Podcasts about gbt

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ROI Podcast—the business show that doubles as a comedy roast—returns with Law Smith and Eric Readinger riffing on TikTok, attention spans, and why horoscopes are basically astrology's version of fantasy football. This episode tackles: TikTok's addictive algorithm vs. China's “education-only” version. Why social media feels like narco-terrorism for your brain. The trader who used TikTok comments to turn $84K into $42M. Comedy, drag shows, group dances, and why dudes just don't vibe with them. A DIY college fantasy football league idea that could flip into billions. If you like your business podcasts with more laughs than LinkedIn posts, hit subscribe and join the world's #1 comedy-business podcast.   Eric Readinger  0:02   Okey, dokey, Law Smith  0:06   Whoo, yeah, ah, I wear, I wear my DMX goggles, yeah. I mean, this is, like, the why is that? DMX, no, but it's like a guy. This is Malibu's Most Wanted. That's what this guy sounds like. Eric Readinger  0:27   Yeah, maybe I don't know. He's not real. So can to be whatever you want him to be in your mind, Law Smith  0:32   so he is. So I'm right, yes, you're right. I'm gonna do this like a chick, yeah, see, I'm right, Eric Readinger  0:36   right, because I can't be proven wrong. I'm right. Law Smith  0:40   I was telling a friend, it made me underthink, like dudes, it's much, much better Eric Readinger  0:46   life. Uh huh, yeah, not everything you think is right. Law Smith  0:52   Well before this turns into no man from Eric Readinger  0:55   your children's club. Law Smith  0:58   You know, we can only call that shit out because we empathize with that play. Welcome to ROI podcast, because this is the number one comedy business podcast in the world. Sometimes we talk about emo stuff like Eric Readinger  1:12   that. Oh yeah. Are we gonna get into it? Nah. Law Smith  1:15   Oh, come on. No, no, no, it's too fresh. Too fresh, okay, fresh wounds. But I did. Eric Readinger  1:23   I'm gonna go ahead and just point out the echo Enos. That's my bad when we rip Law Smith  1:28   it up the floor in the studio, fix it in post. We got some tools. Well, hey, man, we should tell everybody, because I like giving resources out. I'm the Suze Orman of digital resources. That's what I want to be. What? Yeah, Adobe has a podcast Audio Enhancer. It'll take out background noise. It'll take out we have a little buzz I could hear right now that we had two episodes ago or an episode ago that it took outably your headphone. No, when I listened to it later. One of the previous episodes we Eric Readinger  2:02   did. Okay, this is definitely the kind of entertainment people want to hear. Well, maybe Law Smith  2:06   I'm just saying, if you have audio you need to clean up. You can, it's for podcasts, they say. But you could probably use it. If you had audio you needed to clean up, like in a loud room or a conference or, you know, any kind of meeting or something, you can right? But I just like the easy, you know, drag and drop it in, boom, come back out. Five minutes. Eric Readinger  2:24   You're good, yeah, AI is great, loyal part. Law Smith  2:29   But like it, it AI, the LLM, you know, those language learning models of like Chad, GBT and Claude and perplexity, large Eric Readinger  2:39   language, excuse me, what did I say? Learning? Used to Law Smith  2:45   whatever rewind I got. There's too many acronyms in my head or abbreviations, but it's one of those things where it it's a whole to do, like you have to know, how do you hold to do? What happens was. And I think everybody's having this issue, I kind of try to push through it, because I know that outcomes of what you want to get out of it, like, organize this document for me. Like, instead of me having to do it, that's great. That's like, I love that part of it, right? And that's intuitive. But there's some things that aren't intuitive on how to talk to it. Yeah, nicely, you can be mean to it. I don't know if it affects it. Eric Readinger  3:29   Well, not yet. You go on their list, their robot Law Smith  3:33   list, that's fair. So you know, I would just say I like the easy things like that. Like, for this podcast I'll use, there will be a word counter that sem rush, I think, has out there that's just its own website. You can drop a whole paragraph in. It'll pull the keywords for you if you want that are most important. It'll, you know, do stuff like that. I like those kind of little tools. And if we do anything on the show, if we're if we add any value besides our guests wisdom that come on the show, we show you how to be a tool. It's some resources to be a tool. Perfect Circle, exactly. Good album, yeah. You know, I don't know if I want to get into the fantasy football stuff. Eric Readinger  4:19   I know. I mean, I thought we were gonna talk about something else, I'll tease it. Law Smith  4:23   Well, we were, you and I off air. Were bitching about tick tock and how I don't think either of us really like Eric Readinger  4:30   it. I don't ever go Law Smith  4:32   into talk well, I don't, I don't like I don't like reels, I don't like show. I don't unless I'm like, going to Eric Readinger  4:39   look for something, right, right? It's not, we weren't talking just about Tiktok what? Law Smith  4:43   But I mean, Facebook reels, when I open those apps, it's like, abrasive with the video. You know? It's like, oh, sometimes the sound is like, way high, like an old TV commercial where the audio is like, doesn't that still happens, right? And it's so. Well, it's like, when I open up those apps and it goes right to video, it's like, oh, and I'm usually already listening to something, right? I've realized that's on me a little bit as far as like, I don't, I'm not people send me videos. I'm like, I'll get to that later. And I just never, yeah, I know it a lot of the time, but that's not because I didn't want to watch it. And I do like that. People will send me stuff. They go, Oh, they're thinking of you. They go, Oh, it's Eric Readinger  5:28   nice in general, to me, the interface is just a pain in the ass. Did you see the videos I sent you? Oh, you sent more than one. Oh, my God, gotta back out, because I go back in like, Law Smith  5:38   it's just stupid, and then I might be a comedy snob at the same time, exactly. And so that Eric Readinger  5:44   isn't funny. Isn't funny. Why are you sending me out? And then Law Smith  5:47   so I was kind of thinking about it, when we talked about it, like last week, just kind of shooting the shit. And I was like, Why does Tiktok kind of annoy the shit out of me? And it part of it. Once I found out that the Chinese algorithm for their people is wildly different than the one over here. I think that was my trigger point to go. I don't want to be on that. That. And at the same time, my mom, friends that are like our age in their 40s, they were telling me they're wasting two hours a night on there every night, and they're like, I'm so addicted. Like, when it was really popping. Like, you know, 2021 I don't know 22 we're not the first movers on this, but the laggard, older people, yeah, and so, like, I was like, I want that. I don't have enough time. I feel like, but you're Eric Readinger  6:41   acting like the Tick Tock algorithm is that much worse than any other social media algorithm. They're all doing the same thing. Law Smith  6:47   Well, I think they do they I think they do it the best it seems like. Because it seems like, yeah, maybe I don't know, man, just from general chatter I hear in my life. But also, when I'm listening, I listen to a dick loader comedy podcast all day, because, you know, marketing, marketing work is like, once you know how to do it, you can kind of be on autopilot a little bit. And so it's one of those things where the chatter is like, it is they have, they got it dialed in, they got you screwed in, buddy. And that's, that's, that's really, they're the best at Eric Readinger  7:27   it that. But it's like we're on neither of us are on it. To know if it's better or worse. I'm on it enough. I Oh, here we go. Now we get the truth. Law Smith  7:36   Well, I need to know, well, marketing, we're in marketing, so it's like, I need to know enough, right? And I need to know a user perspective of it, right? I can't. I usually just try to stick to, like, outside research, well, yeah. But I'm always like, I like, put it away, like, it's like, a Ebola virus or something, okay, you know, I'm like, Oh, I don't want, that's good. That's really, yeah, but I also like timely reference. So the thing was like, Yeah, it's like, the Black Plague. And so I think, like, when? But really when it was like, okay, the algorithm for China and the Chinese people definitely got some pro China stuff going on there, right? That's, that's just good marketing within the country, right? Educational outside of that, it's only educational stuff. Eric Readinger  8:29   Now here, what is the education about, Law Smith  8:31   like, science and like things of that nature, probably revisionist history, I'm sure. But I'm sure it has a whole glaze of propaganda over it, yeah, but at the same time they're doing that, but over here, they're like, let these dummies get dumber. That's what. That's my like, Eric Readinger  8:50   yeah, I don't think that's a wild No, that's not wild at all. I agree with you, and Law Smith  8:56   I compare it to Narco terrorism of like, you know, they say there's a lot of fentanyl that gives through Mexico from other countries to go up, up to the United States to kind of hurt, yeah, oh, no. This is, and that's happened on the Russian Eric Readinger  9:12   border without better than Narco terrorism, bro. Well, it's it. This is the Idiocracy. This is Lee, yeah, it's legal, right? Law Smith  9:19   And we and another bigger if we back, really back out, like the the future where everything takes over, like, you know, all agency is lost for people, right? And at 1984 it was about like, everything coming at people to take over society. We're willingly giving it away with our time data, you know? Eric Readinger  9:45   Yeah, we just keep letting them do whatever. You know, it's man. It sucks. So older I get, the more I'm like man they are. They are probably trying to control Law Smith  9:55   us. Look, it's not all bad. But as our buddy in the. Uh, all star guest, Dean Akers, who's, come on, he's, I'm surprised when we had breakfast the other day, he didn't bring it up. But because I think he's brought it up every breakfast we've had the last, you know, two years, he goes, You know what the new cigarettes are? And I'm like, what? And he's like, it's the bone. And I'm like, I know that one. I actually can answer right? When he is a teaching, he's a he's a teaching kind of mentor, yeah? Eric Readinger  10:28   So like, when Dean comes on here, and he'll ask us questions, and then we get all nervous and try to think of the right answer, and then one of us gets it right, and the other, he does the same thing at breakfast. And we the same way in real life. He's no different, yeah. We act the same way. Law Smith  10:41   So he keeps score, but he that's like, his favorite, you know, kind of angle, and he's right, because he, he was telling me people were wasting two hours as well. And I was like, whoa. I mean, he, he looks up Eric Readinger  10:54   that stuff. Yeah, that's not even now. That's, I thought that was obvious. Law Smith  10:58   Is it all bad? No, it it provides entertainment for people, right, right? You can get information from it. I just don't know how I feel, like you, like we talk about with news outlets, we'd be doing a lot more work to figure out if, if this, this thing on my feed, is actually true. But most people don't take that extra step, including myself, and a lot of the times just go, oh yeah, that's okay, right? Just move on, Eric Readinger  11:27   right? I think they annoying, most annoying dances I even get to that the dances, they're not as annoying. I don't think the food food, try this viral. Try this viral recipe. First of all, if that's obviously throwing a word viral into all the food, right? It's viral. It's viral. Whatever chocolates you know, like you, but the way they do the thing is, like, here, let me do a quick, sharp, snap, cut all, like, of the ingredients that you gotta, like, pause your phone. Like, they don't give you any measurements on what you're doing. Like, there no, it's just like you barely kind of got to guess what they're doing. And yet, there's still people are still trying Law Smith  12:06   to do it. I went on a mom date. I had to go on a date with my mom for lunch once a month. Law loves mom. I love my mama and and she was saying, I was I was saying the same thing. I was like, I don't like any recipe online that doesn't give you the ingredients first. I know that's because that's another bunch into it. And you're like, I don't have, oh, fuck man, I don't have basil. I don't have that kind of basil here. No. But I Eric Readinger  12:34   mean, whatever happened to the websites that just give you the recipe? Well, you'll have to write a fucking Law Smith  12:39   story about it. They're all trying to game it. So, like, they know that's going to be too boring, and people don't want to see that at the beginning. But when you really, actually want to use the information for recipe, and you don't know, I don't I, admittedly, I'm not. I don't know offhand how to bake or cook really well. I can grill, okay, right? But like, I look everything up and just follow whatever the directions are Eric Readinger  13:04   exactly. And when the directions start with, I remember when I was nine years old, it's like, what are you doing, right? I don't even, I don't even see them. Where are you taking me? Yeah, bro, it's a whole thing. Everybody's got to get their SEO in. Law Smith  13:17   So 25% of the users are 18 to 2425 34 is about 30% and our swing and Dick group is about 20 Okay, I just, I wanted to pull some stats up, because I was like, I was curious how really even spread. So it started in 2016 and it's become this. It's grown quicker, more more adopted users, more daily active users than any of them in such a short amount of time. That seems suspect to me, right? Because I was like, how did it grow like that? And I can't get any of the any of the AI apps to tell me Eric Readinger  14:00   really, I know, I think there's absolutely, well, whether it's an app or a person like that, get propped up and put in the spotlight and be made to be, you know, a household thing. It's like we were talking about like a guy like Sean Ryan. Yeah, who the fuck was Sean Ryan before he started getting every top tier podcast guest, yeah? Like, yes, I understand he Law Smith  14:27   was, you know, he was a journalist. He was, he Eric Readinger  14:31   was a counter Intel guy. Law Smith  14:33   Wait, whom? I'm thinking of, the hot wings guy, the hot ones guy. What's that guy's name? Who gives a shit? Now, I'm thinking of Sean Kelly, but, all right, who's Sean? Who Sean? Eric Readinger  14:48   What? Sean Ryan? Law Smith  14:49   There Is he cute. He's a bald headed man. Well, I mean, there's so many audiences we don't know about. There's so many like popular things. Like, when people come up to you, especially like comedy, you think you have a finger on the pulse. Like, you ever heard of this guy? He has a billion people that follow on me. Like, never heard of him? Eric Readinger  15:10   No. I mean, 4.8 3 million subscribers, right? Law Smith  15:14   I don't know if I even know this guy. Well, I thought you were talking about the hot ones. Guy off air. Eric Readinger  15:19   I mean, you just see he's got, you know, Law Smith  15:23   he's is, Eric Readinger  15:25   uh, sets. Let's see if I can imagine being able Law Smith  15:30   to build up. My God, how unprofessional. Whatever you don't do premium down, um, Eric Readinger  15:36   but anyways, I think there's guys that just like, get put into the spotlight to push a narrative, you know, like, just get certain people on there. Like, we're gonna give you a bunch of money for marketing because, like, somebody like, I just don't have no problem with the guy, Sean Ryan, he killed me in the sleep. But like, I don't necessarily think he's a great interviewer, or, like, has a fantastic recall of information, or anything, you know, Law Smith  16:07   well, that doesn't mean, I mean that it's entertainment at the end of the day. So it's Eric Readinger  16:13   not easy. Like, there's just a couple of them that are puzzling to me. Law Smith  16:17   He created and show ran several. Oh, that's, I think that's a different guy. That is absolutely a different guy, former Navy SEAL in CIA, contractor. So that's pretty interesting. Right off the Eric Readinger  16:29   bat, exactly what I'm saying, bro, and then he just jumps into the spotlight like Law Smith  16:34   that. No, okay, so there are, if you're talking about, like, podcasts, where there's, like, how did uh, these podcasts land on the top 10 list? It's like they have PR for that now, it's like you pay to get on that shit. Eric Readinger  16:50   Sure, I understand that. I'm just saying there's certain ones that I hear them and then just the way they are. It's very fishy. Law Smith  16:57   He, uh, became a CIA contractor enemies, so maybe had some cash to spend from that. Yeah. And then founded vigilance elite and 20 vitamin company to teach tactical skills to civilians law enforcement. So maybe money, some money there. If you have money, you can, you can, you can get that many people, even Eric Readinger  17:20   if you suck. Well, anybody who's been in the CIA, but not Law Smith  17:25   us, we're doing it lean on purpose, right? Yeah. So you got, or even it's for this is brought to you, for viewers like you. I don't have that the end of PBS stuff Eric Readinger  17:39   when they play best, get damp. Sure that's the right sound. Law Smith  17:43   Whenever where they go. This TV show, this program, is brought to you by and they give a bunch of, oh, I got it. I got the reference. But, and then they'd say viewers like you at the end, Eric Readinger  17:54   yeah, I know. Did you get it? Yeah, I still get it. Still get it. Law Smith  17:58   I tried to get back to tick tock. I tried to get the list of words that will demonetize you or give you, oh, let's read those aloud. I've wanted to, that was what I was gonna do. I was just gonna start reading them without with no segue into it. But I can't get them. I can't get a list of them. It's like, secret. Eric Readinger  18:17   Well, I know the kids. Oh, visit. Is it one? Well, you can't talk about that. Can't talk about unaliving yourself. Law Smith  18:25   And Tiktok, I think, is the most prude out of all of them. Like you can't say sex, you say SIGs with, like, eggs with an S on right? Yeah, or the one on YouTube, and Tiktok is on alive yourself instead Eric Readinger  18:42   of, did you hear me just say Law Smith  18:44   that? Oh, no. Okay, good. Eric Readinger  18:46   You see how this podcast goes. Everybody, I kind of do my own show over here. Law does his own show over there, and then we meet in the middle at the end. I'm trying, Law Smith  18:54   yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. Well, I'm trying to read some notes. I think we were talking at the same time for a full minute at one point when today, just a couple minutes ago, very possible. So what I don't like about that is, like, self censorship of stuff. But you know, it's not all bad, I guess, because there's so many kids that have accounts and they're on there the dance dances have never like, unless it's like, a bunch of people are never like, Wow, what a cool dance. I think it's interesting. I think it's I respect like a dance group that does something pretty, you know, difficult, synchronized. I feel like that is a female thing. Big time is like, I got a dance. I got, I got it hit me, Eric Readinger  19:46   right, right? Law Smith  19:48   I know I misogynist lately, so I'm just gonna lean into before, yeah, no, I'm saying like that. Okay, so group dance. Yes, moves, I'm gonna go with horoscopes. In, like, astrology, these are all things I don't know a straight man that is into any of this in drag queen shows, yeah, well, people are like, it's hilarious, and you're like, a half second, maybe at best. Okay, I'll there one straight male that enjoys any of those three things. Eric Readinger  20:27   Okay, well, hold on, on the dragon shows, there is an element that can make it fun. That is, if you have another dude in your group who's very uncomfortable with the situation, sure, yeah. And we obviously let the drag queens know this, you know, you tell them, hey, focus in on him. Yeah, it's going to be funny forever. But I give you credit Law Smith  20:47   for you having the friend, bring in that friend, or making that friend go kind of right. I'm not, I don't know. It's just like, I mean, this is obviously, it's Eric Readinger  20:55   not like, I came up with the idea. I'm saying, like, if you're forced to go, you can make the best out of it, yeah, by making your friends uncomfortable, yeah, Law Smith  21:04   at the same time, like dudes, I'm trying to, I try to be open to that those kind of things when they're brought up, I try not to just shut it down kind of right away. Eric Readinger  21:15   You know, what kind of things, Law Smith  21:17   stuff that has zero interest to me. And I extrapolated out to I'm like, do I know any men that like actual men that like this stuff? Yeah, straight guys like myself, but yeah, Comparison is the thief of joy. So try to be open to it. I don't know everything, and there might be a funny drag show out there. Eric Readinger  21:42   I'm not, yeah, but again, I'm not trying to go to drag if you're forced. Law Smith  21:46   Well, I've been, I've been to a lot of drag places because of comedy, and it's like, I've seen it. You get to open with Eliza Manali, and you're going to close the share. Eric Readinger  21:58   I don't get it. I don't get how it's so much a thing. Law Smith  22:03   So what else did I have on here? Look, we don't even have a Tiktok account for this podcast, which is pathetic. So we'll this, hopefully this will help. Here's one thing I found that was interesting. There was an entrepreneur trader that followed all the comments on Tiktok to find trends before people on Wall Street could find out about them. So he would spend four hours every night analyzing comments to find out what people were talking about. Okay, and then he would find that trend, and he he put a trade in on that company before it really popped to like older Wall Street people, and he fucking crushed it. Guy's name is Chris Camillo from from Texas, and he turned $84,000 into 42 million by just finding trends before they really pop to the general public, the older public, you know, Eric Readinger  23:06   yep, but I see that he turned $84,000 into whatever. No, I mean, that's just like, what's his face? Law Smith  23:16   Here's here's a good example. So Hollywood insider predicted Margot Robbie last the Barbie movie, right? So he sees all the Tiktok comments about the Barbie movie buzz. He puts a bunch of trade on Mattel stock because it's gonna, it's gonna go through the roof, because it's gonna be a legit movie, right? And crushes it with that kind of thing. I think ozempic was another one, or one of the weight loss drugs. When people were starting to do that and talk Eric Readinger  23:47   about it, it doesn't seem like four hours a night is necessary for that. Law Smith  23:52   Well, obviously he's obsessive about it. But it was one of those things where, what did I go? It was obviously, like obsessive and by the way, slime was the other one that that's like genius. If he was reading comments, I doubt he did it four hours a night. By the way, this is Eric Readinger  24:09   what I'm saying. I have four hours. I didn't vet I didn't vet this whole thing, mental thing. Law Smith  24:13   Maybe I didn't vet it out. And I'm sure he figured out how to get a bot to sweep and look at all this stuff. But kids obsessing over slime, and then, so he bought, he bought a bunch of Elmer, elmer's Glue stock, like shit like that. That's pretty awesome. Why is that? Because that's what makes up slime. Of a lot of that, okay, Eric Readinger  24:37   but they're using it for glue. Law Smith  24:40   No, you put you Elmer glue is one of the ingredients in slime, Eric Readinger  24:44   but they're not making the glue. They're not taking Elmers glue and making slime out of Law Smith  24:49   it. A lot of kids were making at home, yeah, including my own kids, I see. And then I had to have a no slime rule at my house, Eric Readinger  24:58   yeah. No. The parents like the slime. I'm fuck that shit. Well, it just, it gets everywhere. It never comes off. Law Smith  25:04   Yeah, it's like, Slimer from Ghostbusters. It leaves, like, residue Eric Readinger  25:07   everywhere, snail trails. Yeah, yeah, fucking Law Smith  25:11   first. Oh, but have I brought this up Ghostbusters? I got a lot of people that don't like cops, but they love Ghostbusters. And I'm like, You're you're backing, you're back in enforcement Eric Readinger  25:23   there that don't like, like cops the TV show or cops in real life, Law Smith  25:26   like police in real life. They're like, they're like, defund the police people, and then they love Ghostbusters. I find that funny, Eric Readinger  25:34   right? That's a really fun thing for you to say to them. I Law Smith  25:37   never bring it up. Oh, okay, dude, I, I don't if it's a big calorie burner, and I don't have a lot of information or a hot take other than that one sentence, yeah, I Eric Readinger  25:48   am bringing it up. Yeah. I mean, defund the Ghostbusters. Law Smith  25:53   I'm just saying, Man, you know, they deserve fair trial too. Eric Readinger  25:57   The ghosts, I feel like they've already had their trial. Did they there? I mean, that's why Law Smith  26:02   they got hurt there. There's systemic ghostism. Eric Readinger  26:06   Oh, I see. So it's a problem with communities. Law Smith  26:10   Anyway, I thought that was interesting. Not all Tiktok is bad. You can use it the way you want. Everybody wants to be an influencer now that's under the age of 18. YouTube star or Tiktok star is like the number one. I know job they want when they get older. It's crazy, yep, all right, I didn't think it Eric Readinger  26:29   was any foresight to say we can't all be influencers. Hey, Eric. I didn't think we're gonna talk that much. I thought we're gonna have a short episode, I know, but I knew we would just gab like gals. I got, Law Smith  26:39   I got one more thing, and then we'll get out of here and it, I'm going to open source it to everybody. So if you made it, I'm going to Shawshank Redemption you, if you made it this far, why you come a little bit further? What? There is a great idea I don't think I'll be able to ever capitalize on. So as if, like my Cuban coffee drive through idea. Eric Readinger  27:02   You know, that's the one joke that I thought of when you're like, I'm gonna that's not my my bits on stage. What's the name of your Cuban drive through? What's the name that you give it? Oh, that's Law Smith  27:15   the fruit the food truck joke, Eric Readinger  27:18   whatever it is, the two cups. Yeah, my point is, is that came into my mind when you're like, I don't really do a lot of dirty stuff or shock Law Smith  27:27   value stuff, yeah? Well, it's tough to shock people. Number one, you have to go so extreme. That's, that's why it felt out of place. And then this is a conversation we had off air. Eric Readinger  27:38   It was, yeah, Law Smith  27:41   about a set I did, and I was like, Yeah, not really. Part of who shit it was, yeah, Eric Readinger  27:47   yeah, who's in, who's in the zone? Now, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't change. Holy Water, all right, we have, you don't get to just say it. Law Smith  27:56   I'm getting closer. I'm getting closer. Nailing that. Holy guacamole, Eric Readinger  28:01   gronca, moly, I Law Smith  28:02   know, but I Eric Readinger  28:03   messed up. Okay, fantasy football, is that what you want to talk about? Law Smith  28:06   Well, I've tried to figure out how to capitalize this league. I do. No one's figured out. Okay, so NFL, fantasy football, billion dollar business, like, if not 10 100. We know he knows sports betting going on with the Daily Fantasy leaves too well, and the college football is getting cooler about being less kind of they're they're becoming less restrictive about players rights and their naming rights and all that stuff paying them like they should have been the whole time. So I do a very nerdy college fantasy football league, but I'm always like, when I'm preparing for it, I have my draft tonight, and when I'm preparing for it, I'm always like, I can't believe no one's figured this out how to make college football fantasy because everyone goes well, there's too many teams, ah, but we do it a different way. We have eight managers, ah, and it's a top 25 League. You stick with the AP, top 25 and your draft really matters, because you have to skew it a bit. So if it's like Boise State's 24 and they play, you know, one of those opening games where they got to play something difficult, they can lose the value of that player goes down, because once they drop out of the top 25 you lose them, yeah? And you have to do a waiver, a weekly waiver. Eric Readinger  29:26   Life is somebody doing all this by hand? Yeah? Law Smith  29:30   Holy shit. I mean, not like writing it down? No, I know, but manually, I told you, this is the one where it's me, my buddy, Brendan, and I think everybody else is black dude that. So I'm like, you stupid kind of white guy in the group. I'm I was, like, the new guy, and that I was the new guy for like, 15 years in this league. I don't know these guys that well. So it's always like, we're doing the Zoom draft. Often. I'm like, sometimes I've been a little loosey goosey, you know, yeah, battle pops, it made some jokes that fall flat, and I'm like, Okay, well, I don't know these guys anyway, so, yeah, Eric Readinger  30:10   well, but you need me there with you. Law Smith  30:14   You can hop on tonight. No, Eric Readinger  30:17   God, I try to so racist jokes and fall flat, but Law Smith  30:21   I'm open to sourcing it. I've definitely done this on the show before and put it out there. It's one of those things where it's, like, I tried one year to really try to put effort into it for a while, Eric Readinger  30:30   and like, what are you hoping sourcing the Law Smith  30:33   idea of the game? So, like, you can be even hard to pitch this to a big like Yahoo or ESPN, or any FanDuel or something. Yeah, because you you'd have to go, I gotta pitch you something, but you gotta sign the longest NDA of all time that you can, like, it's like a movie script, while people don't read movie scripts just given to them, that has to go through their agency, because they'll get sued for, like, copying the idea. It's kind of like that, an IP of this idea of some of something that already exists, statistics that are out there. Eric Readinger  31:08   Yeah, I don't think it'd be that crazy. Law Smith  31:11   What sucks is, every year you have to do the manual research. Now there's sites you can pay for, subscription wise, that kind of do it. But like, Yeah, nobody cares about college. You can't. You can't really key in firsthand, all the parameters you need. So I've tried to, like, here's my strategy this year, because, oh, my God, I didn't read Phil Steele's phone book magazine. He does a thing on every team. It's like the craziest, like, Aspergers, he, like, he has, he it's like 180 pages. It's crazy. And he predict, he's the best predictor of, like, who's gonna win the Heisman, who's gonna be good this year kind of thing. So I tried to go, here's my here's what I was like, I gotta think outside the box, because last year I tried to do, I tried to use chat GBT didn't really work. This year I gave it a whirl. Still wasn't working for me. I'm going to look up the EA college football video game ratings, yeah, filter out all the non top 25 people, and then kind of go from that, Eric Readinger  32:20   yeah, that's just that, right? Like, I was like a thing when back in my fantasy football days, like, if you ever had somebody like, you're trying to make a tough decision, start this guy or start that guy, I'd go to FanDuel, who cost support. Oh, yeah, yeah. Gamblers know, Law Smith  32:36   right? The problem with the the Daily Fantasy ones was they don't have all the teams in there a lot of the time, so it's like, you're not getting a pure one to one sometimes, you know, if you're, if you're Jocelyn between, I've tried to do that for NFL. Eric Readinger  32:53   I'm like, Oh, you're saying, like some teams play at different times and, well, yeah, they don't. Law Smith  32:58   I don't know if they do it now. I haven't, I haven't really gone on those sites because I'm scared I'll, I'll gamble my life away. But it's one of those things where they do, like, here's the seven games early Sunday kind of package, but they would never have the whole Thursday to Monday, right? So it was hard to put it against it. I don't know, you know I'm saying anyway, I Eric Readinger  33:20   guess so. But the prices are all the same. Law Smith  33:23   The Price Is Right. Thanks for listening, and Eric Readinger  33:29   it's from the prices. Law Smith  33:31   And when you make billions off of this idea, you know, you package it, you're the listener. I'm talking to you, the listener. When you package this, just throw a couple shackles for for for funzies fucking nuts. Eric Readinger  33:58   Yo, I'm dumb. I.  

