitalocean.com - promo code: C101 lynda.com/c101

Personal assistants can come in handy when developing, but how much user information do they need to access, and why? Plus, David Diers from Four Kitchens talks to us about the creation of the TWiT API. Hosts: Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ and Louis Maresca Guests: Patrick Delahanty and David Diers Subscribe and get Coding 101 automatically at https://twit.tv/code Follow @PadreSJ and @LouMM on Twitter. Bandwidth for Coding 101 is provided by CacheFly. Sponsors: digitalocean.com - promo code: C101 lynda.com/c101

Personal assistants can come in handy when developing, but how much user information do they need to access, and why? Plus, David Diers from Four Kitchens talks to us about the creation of the TWiT API. Hosts: Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ and Louis Maresca Guests: Patrick Delahanty and David Diers Subscribe and get Coding 101 automatically at https://twit.tv/code Follow @PadreSJ and @LouMM on Twitter. Bandwidth for Coding 101 is provided by CacheFly. Sponsors: digitalocean.com - promo code: C101 lynda.com/c101

Hey everyone,   Super exciting news this week! I've secured sponsors for the next two months to provide EVERY video on ModulesUnraveled.com absolutely FREE for you!   It's a bit of a long story, so if you don't care, [just go learn some Drupal](/videos). But, I thought you might be interested in the back story, so here goes...   (P.S. If you're not a reader, I recorded this as an 8 minute podcast just for you.)   ## Why Modules Unraveled is now FREE for everyone   Late last year, there was a moment when I realized that it had been a long time since I had thought about why I started Modules Unraveled in the first place, and whether or not I was still on course with that original vision. I decided that I wasn't.   For reference, Modules Unraveled started with a video demonstrating how to setup Organic Groups in Drupal 7, back in 2011, when Amitai took over development, and did a complete re-write. Nothing was the same, and there were support requests all over the internet from people who didn't know how to use the new version.   I wanted to use it in a project I was starting at the time, so I went through the twisted, and _difficult_ process of figuring out how the new module was supposed to be used. When I finally did, I recorded a video showing exactly what I had learned, so that others could skip the hours (and let's be honest, days!) that I had spent figuring it out, and just use the module the way it was intended.   Basically, I wanted to help everyone use Drupal to do amazing things.   At the time, I was teaching in the public schools full-time, but had the desire to do more web development and create videos like the one for Organic Groups. So, I started getting up at 3am... yes. 3:00 in the morning... and during that time I worked on videos until 6am when I would get ready to go to my full-time job.   Then, I started to charge for some videos. I figured, if I was saving people time, it was worth the $29 investment to learn how to use something like the Simplenews module, which has its own complexities. People apparently agreed with me, because the orders started coming in. Then I created more series' and put those up for sale, and everything was on an upward trajectory.   In the spring of 2012, I looked at what I was making between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning, and extrapolated that to see what I could make full time. Based on that, I decided that it would make sense to quit my full-time teaching position, and focus on developing sites, and videos full time. (Too early as it turned out, but I'll explain that later.)   So, I was working for myself, from home, and everything seemed to be going great. The income was incredibly irregular though, so eventually, I switched the site from a pay-per-series model, to a subscription model. That was nice, because it provided a bit more predictable income, but though there were good months, on average, it still hadn't ramped up to what I was making as a full time teacher.   Because of this, I started to focus more and more on the money that I needed to make, instead of providing amazing quality videos that could help thousands of Drupal developers create their sites more quickly, and with less headache, like the original Organic Groups series did.   So, in December of of 2014, when I re-evaluated whether or not I was fulfilling my original mission, the answer was a resounding "No." I saw the thousands and thousands of site visitors in Google Analytics, and the meager handful that were actually signing up as a paying subscriber to access the videos. And the interesting thing is that it wasn't the lack of subscribers that hurt the most, it was that such a broad audience was coming to my site, because I had something they needed, but then immediately leaving because of the subscription requirement.   These were the exact people I had set out to help. And I was turning them away. I had reached a wide audience of people who didn't know what I was saying, because I was charging them to listen.   So, I wasn't making enough on the subscriptions alone to provide for my family, but I kept churning out new videos in the hope that eventually, the snow ball would roll in my direction, but it wasn't happening.   I eventually came to grips with that fact, and started trying to figure out other ways to produce an income, but still help the people that I had originally set out to help. I knew if I just got another job, I'd stop making videos. Because they take time. A LOT of time. You see this evidenced all over the web. YouTube is littered with Drupal tutorials teaching you how to do this or that, but there are rarely more than a handful done by any one individual. And, because video production, and teaching are not generally their areas of expertise, the quality is widely varying (to put it nicely.)   The obvious monetization strategy was advertising. I had never had third party ads on my site, and really didn't like the idea, but I had to try something new, because what I was doing wasn't working. (And one definition of insanity after all, is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. I didn't want to be insane.)   So, I immediately started to contact businesses that I had some form of personal connection with. Some were ones that had products I used, some were ones where I knew someone(s) personally within the business, and others were ones that close friends of mine had personally recommended.   I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in advertising on my site. Some said yes, and some said no (one even suggested buying me outright, but after thorough discussion with my wife, and time in prayer, it didn't align with my life goals.)   The ones that said yes had a hard time nailing down a dollar amount (which is understandable, since I didn't have metrics to give them, having always been subscriber only), and for four or five months, I felt strung along, and didn't know if it was ever going to work out.   Then, I went to DrupalCon in LA. I wasn't planning to go, but then I won a conference ticket from the amazing people at Four Kitchens (thank you again!) and then just had to figure out a way to pay my room and flight. The only way I could convince my wife (who would be left alone with a two year old, and five month old) to let me go, was to convince her that I resolved to make something happen while I was there and that it would be a good investment.   I followed through. To give you an idea, I went to one (1) session the entire week, and spent the rest of my time in the expo hall, and hanging out with people who might be interested in becoming a sponsor (as well as a few old friends, that I don't get to see except at DrupalCons).   This was MUCH more fruitful than my previous, online-only, attempts. The net result was that six sponsors agreed to advertise, and combined, they would replace the existing membership income, and a little more. It wasn't much more, but was enough to let me run a two month trial to see how it would go, since I have absolutely no idea if it will be beneficial to anyone. My hope though, is that it will be beneficial for everyone, and I can sign additional sponsors, and/or charge higher rates.   One of those sponsors let me know that, after reviewing their budget, they would not be able to advertise, but the other five are still on board. You can see them, and (please!) thank them on [the "Sponsors" page](/sponsors).   So, here we are! The site is completely free for anyone that wants to learn what I teach, and I get to find out if advertising will work on Modules Unraveled.   I'm happy!   If you want to learn [Organic Groups](/organic-groups-7x-2x), [Search API](/search-api), [Simplenews](/simplenews), [Git Basics](/very-basics-git), or anything else, [check out the videos on this site](/videos). They're all FREE!   ## Want to become a sponsor?   I'd be a fool to leave it at that, and not mention that if you're interested in becoming a sponsor of the site, or the podcast, [contact me](/contact), and I'll get you the information you need.   You MUST be able to legitimately serve my audience, and prove your worth in order to be a sponsor. But, if you meet that criteria, I'd be delighted to talk to you!   Thanks for taking the time to read this. It means a lot to me! And if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask!   -Brian