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this podcast, Bishop Rader Johnson extends the series beyond the 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ. Hebrews 6:1-3 calls us to go on to perfection—to grow beyond the basics and press forward to maturity in Christ. Spiritual growth means bringing our thoughts, desires, and actions under God's Word so we can reflect the life of Jesus.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches on The 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ found in Hebrews 6:1–3, revealing how these core teachings form the bedrock of the entire Bible. The six principles are:Repentance from Dead WorksFaith Toward GodDoctrine of BaptismsLaying on of HandsResurrection of the DeadEternal JudgmentBishop Johnson emphasizes that while the first four principles relate to entering into salvation and the body of Christ, the last two apply to every soul—because all will be resurrected and judged.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches on The 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ found in Hebrews 6:1–3, revealing how these core teachings form the bedrock of the entire Bible. The six principles are:Repentance from Dead WorksFaith Toward GodDoctrine of BaptismsLaying on of HandsResurrection of the DeadEternal JudgmentBishop Johnson emphasizes that while the first four principles relate to entering into salvation and the body of Christ, the last two apply to every soul—because all will be resurrected and judged.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches on The 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ found in Hebrews 6:1–3, revealing how these core teachings form the bedrock of the entire Bible. The six principles are:Repentance from Dead WorksFaith Toward GodDoctrine of BaptismsLaying on of HandsResurrection of the DeadEternal JudgmentBishop Johnson emphasizes that while the first four principles relate to entering into salvation and the body of Christ, the last two apply to every soul—because all will be resurrected and judged.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches on The 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ found in Hebrews 6:1–3, revealing how these core teachings form the bedrock of the entire Bible. The six principles are:Repentance from Dead WorksFaith Toward GodDoctrine of BaptismsLaying on of HandsResurrection of the DeadEternal JudgmentBishop Johnson emphasizes that while the first four principles relate to entering into salvation and the body of Christ, the last two apply to every soul—because all will be resurrected and judged.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches on The 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ found in Hebrews 6:1–3, revealing how these core teachings form the bedrock of the entire Bible. The six principles are:Repentance from Dead WorksFaith Toward GodDoctrine of BaptismsLaying on of HandsResurrection of the DeadEternal JudgmentBishop Johnson emphasizes that while the first four principles relate to entering into salvation and the body of Christ, the last two apply to every soul—because all will be resurrected and judged.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Nonprofits, your “10 blue links” era is over. In this episode, Avinash Kaushik (Human-Made Machine; Occam's Razor) breaks down Answer Engine Optimization—why LLMs now decide who gets seen, why third-party chatter outweighs your own site, and what to do about it. We get tactical: build AI-resistant content (genuine novelty + depth), go multimodal (text, video, audio), and stamp everything with real attribution so bots can't regurgitate you into sludge. We also cover measurement that isn't delusional—group your AEO referrals, expect fewer visits but higher intent, and stop worshiping last-click and vanity metrics. Avinash updates the 10/90 rule for the AI age (invest in people, plus “synthetic interns”), and torpedoes linear funnels in favor of See-Think-Do-Care anchored in intent. If you want a blunt, practical playbook for staying visible—and actually converting—when answers beat searches, this is it. About Avinash Avinash Kaushik is a leading voice in marketing analytics—the author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and Web Analytics 2.0, publisher of the Marketing Analytics Intersect newsletter, and longtime writer of the Occam's Razor blog. He leads strategy at Human Made Machine, advises Tapestry on brand strategy/marketing transformation, and previously served as Google's Digital Marketing Evangelist. Uniquely, he donates 100% of his book royalties and paid newsletter revenue to charity (civil rights, early childhood education, UN OCHA; previously Smile Train and Doctors Without Borders). He also co-founded Market Motive. Resource Links Avinash Kaushik — Occam's Razor (site/home) Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik Marketing Analytics Intersect (newsletter sign-up) Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik AEO series starter: “AI Age Marketing: Bye SEO, Hello AEO!” Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik See-Think-Do-Care (framework explainer) Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik Books: Web Analytics: An Hour a Day | Web Analytics 2.0 (author pages) Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik+1 Human Made Machine (creative pre-testing) — Home | About | Products humanmademachine.com+2humanmademachine.com+2 Tapestry (Coach, Kate Spade) (company site) Tapestry Tools mentioned (AEO measurement): Trakkr (AI visibility / prompts / sentiment) Trakkr Evertune (AI Brand Index & monitoring) evertune.ai GA4 how-tos (for your AEO channel + attribution): Custom Channel Groups (create an “AEO” channel) Google Help Attribution Paths report (multi-touch view) Google Help Nonprofit vetting (Avinash's donation diligence): Charity Navigator (ratings) Charity Navigator Google for Nonprofits — Gemini & NotebookLM (AI access) Announcement / overview | Workspace AI for nonprofits blog.googleGoogle Help Example NGO Avinash supports: EMERGENCY (Italy) EMERGENCY Transcript Avinash Kaushik: [00:00:00] So traffic's gonna go down. So if you're a business, you're a nonprofit, how. Do you deal with the fact that you're gonna lose a lot of traffic that you get from a search engine? Today, when all of humanity moves to the answer Engine W world, only about two or 3% of the people are doing it. It's growing very rapidly. Um, and so the art of answer engine optimization is making sure that we are building for these LMS and not getting stuck with only solving for Google with the old SEO techniques. Some of them still work, but you need to learn a lot of new stuff because on average, organic traffic will drop between 16 to 64% negative and paid search traffic will drop between five to 30% negative. And that is a huge challenge. And the reason you should start with AEO now ​ George Weiner: [00:01:00] This week's guest, Avinash Kaushik is an absolute hero of mine because of his amazing, uh, work in the field of web analytics. And also, more importantly, I'd say education. Avinash Kaushik, , digital marketing evangelist at Google for Google Analytics. He spent 16 years there. He basically is. In the room where it happened, when the underlying ability to understand what's going on on our websites was was created. More importantly, I think for me, you know, he joined us on episode 45 back in 2016, and he still is, I believe, on the cutting edge of what's about to happen with AEO and the death of SEO. I wanna unpack that 'cause we kind of fly through terms [00:02:00] before we get into this podcast interview AEO. Answer engine optimization. It's this world of saying, alright, how do we create content that can't just be, , regurgitated by bots, , wholesale taken. And it's a big shift from SEO search engine optimization. This classic work of creating content for Google to give us 10 blue links for people to click on that behavior is changing. And when. We go through a period of change. I always wanna look at primary sources. The people that, , are likely to know the most and do the most. And he operates in the for-profit world. But make no mistake, he cares deeply about nonprofits. His expertise, , has frankly been tested, proven and reproven. So I pay attention when he says things like, SEO is going away, and AEO is here to stay. So I give you Avan Kashic. I'm beyond excited that he has come back. He was on our 45th episode and now we are well over our 450th episode. So, , who knows what'll happen next time we talk to him. [00:03:00] This week on the podcast, we have Avinash Kaushik. He is currently the chief strategy officer at Human Made Machine, but actually returning guest after many, many years, and I know him because he basically introduced me to Google Analytics, wrote the literal book on it, and also helped, by the way. No big deal. Literally birth Google Analytics for everyone. During his time at Google, I could spend the entire podcast talking about, uh, the amazing amounts that you have contributed to, uh, marketing and analytics. But I'd rather just real quick, uh, how are you doing and how would you describe your, uh, your role right now? Avinash Kaushik: Oh, thank you. So it's very excited to be back. Um, look forward to the discussion today. I do, I do several things concurrently, of course. I, I, I am an author and I write this weekly newsletter on marketing and analytics. Um, I am the Chief Strategy Officer at Human Made Machine, a company [00:04:00] that obsesses about helping brands win before they spend by doing creative pretesting. And then I also do, uh, uh, consulting at Tapestry, which owns Coach and Kate Spades. And my work focuses on brand strategy and marketing transformation globally. George Weiner: , Amazing. And of course, Occam's Razor. The, the, yes, the blog, which is incredible. I happen to be a, uh, a subscriber. You know, I often think of you in the nonprofit landscape, even though you operate, um, across many different brands, because personally, you also actually donate all of your proceeds from your books, from your blog, from your subscription. You are donating all of that, um, because that's just who you are and what you do. So I also look at you as like team nonprofit, though. Avinash Kaushik: You're very kind. No, no, I, I, yeah. All the proceeds from both of my books and now my newsletter, premium newsletter. It's about $200,000 a year, uh, donated to nonprofits, and a hundred [00:05:00] percent of the revenue is donated nonprofit, uh, nonprofits. And, and for me, it, it's been ai. Then I have to figure out. Which ones, and so I research nonprofits and I look up their cha charity navigators, and I follow up with the people and I check in on the works while, while don't work at a nonprofit, but as a customer of nonprofits, if you will. I, I keep sort of very close tabs on the amazing work that these charities do around the world. So feel very close to the people that you work with very closely. George Weiner: So recently I got an all caps subject line from you. Well, not from you talking about this new acronym that was coming to destroy the world, I think is what you, no, AEO. Can you help us understand what answer engine optimization is? Avinash Kaushik: Yes, of course. Of course. We all are very excited about ai. Obviously you, you, you would've to live in. Some backwaters not to be excited about it. And we know [00:06:00] that, um, at the very edge, lots of people are using large language models, chat, GPT, Claude, Gemini, et cetera, et cetera, in the world. And, and increasingly over the last year, what you have begun to notice is that instead of using a traditional search engine like Google or using the old Google interface with the 10 blue links, et cetera. People are beginning to use these lms. They just go to chat, GPT to get the answer that they want. And the one big difference in this, this behavior is I actually have on September 8th, I have a keynote here in New York and I have to be in Shanghai the next day. That is physically impossible because it, it just, the time it takes to travel. But that's my thing. So today, if I wanted to figure out what is the fastest way. On September 8th, I can leave New York and get to Shanghai. I would go to Google flights. I would put in the destinations. It will come back with a crap load of data. Then I poke and prod and sort and filter, and I have to figure out which flight is right for that. For this need I have. [00:07:00] So that is the old search engine world. I'm doing all the work, hunting and pecking, drilling down, visiting websites, et cetera, et cetera. Instead, actually what I did is I went to charge GBT 'cause I, I have a plus I, I'm a paying member of charge GBT and I said to charge GBTI have to do a keynote between four and five o'clock on September 8th in New York and I have to be in Shanghai as fast as I possibly can be After my keynote, can you find me the best flight? And I just typed in those two sentences. He came back and said, this Korean airline website flight is the best one for you. You will not get to your destination on time until, unless you take a private jet flight for $300,000. There is your best option. They're gonna get to Shanghai on, uh, September 10th at 10 o'clock in the morning if you follow these steps. And so what happened there? I didn't have to hunt and pack and dig and go to 15 websites to find the answer I wanted. The engine found the [00:08:00] answer I wanted at the end and did all the work for me that you are seeing from searching, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking to just having somebody get you. The final answer is what I call the, the, the underlying change in consumer behavior that makes answer engine so exciting. Obviously, it creates a challenge for us because what happened between those two things, George is. I didn't have to visit many websites. So traffic is going down, obviously, and these interfaces at the moment don't have paid search links for now. They will come, they will come, but they don't at the moment. So traffic's gonna go down. So if you're a business, you're a nonprofit, how. Do you deal with the fact that you're gonna lose a lot of traffic that you get from a search engine? Today, when all of humanity moves to the answer Engine W world, only about two or 3% of the people are doing it. It's growing very rapidly. Um, and so the art of answer engine optimization [00:09:00] is making sure that we are building for these LMS and not getting stuck with only solving for Google with the old SEO techniques. Some of them still work, but you need to learn a lot of new stuff because on average, organic traffic will drop between 16 to 64% negative and paid search traffic will drop between five to 30% negative. And that is a huge challenge. And the reason you should start with AEO now George Weiner: that you know. Is a window large enough to drive a metaphorical data bus through? And I think talk to your data doctor results may vary. You are absolutely right. We have been seeing this with our nonprofit clients, with our own traffic that yes, basically staying even is the new growth. Yeah. But I want to sort of talk about the secondary implications of an AI that has ripped and gripped [00:10:00] my website's content. Then added whatever, whatever other flavors of my brand and information out there, and is then advising somebody or talking about my brand. Can you maybe unwrap that a little bit more? What are the secondary impacts of frankly, uh, an AI answering what is the best international aid organization I should donate to? Yes. As you just said, you do Avinash Kaushik: exactly. No, no, no. This such a, such a wonderful question. It gets to the crux. What used to influence Google, by the way, Google also has an answer engine called Gemini. So I just, when I say Google, I'm referring to the current Google that most people use with four paid links and 10 SEO links. So when I say Google, I'm referring to that one. But Google also has an answer engine. I, I don't want anybody saying Google does is not getting into the answer engine business. It is. So Google is very much influenced by content George that you create. I call it one P content, [00:11:00] first party content. Your website, your mobile app, your YouTube channel, your Facebook page, your, your, your, your, and it sprinkles on some amount of third party content. Some websites might have reviews about you like Yelp, some websites might have PR releases about you light some third party content. Between search engine and engines. Answer Engines seem to overvalue third party content. My for one p content, my website, my mobile app, my YouTube channel. My, my, my, everything actually is going down in influence while on Google it's pretty high. So as here you do SEO, you're, you're good, good ranking traffic. But these LLMs are using many, many, many, literally tens of thousands more sources. To understand who you are, who you are as a nonprofit, and it's [00:12:00] using everybody's videos, everybody's Reddit posts, everybody's Facebook things, and tens of thousands of more people who write blogs and all kinds of stuff in order to understand who you are as a nonprofit, what services you offer, how good you are, where you're falling short, all those negative reviews or positive reviews, it's all creepy influence. Has gone through the roof, P has come down, which is why it has become very, very important for us to build a new content strategy to figure out how we can influence these LMS about who we are. Because the scary thing is at this early stage in answer engines, someone else is telling the LLMs who you are instead of you. A more, and that's, it feels a little scary. It feels as scary as a as as a brand. It feels very scary as I'm a chief strategy officer, human made machine. It feels scary for HMM. It feels scary for coach. [00:13:00] It's scary for everybody, uh, which is why you really urgently need to get a handle on your content strategy. George Weiner: Yeah, I mean, what you just described, if it doesn't give you like anxiety, just stop right now. Just replay what we just did. And that is the second order effects. And you know, one of my concerns, you mentioned it early on, is that sort of traditional SEO, we've been playing the 10 Blue Link game for so long, and I'm worried that. Because of the changes right now, roughly what 20% of a, uh, search is AI overview, that number's not gonna go down. You're mentioning third party stuff. All of Instagram back to 2020, just quietly got tossed into the soup of your AI brand footprint, as we call it. Talk to me about. There's a nonprofit listening to this right now, and then probably if they're smart, other organizations, what is coming in the next year? They're sitting down to write the same style of, you know, [00:14:00] ai, SEO, optimized content, right? They have their content calendar. If you could have like that, I'm sitting, you're sitting in the room with them. What are you telling that classic content strategy team right now that's about to embark on 2026? Avinash Kaushik: Yes. So actually I, I published this newsletter just last night, and this is like the, the fourth in my AEO series, uh, newsletter, talks about how to create your content portfolio strategy. Because in the past we were like, we've got a product pages, you know, the equivalent of our, our product pages. We've got some, some, uh, charitable stories on our website and uh, so on and so forth. And that's good. That's basic. You need to do the basics. The interesting thing is you need to do so much more both on first party. So for example, one of the first things to appreciate is LMS or answer engines are far more influenced by multimodal content. So what does that mean? Text plus [00:15:00] video plus audio. Video and audio were also helpful in Google. And remember when I say Google, I'm referring to the old linky linking Google, not Gemini. But now video has ton more influence. So if you're creating a content strategy for next year, you should say many. Actually, lemme do one at a time. Text. You have to figure out more types of things. Authoritative Q and as. Very educational deep content around your charity's efforts. Lots of text. Third. Any seasonality, trends and patterns that happen in your charity that make a difference? I support a school in, in Nepal and, and during the winter they have very different kind of needs than they do during the summer. And so I bumped into this because I was searching about something seasonality related. This particular school for Tibetan children popped up in Nepal, and it's that content they wrote around winter and winter struggles and coats and all this stuff. I'm like. [00:16:00] It popped up in the answer engine and I'm like, okay. I research a bit more. They have good stories about it, and I'm supporting them q and a. Very, very important. Testimonials. Very, very important interviews. Very, very important. Super, super duper important with both the givers and the recipients, supporters of your nonprofit, but also the recipient recipients of very few nonprofits actually interview the people who support them. George Weiner: Like, why not like donors or be like, Hey, why did you support us? What was the, were the two things that moved you from Aware to care? Avinash Kaushik: Like for, for the i I Support Emergency, which is a Italian nonprofit like Ms. Frontiers and I would go on their website and speak a fiercely about why I absolutely love the work they do. Content, yeah. So first is text, then video. You gotta figure out how to use video a lot more. And most nonprofits are not agile in being able to use video. And the third [00:17:00] thing that I think will be a little bit of a struggle is to figure out how to use audio. 'cause audio also plays a very influential role. So for as you are planning your uh, uh, content calendar for the next year. Have the word multimodal. I'm sorry, it's profoundly unsexy, but put multimodal at the top, underneath it, say text, then say video, then audio, and start to fill those holes in. And if those people need ideas and example of how to use audio, they should just call you George. You are the king of podcasting and you can absolutely give them better advice than I could around how nonprofits could use audio. But the one big thing you have to think about is multimodality for next year George Weiner: that you know, is incredibly powerful. Underlying that, there's this nuance that I really want to make sure that we understand, which is the fact that the type of content is uniquely different. It's not like there's a hunger organization listening right now. It's not 10 facts about hunger during the winter. [00:18:00] Uh, days of being able to be an information resource that would then bring people in and then bring them down your, you know, your path. It's game over. If not now, soon. Absolutely. So how you are creating things that AI can't create and that's why you, according to whom, is what I like to think about. Like, you're gonna say something, you're gonna write something according to whom? Is it the CEO? Is it the stakeholder? Is it the donor? And if you can put a attribution there, suddenly the AI can't just lift and shift it. It has to take that as a block and be like, no, it was attributed here. This is the organization. Is that about right? Or like first, first party data, right? Avinash Kaushik: I'll, I'll add one more, one more. Uh, I'll give a proper definition. So, the fir i I made 11 recommendations last night in the newsletter. The very first one is focus on creating AI resistant content. So what, what does that mean? AI resistant means, uh, any one of us from nonprofits could [00:19:00] open chat, GPT type in a few queries and chat. GD PT can write our next nonprofit newsletter. It could write the next page for our donation. It could create the damn page for our donation, right? Remember, AI can create way more content than you can, but if you can use AI to create content, 67 million other nonprofits are doing the same thing. So what you have to do is figure out how to build AI resistant content, and my definition is very simple. George, what is AI resistance? It's content of genuine novelty. So to tie back to your recommendation, your CEO of a nonprofit that you just recommended, the attribution to George. Your CEO has a unique voice, a unique experience. The AI hasn't learned what makes your CEO your frontline staff solving problems. You are a person who went and gave a speech at the United Nations on behalf of your nonprofit. Whatever you are [00:20:00] doing is very special, and what you have to figure out is how to get out of the AI slop. You have to get out of all the things that AI can automatically type. Figure out if your content meets this very simple, standard, genuine novelty and depth 'cause it's the one thing AI isn't good at. That's how you rank higher. And not only will will it, will it rank you, but to make another point you made, George, it's gonna just lift, blanc it out there and attribute credit to you. Boom. But if you're not genuine, novelty and depth. Thousand other nonprofits are using AI to generate text and video. Could George Weiner: you just, could you just quit whatever you're doing and start a school instead? I seriously can't say it enough that your point about AI slop is terrifying me because I see it. We've built an AI tool and the subtle lesson here is that think about how quickly this AI was able to output that newsletter. Generic old school blog post and if this tool can do it, which [00:21:00] by the way is built on your local data set, we have the rag, which doesn't pause for a second and realize if this AI can make it, some other AI is going to be able to reproduce it. So how are you bringing the human back into this? And it's a style of writing and a style of strategic thinking that please just start a school and like help every single college kid leaving that just GPT their way through a degree. Didn't freaking get, Avinash Kaushik: so it's very, very important to make sure. Content is of genuine novelty and depth because it cannot be replicated by the ai. And by the way, this, by the way, George, it sounds really high, but honestly to, to use your point, if you're a CEO of a nonprofit, you are in it for something that speaks to you. You're in it. Because ai, I mean nonprofit is not your path to becoming the next Bill Gates, you're doing it because you just have this hair. Whoa, spoiler alert. No, I'm sorry. [00:22:00] Maybe, maybe that is. I, I didn't, I didn't mean any negative emotion there, but No, I love it. It's all, it's like a, it's like a sense of passion you are bringing. There's something that speaks to you. Just put that on paper, put that on video, put that on audio, because that is what makes you unique. And the collection of those stories of genuine depth and novelty will make your nonprofit unique and stand out when people are looking for answers. George Weiner: So I have to point to the next elephant in the room here, which is measurement. Yes. Yes. Right now, somebody is talking about human made machine. Someone's talking about whole whale. Someone's talking about your nonprofit having a discussion in an answer engine somewhere. Yes. And I have no idea. How do I go about understanding measurement in this new game? Avinash Kaushik: I have. I have two recommendations. For nonprofits, I would recommend a tool called Tracker ai, TRA, KKR [00:23:00] ai, and it has a free version, that's why I'm recommending it. Some of the many of these tools are paid tools, but with Tracker, do ai. It allows you to identify your website, URL, et cetera, et cetera, and it'll give you some really wonderful and fantastic, helpful report It. Tracker helps you understand prompt tracking, which is what are other people writing about you when they're seeking? You? Think of this, George, as your old webmaster tools. What keywords are people using to search? Except you can get the prompts that people are using to get a more robust understanding. It also monitors your brand's visibility. How often are you showing up and how often is your competitor showing up, et cetera, et cetera. And then he does that across multiple search engines. So you can say, oh, I'm actually pretty strong in OpenAI for some reason, and I'm not that strong in Gemini. Or, you know what, I have like the highest rating in cloud, but I don't have it in OpenAI. And this begins to help you understand where your current content strategy is working and where it is not [00:24:00] working. So that's your brand visibility. And the third thing that you get from Tracker is active sentiment tracking. This is the scary part because remember, you and I were both worried about what other people saying about us. So this, this are very helpful that we can go out and see what it is. What is the sentiment around our nonprofit that is coming across in, um, in these lms? So Tracker ai, it have a free and a paid version. So I would, I would recommend using it for these three purposes. If, if you have funding to invest in a tool. Then there's a tool called Ever Tool, E-V-E-R-T-U-N-E Ever. Tune is a paid tool. It's extremely sophisticated and robust, and they do brand monitoring, site audit, content strategy, consumer preference report, ai, brand index, just the. Step and breadth of metrics that they provide is quite extensive, but, but it is a paid tool. It does cost money. It's not actually crazy expensive, but uh, I know I have worked with them before, so full disclosure [00:25:00] and having evaluated lots of different tools, I have sort of settled on those two. If it's a enterprise type client I'm working with, then I'll use Evert Tune if I am working with a nonprofit or some of my personal stuff. I'll use Tracker AI because it's good enough for a person that is, uh, smaller in size and revenue, et cetera. So those two tools, so we have new metrics coming, uh, from these tools. They help us understand the kind of things we use webmaster tools for in the past. Then your other thing you will want to track very, very closely is using Google Analytics or some other tool on your website. You are able to currently track your, uh, organic traffic and if you're taking advantage of paid ads, uh, through a grant program on Google, which, uh, provides free paid search credits to nonprofits. Then you're tracking your page search traffic to continue to track that track trends, patterns over time. But now you will begin to see in your referrals report, in your referrals report, you're gonna begin to seeing open [00:26:00] ai. You're gonna begin to see these new answer engines. And while you don't know the keywords that are sending this traffic and so on and so forth, it is important to keep track of the traffic because of two important reasons. One, one, you want to know how to highly prioritize. AEO. That's one reason. But the other reason I found George is syn is so freaking hard to rank in an answer engine. When people do come to my websites from Answer engine, the businesses I work with that is very high intent person, they tend to be very, very valuable because they gave the answer engine a very complex question to answer the answers. Engine said you. The right answer for it. So when I show up, I'm ready to buy, I'm ready to donate. I'm ready to do the action that I was looking for. So the percent of people who are coming from answer engines to your nonprofit carry significantly higher intention, and coming from Google, who also carry [00:27:00] intent. But this man, you stood out in an answer engine, you're a gift from God. Person coming thinks you're very important and is likely to engage in some sort of business with you. So I, even if it's like a hundred people, I care a lot about those a hundred people, even if it's not 10,000 at the moment. Does that make sense George? George Weiner: It does, and I think, I'm glad you pointed to, you know, the, the good old Google Analytics. I'm like, it has to be a way, and I, I think. I gave maximum effort to this problem inside of Google Analytics, and I'm still frustrated that search console is not showing me, and it's just blending it all together into one big soup. But. I want you to poke a hole in this thinking or say yes or no. You can create an AI channel, an AEO channel cluster together, and we have a guide on that cluster together. All of those types of referral traffic, as you mentioned, right from there. I actually know thanks to CloudFlare, the ratios of the amount of scrapes versus the actual clicks sent [00:28:00] for roughly 20, 30% of. Traffic globally. So is it fair to say I could assume like a 2% clickthrough or a 1% clickthrough, or even worse in some cases based on that referral and then reverse engineer, basically divide those clicks by the clickthrough rate and essentially get a rough share of voice metric on that platform? Yeah. Avinash Kaushik: So, so for, um, kind of, kind of at the moment, the problem is that unlike Google giving us some decent amount of data through webmaster tools. None of these LLMs are giving us any data. As a business owner, none of them are giving us any data. So we're relying on third parties like Tracker. We're relying on third parties like Evert Tune. You understand? How often are we showing up so we could get a damn click through, right? Right. We don't quite have that for now. So the AI Brand Index in Evert Tune comes the closest. Giving you some information we could use in the, so your thinking is absolutely right. Your recommendation is ly, right? Even if you can just get the number of clicks, even if you're tracking them very [00:29:00] carefully, it's very important. Please do exactly what you said. Make the channel, it's really important. But don't, don't read too much into the click-through rate bits, because we're missing the. We're missing a very important piece of information. Now remember when Google first came out, we didn't have tons of data. Um, and that's okay. These LLMs Pro probably will realize over time if they get into the advertising business that it's nice to give data out to other people, and so we might get more data. Until then, we are relying on these third parties that are hacking these tools to find us some data. So we can use it to understand, uh, some of the things we readily understand about keywords and things today related to Google. So we, we sadly don't have as much visibility today as we would like to have. George Weiner: Yeah. We really don't. Alright. I have, have a segment that I just invented. Just for you called Avanade's War Corner. And in Avanade's War Corner, I noticed that you go to war on various concepts, which I love because it brings energy and attention to [00:30:00] frankly data and finding answers in there. So if you'll humor me in our war corner, I wanna to go through some, some classic, classic avan. Um, all right, so can you talk to me a little bit about vanity metrics, because I think they are in play. Every day. Avinash Kaushik: Absolutely. No, no, no. Across the board, I think in whatever we do. So, so actually I'll, I'll, I'll do three. You know, so there's vanity metrics, activity metrics and outcome metrics. So basically everything goes into these three buckets essentially. So vanity metrics are, are the ones that are very easy to find, but them moving up and down has nothing to do with the number of donations you're gonna get as a nonprofit. They're just there to ease our ego. So, for example. Let's say we are a nonprofit and we run some display ads, so measure the number of impressions that were delivered for our display ad. That's a vanity metric. It doesn't tell you anything. You could have billions of impressions. You could have 10 impressions, doesn't matter, but it is easily [00:31:00] available. The count is easily available, so we report it. Now, what matters? What matters are, did anybody engage with the ad? What were the percent of people who hovered on the ad? What were the number of people who clicked on the ad activity metrics? Activity metrics are a little more useful than vanity metrics, but what does it matter for you as a non nonprofit? The number of donations you received in the last 24 hours. That's an outcome metric. Vanity activity outcome. Focus on activity to diagnose how well our campaigns or efforts are doing in marketing. Focus on outcomes to understand if we're gonna stay in business or not. Sorry, dramatic. The vanity metrics. Chasing is just like good for ego. Number of likes is a very famous one. The number of followers on a social paia, a very famous one. Number of emails sent is another favorite one. There's like a whole host of vanity metrics that are very easy to get. I cannot emphasize this enough, but when you unpack and or do meta-analysis of [00:32:00] relationship between vanity metrics and outcomes, there's a relationship between them. So we always advise people that. Start by looking at activity metrics to help you understand the user's behavior, and then move to understanding outcome metrics because they are the reason you'll thrive. You will get more donations or you will figure out what are the things that drive more donations. Otherwise, what you end up doing is saying. If I post provocative stuff on Facebook, I get more likes. Is that what you really wanna be doing? But if your nonprofit says, get me more likes, pretty soon, there's like a naked person on Facebook that gets a lot of likes, but it's corrupting. Yeah. So I would go with cute George Weiner: cat, I would say, you know, you, you get the generic cute cat. But yeah, same idea. The Internet's built on cats Avinash Kaushik: and yes, so, so that's why I, I actively recommend people stay away from vanity metrics. George Weiner: Yeah. Next up in War Corner, the last click [00:33:00] fallacy, right? The overweighting of this last moment of purchase, or as you'd maybe say in the do column of the See, think, do care. Avinash Kaushik: Yes. George Weiner: Yes. Avinash Kaushik: So when the, when the, when we all started to get Google Analytics, we got Adobe Analytics web trends, remember them, we all wanted to know like what drove the conversion. Mm-hmm. I got this donation for a hundred dollars. I got a donation for a hundred thousand dollars. What drove the conversion. And so what lo logically people would just say is, oh, where did this person come from? And I say, oh, the person came from Google. Google drove this conversion. Yeah, his last click analysis just before the conversion. Where did the person come from? Let's give them credit. But the reality is it turns out that if you look at consumer behavior, you look at days to donation, visits to donation. Those are two metrics available in Google. It turns out that people visit multiple times before [00:34:00] they make a donation. They may have come through email, their interest might have been triggered through your email. Then they suddenly remembered, oh yeah, yeah, I wanted to go to the nonprofit and donate something. This is Google, you. And then Google helps them find you and they come through. Now, who do you give credit Email or the Google, right? And what if you came 5, 7, 8, 10 times? So the last click fallacy is that it doesn't allow you to see the full consumer journey. It gives credit to whoever was the last person who sent you this, who introduced this person to your website. And so very soon we move to looking at what we call MTI, Multi-Touch Attribution, which is a free solution built into Google. So you just go to your multichannel funnel reports and it will help you understand that. One, uh, 150 people came from email. Then they came from Google. Then there was a gap of nine days, and they came back from Facebook and then they [00:35:00] converted. And what is happening is you're beginning to understand the consumer journey. If you understand the consumer journey better, we can come with better marketing. Otherwise, you would've said, oh, close shop. We don't need as many marketing people. We'll just buy ads on Google. We'll just do SEO. We're done. Oh, now you realize there's a more complex behavior happening in the consumer. They need to solve for email. You solve for Google, you need to solve Facebook. In my hypothetical example, so I, I'm very actively recommend people look at the built-in free MTA reports inside the Google nalytics. Understand the path flow that is happening to drive donations and then undertake activities that are showing up more often in the path, and do fewer of those things that are showing up less in the path. George Weiner: Bring these up because they have been waiting on my mind in the land of AEO. And by the way, we're not done with war. The war corner segment. There's more war there's, but there's more, more than time. But with both of these metrics where AEO, if I'm putting these glasses back on, comes [00:36:00] into play, is. Look, we're saying goodbye to frankly, what was probably somewhat of a vanity metric with regard to organic traffic coming in on that 10 facts about cube cats. You know, like, was that really how we were like hanging our hat at night, being like. Job done. I think there's very much that in play. And then I'm a little concerned that we just told everyone to go create an AEO channel on their Google Analytics and they're gonna come in here. Avinash told me that those people are buyers. They're immediately gonna come and buy, and why aren't they converting? What is going on here? Can you actually maybe couch that last click with the AI channel inbound? Like should I expect that to be like 10 x the amount of conversions? Avinash Kaushik: All we can say is it's, it's going to be people with high intention. And so with the businesses that I'm working with, what we are finding is that the conversion rates are higher. Mm. This game is too early to establish any kind of sense of if anybody has standards for AEO, they're smoking crack. Like the [00:37:00] game is simply too early. So what we I'm noticing is that in some cases, if the average conversion rate is two point half percent, the AEO traffic is converting at three, three point half. In two or three cases, it's converting at six, seven and a half. But there is not enough stability in the data. All of this is new. There's not enough stability in the data to say, Hey, definitely you can expect it to be double or 10% more or 50% more. We, we have no idea this early stage of the game, but, but George, if we were doing this again in a year, year and a half, I think we'll have a lot more data and we'll be able to come up with some kind of standards for, for now, what's important to understand is, first thing is you're not gonna rank in an answer engine. You just won't. If you do rank in an answer engine, you fought really hard for it. The person decided, oh my God, I really like this. Just just think of the user behavior and say, this person is really high intent because somehow [00:38:00] you showed up and somehow they found you and came to you. Chances are they're caring. Very high intent. George Weiner: Yeah. They just left a conversation with a super intelligent like entity to come to your freaking 2001 website, HTML CSS rendered silliness. Avinash Kaushik: Whatever it is, it could be the iffiest thing in the world, but they, they found me and they came to you and they decided that in the answer engine, they like you as the answer the most. And, and it took that to get there. And so all, all, all is I'm finding in the data is that they carry higher intent and that that higher intent converts into higher conversion rates, higher donations, as to is it gonna be five 10 x higher? It's unclear at the moment, but remember, the other reason you should care about it is. Every single day. As more people move away from Google search engines to answer engines, you're losing a ton of traffic. If somebody new showing up, treat them with, respect them with love. Treat them with [00:39:00] care because they're very precious. Just lost a hundred. Check the landing George Weiner: pages. 'cause you may be surprised where your front door is when complexity is bringing them to you, and it's not where you spent all of your design effort on the homepage. Spoiler. That's exactly Avinash Kaushik: right. No. Exactly. In fact, uh, the doping deeper into your websites is becoming even more prevalent with answer engines. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, than it used to be with search engines. The search always tried to get you the, the top things. There's still a lot of diversity. Your homepage likely is still only 30% of your traffic. Everybody else is landing on other homepage or as you call them, landing pages. So it's really, really important to look beyond your homepage. I mean, it was true yesterday. It's even truer today. George Weiner: Yeah, my hunch and what I'm starting to see in our data is that it is also much higher on the assisted conversion like it is. Yes. Yes, it is. Like if you have come to us from there, we are going to be seeing you again. That's right. That's right. More likely than others. It over indexes consistently for us there. Avinash Kaushik: [00:40:00] Yes. Again, it ties back to the person has higher intent, so if they didn't convert in that lab first session, their higher intent is gonna bring them back to you. So you are absolutely right about the data that you're seeing. George Weiner: Um, alright. War corner, the 10 90 rule. Can you unpack this and then maybe apply it to somebody who thinks that their like AI strategy is done? 'cause they spend $20 or $200 a month on some tool and then like, call it a day. 'cause they did ai. Avinash Kaushik: Yes, yes. No, it's, it's good. I, I developed it in context of analytics. When I was at my, uh, job at Intuit, I used to, I was at Intuit, senior director for research and analytics. And one of the things I found is people would consistently spend lots of money on tools in that time, web analytics tools, research tools, et cetera. And, uh, so they're spending a contract of a few hundred thousand dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then they give it to a fresh graduate to find insights. [00:41:00] I was like, wait, wait, wait. So you took this $300,000 thing and gave it to somebody. You're paying $45,000 a year. Who is young in their career, young in their career, and expecting them to make you tons of money using this tool? It's not the tool, it's the human. And so that's why I developed the the 10 90 rule, which is that if you have a, if you have a hundred dollars to invest in making smarter decisions, invest $10 in the tool, $90 in the human. We all have access to so much data, so much complexity. The world is changing so fast that it is the human that is going to figure out how to make sense of these insights rather than the tool magically spewing and understanding your business enough to tell you exactly what to do. So that, that's sort of where the 10 90 rule came from. Now, sort of we are in this, in this, um, this is very good for nonprofits by the way. So we're in this era. Where On the 90 side? No. So the 10, look, don't spend insane money on tools that is just silly. So don't do that. Now the 90, let's talk about the [00:42:00] 90. Up until two years ago, I had to spell all of the 90 on what I now call organic humans. You George Weiner: glasses wearing humans, huh? Avinash Kaushik: The development of LLM means that every single nonprofit in the world has access to roughly a third year bachelor's degree student. Like a really smart intern. For free. For free. In fact, in some instances, for some nonprofits, let's say I I just reading about this nonprofit that is cleaning up plastics in the ocean for this particular nonprofit, they have access to a p HT level environmentalist using the latest Chad GP PT 4.5, like PhD level. So the little caveat I'm beginning to put in the 10 90 rule is on the 90. You give the 90 to the human and for free. Get the human, a very smart Bachelor's student by using LLMs in some instances. Get [00:43:00] for free a very smart TH using the LLMs. So the LLMs have now to be incorporated into your research, into your analysis, into building a next dashboard, into building a next website, into building your next mobile game into whatever the hell you're doing for free. You can get that so you have your organic human. Less the synthetic human for free. Both of those are in the 90 and, and for nonprofit, so, so in my work at at Coach and Kate Spade. I have access now to a couple of interns who do free work for me, well for 20 minor $20 a month because I have to pay for the plus version of G bt. So the intern costs $20 a month, but I have access to this syn synthetic human who can do a whole lot of work for me for $20 a month in my case, but it could also do it for free for you. Don't forget synthetic humans. You no longer have to rely only on the organic humans to do the 90 part. You would be stunned. Upload [00:44:00] your latest, actually take last year's worth of donations, where they came from and all this data from you. Have a spreadsheet lying around. Dump it into chat. GPT, I'll ask it to analyze it. Help you find where most donations came from, and visualize trends to present to board of directors. It will blow your mind how good it is at do it with Gemini. I'm not biased, I'm just seeing chat. GPD 'cause everybody knows it so much Better try it with mistrial a, a small LLM from France. So I, I wanna emphasize that what has changed over the last year is the ability for us to compliment our organic humans with these synthetic entities. Sometimes I say synthetic humans, but you get the point. George Weiner: Yeah. I think, you know, definitely dump that spreadsheet in. Pull out the PII real quick, just, you know, make me feel better as, you know, the, the person who's gonna be promoting this to everybody, but also, you know, sort of. With that. I want to make it clear too, that like actually inside of Gemini, like Google for nonprofits has opened up access to Gemini for free is not a per user, per whatever. You have that [00:45:00] you have notebook, LLM, and these. Are sitting in their backyards for free every day and it's like a user to lose it. 'cause you have a certain amount of intelligence tokens a day. Can you, I just like wanna climb like the tallest tree out here and just start yelling from a high building about this. Make the case of why a nonprofit should be leveraging this free like PhD student that is sitting with their hands underneath their butts, doing nothing for them right now. Avinash Kaushik: No, it is such a shame. By the way, I cannot add to your recommendation in using your Gemini Pro account if it's free, on top of, uh, all the benefits you can get. Gemini Pro also comes with restrictions around their ability to use your data. They won't, uh, their ability to put your data anywhere. Gemini free versus Gemini Pro is a very protected environment. Enterprise version. So more, more security, more privacy, et cetera. That's a great benefit. And by the way, as you said, George, they can get it for free. So, um, the, the, the, the posture you should adopt is what big companies are doing, [00:46:00] which is anytime there is a job to be done, the first question you, you should ask is, can I make the, can an AI do the job? You don't say, oh, let me send it to George. Let me email Simon, let me email Sarah. No, no, no. The first thing that should hit your head is. I do the job because most of the time for, again, remember, third year bachelor's degree, student type, type experience and intelligence, um, AI can do it better than any human. So your instincts to be, let me outsource that kind of work so I can free up George's cycles for the harder problems that the AI cannot solve. And by the way, you can do many things. For example, you got a grant and now Meta allows you to run X number of ads for free. Your first thing, single it. What kind of ad should I create? Go type in your nonprofit, tell it the kind of things you're doing. Tell it. Tell it the donations you want, tell it the size, donation, want. Let it create the first 10 ads for you for free. And then you pick the one you like. And even if you have an internal [00:47:00] designer who makes ads, they'll start with ideas rather than from scratch. It's just one small example. Or you wanna figure out. You know, my email program is stuck. I'm not getting yield rates for donations. The thing I want click the button that called that is called deep research or thinking in the LL. Click one of those two buttons and then say, I'm really struggling. I'm at wits end. I've tried all these things. Write all the detail. Write all the detail about what you've tried and now working. Can you please give me three new ideas that have worked for nonprofits who are working in water conservation? Hmm. This would've taken a human like a few days to do. You'll have an answer in under 90 seconds. I just give two simple use cases where we can use these synthetic entities to send us, do the work for us. So the default posture in nonprofits should be, look, we're resource scrapped anyway. Why not use a free bachelor's degree student, or in some case a free PhD student to do the job, or at least get us started on a job. So just spending 10 [00:48:00] hours on it. We only spend the last two hours. The entity entity does the first date, and that is super attractive. I use it every single day in, in one of my browsers. I have three traps open permanently. I've got Claude, I've got Mistrial, I've got Charge GPT. They are doing jobs for me all day long. Like all day long. They're working for me. $20 each. George Weiner: Yeah, it's an, it, it, it's truly, it's an embarrassment of riches, but also getting back to the, uh, the 10 90 is, it's still sitting there. If you haven't brought that capacity building to the person on how to prompt how to play that game of linguistic tennis with these tools, right. They're still just a hammer on a. Avinash Kaushik: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Or, or in your case, you, you have access to Gemini for nonprofits. It's a fantastic tool. It's like a really nice card that could take you different places you insist on cycling everywhere. It's, it's okay cycle once in a while for health reasons. Otherwise, just take the car, it's free. George Weiner: Ha, you've [00:49:00] been so generous with your time. Uh, I do have one more quick war. If you, if you have, have a minute, uh, your war on funnels, and maybe this is not. Fully fair. And I am like, I hear you yelling at me every time I'm showing our marketing funnel. And I'm like, yeah, but I also have have a circle over here. Can you, can you unpack your war on funnels and maybe bring us through, see, think, do, care and in the land of ai? Avinash Kaushik: Yeah. Okay. So the marketing funnel is very old. It's been around for a very long time, and once I, I sort of started working at Google, access to lots more consumer research, lots more consumer behavior. Like 20 years ago, I began to understand that there's no such thing as funnel. So what does the funnel say? The funnel says there's a group of people running around the world, they're not aware of your brand. Find them, scream at them, spray and pray advertising at them, make them aware, and then somehow magically find the exact same people again and shut them down the fricking funnel and make them consider your product.