Part 2 of 2 – I ran into Elia Albarran, Four Kitchens' Operations Manager at BADCamp 2014. She mentioned she'd read my blog post 10 Tips for Success as a Remote Employee; we started exchanging tips and ideas until I basically yelled, "Stop! I need to get this on camera for the podcast!" She graciously agreed and brought along two Four Kitchens developers for the session, too: Taylor Smith and Matt Grill, whom I spoke with in part 1. Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/175-remote-team-success-22-manager

Part 1 of 2 – I ran into Elia Albarran, Four Kitchens' Operations Manager ... ahem "Funmaster", in the inspiring atmosphere of BADCamp 2014. She mentioned she'd read my blog post 10 Tips for Success as a Remote Employee; we started exchanging tips and ideas until I basically yelled, "Stop! I need to get this on camera for the podcast!" She graciously agreed and brought along two Four Kitchens developers for the session, too: Taylor Smith and Matt Grill. Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/173-remote-team-success-12-developers

Good leaders know the value of good employees with a specific skill for the job. Great leaders know that you hire people and train for skills. Todd Nienkerk is the co-founder of Four Kitchens, a digital agency that exploded on the market. Todd shares the value of hiring people that can think through creative and innovative projects for their clients. They don’t just do websites…they create cutting edge, dynamic solutions for their clients. Get the show notes for 070 Todd Nienkerk | Hiring Right To Scale Your Company Click to Tweet: Listening to an amazing episode on Leaders in the Trenches with @GeneHammett @ToddRoss #Market #HiringPeople #Episode070 #Podcasts Give Leaders in the Trenches a review on iTunes!

Elia Albarran describes herself as a people person, a tech person and an artistic person. She's a Jacqueline of All Trades who is a small business owner, the office manager for the web design and development firm Four Kitchens, and helps produce the annual Armadillo Christmas Bazaar in Austin, Texas. As a "digital native" who never knew what life was like before computers and the internet, Elia integrates technology and social media into all aspects of her life. On this episode, Elia shares great ideas for taking your use of everyday technology to the next level, offering tips for how to use online tools like Google Drive to get work done more efficiently. Building on her experience developing small websites with WordPress, Elia suggests ways to create your own site with the world's most popular blogging platform. As a devotee of "iPhoneography," or taking creative and artistic photos using just a cell phone, Elia also helps listeners navigate some of the best photography apps to make the most of our cell phones as cameras. She offers some excellent insights into how to find free and inexpensive online courses that teach both creative and technical skills which can enhance our value as employees and business owners. So many great ideas in this episode!

After completing a degree at the University of Chicago, Lauren Shockey took up a role in a public relations agency. But after just one year in the “perdition” of the corporate world she quit her job and enrolled in the French Culinary Institute to start her training as a chef. She went on to take up internship roles in some of the world’s most well-known restaurants, in New York, Paris, Hanoi and Tel Aviv. Her book, Four Kitchens, chronicles her life as a stagiares (chef’s apprentice). Interview by Valerie Khoo, director of Sydney Writers' Centre. www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au www.valeriekhoo.com

This week on on Let’s Eat In chef, and Village Voice restaurant critic Lauren Shockey who has just finished her first book “Four Kitchens”. Hear about her culinary experiences from Israel, New York, Hanoi, and Paris. This episode is sponsored by Whole Foods Market. Download MP3