[00:50:00] And now that they're considering, find them again, exactly the same people, and then shove them one more time. Move their purchase index and then drag them to your website. The thing is this linearity that there's no evidence in the universe that this linearity exists. For example, uh, I'm going on a, I like long bike rides, um, and I just got thirsty. I picked up the first brand. I could see a water. No awareness, no consideration, no purchase in debt. I just need water. A lot of people will buy your brand because you happen to be the cheapest. I don't give a crap about anything else, right? So, um, uh, uh, the other thing to understand is, uh, one of the brands I adore and have lots of is the brand. Patagonia. I love Patagonia. I, I don't use the word love for I think any other brand. I love Patagonia, right? For Patagonia. I'm always in the awareness stage because I always want these incredible stories that brand ambassadors tell about how they're helping the environment. [00:51:00] I have more Patagonia products than I should have. I'm already customer. I'm always open to new considerations of Patagonia products, new innovations they're bringing, and then once in a while, I'm always in need to buy a Patagonia product. I'm evaluating them. So this idea that the human is in one of these stages and your job is to shove them down, the funnel is just fatally flawed, no evidence for it. Instead, what you want to do is what is Ash's intent at the moment? He would like environmental stories about how we're improving planet earth. Patagonia will say, I wanna make him aware of my environmental stories, but if they only thought of marketing and selling, they wouldn't put me in the awareness because I'm already a customer who buys lots of stuff from already, right? Or sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm heading over to London next week. Um, I need a thing, jacket. So yeah, consideration show up even though I'm your customer. So this seating do care is a framework that [00:52:00] says, rather than shoving people down things that don't exist and wasting your money, your marketing should be able to discern any human's intent and then be able to respond with a piece of content. Sometimes that piece of content in an is an ad. Sometimes it's a webpage, sometimes it's an email. Sometimes it's a video. Sometimes it's a podcast. This idea of understanding intent is the bedrock on which seat do care is built about, and it creates fully customer-centric marketing. It is harder to do because intent is harder to infer, but if you wanna build a competitive advantage for yourself. Intent is the magic. George Weiner: Well, I think that's a, a great point to, to end on. And again, so generous with, uh, you know, all the work you do and also supporting nonprofits in the many ways that you do. And I'm, uh, always, always watching and seeing what I'm missing when, um, when a new, uh, AKA's Razor and Newsletter come out. So any final sign off [00:53:00] here on how do people find you? How do people help you? Let's hear it. Avinash Kaushik: You can just Google or answer Engine Me. It's, I'm not hard. I hard to find, but if you're a nonprofit, you can sign up for my newsletter, TMAI marketing analytics newsletter. Um, there's a free one and a paid one, so you can just sign up for the free one. It's a newsletter that comes out every five weeks. It's completely free, no strings or anything. And that way I'll be happy to share my stories around better marketing and analytics using the free newsletter for you so you can sign up for that. George Weiner: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Avan. And maybe, maybe we'll have to take you up on that offer to talk sometime next year and see, uh, if maybe we're, we're all just sort of, uh, hanging out with synthetic humans nonstop. Thank you so much. It was fun, George. [00:54:00]

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches on The 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ found in Hebrews 6:1–3, revealing how these core teachings form the bedrock of the entire Bible. The six principles are:Repentance from Dead WorksFaith Toward GodDoctrine of BaptismsLaying on of HandsResurrection of the DeadEternal JudgmentBishop Johnson emphasizes that while the first four principles relate to entering into salvation and the body of Christ, the last two apply to every soul—because all will be resurrected and judged.Using Hebrews 5:12–14, he also calls attention to the spiritual immaturity of the saints in Jerusalem—saved for nine years, yet still in need of "milk" rather than "strong meat." Their failure to hold fast to the Word serves as a warning for us today: we must grow in the knowledge and application of God's Word.This series is a compelling reminder to build your spiritual life on the solid foundation of Christ's doctrine—and to press on toward spiritual maturity.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Title: Million Dollar Monday - Mike Hoffman Summary: Mike made his first million in real estate during the COVID short-term rental boom, and his last million by flipping outdated vending machine routes into modern micro markets selling unconventional products like shampoo and Tide pods. His next million will likely come from leveraging AI to scale vending and small business operations. He emphasizes the rapid evolution of AI and its ability to replace manual tasks, predicting a near future where AI-powered robots handle everyday chores. Links to Watch and Subscribe: https://youtu.be/1EOavier6ug Bullet Point Highlights: First million: Real estate + COVID timing (short-term rentals) Last million: Vending machines → flipped old routes into micro markets Sold high-ticket items (e.g., $35 shampoo) in vending setups Tech improvements + AI driving down costs, boosting efficiency Next million: Scaling vending/small biz ops with AI tools Believes AI is replacing human roles fast (e.g., virtual assistants) Predicts humanoid AI robots in homes within 5 years Transcript: Seth Bradley (00:00.172) Welcome to Million Dollar Mondays, how to make, keep, and scale a million dollars. Mike is a super successful entrepreneur in the vending machine business and beyond. Tell us, how did you make your first million dollars?   Yeah, Seth, probably actually through real estate and just getting a little bit kind of lucky with timing with COVID and short term rentals and some of that. But yeah, that's probably how I got the first million.   Gotcha. Yeah. Real estate usually plays a role in the everybody's strategy down the line, whether they're in, you know, in that primary business or not, you know, whether they start out there or they end up there, real estate usually plays a part. How'd you make your last million?   Yeah, that's a good question because it's completely different than real estate, but it's actually been vending machines. that's been kind of fun. just, you you talk about product market fit whenever you're an entrepreneur with a business. And that was just kind of the perfect storm right now of traditional vending really kind of being outdated. And we found a product market fit.   with it. Gotcha. Cool. And that was from, was this maybe mostly attributed to kind of buying those routes, those larger routes?   Mike Hoffman (01:14.646) Exactly, yeah, buying old school routes and really kind of flipping them like a house with modern micro markets, charging with different products and what would fit in a vending machine like more of the unorthodox, know, toilet paper and tide pods and things that wouldn't fit in a traditional vending machine. I mean, we'll sell $35 bottles of shampoo in these micro markets. So just kind of go and add it in a different way.   Yeah, and then with the aging population, there's got to be more and more of these things popping up. So there should be more opportunity for people to get involved or for people like yourself to just snag everything, right?   Yeah, think there's no chance I could snag everything, not even just in this town alone that I'm currently in. I mean, machines are getting cheaper, the technology is getting way better with AI. And nowadays, it's not what fits in a vending machine motor. It's okay, what's shelf space? So if it's a bottle of shampoo or a glass Coke, it doesn't matter because it's not just getting thrown down the chute of a traditional machine.   Makes sense, makes sense. Last, how are you planning on making your next million dollars?   I think probably with AI, we're doing a lot of interesting stuff with helping people scale their vending routes that is applicable to any small business. And so I'm really intrigued. Just every time I go down a rabbit hole with some new AI tool, I feel like there's another better one that just came right behind it. So I just think it's kind of that time where you can really get ahead by just learning right now in this kind of wave of AI.   Seth Bradley (02:49.27) Yeah, totally makes sense. mean, people that are not paying attention to AI, whether it's simply using chat GBT instead of Google search are getting left behind quickly because it's just advancing so fast. I can't even imagine what this world's going to look like five years from now, the way that things are moving.   It's crazy. Three years ago when I was working for a tech company selling software to the government, I would have to work with three secretaries to schedule a meeting with the general to sell their software. Now my EA is literally an AI bot and everyone that's scheduling time on my calendar, they don't even know they're talking to a non-human, which is perfect.   Yeah, 100%. I predicted within five years, everybody's going to have a humanoid robot in their home with AI instilled, and they're going to be doing physical things for us at our homes.   I hope so. I hope they can go to Costco, get all our groceries, do our laundry, the dishes.   Yup. Yup. Awesome,   Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Mike Hoffman's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/ https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en

Title: Million Dollar Monday - Mike Hoffman Summary: Mike made his first million in real estate during the COVID short-term rental boom, and his last million by flipping outdated vending machine routes into modern micro markets selling unconventional products like shampoo and Tide pods. His next million will likely come from leveraging AI to scale vending and small business operations. He emphasizes the rapid evolution of AI and its ability to replace manual tasks, predicting a near future where AI-powered robots handle everyday chores. Links to Watch and Subscribe: https://youtu.be/1EOavier6ug Bullet Point Highlights: First million: Real estate + COVID timing (short-term rentals) Last million: Vending machines → flipped old routes into micro markets Sold high-ticket items (e.g., $35 shampoo) in vending setups Tech improvements + AI driving down costs, boosting efficiency Next million: Scaling vending/small biz ops with AI tools Believes AI is replacing human roles fast (e.g., virtual assistants) Predicts humanoid AI robots in homes within 5 years Transcript: Seth Bradley (00:00.172) Welcome to Million Dollar Mondays, how to make, keep, and scale a million dollars. Mike is a super successful entrepreneur in the vending machine business and beyond. Tell us, how did you make your first million dollars?   Yeah, Seth, probably actually through real estate and just getting a little bit kind of lucky with timing with COVID and short term rentals and some of that. But yeah, that's probably how I got the first million.   Gotcha. Yeah. Real estate usually plays a role in the everybody's strategy down the line, whether they're in, you know, in that primary business or not, you know, whether they start out there or they end up there, real estate usually plays a part. How'd you make your last million?   Yeah, that's a good question because it's completely different than real estate, but it's actually been vending machines. that's been kind of fun. just, you you talk about product market fit whenever you're an entrepreneur with a business. And that was just kind of the perfect storm right now of traditional vending really kind of being outdated. And we found a product market fit.   with it. Gotcha. Cool. And that was from, was this maybe mostly attributed to kind of buying those routes, those larger routes?   Mike Hoffman (01:14.646) Exactly, yeah, buying old school routes and really kind of flipping them like a house with modern micro markets, charging with different products and what would fit in a vending machine like more of the unorthodox, know, toilet paper and tide pods and things that wouldn't fit in a traditional vending machine. I mean, we'll sell $35 bottles of shampoo in these micro markets. So just kind of go and add it in a different way.   Yeah, and then with the aging population, there's got to be more and more of these things popping up. So there should be more opportunity for people to get involved or for people like yourself to just snag everything, right?   Yeah, think there's no chance I could snag everything, not even just in this town alone that I'm currently in. I mean, machines are getting cheaper, the technology is getting way better with AI. And nowadays, it's not what fits in a vending machine motor. It's okay, what's shelf space? So if it's a bottle of shampoo or a glass Coke, it doesn't matter because it's not just getting thrown down the chute of a traditional machine.   Makes sense, makes sense. Last, how are you planning on making your next million dollars?   I think probably with AI, we're doing a lot of interesting stuff with helping people scale their vending routes that is applicable to any small business. And so I'm really intrigued. Just every time I go down a rabbit hole with some new AI tool, I feel like there's another better one that just came right behind it. So I just think it's kind of that time where you can really get ahead by just learning right now in this kind of wave of AI.   Seth Bradley (02:49.27) Yeah, totally makes sense. mean, people that are not paying attention to AI, whether it's simply using chat GBT instead of Google search are getting left behind quickly because it's just advancing so fast. I can't even imagine what this world's going to look like five years from now, the way that things are moving.   It's crazy. Three years ago when I was working for a tech company selling software to the government, I would have to work with three secretaries to schedule a meeting with the general to sell their software. Now my EA is literally an AI bot and everyone that's scheduling time on my calendar, they don't even know they're talking to a non-human, which is perfect.   Yeah, 100%. I predicted within five years, everybody's going to have a humanoid robot in their home with AI instilled, and they're going to be doing physical things for us at our homes.   I hope so. I hope they can go to Costco, get all our groceries, do our laundry, the dishes.   Yup. Yup. Awesome,   Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Mike Hoffman's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/ https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en

In this chaotic and charming Quickie, Keltie opens up about her disastrous flirtation with retinol, Jack triggers the Sunday scaries with a parking lot meltdown, and Becca reveals her secret to scoring free guac. The ladies play a round of “Lady Most Likely,” debating who would join a cult, flirt their way into freebies, or stalk an ex from 2009. Plus, we unpack email etiquette, ChatGPT (or is it GBT?!), and why Keltie's still emotionally attached to her BlackBerry that never was.Check out our summer sponsors!!Old Navy: Need summer activewear? Shop in store OR online at OldNavy.com21 Seeds: The official tequila of LadyWorld! Discover more at 21seeds.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches on The 6 Principles of the Doctrine of Christ found in Hebrews 6:1–3, revealing how these core teachings form the bedrock of the entire Bible. The six principles are:Repentance from Dead WorksFaith Toward GodDoctrine of BaptismsLaying on of HandsResurrection of the DeadEternal JudgmentBishop Johnson emphasizes that while the first four principles relate to entering into salvation and the body of Christ, the last two apply to every soul—because all will be resurrected and judged.Using Hebrews 5:12–14, he also calls attention to the spiritual immaturity of the saints in Jerusalem—saved for nine years, yet still in need of "milk" rather than "strong meat." Their failure to hold fast to the Word serves as a warning for us today: we must grow in the knowledge and application of God's Word.This series is a compelling reminder to build your spiritual life on the solid foundation of Christ's doctrine—and to press on toward spiritual maturity.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this eye-opening episode, Bishop Rader Johnson dives deep into The Humanity of Jesus, unpacking the divine mystery of how the eternal God revealed Himself through the man Christ Jesus. Rooted in Matthew 11:25–27, this teaching explores how one God operates in distinct roles:Father in CreationSon in RedemptionHoly Ghost in our heartsBishop Johnson explains how Jesus, though fully divine, prayed as a man because He took on humanity to accomplish what the eternal Spirit could not, to suffer and die for our salvation. The world didn't recognize Him then, and it still doesn't recognize the true church (the body of Christ) today.This revelatory teaching emphasizes that spiritual understanding doesn't come from intellect or status, but by divine revelation. To know who Jesus truly is, one must first come to the Son to be saved, then continue in Him to be taught. Only through the Son can the Father be revealed.This is a must-listen for anyone seeking deeper understanding of Jesus' identity and the oneness of God.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this eye-opening episode, Bishop Rader Johnson dives deep into The Humanity of Jesus, unpacking the divine mystery of how the eternal God revealed Himself through the man Christ Jesus. Rooted in Matthew 11:25–27, this teaching explores how one God operates in distinct roles:Father in CreationSon in RedemptionHoly Ghost in our heartsBishop Johnson explains how Jesus, though fully divine, prayed as a man because He took on humanity to accomplish what the eternal Spirit could not, to suffer and die for our salvation. The world didn't recognize Him then, and it still doesn't recognize the true church (the body of Christ) today.This revelatory teaching emphasizes that spiritual understanding doesn't come from intellect or status, but by divine revelation. To know who Jesus truly is, one must first come to the Son to be saved, then continue in Him to be taught. Only through the Son can the Father be revealed.This is a must-listen for anyone seeking deeper understanding of Jesus' identity and the oneness of God.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this eye-opening episode, Bishop Rader Johnson dives deep into The Humanity of Jesus, unpacking the divine mystery of how the eternal God revealed Himself through the man Christ Jesus. Rooted in Matthew 11:25–27, this teaching explores how one God operates in distinct roles:Father in CreationSon in RedemptionHoly Ghost in our heartsBishop Johnson explains how Jesus, though fully divine, prayed as a man because He took on humanity to accomplish what the eternal Spirit could not, to suffer and die for our salvation. The world didn't recognize Him then, and it still doesn't recognize the true church (the body of Christ) today.This revelatory teaching emphasizes that spiritual understanding doesn't come from intellect or status, but by divine revelation. To know who Jesus truly is, one must first come to the Son to be saved, then continue in Him to be taught. Only through the Son can the Father be revealed.This is a must-listen for anyone seeking deeper understanding of Jesus' identity and the oneness of God.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this eye-opening episode, Bishop Rader Johnson dives deep into The Humanity of Jesus, unpacking the divine mystery of how the eternal God revealed Himself through the man Christ Jesus. Rooted in Matthew 11:25–27, this teaching explores how one God operates in distinct roles:Father in CreationSon in RedemptionHoly Ghost in our heartsBishop Johnson explains how Jesus, though fully divine, prayed as a man because He took on humanity to accomplish what the eternal Spirit could not, to suffer and die for our salvation. The world didn't recognize Him then, and it still doesn't recognize the true church (the body of Christ) today.This revelatory teaching emphasizes that spiritual understanding doesn't come from intellect or status, but by divine revelation. To know who Jesus truly is, one must first come to the Son to be saved, then continue in Him to be taught. Only through the Son can the Father be revealed.This is a must-listen for anyone seeking deeper understanding of Jesus' identity and the oneness of God.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this powerful episode, Bishop Rader Johnson breaks down the 4 Aspects of Faith—Hope, Confidence, Trust, and Belief—offering biblical insight and practical encouragement for your spiritual journey. Drawing from Hebrews 11:1-3and Romans 10:1-17, Bishop Johnson teaches how:Hope is our expectation rooted in the God who authors it.Confidence is the bold courage that comes from being persuaded of God's promises.Trust is the sense of safety we find in God's reliability, even when we cannot see Him.Belief is the deep conviction that God is who He says He is.Whether you're new to faith or deepening your walk with God, this episode will challenge and inspire you to believe more boldly, trust more deeply, and stand firm in the faith that comes from God.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this powerful episode, Bishop Rader Johnson breaks down the 4 Aspects of Faith—Hope, Confidence, Trust, and Belief—offering biblical insight and practical encouragement for your spiritual journey. Drawing from Hebrews 11:1-3and Romans 10:1-17, Bishop Johnson teaches how:Hope is our expectation rooted in the God who authors it.Confidence is the bold courage that comes from being persuaded of God's promises.Trust is the sense of safety we find in God's reliability, even when we cannot see Him.Belief is the deep conviction that God is who He says He is.Whether you're new to faith or deepening your walk with God, this episode will challenge and inspire you to believe more boldly, trust more deeply, and stand firm in the faith that comes from God.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that in the last days, evil men and seducers will grow worse—deceiving others and being deceived themselves. Paul urges Timothy to continue in the truth he's learned. Knowing the Bible isn't enough; we must understand what it means and why it means what it says.Seducing spirits work through people, leading saints away from truth. The only defense is staying rooted in Apostolic teaching and obeying godly counsel. Those who reject sound doctrine and their pastor's guidance open the door to error and destruction.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with David Hirschfeld, owner of 18 year old business Tekyz, that boasts a hyperexceptional development team building high “ticket” products in the B2B space. They speak about ways in which AI is a gamechanger, how Tekyz backs their work for clients with relentless pursuit of quality, and how Tekyz practices ruthless compassion,to protect the company and enable it to grow Having collaborated with over 90 startups, he developed the Launch 1st Method—a systematic approach that minimizes risks and accelerates software company success with reduced reliance on investor funding, after observing that many companies launch a product first and then fail at a later stage – With Tekyz approach of Launch 1st exceptional founders are in love with the problem not the product.   David's expertise bridges cutting-edge AI technologies, workflow optimization, and startup ecosystem dynamics. When not transforming business strategies, he enjoys woodworking, golfing, and drawing leadership insights from his experience raising four successful sons. You can find out more about David and Tekyz at: https://sites.google.com/tekyz.com/david-hirschfeld?usp=sharing https://tekyz.podbean.com/ - Scaling Smarter Episodes. www.scalingsmarter.net - Schedule an interview https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://x.com/tekyzinc https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://www.facebook.com/dmhirschfeld       transcription:  00:04 Welcome  back to the Founders Sandbox.  I am Brenda McCabe, the host here on this monthly podcast, now in its third season. This podcast reaches entrepreneurs, business owners that are scaling. 00:31 professional service providers that provide services to these  entrepreneurs, and corporate board directors who, like me, are building resilient, purpose-driven, and scalable businesses with great corporate governance. My guests to this podcast are business owners themselves, professional service providers, and corporate directors who, like me, want to  use the power of the private company to build a better 01:01 world through storytelling with each of my guests in the sandbox. My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. So today I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, David Hirschfeld. David is the owner and CEO of Techies, 17 or 18 year old business now that boasts 01:29 a hyper exceptional development team that are building high ticket products in the B2B space.  Welcome David to the Founder Sandbox. Hi Brenda and thanks for having me. Great. So I'm delighted that we  actually did a dry run in February.  We've known each other for some time  and AI, we're going to be touching on AI.  And I think that the world of AI 01:58 particularly in software development,  has changed significantly since we last spoke in February. So we're going to be getting into  some, I think, novel concepts for  the listeners of the Founder Sandbox. So I wanted to, you I always talk about how I like to work with  growth stage companies  that  typically are bootstrapped  and 02:26 It's only at a later stage do they seek institutional investment  by building great corporate governance  and reducing the reliance on investor funding  until such a time that they choose the right type of investors that can help them scale. So when I found out what you do at Techies with Launch First  and the type of work you do in B2B businesses, I absolutely wanted to have you here  on the  founder sandbox. 02:56 So let's jump right in, right? I think I'm eager to learn more about how to scale your bespoke development at Techies, right? To scale my own business? Okay. So there's a lot of different aspects to scaling my business and I bootstrapped for the last 18 years. 03:25 I've never taken any investment  with techies.  And I've  done that very specifically because  it gives me a lot of freedom. I don't have  a reporting structure that I have to worry about. That doesn't mean that I can be lazy with my team.  To grow my team, I have a philosophy 03:52 that I only hire people that are smarter than I am.  And the  ones that are in a position to hire, they can only hire people that are smarter than them. And by  really sticking to this philosophy, even though sometimes it makes us grow a little slower than we would like, it means that when we bring in people, those people  contribute immediately and contribute in a way 04:21 that it's our job to get the impediments out of their way and to facilitate them  so that they can contribute and  help us grow the company. So I call it  the ball rolls uphill  here because  my job is to support everybody that is above me, which is everybody. And then the people that I support directly, their job is to support the people that are above them. 04:51 Because if we're hiring correctly, then  people that we bring in can contribute in the area that we're bringing them in way more than the person that's hiring them. Okay. Thank you for that. So before you launched Techies, you had a career in companies like,  I  believe, Computer Associates, right? Texas Experiments and TelaMotorola. 05:19 There was a period of time between your  experience in these large corporations before your launch tech is where you actually had your own startup  and  you sold it in 2000, right? And I believe you also learned perhaps with the second startup about how hard it is to find product market fit. Can you talk to that for my listeners, please? 05:46 I don't know that it's that hard to find product market fit. It depends if that's your focus or not. If your focus is to nail down product market fit, then  it's not that hard to determine whether you can achieve that or not fairly quickly.  You can do that by  selling your product to potential customers.  That sounds strange. Of course, we all want to sell our products, but 06:14 What I'm suggesting is you start selling your product before you have a product, before you have a  full product. And I don't mean an MVP, but a design prototype. You go out to the market and you start to sell it. If you have product market fit and you've identified the early adopter in your market and you know that they have a very high  need from a perception perspective  and there's a big cost to the problem that you're solving. 06:45 then you can offer them a big enough value upfront that they'll buy your product early and you can prove that there's a market for your product and they'll buy it in enough numbers that you  can achieve a measurable  metric, which I kind of call the golden ratio, which is three to one in terms of what is the lifetime value of a customer versus what does it cost to acquire that customer? And you can get to that three to one ratio. 07:13 in a prelaunch sale model before you ever started developing your product as a way of proving product market fit. Or you pivot quickly and cheaply because you're not having to rebuild a product that you've built in the wrong way. Or you  fail fast and cheap. And every entrepreneur's first goal should be to fail fast and cheap. know that sounds backwards, but that should be your goal is that you can fail fast and cheap or if you 07:42 If you fail to fail fast and cheap, that means you've found a path to revenue  and  product market fit. And now you know you have a viable business. making the investment to build the product  is a no brainer.  And you came upon this methodology, right? Yes.  because you did yourself when you had your first company, you did not understand the funding part, right?  Can you talk? 08:12 a bit about your specific example and then how that's informed now 17 years of techies and over 90 projects with startups. Okay. So my first company was Bootstrap. Okay.  And that one was successful and we grew it despite  me, it was me and a partner. And  despite ourselves, we grew it  over eight years. 08:39 where he ended up with 800 customers in 22 countries and sold it to a publicly traded firm out of Toronto. That was in the product food, snack food distribution business because that was what our product was focused on. So I started another company about five years later, not realizing the things that I did the first time. 09:08 that made it  so successful,  which really fit the launch first model to a large degree.  But the second time I built a product that would have been successful had I followed my first model,  but I didn't. So I went the route of building an MVP and getting customers on a free version of it, and then going out and trying to raise money, which is the very classic approach that the SaaS products 09:38 take now.  And the problem is with that approach is that you end up digging a really deep hole  in terms of the investment that you make to build the product with enough functionality that you can convince people it's worth putting an investment in and you're not generating any revenue at the time. And I should have just started selling the product and generating subscription revenue right from the beginning. First of all, I would have been able to  raise money much more easily. 10:08 Secondly, I would have not needed to raise money as much if I'd focused on sales. The problem with a lot of founders is they fall in love with their product. They believe that people will buy it at enough numbers and that investors will see the potential. they're afraid of sales. I've fallen into this trap before too. I've done it both ways. And I can tell you selling early 10:38 and staying focused on the customer and the problem are the way to be successful. So founders who I find are consistently successful, they are focused on the problem, they love the problem. The product is just the natural conclusion to solving the problem, not something to be in love with. They spend their time talking to customers about the problems.  So how does a potential customer find you and work with you? 11:08 Oh, they can find me at Techies or they can find me at LaunchFirst, was spelled launch1st.com. And they can find me on LinkedIn. And then to work with me, it's just give me a call, send me an email, we'll set up a Zoom. I'll start to learn about what you're trying to accomplish and what your requirements are. And I'll typically spend quite a bit of time with any potential clients. 11:39 in  one to usually multiple calls or Zooms, learning and  creating estimates and doing a lot of work in advance with the idea that there'll be a natural conclusion at the end of this that they'll wanna start working with me in a paid fashion. So there's a lot of value that my clients get from me whether they end up contracting me or not.  And how, again, back to,  thank you for that and that. 12:08 how to contact you will be in the show notes. But what types of sectors do you work in?  You know, in your introduction, I talk about high ticket B2B, right?  who are the,  so  what founder that's has some idea today?  What would be  their call to action to find techies? And what would you, is it launch first before you go down? 12:35 No, it's not necessarily. It may be an existing company that  is trying to implement AI or implement workflow automation, or they have a project and they don't have the IT team or capacity to handle it.  We love those types of projects. It might be an existing startup that is struggling with their software development team and they're not 13:04 getting  to the end goal that they're expecting and the product's buggy, it's taking too long,  there's constant delays, they're way over budget  and they  need to get this thing done. And  I call those recovery projects,  they're probably my favorite because people  recognize very quickly  the difference  that we bring. 13:33 and they really, really appreciate us.  As far as what sectors,  business sectors,  healthcare, law enforcement,  prop tech, real estate, finance,  entertainment, I mean, we work in  many, many different sectors over the last 18 years.  So  regardless in  B2B, B2B2C,  not so much e-commerce unless there's some 14:03 complex workflow associated with your particular e-commerce, but there's lots of really good solutions for e-commerce that  don't require developers to be involved.  But  mobile, web, IoT,  definitely everything is AI now. Absolutely. And in fact, when we last spoke,  I'd like to say that you started to drink your own Kool-Aid at Techies. 14:33 you're starting to actually use AI automation for internal functions as well as projects at Techies. So can you walk my listeners through how you're using  AI automation  and what's the latest with agentic AI?  So let's do the first.  Yeah,  okay.  So there are a bunch of questions there. So  let me start with 15:02 that we're building products internally  at Techies to help us with our own workflows.  These products though  are  applicable to almost any development company or any company with a development team.  Some of them are, and some of them are applicable to companies that are, well, so one product  is  putting voice capability in front of project management tool. 15:32 and we use JIRA and JIRA is an incredibly technical tool for project managers and development teams to use to  their projects, requirements, their  track bugs, all of that.  And so your relationship with what I call relationship with project management is very technical one. If you're a client, some clients are willing to  go through the learning curve so that they can enter their own... 15:59 bugs and feature requests and things like that directly into JIRA. Most don't.  They  want to send us emails, which is fine,  and just give us a list of what's going on and the problems that they're finding or the things that they need  for a future version and the planning and the documentation, everything else. This is a real technical thing. We're going to make it a very natural personal relationship by  adding voice in front of all this so that you can 16:29 be sharing your screen with your little voice app and say, just found a problem on the screen.  And  the voice app can see the screen. It knows your project. It knows your requirements. And it can identify problems on the screen that you may not have even noticed.  And it can also prevent you from reporting bugs that have already been reported and tell you when they're planned to be built.  And all of this just with a verbal discussion with the app. 16:58 that basically knows your project.  Kind of like talking to a project manager in real time, but they don't have to write down notes and  they can instantly  look up anything about your project in terms of what's been reported in terms of bugs or feature requests  and update them or create new ones for you or just report them to you and tell you when things are planned to be built and released or. 17:24 where they've already been released and maybe you need to clear your cache so you can see the change, whatever.  Yeah. So it be like an  avatar, but it's trained and it's  specific to Jira  in your case?  In the first version, it's actually being built architected so that we'll be able to add other project management tools to it besides Jira in the future.  to begin with, because we use Jira,  it's going to work directly with Jira to start. 17:54 And this, by the way, you asked about agentic workflows,  right? So we're  building an agentic workflow  in this tool where we have more  different agents  that work together to resolve these issues.  so we have an agent that reads and writes documentation to JIRA.  We have an agent that communicates with  the user and the user might be the programmer 18:23 might be a person in QA, it might be a client for a lot of different things. And we have an analyst agent that when the person talks, the voice agent says to the analyst agent, here's what I understand. Here's the information I just got. Go do your work and come back and get me the answer. And it'll speak to the JIRA agent to get the information. It will also speak directly to us. 18:52 a vector database, which is a database where all the documentation from that project  is ingested into our own  separate AI model so that the context of all the communication is about their project and doesn't go off into other directions.  And then can  get back. So this is an agentic workflow.  The idea of 19:20 agents is like everybody keeps talking about agents. Not everybody is really clear on what that even means. Can you define  that?  an agent is an AI  model  that you can interact with that is focused on  one specific area of expertise.  So if it's a travel agent, the word agent fits very well there, then their expertise would be on everything related to 19:49 travel and booking travel and looking up  options and comparing prices. And  that would be an AI  travel agent.  So that's very different from an AI project management agent, very different from an AI financial analyst agent.  So each agent specializes in its own area of expertise and may draw from specific 20:18 repositories of information that are  specific to that particular agent's area of expertise.  And they actually look from the perspective of that type of person, if it was a person. So,  and so they'll respond in a way that is consistent with how somebody who is a project manager would respond to you when you're talking to them, asking you questions about your requirements, knows what 20:46 information it needs to be able to assess it properly, things like that.  wouldn't be very good about travel because that's  not its area of expertise. Right.  So is it  common to have companies that are creating with their own large language model, right? Or their workflow processes internally to the company to create their own agent AI? 21:14 Or is there a marketplace now where you can say, want this type of agent to get in. This is a very basic question, but  do build it? Right. Or do you buy it? Or is it something in between? It's something in between.  So there are tools that allow you to  basically collect agents out there.  And there's a difference between an agent and a context.  Cause you hear a lot about model context switching and things like, don't know. 21:44 if your audience knows these things.  Or model context protocol. A context is not an agent, but it has some agent capabilities because it's kind of specializing your model in a certain area. But you would use this, but you're not, if it's a true agent, then  it's probably tied to its own vector database. 22:12 that gets trained with specific information. It might be company's information. It might be information, let's say if I'm a security agent, then I'm going to be trained on the entire NIST system as well as all of my security architecture that's currently in place. And that so that it could monitor and 22:41 assess instantly whether there's  security vulnerabilities, which you wouldn't ask Chet GPT to do that. No. Right? Because it couldn't. Because it doesn't know  anything about your organization or environment. And  it  really also doesn't know how to prioritize  what matters and what doesn't at any given moment. Whereas a  security agent, that would be what it does. 23:10 I don't know if I answered that question. Oh, bad thing about building or buying.  there are- Or something in between,  Yeah. So there are tools that you can use to build workflows  and  bring in different agents that already exist. And  you can use something like OpenAI or Claude  and  use it to create an agent and give it some intelligence and- 23:37 give it a specific, in this case, you're giving it a specific context.  You could even  tie a special machine learning database to it  and make it even more agentic in that way.  And then  build these workflows where you're  like, let's say a marketing workflow,  where you're saying you first go out and research all the people who are your  ideal customer profile. 24:07 I was going to say ICP, but I'm trying not to use acronyms because not everybody knows every acronym.  Ideal customer profile.  And then it finds all these people that fit your ideal customer profile. Then it says, well, which of these people  are  in the countries that I do business? And then it illuminates the ones that aren't. then which ones, and it may be using  the same agent or different agents to do this.  Then once it's nailed it down to the very discrete 24:37 set of customers. Now  the next step in the workflow is, okay, now  enrich their data  of these people to find their email and other ways of contacting them as well as other information about them so that I have a really full picture of what kind of activity are they active  socially? they speak? Do they post? What are they speaking about? What are they posting about? What events are they going to? Things like that. 25:07 So that would be the next step and that'd be an agent that's doing all the enriching.  And then after that, the next step would be to call basically call a writing agent to go do, am I writing an email? Am I writing a LinkedIn connection post? Am I doing both?  Set up a drip campaign and start reaching out to these people one at a time  with very customized specific language, right? That  is in your voice. 25:34 It doesn't sound like it's written by a typical AI outreach thing. All right, so these would be  steps in a workflow that you could use with several different tools to build the workflows and then calling these different agents. 25:48 Let's go back to the launched first. What would be a typical engagement with a company? you know, they, um, the founders that have the greatest success in your experiences are the ones that love the problem space and not the product. All right. So walk my listeners through. 26:17 What a typical engagement. it's staff augmentation. it  full out  outsourcing? it tech?  because it's very complex. I can touch so many. can touch high  tech and high ticket B2B products,  sector agnostic. what,  put some legs on this for my listeners, please. Sure, sure. We're not. 26:46 so much a staff augmentation company, although we'll do that if asked to, but that's not  the kind of business that we  look for.  We look for project type work. So a typical engagement for launch first would be  somebody wants to launch a product, they're in the concept phase. We help refine the concept and we build out,  help that we do the design and then we build a high fidelity prototype, which is a design prototype. 27:16 When I demo a design prototype to somebody, they think that they're looking at a finished product,  but  it's not. It doesn't actually do anything. It just looks like it  does everything.  So it's very animated set of mock-ups is another way to look at it.  And it's important because you can build out the big vision of the product this way in a couple of months, whereas 27:46 it takes instead of, you so you're looking at the two year roadmap when we're done of the product. If we were to build an MVP, then you're going to see a very limited view of the product and it's going to cost a lot more to build that MVP than it takes to build this design prototype. Now we're in the process of doing this. We're also nailing down who that early adopter is. And there's a, there's a very, 28:14 metrics driven methodology for doing this.  your launch first. Within launch first, right. Okay. All right. And then  we'll help the client build a marketing funnel and help them start to generate sales.  We're not doing the selling, they're doing the selling. And it's important that founders do the selling because they need to hear what customers are saying about the thing they're demoing, why they want it, why they don't. 28:43 So that  if we need to pivot, which we can do easily and quickly with a design prototype,  then we can  pivot and then go and test the model again, two or three or four times in the space of a couple of months.  And we'll either find a path to revenue or accept the fact that this probably isn't the right product for the right time.  But in the process of doing this, you're learning a lot about the market and about the potential customer. 29:13 I want to be clear about something. Almost every founder that comes to  that I meet with, they love the product, not the problem. They started out with a problem that they realized they had a good solution for and they forgot all about the problem at that point. And so I spend a lot of time with founders  reminding them why the  problem is all that matters  and what that means and how to approach customers, potential customers so that 29:41 you're syncing with their problems, not telling them about this product that you're building because nobody cares about your product. All they care about is what they're struggling with.  And if they believe that you really understand that, then they  care about whether you can solve that problem for them or 30:01 And can  I be  audacious and ask you what a typical engagement duration is like? So this would be for launch first. Yes. If it's a,  and our hope is that they'll  find a path to revenue and start building the product and engage us for the development. Cause that's really our business is building the products.  So, but it's not a requirement.  And,  and our typical engagement with our clients are several years. 30:32 Not all of them, but most of them, would say. Once they start working with us, they just continue to work with us until they decide to bring in their own in-house team  or they fail eventually, which many of our clients do, which is why I  created Launch First. Right. You often talk about your hyper exceptional team at Techies. What is it that's so highly exceptional? Talk to me about your team. Where are they? Yeah. 31:02 And if you go to my website, which is tekyz.com,  you'll see at the very top of it  in the header above the fold, it says hyper exceptional development team. And I don't expect people to believe me  because I write that down or I tell them that I expect them to ask me, well, what does that mean? Do you have evidence? And  that's the question I want to get because I do.  Because when you work in an exceptional manner, 31:31 as a natural consequence of working that way, you produce certain artifacts  that the typical development teams don't produce. And I'm not saying there aren't other exceptional teams, but they're really few and far between. And what makes a team exceptional is a constant need to  improve their ability to deliver  and the level of quality that they deliver as well and the speed at which they develop. It's all of these things. 31:59 So,  and, you know, after 18 years, we've done a lot of improving and a lot of automation internally,  because  that allows our team to work in a really disciplined protocol manner without having to feel like they're under the strict  discipline and protocol of,  you  know, a difficult environment to work in.  And so we  create automation everywhere we can. The voice... 32:27 tool is one of those automations.  The way we  do status reports, it's very clear at the level of detail that we provide every week  to every client in terms of status reports  where we're showing here's what we estimated, here's the actual, here's our percent variance  on how much time we spent and how much it's costing.  We want to always be within 10 % above or below. 32:56 Either  being above or below is not,  know,  the fact that we're ahead of that doesn't necessarily mean that's a good thing, right? So we want to be accurate with our estimates.  And we are typically within 10%. In fact, our largest customer last year, we did a retrospective and we were within six and a half percent of what our estimates were for the whole year.  and that's a,  we're pretty happy with that number. 33:24 I think most teams are looking at many, many times that in terms of variance.  it's not that uncommon for teams to be double or triple what they're or even higher what the actual estimate was. So  when we do invoicing, we invoice for each person at their rate. 33:50 based on their level of expertise, which is all part of our agreement upfront. So the client is very transparent every month for the hours that they work. And we attach the daily time sheets to every invoice. I'm the only company I know of right now that does that. I know there are others. I've seen monthly, but I've never seen daily. Yeah. Yeah. Because for me, if I could ask, well, 34:18 why did this person ask a work that many hours that last month? What did they do? I hate that feeling that I get when somebody asks that question. I know they're only asking because they have to justify it to somebody else or whatever the reason, but I don't like the way it feels because it feels like my integrity is being questioned. I don't get upset at people for asking me that. I just feel like I'm not giving them enough information if they have to ask me that question. So we started about eight years ago. 34:47 providing the daily time sheets because I don't like that question. And we never get questioned on our  invoices ever anymore. I bet you it's informed you  as well in  future  projects,  maybe on  including workflow automation in your own internal processes, right? When you see people's time sheets, right? And you've gone over budget. So it informs you internally. So it's not only for the client. 35:16 I suspect, right? No, it's not. Right. And we use it ourselves to also, because it also helps us looking at our overhead costs because not everything gets built to the client. And so we track all our own times, you know, what we're spending doing what. And we don't get to, it's not like a developer has to spend a lot of time or a QA person or whatever, putting in a lot of detail. We just need a couple of bullets, you know, every day in the time sheet with the, whatever they spend. 35:45 If they spent four hours on one thing and three on another, they'll just break it into two entries just to make it easy.  And that's important for us, or they may be working on two different projects and each project. So when we do the timesheets also every month, we give our clients a breakdown by project. So if we're working on four different projects  for a client  or even one project, but it has four different really 36:15 functional elements that are very clearly different. Like let's say a mobile app and a web app  and a  particular client implementation. Each one of those gets assigned its own project and we break down summaries of the time spent on each of those every month and who spent the time on those, along with the daily time sheets, along with the invoice.  And nobody else does that because it takes a lot of discipline and protocol and you have to have lot of systems in place 36:45 to do that without  literally getting everybody to quit, right? That works for you. And nobody minds doing it because it's easy because of all the systems we put in place to do that.  That's the whole point, right? Right. were  not particularly happy of getting asked that question oftentimes. So eight years ago, you set out to  provide the information on a daily basis, which is incredible.  We started that with blended rates like a lot of companies do. 37:14 And then I didn't like that because at the end of a project when most of it's QA, people would start to get frustrated that they're still getting billed the same blended rate, even though for the more expensive period at the beginning of the project,  I thought, okay, forget this. Well, just bill based on individual.  And then I didn't get those questions anymore, but then I would get questions about individuals on the month. And that's when I started doing the time sheets. 37:43 And like I said, I'm sure there's other companies that do it, but I haven't run into  one or somebody that works with one. So  that's an exceptional thing that we do. But it also allows us to do  really, really good reporting to the client on status on what we've spent our time on, what we're expecting to spend our time on  next week, what we just spent our time on this week, where we are. 38:12 in terms of our plan for the month, things like that.  So let's switch gears, David.  Yeah. Back to  actually the podcast and  some of my guests and listeners  are corporate board directors. So they're sitting on either advisory boards or fiduciary corporate boards.  And with all the hype around AI. 38:39 it's not uncommon for them to be asking, what are we doing, right? For existing companies, right? And  I'd like you to walk my listeners through while it's in the, you know,  in the imaginary realm, what is it? I think any founder today that's actually scaling, right? Has to have some AI element. At least I've even heard you need to have it. 39:08 an AI officer in the company. So what's your take on that? What would you respond to either to your board of advisors, your advisory board, or your board of directors?  So,  and of course, a lot of it depends on the type of company you are. Absolutely. Right. If  you're making  alternative material I-beams, for example,  for skyscraper construction, then 39:37 AI, other than maybe in the design process of these specialized materials,  AI may not be as big a critical factor, although for invoice reconciliation and  distribution and  scheduling and all that, AI could be a huge value to you if you don't have super efficient systems already.  For most everybody else though, if you have not embraced the need to 40:06 leverage AI and everything you're doing,  then you're way behind already.  That doesn't mean you have to be in a race to do this. just, because  I'm  of the belief that  you have to slow down to speed up. But you do need to make it a priority.  And in a lot of different ways. Number one is, 40:36 The most obvious is workflow automation. You should be probably tackling  workflow automation as just a part of your constant improvement program  to become more efficient, whether it's with AI or not.  But AI is particularly good at workflow automation  because it can tackle steps in that workflow that couldn't be tackled without AI.  So the  first thing 41:06 the companies should be doing if they're not doing it is documenting all of their processes,  all of their tribal knowledge into playbooks. So when you have somebody who's an expert in something in your company and they're the person who's the only one that knows how to do it and so we can't live without them, that's a bottleneck for scaling. Because if you bring somebody else in to expand their capacity, they're going to... 41:32 put a big dependency on that person with all the expertise, which is going to cause problems.  So  anybody in a position like that should be documenting all of their  procedures and protocols and especially all the nuances and all the edge cases into playbooks.  And there should be some centralized playbook repository for the company. And this becomes part of your intellectual property and part of your value if you ever 42:02 you're trying to raise money or you're trying to sell your company. So it increases your value. So you do that, then AI,  you start to look at automating those workflows because now they're documented. So now what can be automated in them from just a workflow automation perspective. And then how much can you implement AI in there? Because now AI can learn to make the same kinds of decisions that this person is making. 42:31 And this is like the low hanging fruit that I'm talking about right now. Right. Exactly. Right. Because the bigger stuff is if we implement AI in here, what workflows would we totally  throw away and start from scratch?  Because we can think of way more sophisticated ways of addressing this now that we have intelligence involved in all these steps.  But that's later. 42:57 worry about that once you get your arms around implementing AI,  automated workflows and then- So workflow automation. So playbooks, workflows and AI in your automated workflows. That's sort of the stepped wise process. Excellent. You heard it here  on the founder sandbox. Thank you, David.  And if you're not sure how to do all that, 43:25 ask AI, okay, here's my company. What should I be focusing on if I wanna implement playbooks, workflow automation and AI? And AI will help you figure this all out. Right. That's a jewel here. So what'd you do? Chat GBT, co-pilot, what's your complexity? Where would you go to? All right. Well, it just depends on the flavor of the day. Right now. 43:53 I was using chat GPT primarily for this stuff just because it was a first and I'm very comfortable with the apps. have them everywhere. And Claude's recently come out with a  new version and it's in some ways I'm just finding the output way more organized and smarter. And so I've been using Claude more in the last couple of weeks, but that'll change in another week or two.  Any one of them will do a pretty decent job. 44:21 I'm  not using perplexity because it's built on top of the other ones.  But perplexity is a great tool if you're newer with this because it makes some of the... It's a little bit more accessible for somebody who doesn't know how to use AI.  Gemini is also  really good, but that's  more of a technical... And there's so many things you can do. 44:49 with AI that you wouldn't even think about. And I'll give you an example, more as a brain opening exercise for everybody than anything else. Because this is something I did about seven weeks ago.  I,  chat GPT had just come out a week or two before with their vision capability in the mobile app. And for  those of you who don't know it,  with chat GPT, there's a talk 45:19 button. It's not  the microphone. It's the one that looks like a sound wave  in the mobile app. You tap that, and now you have a voice conversation with chat, which I use this constantly. Even when I'm working with,  I've got some contractors at my house whose English isn't very good, so I ask it to do real-time translation for me. And it does matter the language.  And I start talking, and it translates to their language. And they respond 45:49 in their language and it translates to English and it's doing it perfectly. And so I can have a very natural conversation with anybody just holding my phone up in front of them now.  Right?  But it has this vision capability  where when you go into that voice mode, you tap the camera next to it, and now it's looking out the front of your screen while you're talking to it. And so I'll give you a couple of examples where I've used it  six weeks ago and again, like 46:18 weeks later and I now used it many times like this.  I was in  Lowe's, which is a  store for home improvement.  And  for some project I was on, my wife calls me and says, I need fertilizer for a hibiscus. And I say, well, what do I get? She says, anything that says hibiscus on it, it'll be fine. I said, okay, fine. And if anybody that knows these big box stores, there's like hundreds of bags of fertilizer of different brands. 46:48 And I couldn't find one that said hibiscus. This is a typical thing with my wife. Oh, just look for this. And of course, there isn't that. So I asked Chess GPT, okay, I'm in  Lowe's  and I'm looking for a fertilizer for hibiscus.  What would you suggest? And it said, oh, there's a number of brands that are high acid.  And I said, we'll recommend a brand. Tonal is a really good brand. And I said, okay. So I'm looking and I can't find it. 47:18 So I walked 30 feet back and I'm talking, right? I'm having this, know, people are looking at me like, what the hell is he doing? And I walked 30 feet back because there's many, many shelves, you know, columns of shelves with fertilizer. I walked back and I turned on the vision and I say, okay, there's all the fertilizers. And I'm moving my phone across all these shelves. say, do you see tonal here? And it says, yes, look for the one in the red and white bag. 47:48 And  I see it on the shelf. So I walk straight forward. see a red and white bag. That's not tonal. said, this isn't it. And she, cause it's a woman's voice that I have, she says,  it's two shelves to the left, second from the top.  I walk over there and it's right where she said it was. Crazy. And you're not a beta user. So this is available today. This is available. It's been available for a couple of months. And then 48:18 My daughter-in-law asked me to get something from the pharmacy, from CVS, another  big box pharmacy store, right? And this is something I don't even know if I'm in the right aisle because it's something I've never bought. So I ask it, I say, I'm looking for this brand  and I'm not sure if I'm in the right aisle or not, but I'm going to walk down the aisle and tell me if you see it. As I'm walking down the aisle, holding it straight forward so it can see both sides.  And it says, well, 48:45 Yes, I'm familiar with the brand. You should look for it in a green and white box. then she goes like this. Oh, I see it. It's down there on the right on the bottom shelf. And I turn and I look and it's right by my right foot. 48:58 You heard it here. This is crazy. think it's a bit creepy.  How many times have you been looking for something on a shelf? You know, and you're like, oh, how long, how many hours is this going to take me to spot it?  Good internet connection and all that. So, oh my goodness. It's creepy and it's wonderful. So  same time.  the same time. Yeah. Yeah. For quality of life and even for,  um, yeah.  So 49:25 That's a mind opening thing is all the reason I bring that up. Excellent. Hey, let's go. Let's continue on in the founder sandbox. I'd like to ask each of my guests to  share with me.  I'm all about working with resilient, purpose driven and scalable companies in the growth phase. So what does resilience mean to you? You can either answer, you know, what's the first thing that comes out of your, you cannot use chat, GBT. I'm not fancy. No hands. 49:55 No hands, and I don't have the voice version going because you'd hear it. Podcast we could do it.  And we are real. We're not. Yeah, we are real. We're not. So I think that's, I don't think that's a difficult question to answer. Resilience means opportunity. So no matter what happens, even if it seems terrible, what  opportunity does that create? Excellent. If you ask that. 50:22 keep reframing everything from that perspective,  it creates resilience. Right. Thank you. What about purpose-driven?  Purpose-driven  means having  a clear  long-term path and goal  and  asking yourself if the things you're doing keep you on purpose to that. 50:56 Scalable. What's scalable mean for you? Scalable for me means  eliminating tribal knowledge or not eliminating it, but documenting tribal knowledge.  First of all, figuring out how you generate revenue and then how you expand your ability to generate revenue, which means growing your 51:25 growing your team, growing your capacity  and identifying the bottlenecks and focusing all your energy on the bottlenecks. And usually the bottlenecks have to do  with tribal knowledge or with  lack of workflow automation. Wow, you know, it's easier said than done though, that tribal knowledge, it is resistant, right? Oh yeah,  because it's  career,  what's the word I'm trying to think of? 51:55 It  keeps you in your job forever if you're the only one that knows how to do the thing. Absolutely. That's for another podcast, David. My  final question today is,  did you have fun in the Founder Sandbox? Oh, yes.  I had a lot of fun. Thanks. That's a great question too. Thank you, Brenda. Did you have fun? 52:20 Did you? I had had fun. And particularly in this last part, right? Cause we're talking about some heavy duty, you know, uses of, um, agentic AI, right. And scalable, you know, LTV, CAC and all that. And then we get to hear these real life, you know, kind of creepy, um, uh, uses of, um, on our phones today with, um, with AI, which is, which is quite amazing. But I also know that in your world of techies, 52:50 your team, which is distributed, have a lot of fun events too. So you probably- have one more thing on the whole scalable thing. You have to be compassionately ruthless or ruthlessly compassionate, however you want to say it. Okay. So that the people, every, and the ruthless is anything that's going to get in the way of you growing your company, which benefits everybody in the company. 53:19 it needs to be addressed in a ruthless way. But if you build a culture of ruthlessly compassionate, then all the people that work for you feel that same level of ruthlessness to protect the company and make it grow. And you practice what you preach, I suspect, at Techies. Yes. Yes. It took me a while, but if we accidentally hire the wrong person, either because 53:45 we made a mistake in the process or they faked us out and we recognize they're not smart enough. Literally, that's usually the problem. They're not smart enough to carry their weight. We fire them immediately. We don't try to bring them along because you can't improve somebody's IQ. You can improve any other aspect, but their IQ is their IQ.  And  that will be a bottleneck forever. 54:13 in our team and it'll require other people to carry that person. And it sends the wrong message to the team that I don't value them enough to make sure that we only surround them with people that are going to inspire them and help them grow. Excellent. And I suspect they are not fungible by AI, your employees, not techies. I mean, we've gotten better and better. 54:40 at not making those mistakes over the years. So that doesn't typically happen. takes us, we're much more careful about how we hire.  AI gives us the ability to recruit faster, more broadly,  along with workflow automation. But  what I mean by real, this is the compassionate. Once my team understood this, now they embody that and  they will get rid of somebody if they made a mistake. I don't have to force the issue ever anymore because 55:10 they recognize how much, important it is to protect their teams. So to my listeners, if you liked this episode today with the CEO and founder of Techies, sign up for the monthly release of founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who provide their examples of how they're building companies or consulting with companies  to make them more resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven. 55:40 to make profits for good.  Signing off for today. See you next month in the Founder Sandbox. Thank you.  

Imagine turning down $100 million salaries. That's apparently what's happening at OpenAI. And that's just the tip of the newsworthy AI iceberg for the week. ↳ Meta reportedly failed to acquire Perplexity. Could Apple try next? ↳ Why is Microsoft cutting so many jobs? ↳ Why are AI systems blackmailing at will? ↳ Will too much AI use lead to brain rot?Let's talk AI news shorties. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Thoughts on this? Join the convo.Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: info@youreverydayai.comConnect with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:$100M AI Salaries Being DeclinedMeta's AI Talent War EffortsMeta's Unsuccessful Acquisitions OverviewBrain Rot Concerns with AI UseOpenAI's $200M DoD ContractGoogle's Voice AI Search RolloutGoogle Gemini 2.5 in ProductionSoftBank's $1T Robotics InvestmentAnthropic's AI Model Risks ExposedMicrosoft and Amazon AI Job CutsTimestamps:00:00 Weekly AI News and Insights04:17 Meta's Major AI Acquisitions08:50 AI Impact on Student Writing Skills12:53 OpenAI Expands Government AI Program15:31 Google Launches Voice AI Search19:32 Google AI Models' Stability Feature22:55 "Project Crystal Land Initiative"27:17 AI Acquisition Talks Intensify29:43 "Apple Eyes Perplexity Acquisition"31:54 Apple's Potential Market Decline36:57 AI Ethics and Safety Concerns40:44 Amazon Warns of AI-Driven Layoffs42:44 AI's Impact on Job Market45:24 "Canvas Tips for Business Intelligence"Keywords:$100 million salaries, AI talent war, Meta, OpenAI, AI signing bonuses, Andrew Bosworth, Scale AI acquisition, Alexander Wang, Safe Superintelligence, Daniel Gross, Nat Friedman, Perplexity AI, Brain rot from AI, chat GBT and brain, MIT study on AI, SAT style essays using AI, AI neural activity, AI and cognitive effort, AI in government, $200 million contract with Department of Defense, OpenAI in security, ChatGPTgov, Federal AI initiatives, Google Gemini 2.5, AI mission-critical business, Gemini 2.5 flashlight, AI model stability, SoftBank $1 trillion investment, Project Crystal Land, Arizona robotics hub, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Embodied AI, AI job cuts, Microsoft layoffs, Amazon AI workforce, Anthropic study on AI ethics, AI blackmail, Google voice-based AI search, AI search live, New AI apps, Apple acquisition interest in Perplexity, AI-powered search engine, Siri integration, AI-driven efficiencies, GenSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Try Google Veo 3 today! Sign up at gemini.google to get started. Try Google Veo 3 today! Sign up at gemini.google to get started.

Tell us what you think about this podcast!Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that in the last days, evil men and seducers will grow worse—deceiving others and being deceived themselves. Paul urges Timothy to continue in the truth he's learned. Knowing the Bible isn't enough; we must understand what it means and why it means what it says.Seducing spirits work through people, leading saints away from truth. The only defense is staying rooted in Apostolic teaching and obeying godly counsel. Those who reject sound doctrine and their pastor's guidance open the door to error and destruction.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that in the last days, evil men and seducers will grow worse—deceiving others and being deceived themselves. Paul urges Timothy to continue in the truth he's learned. Knowing the Bible isn't enough; we must understand what it means and why it means what it says.Seducing spirits work through people, leading saints away from truth. The only defense is staying rooted in Apostolic teaching and obeying godly counsel. Those who reject sound doctrine and their pastor's guidance open the door to error and destruction.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In “The Builder,” Bishop Rader Johnson teaches from the foundation scripture found in Matthew 16:13–19 emphasizing that God's church is built upon the revelation of who He is—Jesus Christ. This divine revelation is essential, because it's only by knowing who Jesus is that we can be transformed to be like Him—holy. Holiness cannot be achieved through personal righteousness alone, as in nominal churches; it comes through the New Birth experience, which includes being baptized in the Holy Ghost.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In “The Builder,” Bishop Rader Johnson teaches from the foundation scripture found in Matthew 16:13–19 emphasizing that God's church is built upon the revelation of who He is—Jesus Christ. This divine revelation is essential, because it's only by knowing who Jesus is that we can be transformed to be like Him—holy. Holiness cannot be achieved through personal righteousness alone, as in nominal churches; it comes through the New Birth experience, which includes being baptized in the Holy Ghost.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In “The Builder,” Bishop Rader Johnson teaches from the foundation scripture found in Matthew 16:13–19 emphasizing that God's church is built upon the revelation of who He is—Jesus Christ. This divine revelation is essential, because it's only by knowing who Jesus is that we can be transformed to be like Him—holy. Holiness cannot be achieved through personal righteousness alone, as in nominal churches; it comes through the New Birth experience, which includes being baptized in the Holy Ghost.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In “The Builder,” Bishop Rader Johnson teaches from the foundation scripture found in Matthew 16:13–19 emphasizing that God's church is built upon the revelation of who He is—Jesus Christ. This divine revelation is essential, because it's only by knowing who Jesus is that we can be transformed to be like Him—holy. Holiness cannot be achieved through personal righteousness alone, as in nominal churches; it comes through the New Birth experience, which includes being baptized in the Holy Ghost.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In “The Builder,” Bishop Rader Johnson teaches from the foundation scripture found in Matthew 16:13–19 emphasizing that God's church is built upon the revelation of who He is—Jesus Christ. This divine revelation is essential, because it's only by knowing who Jesus is that we can be transformed to be like Him—holy. Holiness cannot be achieved through personal righteousness alone, as in nominal churches; it comes through the New Birth experience, which includes being baptized in the Holy Ghost.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Think AI is hitting a wall? Nope. This is just the start. Actually, we're at the first chapter. Here's what that means, and how you can move your company ahead. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Thoughts on this? Join the conversationUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: info@youreverydayai.comConnect with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:Generative AI's current phaseMeta's in-house AI chips developmentOpenAI's new developer toolsDay zero of AI and future prospectsReinforcement learning advancementsEmergent reasoning capabilities in AIBusiness implications of AI advancementsAI in healthcare and scienceTimestamps:00:00 Day Zero of AI03:31 AI Tools Enhance Customization & Access09:02 Reinforcement Learning Enhances AI Reasoning11:27 Agentic AI: The Future of Tasks15:59 Tech Potential vs. Everyday Utilization18:48 AI Models Offer Broad Benefits23:15 "Generative AI: Optimism and Oversight"27:08 Generative AI vs. Domain-Specific AI29:24 Superhuman AI: Next FrontierKeywords:Generative AI, Fortune 100 leaders, chat GBT, Microsoft Copilot, enterprise companies, day zero of AI, livestream podcast, free daily newsletter, leveraging AI, capital expenditures, Meta AI chips, Nvidia, Taiwan's TSMC, AI infrastructure investments, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, responses API, agents SDK, legal research, customer support, deep research, agentic AI, supervised learning, reinforcement learning, language models, health care, computational biology, AlphaFold, protein folding prediction.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Ready for ROI on GenAI? Go to youreverydayai.com/partner

Tell us what you think about this podcast!Offerings are an act of faith, obedience, and sacrifice. In Ezra 1, those who couldn't physically rebuild the temple were still expected to support the work through freewill offerings—the first biblical example of a building fund. God's people are called to give willingly and consistently, as shown in Exodus 36, where the people gave so much that they had to be stopped.Offerings should reflect how God has blessed us (Deut. 16:10)—not based on pressure, but from a grateful heart.For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

00:00 - 09:50 - Introduction, UFC, steroids, recent training tales09:50 - 16:01 - How to improve your squeeze strength16:01 - 18:30 - Video games & exercises for sport 18:30 - 21:15 - Seated guard & CrossFit for jiu jitsu 21:15 - 23:00 - Steroids 23:00 - 24:45 - Creatine 24:45 - 29:15 - Strength training for sport and chat GBT 29:15 -35:60 - Hundred men vs Gorilla 35:60 - 41:30 - Unconventional training 41:30 - 45:15 - Biggest meal eaten 45:15 - 47:28 - RNC and closing notes Sponsors: Progress: https://www.progressjj-europe.com Use code RUNESCAPE at checkout for discount on any productsLess Impressed More Involved: https://outlierdb.com/ - use code RUNESCAPE for 50% off your first monthHow to work with us:Charles Strength Training Programs GET 7 DAY FREE MAT STRONG PROGRAM: https://mailchi.mp/charlesallanprice/mat-strong-landing-page BJJ Workouts Instructional: https://bjjfanatics.com/collections/new-releases/products/building-workouts-for-bjj-by-charles-allan-price 1:1 Coaching Inquiries: https://7kdbbkmkmsl.typeform.com/to/nSZHpCOL Eoghan's InstructionalsEoghans Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/eoghanoflanagansubmissiongrappling?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaeVwoFHqyoZbzOnBQj1A_HdJuseIdZ5JeBDv2WviMJErMprNx8nBaRtazKB8A_aem_hDebDKTGIEpirScyGQEG0w Leg Lock Instructional: https://bjjfanatics.com/products/leglocks-the-uk-variant-by-eoghan-oflanagan Half Butterfly Instructional: https://bjjfanatics.com/products/down-right-sloppy-half-butterfly-by-eoghan-oflanagan Countering the outside passer: https://bjjfanatics.com/products/sloppy-seconds-countering-the-outside-passer-by-eoghan-o-flanagan Los Banditos Gym: https://losbanditos.club/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tell us what you think about this podcast!Faith is central to the believer's walk with God. It's not just belief—it's substance, though intangible, and it's powerful enough to make what we hope for feel already within reach. True faith isn't in ourselves or our ability to believe—it is faith in God, and it originates from Him. As we learn and grow in His word, our faith is activated and strengthened. For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson expounds on Holiness (defined as "all that God is"). We are taught that in order for us to please God we have to emulate him, we have to live holy. Holiness is an absolute requirement if we are to see God. But first we must understand what holiness is: pleasing God from the heart, being convinced that God's way is right. It involves being committed and our attitude toward God (should be that we love God and we want to please him). Find out more in this important series!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson expounds on Holiness (defined as "all that God is"). We are taught that in order for us to please God we have to emulate him, we have to live holy. Holiness is an absolute requirement if we are to see God. But first we must understand what holiness is: pleasing God from the heart, being convinced that God's way is right. It involves being committed and our attitude toward God (should be that we love God and we want to please him). Find out more in this important series!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson expounds on Holiness (defined as "all that God is"). We are taught that in order for us to please God we have to emulate him, we have to live holy. Holiness is an absolute requirement if we are to see God. But first we must understand what holiness is: pleasing God from the heart, being convinced that God's way is right. It involves being committed and our attitude toward God (should be that we love God and we want to please him). Find out more in this important series!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tyler Woodard offers a simple explanation of AI. Also how to use chat GBT, Grok or gemini for clarification of what you REALLY want to know. And it's true - I called him Taylor the entire time. WHY? You just have to laugh at yourself.

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson expounds on Holiness (defined as "all that God is"). We are taught that in order for us to please God we have to emulate him, we have to live holy. Holiness is an absolute requirement if we are to see God. But first we must understand what holiness is: pleasing God from the heart, being convinced that God's way is right. It involves being committed and our attitude toward God (should be that we love God and we want to please him). Find out more in this important series!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that God is working on us to get us ready for the Rapture. As we grow in this saved life, we must strive to get to a point to where Satan cannot use anything within us to cause us to fall into temptation. In order to do this effectively, we not live in our feelings and emotions, and allow all of our senses to be influenced by the power of the Holy Ghost. Learn more in this important series for our saved lives!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that God is working on us to get us ready for the Rapture. As we grow in this saved life, we must strive to get to a point to where Satan cannot use anything within us to cause us to fall into temptation. In order to do this effectively, we not live in our feelings and emotions, and allow all of our senses to be influenced by the power of the Holy Ghost. Learn more in this important series for our saved lives!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Victor Negrescu: [00:00:00] Victor Negrescu este lăsat acolo la Bruxelles pentru că dă o față europeană a PSD-ului. Eu probabil că exprim niște poziții minoritare în partid și recunosc lucrurile acestea dar măcar le exprim am curajul să le spun. George Buhnici: Eu sunt de acord că omul politic trebuie să se ocupe de politică nu trebuie salveze pisici din copac.Victor Negrescu: Nu mă interesează unde se tunde candidatul Sau filmuleţe haioase şi aşa mai departe Sincer nici pisica din copac. Eu nu mă regăsesc. Nu punem la bătaie guvernul se pune la bătaie preşedintele României. Eu cred că se joacă şi soarta guvernării. George Buhnici: Marcel Ciolac o să păţească exact ca Iohannis. O să plece pe sub-autobuz nu cu Victor Negrescu: autobuzul.Dacă Crina Antonescu câştiga alegerile, sunt şase foarte mari Crina Antonescu nu are nicio şansă Este în pinea ta. Dar pe bune, serios, doar atât putem? Doar atât poate PSD-ul? Știu că lumea e coceată pe subiectul ăsta. Și tu insisti, Marcel Ciolacu Marcel Ciolacu, nu e vorba despre el. Nu e despre Marcel Ciolacu este vorba despre George Buhnici: lipsă de educație, incompetență și lipsă de performanță.35 de ani nu s-a întâmplat nimic. Victor Negrescu: Doar George Buhnici: s-a furat. Victor Negrescu: Și pe această chestiune s-a cultivat sentimentul că democrația e de vină și partidele sunt de vină. [00:01:00] Suntem vot împotrivă e bapea mântii, suntem sătui de sistem. Nu e dacă ești suveranist în România. De ce te opui ca ucrainienii să aibă suveranitate? Pentru că dacă tu ești dispus să încalci suveranitatea Ucrainei, cum zic suveraniștii în România, înseamnă că ești dispus să accepti ca Rusia să încalce suveranitatea României.E un nonsens adică când ești George Buhnici: suveranist? Dar le zic nouă suveraniștii că dacă nu am provocat Rusia, Rusia ne-ar lăsa în pace, că noi ajutăm ucrainei și de-aia îi provocăm pe ruși. Spun, domnule, Victor Negrescu: să fim mândri. Adică ei stă acolo să stă cam plecat la Moscova, că asta e problema lor. De George Buhnici: ce ești unul dintre foarte puțini pesediși cu fața umană?Nu uitați să [00:02:00] dați like să lăsați comentariu distribuiți video pe alte ce ești unul dintre foarte puțini pesediși cu fața umană? Acum sper că toată Victor Negrescu: lumea este... Toți politicienii sunt oameni la finalul zilei. Nu știu, mi se pare că, cel puțin în ceea mă privește, că trebuie să vorbesc cât se poate de direct, să fiu eu, să fiu autentic.Fac politică pentru că am niște convingeri ferme. Am trecut și prin situații, zic eu, dificile în politică. Am fost propus de trei ori să fiu exclus din Partidul Social-Democrat și, în consecință, dacă tot am realizat atâția ani, e timpul să vorbim și mai liber și mai deschis și, poate asta mă face mai uman.Când a fost a treia? A treia cu Liviu Dragnea și cu Viorica Năcilă A mi-a fost teamă George Buhnici: ca acum, după turul 1. Vorbeai prea bine. Victor Negrescu: După turul 1 a fost o provocare. Ideea aceasta să fiu comunicatorul [00:03:00] Partidului pentru Alegele Parlamentare am zis că am niște lucruri care, poate unii nu se așteptau să le zic. Și ai rezistat comunicator două zile.Eu zic că nimeni nu s-a dezis, că nu s-a făcut niciun vot. Am fost votat cu unanimitate să fiu comunicator, dar într-adevăr au revenit și alți colegi în prim plan. Însă am spus lucrurile pe care le-am gândit și cred că am contribuit la redresarea partidului social-democrat. Adică tot și-am câștigat alegele parlamentare.Poate unii au mizat și pe mine și pe oameni ca mine că vom conta mai mult. Și da, am spus cum am spus niște lucruri foarte directe. Am spus foarte clar că dacă s-a întâmplat lucrul acesta, nu sunt de acord că a partidul social-democrat să dea votul altui partid în mod special extremiștilor. Și am spus că dacă a făcut cineva lucrul acesta, cu siguranță, în familia social-democrată nu ar trebui să regăsească.Și am spus cu fermitate încă ceva în care cred că noi... Așa spus făcut cineva lucru în că Luptăm pentru [00:04:00] justiție justiție socială În consecință trebuie să fie o temă și pentru noi. Unii au apreciat, alții au apreciat mai puțin. E o dezbatere internă foarte vie în Partidul Social-Democrat și în sensul acesta nu a zice că există tabere, nu e valoare de tabere, dar e normal să existe și viziuni diferite și fiecare să contribuie cum dorește la această direcție a stângii românești.George Buhnici: După interviul de la ProTV, m-am convins că vreau să am o conversație cu tine. Și după aia ai dispărut. Și a fost foarte ciudat pentru că, exact cum ai zis tu ai spus ceea gândeai, dar ai spus ceea ce gândeam mai mulți. Și era una dintre rarele ocazii când nu mă uitam la un lider politic de la orice partid din România, care vorbea ok.Că nu mă aștept la performanță excepțională de la politicienii români, dar vorbeai ok. Încă... Acum înțeleg mai bine că ai vorbit împotriva conducerii. Victor Negrescu: Nu, nu nu. George Buhnici: Dacă trebuie să iasă cei care au dat voturi, a ieșit la iveală [00:05:00] ulterior că șefii PSD-ului au trimis oamenii să dea voturi lui George Simion.Victor Negrescu: Nici nu mai înțelegem dacă a fost o glumă sau nu a fost o glumă. Acum nu știu. Adevărul este că Partidul Social-Democrat nu a prins turul 2 și trebuie să ne dăm seama că au fost comise cel puțin niște greșeli strategice și ar fi foarte ușor pentru mine să spun că X sau Y este responsabil. O spun foarte direct.E o responsabilitate comună A Partiului Social-Democrat pentru ceea ce s-a întâmplat anul trecut și pentru partidari și pentru România, că de fapt România a avut de suferit pe prisma faptului că, iată, un candidat extremist era să ajungă președintele României cu o agenda, cred eu, împotriva românilor.Așa că tot din interiorul acestui partid trebuie vină soluția pentru a se redresa. E nevoie de o stângă puternică în România, una autentică, sinceră deschisă pentru că [00:06:00] peste toată lumea se așteaptă de la stânga să facă mult mai mult decât toată lumea pentru că noi de principiu spunem reprezentăm oamenii.Complicat adică nivelul de presiune este mult mai mare, standardele sunt mult mai ridicate și trebuie să învățăm și noi cum să respectăm acest angajament pentru că altfel, da, se va întâmpla ca în multe zone din Europa. Stânga românească va avea de suferit dacă nu se adaptează și dacă nu este cu adevărat umană și sinceră.George Buhnici: Eu cred că până la următoarea alegeri în ritmul actual, PSD-ul se va toci de tot și nu este singurul care va avea problema asta. Ce se întâmplă acum nu este un accident. Și acum, într-adevăr stai și te uiți băi ok, avem nevoie de stânga, dar până când să avem, să ajungem să vorbim de ce înseamnă stânga ce înseamnă să fii social-democrat că aș vrea să aud lucrurile astea de la un PSD-s până în urmă, de altfel primul care vine aici, am vrut să aduc și pe domnul Ciolacu înainte de alegeri doar că nu merge decât la chestii aranjate.În condițiile actuale cu Partidul Social-Democrat în formă asta, [00:07:00] eu nu știu ce mai rămâne după alegerile prezidențiale pentru că, da, acum există o coaliție care are guvernul aranjat. Oamenii înțeleg prea puțin lucrul ăsta. Nu punem la bătaie guvernul, se pune la bătaie președintele României. Corect?Partea asta de coaliție de guvernare este pare rezolvată, dar eu nu văd bine liderii niciunui dintre partidele astea două care controlează această coaliție. Da, eu Victor Negrescu: cred că se joacă și soarta guvernării deși cu siguranță mi-aș dori să discutăm mai mult despre ce fel de președinte ne dorim pentru România și care sunt proiectele lor.Acum toată lumea e pe TikTok. E foarte bine, mă bucur să aflăm mai multe despre candidații la prezidențială, însă mi se pare totul forțat. Care-i proiectul de țară? Sincer, poate e profilul meu un pic mai serios. Nu mă interesează unde se tunde candidatul sau filmulețe. Eu nu mă regăsesc Cu siguranță și ăsta este un exemplu [00:08:00] Dar cred că acum avem nevoie, culmea, într-un moment dificil de politicieni serioși care își asumă acest rol.Responsabilitatea pe care o au. Eu am o chestiune. Sincer dacă... Dimineață nu am un program plin și nu fac ceea ce mi-am propus și nu am niște rezultate la finalul zilei, da, am un sentiment de rușine. Asta mă încearcă Adică, totuși, oamenii m-au votat, sunt plătiti din bani publici recunosc lucrul ăsta, deci am o misiune.Unii spun că exagerez, că sunt de principiu mai workaholic în felul acesta. Deci trebuie să ne facem treaba și asta vor oamenii să vadă de la noi. Toată lumea zice, dom'le, trebuie să fim umani. Eu nu înțeleg chestiunea asta. Omul politic care vrea să fie uman. Păi dacă ești om politic, ești, în primul rând om și prin ceea ce faci arăți că te preocupi de ceilalți.Dar alegerile acestea sunt cruciale. Cruciale pentru... George Buhnici: Până la alegerile cruciale hai să vorbim un pic de chestia asta umană, că e o capcană. Eu sunt de acord că omul politic trebuie să se ocupe de [00:09:00] politică nu trebuie să salveze pisici din copac ca să fie cool pe TikTok și nici să-mi arată unde se tunde sau ce am mâncat sau chestii genul ăsta.Astea sunt populisme. Putem fi de acord? Da, sunt total de acord. Putem fi de acord că să fii politician este o meserie în sine și nu trebuie fii entertainer? Victor Negrescu: Sunt de curge aici. Aici problema aceasta, această confuzie între entertainer și politician ne dus în situația pe care o trebuie să mă astăzi. Și da, partidele mainstream au făcut această greșeală au căutat să copieze.Au fost câteva exemple de oameni care au reușit fiind mai degrabă cum spui tu, entertainer decât să fie altceva și în contextul acesta s-a copiat acest model. Însă e vorba de responsabilitate. Dacă țipi nu faci o legie bună. Dacă eventual faci un clip high-ost, asta nu înseamnă că ai stat în comisie și ai negociat decizia cea mai bună.Plus pentru a lua o decizie bună trebuie să te consulti cu mediul de afaceri, cu sindicatele. Trebuie să o scrii, să te discuți cu specialiști să [00:10:00] negociezi cu o altă partidă. Știu nu e fan chestiunea asta. Știu și oamenii care se uită acum la noi, se gândesc doamne, ne dău Victor Negrescu lecții de moral acum.Le știe el pe toate. Nu le știu pe toate. Însă nu-mi doresc să fiu acest tip de politiciar și nu cred că este direcția corectă nici pentru România nici pentru Europa să facem lucrurile acestea Și ca să dau un exemplu că există acest model și la nivel european. Și spun foarte deschis, eu ca pro-european convins.Nu mă interesează când Ursula Van der Leyen, președinta Comisiei Europene, merge la o reunie în Brazilia și mi-arată clip pe Instagram ca să pară cool că s-a dus pe plaja din Brazilia și s-a întâlnit cu oamenii când alerga de dimineață. Nu cred că asta trebuie să facă că trebuie să fim umani, să interacționăm, să fim disponibili, să mergem în supermarket, să ne punem benzină să orice, lucrurile astea trebuie să le facem, în mod natural.Dar este natural să ai o cameră după tine când faci toate lucrurile astea? Nu mi se pare atât de naturală chestia asta. Apoi, de niște mii George Buhnici: euro. Și unii și alții. Deci putem fi de acord [00:11:00] că avem nevoie de politicieni profesioniști când fac chestia asta, problema pe care o văd însă este că oamenii sunt sătuli de elite și percep politicienii de carieră și tu ești unul, Ca fiind niște elite decuplată de la realitate.Și acum și tu ești la treilea mandat în Parlamentul European, faci parte din elita asta. Faptul că vii și îmi spui într-adevăr că sunt uman dar nu vreau să fiu entertainer, asta nu înseamnă că nu faci parte din elita politică. Victor Negrescu: Acum depinde și cum ne gândim la această elită. În istoria României au fost niște lideri politici care și-au asumat responsabilități.Și ții minte că cel puțin noi românii suntem mândri de deciziile luate de anumiti lideri politici care erau tot... Politicieni între ghinimele de carieră Cum eu sunt, în primul rând cadru didact, profesor, așa mă definesc Și, evident, fac și politică de multă vreme, luptându-mă pentru niște convingeri. E nevoie de experiență, de expertiză e nevoie de contact, e nevoie de toate aceste aspecte pentru [00:12:00] a avea impactul dorit.Adică nu e ca și cum astăzi intri în politică și dintr-o dată schimbi ceva sau știi cum funcționează lucrurile. De altfel un om care nu înțelege mecanismele nu va fi eficient, nu va produce rezultate. Însă încerc să păstrez ceea ai spus tu foarte bine, contactul uman Eu am o organizație în interiorul Partiului Social Democrat compusă din peste 10.000 de persoane, persoane care sunt fie membri fie simpatizați de stânga, pro-europeni, Mai tineri în general, dar nu doar tineri și împreună cu ei, periodic, facem o serie de acțiuni inclusiv acțiuni cu caracter social, care sunt diferite.Știți cum se spune de obicei, partidele merg cu plasa, de exemplu la oameni și așa mai departe, inclusiv când fac acțiuni caritabile. Și e bine să fie acțiuni caritabile. La noi facem aceste tipuri de acțiuni dar diferit De exemplu mergem deja de aproape 10 ani, în fiecare an, la copii din zone defavorizate dar pe lângă Că cadourile pe care le [00:13:00] facem, stăm cu ei, împodobim bradul, discutăm aflăm care e problema și facem și follow-up.Și mai invităm și oameni din comunitate, profesori cunoscuți medici oameni politici să vină cu noi. Și aceste experiențe umane, și pentru mine spun sincer, dar și pentru colegii mei ne ajută pe toți să relativizăm, să ne dăm seama. Adică am fost într-un cartier din Sibiu, erau numai vile și în mijloc era un granș în care stăteau șapte fetițe cu familia lor.Am fost de exemplu în Vrancea și la un moment dat, tot așa într-un loc părăsit de lume, o familie formată din două persoane care au crescut într-un centru pentru copii, s-au instalat acolo într-o casă părăsită aveau doi copii și trăiau în aceeași încăpere cu o vacă Știu, pare straniu și am încercat să găsim soluții, să le găsim o casă, să le găsim un loc de muncă, să vedem cum copiii pot merge la școală, unii s-au decuplat asta cred că trebuie să facem mai mult sincer eu, i-aș duce pe mulți [00:14:00] politicieni în aceste zone să vadă la firul ierbii pentru că unele politici nu funcționează până jos și aici cred că e problema neîncrederii față de politică în România, lumea aude lucruri frumoase, vorbim de miliarde de euro europeni, vorbim de decizii merge, bubuie economia și oamenii la firul ierbii nu simt nu este vina doar a decidenților politici, însă mai multă atenție la implementare ar ajuta foarte mult George Buhnici: practic asta este decuplarea când te uiți către Bruxelles nu te uiți la nivel ochelor te uiți în sus și este și o diferență de distanță și de nivel și într-adevăr oamenii simpli nu văd întotdeauna beneficiile astea deși de foarte multe ori punga aia care vine de la primărie era de fapt trimisă de Uniunea Europeană și sunt multe lucruri care se schimbă în viețile noastre datorită Uniunii Europene La revedere!Cei din orașe și mai ales audiența mea înțeleg chestia asta. Eu vreau să înțeleg aici care e, până la urmă, strategia lui Victor Negrescu, pentru că e deja la al treilea mandat în Parlamentul European. Acum ești vicepreședinte. Înainte să faci 40, [00:15:00] nu? Faci la vară. La vară fac. Un vicepreședinte foarte tânăr de Parlamentul European, un politician de carieră Care ți-e planul?Ce vrei de fapt? Victor Negrescu: Vreau să lași ceva în urmă. Vreau să am un impact. La 40? Da La 40 de ani e o problemă chestiunea asta. Când am intrat prima oară în politică mi s-a spus că sunt prea tânăr. Am fost cel mai tânăr român ales vreodată în Parlamentul European și atunci mi s-a spus că sunt prea tânăr. Am intrat din întâmplare pentru că m-au pus pe un loc neeligibil, însă am intrat.Și al doilea mandat tot din întâmplare pentru că am intrat după Brexit. Și după aceea poți să te și scoate. A fi lasat mă și scoată, da. Al treilea mandat zicem că a fost mai ușor un pic, dar ne-a lău obținut și automat a rezultat și în poziția pe care am câștigat-o de vicepreședinte al Parlamentului European.Dar vreau să las ceva în urmă. Când mi este foarte greu și într-un unghi personal și, pe urmă, spun și zona politică, mi-e foarte greu să explic băiatului meu de 12-10 ani de ce m-a văzut mai [00:16:00] rar Dacă nu pot să-i spun că am făcut ceva și că sunt niște rezultate. Am nevoie de chestiunea asta, simt și asta cred că pot să fac astăzi Am puterea resursele, relațiile, dorința să fac lucrul acesta, dar dintr-o perspectivă mai largă cred că e nevoie de lider și pasumat, mai ales pentru ceea ce înseamnă astăzi drumul României.Care-i viziunea? Pentru că noi suntem generația, mă înțeles că suntem de o vârstă destul de apropiată, chiar dacă ești puțin mai în vârstă, noi suntem generația acelor care au vrut să reușească pentru că au văzut greutățile prin care au trecut poate părinții noștri și am vrut și mai mult decât ei, am vrut să reușim, am vrut să ne fie mai bine și să fie mai bine poate și copiilor noștri și ne-am luptat, ne-am luptat, ne-am luptat, dar proiectul nostru a fost aderăm la Uniunea Europeană, aderăm la NATO și care următorul proiect de țară Ce se întâmplă?Pentru că sunt niște schimbări profunde și știi noi ne mândrim sectorul digital în România, e beton suntem tari Au o problemă în sectorul judicial în România, nu mai ține pasul cu tendințele. Vorbim, [00:17:00] agroalimentar agricultura românească e performantă. În alte domenii nu mai este atât de performantă. Cum ține pasul?E clar că trebuie o altă viziune și oameni să se implice. Și îndemnul meu, inclusiv către cei care se uită, este să se implice. Este o lipsă de implicare. Suntem pe ultimele locuri la nivelul european în ce înseamnă implicarea civică a oamenilor. Nu neapărat în politică deși ideal este în politică, dar pentru a putea să alegem oameni competenți trebuie să fie concurență Eu spun.Cum poți George Buhnici: să te concurezi cu Ciolacu și cu Stănescu în PSD cu, nu știu, ăștia toată clica din PNL. În fiecare partid există cât un aparat din ăsta. Dacă vrei să te implici în politică, te uiți și vezi că intri, de fapt nu intri într-un partid intri într-o organizație. Și aș putea să adaug după mafiotă o organizație pe bază de interes sau o organizație opacă în care meritocrația...Serios, acum, încă o dată, îmi pare rău că trebuie să spun lucrul ăsta. Bă dar când arată domnul Ciolacu diploma aia de [00:18:00] bacaloreat? Știi? Și când aud, pe exemplu noi înregistrăm pe final de martie, deja au început să apară fisurile comunicării cu președintele pe subiectul ministrului de externe. Astăzi se decide în timpul discuției noastre, soarta ministrului de externe, că primul nostru ministru ar vrea să o dea la pace, cumva, cu americanii.Pe partea cealaltă președintele spune, hai să nu ne criticăm oamenii în public. Victor Negrescu: Acum Ce fel de leadership e ăsta? Eu cred și în responsabilități și răspundere individuale. Totuși, așa funcționează lucrurile, dar în același timp... Partidele au rostul lor într-o democrație Ele organizează ideile Organizează participarea la decizii Care e ideea?Care e ideea la PSD? Ideea de stânga există Totuși Partidul Social-Democrat Social-Democratia în România Are 132 de ani de istorie Atunci a apărut primul Partid Social-Democrat În România Știu că cei de dreapta spun că ei sunt [00:19:00] Istoria României, însă Social-Democratii în România Au contribuit foarte mult La dezvoltarea României moderne Mulți ignoră faptul că atunci când s-a realizat Marea Unire a fost un fel de adunare Parlamentară în Transilvania Și jumătate din cei care au votat din parlamentarii Respectiv erau Social-Democrati Culmea în Transilvania unde PSD Nu are rezultate tocmai bune Și sunt exemple de acest fel de Social-Democrati Care au contribuit la istoria noastră S-au luptat și cu comuniștii, comuniștii i-au trimis la închisoare Și naziștii i-au trimis la închisoare Pe Social-Democrati și dacă mergem În închisorile comuniste Sau...Extremiste din România, naziste, vedem da, acolo practic zonă unde au murit socialdemocrati. Zici, se uită lucrul acesta. Eu cred în această tradiție, în această istorie. E singurul partid socialdemocrat în România și pentru asta mă lupt. E o concurență, o competiție un conflict de idei, ar fi foarte simplu acum să spun că X este greu.Eu am o comunicare, zic eu, bună cu Marcel Ciolacu atunci [00:20:00] când sunt consultat pe niște subiecte. Și nu este doar de acum. Pe-a lungul timpului împreună am lucrat în a schimba poate modul în care Partidul Socialdemocrat a comunicat pe zona europeană. Era foarte izolat pe plan extern, acum nu mai este atât de izolat.Însă revenind la contextul pe care îl spui acum, Eu cred că avem deficiențe inclusiv din punct de vedere constituțional, în modul în care este reprezentată România pe zona de politică externă. O să pară critică la adesa cuiva, din nou nu-i adesa la cuiva, e o critică constructivă și structurală. În cazul României, reprezentantul României la Consiliul European este șeful statului.Șeful statului nu poate interveni în politica internă. 90% din deciziile importante luate la Bruxelles privesc politica internă, politica pentru consumatori, politica agricolă, banii europei, subiectele ce țin de investițiile în zona de industrie de apărare, culmea, e tot politica internă. De-aia se [00:21:00] duce cu ministrul de externe, George Buhnici: se duce cu Victor Negrescu: reprezentanții guvernului, nu?Dar a fost cu ministrul de externe? Domnul Curezeanu a fost acum în perioada aceasta la Consiliul European sau la ședințele cu liderii europeni. De exemplu eu îl cunosc pe domnul Curezeanu, am un respect deosebit, am lucrat împreună pentru ca să deblocăm poziția austriei. Pe domnul Bolojan l-am văzut în multe poze.Pe domnul Bolojan l-am văzut la toate chestiile astea. Dar n-a fost împreună cu președintele Ar fi normal ca ministrul de externe să meargă cu președintele. Pentru că politica externă este responsabilitatea președintului. Și să meargă împreună. Cum mergi și alții? Deci nu se înțeleg care e problema. Nu știu eu cred că și acolo te-ai văzut un pic care este coordonarea.În moment trăim un moment în care trebuie să fim mult mai eficienți pe zona de politică externă. Și cred că fiecare are rolul lui. De exemplu pe domnul Hurețanul L-aș folosi, e urât că spun lucrul ăsta, dar l-aș folosi, sincer, pe relația aceasta cu Germania, nouul guvern din Germania, cu relația poate cu nouul guvern din Austria, e foarte bun, poate inclusiv pe subiectele europene.Cu siguranță avem niște carențe în relația noastră cu alte state, fie că vorbim de Statele Unite sau că vorbim de India, care acum [00:22:00] este noua pole economică al lumei. Este cea mai mare națiune a planetei. Da, și ați văzut cum se duc liderii europeni din toată lumea, merg în India pentru contracte, pentru a dezvolta relații de afaceri sau politice.Noi nu existăm. Și clar că ne trebuie niște persoane care au niște uși deschise. În același timp putem pretinde că cineva trebuie să-și deschide ușile așa dintr-o dată Este și o construcție. Eu mă uit, de exemplu la prietenii mei laboriști din Marea Britanie. Până să ajungă Să câștige guvernarea, cei de stânga din Marea Britanie au avut persoane desemnate pentru a învăța și ministrul lor de externe, înainte să facă lucrul acesta ajunge în poziția aceasta, a mers și a discutat În toată lumea, inclusiv în România, a avut discuții la nivel înalt pentru a înțelege.Nu pentru a spune ce gândește sau a prezenta ceva, pentru a înțelege contextul în așa fel încât în momentul în care ajunge funcția respectivă să fie pregătit. Noi aici nu pregătim, deci noi nu avem rezerve, o să sună aiurea, rezerve de cadre [00:23:00] politice. Nu profesionalizăm. Partidul Social-Democrat, care de principiu este cel mai pregătit partid din România din punctul ăsta de vedere, nu mai are aceste...Pentru că te uiți în George Buhnici: sus și când te uiți acolo în vorb, zici bă nu e ceva ce mă așteptam să fie la vârful unui partid în care aș vrea să mă regăsesc Dacă mă uit la stânga și aș alege PSD-ul, pentru că am cunoscut oameni foarte competenți, foarte deștepți, care mi-au spus, zici George, te-am mai auzit vorbind despre noi PSD-ul, zici, dar uite un pic ce fel de oameni sunt, pentru că avem oameni competenți mulți între ei sunt antreprenori într-un partid social-democrat.Și am dat dreptate. Dar cu toate astea O fi o rezervă de cadre undeva pe acolo Bă dar la vârf Bă, pe bune, serios, doar atât Victor Negrescu: putem Doar George Buhnici: atât poate Victor Negrescu: PSD-ul? Știu, țintim sus, dar ar fi atât simplu să fie doar o chestiune de vârf Eu cred că e o problemă la bază în ansamblu pentru partide. Modul de selecție, modul în care [00:24:00] cresc oamenii în partidele politice.Nu vreau să mă prezint eu ca o excepție. Eu știu de ce am rezistat în politic. Am rezistat pentru că am creat această organizație cu 10.000 de oameni și pentru că am avut posibilitatea să mă întăresc poziția în partid prin prisma rolului meu la nivel european Am construit foarte mult la nivel european, contacte nu doar la nivel european și poate a zice internațional, cu tot ce înseamnă mișcări de stânga sau democratice.Și în contextul acesta, acest lucru mi-a primit să rezist. Dar altfel ar fi fost foarte greu Trebuie mai multe exemple în acest fel și mai multă presiune de jos în sus, mai multă concurență. Sincer acolo este problema. Spuneam mai devreme, pe categoria mea de vârstă, în toate partidele politice, nu suntem foarte mulți.Eu nu simt o mare presiune, o mare concurență. Când am intrat prima oară în Partidul Social-Democrat, recunosc, mi-era cam frică și cu privire la șansele mele de reușită, dar și când mergeam într-o ședință [00:25:00] a conducirii Partidului Social-Democrat, nu prea vorbeai. Nu pentru că neapărat erai de acord cu ce spuneau ceilalți, dar aveau mult dintre ei o carieră în spate, erau de foarte mult timp, aveau argumente în a susține poziția din nou cu care puteam să nu fiu de acord.Acum lucrurile sunt mai prea relaxante Relaxate. Inclusiv în dialogul între partide. Când am o dispută de idei cu cineva de la alt partid... Parcă nu merge până la capăt cu argumentele Nu zic că este ușor, că nu este ușor dar înainte să vin la această emisiune spuneam că m-am întâlnit cu 2000 de tineri online, conectați în toată Europa și mi-au pus niște întrebări.Wow, ce întrebări! M-au întrebat întrebări grele. De ce se votează europarlamentari care nu au legătură cu Parlamentul European? De exemplu care este poziția Parlamentului European pe subiectul legat de avort? De ce nu se face mai mult pe educație? Sunt cazurile de corupție la Parlamentul European în partidele mainstream?Sunt toți corupți? Adică întrebări serioase. La care trebuie să fie [00:26:00] răspuns? Uneori e convins sau nu. Dar în politică noi nu discutăm lucrurile astea Adică sunt generalități și prin prisma faptului că nu e conținut, nu e substanță Și mai ales convingeri. De ce fac oamenii ăștia politică? Eu am un răspuns la întrebarea asta, dar eu cred că dacă mai ai politicieni aici, de acum o să pară forțat dacă mă întrebi pe mine, întreabă-te rău frumos de ce fac politică.Eu am remarcat că sunt foarte mulți oameni în politică în România care nu au un răspuns sincer la această întrebare sau nu un răspuns care are legătură cu cetățenii și e grav lucrul ăsta. George Buhnici: Revenim la IGDLCC în dată ce-ți spun despre sponsorul nostru, Darkom Energy, cei care ne garantează că nu ni se sting luminile din studio, adică nu avem niciodată pene de curent.Panourile fotovoltaice, invertoarele și bateriile sunt inima sistemului nostru energetic și cred cu tărie că sunt investiții importante, dar și rentabile. Cu acest sistem am economisit deja mii de euro la facturi, dar și mai important avem electricitatea garantată fără fluctuații care ne pot defecta [00:27:00] energiile Dacă ai în plan să construiești, să renovezi orice fel de clădire, inclusiv industrială, alege o soluție solidă de generare și stocare de energie Noi colaborăm cu echipa Darcom Energy și îi recomandăm.Eu cred că există o dezorientare totală în partidul vostru, pentru că pe de o parte, tu ești văzut, cel puțin asta e percepția din documentarea mea, Victor Negrescu este lăsat acolo la Bruxelles pentru că dă o față europeană PSD-ului și face să pară un pic mai sus decât e, în realitate. Iar aici la nivel local, e o mare problemă într-adevăr de competență, de cadre, pentru că structura de conducere a ajuns să fie...Nu știu cum să zic, parazitată, căpușată controlată de o mână de oameni extrem de puternici extrem de influenți și în niciun caz orientați pe meritocrație. Victor Negrescu: Mi s-a părut interesant ce ai zis cu această pară mai sus decât e. Eu spun foarte clar, [00:28:00] chiar dacă trec pe legă trei excluderi din partid. Probabil că oameni ca mine sau inclusiv eu putem să dispărem oricând din politică.Partidul este foarte ușor să scape de mine. Eu probabil că exprim niște poziții minoritare în partid și recunosc lucrurile acestea dar măcar le exprim am curajul să le spun mai des în interior, mai rar public pentru că eu cred foarte mult în discuțiile interne, uneori cu rost alte ori nu Ce vorbeam mai devreme George Buhnici: de discuție dintre primul ministru și ministrul de externe, care se întâmplă în public.Victor Negrescu: Nu este foarte eficientă această dispută publică totuși că s-au întâlnit și în privat. Totodată o coaliție este greu de gestionat și cine stabilește ministrul de externe, din ce mi-aduc aminte, a fost mai ales domnul Hurezeanu, a ajuns în această funcție cu sprijinul fostului președinte a României. Și poate și aici a apars incopelea asta, pentru că ministrul de externe trebuie să fie legătura între premier și președinte, cred că acolo e rolul lui.Dacă nu poate exercita acest rol, sunt niște George Buhnici: [00:29:00] dificultăți. Nu vreau să sap prea mult pe subiectul ăla cel mai probabil până ajungem noi să publicăm, să va fi rezolvat cazul ăsta, dar e interesant așa ca timestamp ca moment în timp pentru toată discuția asta. Ce mă preocupă însă pe mine este, aș vrea să înțeleg dacă în interiorul PSD se înțelege cât gravă este problema, pentru că eu nu cred...Că nici măcar nucleul dur al partidului mai rezistă până la următoarele parlamentare în ritmul ăsta. Victor Negrescu: Eu sunt un pic mai optimist aici, pentru că cred că avem oameni buni și oameni care au performat mai ales în administrațiile locale. Ok o să mă arunc eu George Buhnici: și o să zic Dacă nu se întâmplă până la prezidențiale, imediat după, Marcel Ciolac o să pățească exact ca Iohannis O să plece pe sub-autobuz nu cu Victor Negrescu: autobuzul.Dacă Crin Antonescu câștiga alegerile, sunt șase foarte mari ca Marcel Ciolacu să-și continue mandatul în fruntea guvernului. Crin Antonescu nu are nicio șansă. Este opinia ta. Mulți din partidele... Știu partidele George Buhnici: în [00:30:00] PSD și în PNL este ordin pe Victor Negrescu: unitate Toată lumea subține pe Crin Antonescu. Cred chestiunea aceasta.Acum... Plecând de la chestiunea aceasta pe care tu ai subliniat-o, e o problemă gravă Nici nu știi care este soluția corectă în contextul actual, extrem de dificil. Și din nou revenim la responsabilitate la ce facem. Miza nu este unul. Miza este ce faci mai departe Care este proiectul? Ne George Buhnici: agățăm de oameni.Asta e și motivul pentru care suntem astăzi aici. Ne agățăm de oameni. Eu m-am uitat că nu poți să îngropi un partid social-democrat. Ai nevoie de stânga. Da cum ai zis și tu. Victor Negrescu: Hai să-ți dau un exemplu. Eu am fost doi ani ministru cel care a pregătit președinția României la Consiliul European, în momentul unde am performat ca țară.Și când eram ministru, automat, ocupându-mă de afaceri europene, mai plecam să mă întâlnesc cu demnitarii alte state. Și când plecam, automat... Dacă funcționarii veneau fie [00:31:00] mai târziu la birou, fie pur și simplu nu realizau sarcinile în timp util, tot sistemul din România este crăionat în jurul omului. Dacă ministru e bun și eficient, se întâmplă ceva.Dacă ministru e prezent la birou, se mișcă lucrurile. Dacă are un cabinet puternic, automat se mișcă lucrurile. Ceea nu e normal. Lucrurile trebuie să funcționeze de la sine. Știi, în Belgia au avut luni bune fără guvern și statul a funcționat. Asta înseamnă un stat puternic și serios, care funcționează efectiv poate cu un aport al politicilor în care dau direcția, dar care poate funcționa măcar pe lucrurile de bază fără nicio fel problemă.Ori noi avem multe rateuri, inclusiv la aceste chestiuni de follow-up, fonduri europene pe care le ratăm, termene europene pe care le ratăm, implementarea unor directive europene. Ori avem multe rateuri, aceste chestiuni de-up fonduri ratăm europene Wow, din nou o să zic că expun toate problemele astea, le știm cu toții.Dar înțelege George Buhnici: PSD-ul profund, PSD-ul, structura de [00:32:00] conducere a partidului, înțelege cea mai mare bucată din responsabilitate în care primul ministru... Victor Negrescu: Eu cred că în Partidul Social-Democrat se înțelege lucrul acesta și vă spun foarte bine că este multă liniște cel puțin în spațiu public, dar noi în interior, cel puțin eu am făcut-o, am avut discuții cu premierul României, am spus opinia mea și câteva idei pe care le-am, mai ales pe zona aceasta de politică externă la finalul zilei el este cel care decide.Totuși a reușit să formeze o coaliție de guvernare într-un context dificil are acest parteneria cu domnul Bolojan, au stabilit un candidat comun, este o responsabilitate comună a liderilor acestor partide, au gândit această formulă, ne putem întreba e cea mai bună, nu e cea mai bună formulă asta este formula pe care aceste partide au găsit-o, sincer sper să funcționeze.E o cotă ceală, speri tu speri, nu ești sigur E o cotărceală românească. Cred că e foarte greu să fii sigur după ce s întâmplat anul trecut. [00:33:00] Totuși, candidatul nostru era pe primul loc în toate sondajele de opinie și nu a ajuns într-unul doi. Deci lucrurile se pot schimba dramatic. Și din punctul ăsta de vedere, trebuie să avem un nivel de precauție.Însă responsabilitatea noastră a celor din mediul politic depășește ciclul electoral sau momentul electoral. Eu am înțeles, mentuși aici, cred că și dezamăgirea pe care o văd la mulți oameni. Politicienii dau impresia că ei se preocupă de cetățeni doar că sunt alegeri Și acum e același sentiment. Eu am impresia că astăzi trăim din nou toamna anului trecut.Asta cred eu. Nu George Buhnici: este un purgatoriu este ceva nesfârșit așa Deci este, nu știu, de jumătate de ani suntem în limbo. Victor Negrescu: Da, și liniștea socială ascunde, de fapt, aceleași riscuri ca și anul trecut. Un vot protest, un vot bazat pe agresivitate, pe supărare și dacă nu sunt canalizate aceste [00:34:00] energii într-un sens pozitiv către o soluție de speranță cu proiecte concrete, va fi foarte complicat.Din nou, mulți dintre cei angrenați în această campanie prezidențială și, din nou am vorbit inclusiv cu Crina Tonescu, dau sentimentul că ei candidează Pentru a vorbi despre politică. Președintele nu trebuie facă mai mult decât politică. De aceea și Constituționalul are rolul ăsta să fie deasupra partidelor.Trebuie să văd că despre cetățeni. Eu, dacă mergi, m-am întâlnit de exemplu, recent cu tineri într-un liceu chiar din București. Merg prin toată țara și am întrebat pe tineri care este principala lor preocupare și mi-au zis noi învățăm ceva aici și nu știi dacă vom găsi un loc de muncă. Exact. Că am înțeles că locurile noastre de muncă vor dispărea.Ei studiau, elevii aceștia, o filiară profesională. Unii în zona auto, ceilalți în zona de contabilitate și mă întrebau. Eu folosesc ei spuneau noi folosim cea GBT și alte instrumente AI [00:35:00] și fac cam ceea ce învăț eu aici. O să am un job? Asta mă întrebau. De ce nu vorbim de subiectele astea? De ce nu atingem subiectele dificile, care nu necesită neapărat o soluție ușoară?Adică politicienii evită să aleg numai ce este confortabil. Și de aceea cred că suntem situația asta, pentru că confortul dezbaturilor publice a făcut ca oamenii să nu se mai simtă reprezentati sau să nu mai simtă că ideile lor sunt discutate sau o preocupare pentru cei care decid. George Buhnici: Da Singurul candidat pe care l-am auzit vorbind despre tehnologie, inteligență artificială, digitalizare, educație, toate lucrurile astea, era Mircea Joana.Nici nu a contat întoruntei pentru că el nu a înțeles cât importantă era emoția la un moment dat respectiv, pentru că este exact ce ai zis este vot împotrivă. E bapea mătii, suntem sătui de sistem, whatever that is, de statul profund, dar eu nu cred, încă o dată, că oamenii din partidele de la putere înțeleg asta.Că problema nu s-a [00:36:00] rezolvat doar că l-ai pus pe Bolojan acolo care vorbește frumos. Nu-i ajuns. Victor Negrescu: Da, nu este cu siguranță de ajuns și chiar dacă acum... Există această încredere că nu se m-au mai întâmplat ce s-a întâmplat anul trecut și sondajele și sentimentele conduc la această impresie. Asta nu înseamnă că peste patru ani sau cinci ani nu ne vom regăsi în acea situație.Va fi mai rău. Și eu cred la fel. Dacă nu se întâmplă ceva. Pentru că eu am remarcat, sunt foarte atent la ce se întâmplă Și nu rezolvăm cu închiderea TikTok-ului în timpul alegerilor? Cu siguranță nu asta este soluția, dar în alte state europene, cea mai mare provocare nu a fost prima generație de extremiști.A doua și a treia generație, care a ajuns la performanță electorală. În Italia există data legile, vedem ce s-a întâmplat în Austria, vedem în Suedia unde-s la guvernare, în Olanda unde-s la guvernare. A doua și a treia generație care deja scâștigă consistență găsește mai mult susținători, poate și oameni mai bine pregătiți care să-i pună în prim plan și atunci foarte greu [00:37:00] combați dacă nu ai argumente solide.Acum da, nu vreau să critic personal, dar e o realitate. Simeon nu are foarte mult continuu și atunci e foarte mai ușor de combătut din punctul ăsta de vedere. Nu George Buhnici: are Victor Negrescu: deloc. Are în plan să vândă apartamente de 30-35. Cât era? Au crescut mai nou că e inflație. Mai mult de 35. Dar trecând peste chestiunea asta, e adevărat, nu există consistență.Există radicalism. Dar hai să mai George Buhnici: rămânem o secundă la Simeon. Este el un satelit al PSD-ului? S-a comportat ca un satelit și a fost Victor Negrescu: susținut. Așa zici? Eu nu știu. O să spun ce am spus în emisiunea care mi-a adus de servicii. Dacă l-a susținut cineva, să-l dăm afară din partid. George Buhnici: Foarte direct. Au recunoscut că l-au susținut.Deci este mascotă. Oricum o să iasă cineva acum și o să ne contrazică ceea ce abia aștept. Din nou a fost o glumă. Victor Negrescu: Mi-a George Buhnici: plăcut.Victor Negrescu: Asta [00:38:00] fost meta. Eu citesc destul de mult și îmi place să mă documentez. Și dacă citești istoria social-democrației revin la ea. Când extremiști ăștia au căutat să omoare socialdemocrația structurală, eu nu aș putea nici măcar să glumesc cu privire la posibilitatea de a da un vot unor extremiști. Nu pot George Buhnici: chestiunea aceasta.Știu dar PSD-ul e în pană de idei înainte de fiecare alegeri și la doamna Dăncilă s-a întâmplat. Vin cu tot felul de chestii cu steagul, semnele la populare noi suntem populari dintr-o dată devenim foarte populari pentru că ne uităm la populiști cum cresc și nu știm cum să facem altceva. Că nu reușim să explicăm socialdemocrația că este complicată, este elitistă, habar n-am de ce, nu poate PSD-ul să o explice și atunci alunecă în popular populism Se duce în zona asta, acolo, puf se întâlnește cu ăștia.Victor Negrescu: Eu cred că e o greșeală să caut să copiezi extremismul. Pentru că, oricum, originalul o să fie tot timpul mai bun. Exact. [00:39:00] Socialdemocratii și multe partide mainstream au căutat să-i copieze pe extremiști și, de fapt doar l-au dat mai multă forță. Și trebuie să recunosc și această greșeală. Istoric, nu mă refer acum, Partidul Socialdemocrat a cultivat o bună parte din aceste idei și valori De care au profitat partidele extremiste.Fie că vorbim de perioada aceea cu Liviu Dragnea, fie că vorbim de perioada Victor Ponta, care a făcut primele slogane în această direcție și ne-am creat singur groapa. Acum ce face Partidul Social Democrat? Ca să sară în ea sau vrea să o acopere construind ceva mai serios lângă? Eu sper să fim capabili să mergem înainte să avem un proiect.Din nou nu este despre persoane, pentru că știu că lumea e cociată pe subiectul ăsta și am văzut că și tu insisti, Marcel Ciolacu, Marcel Ciolacu, nu e vorba despre el. Nu e despre Marcel Ciolacu este vorba George Buhnici: despre lipsa de educație, incompetență și lipsa de performanță. Marcel Ciolacu le [00:40:00] întrupează Și mai este și fals pe deasupra Și nici nu ne arată diplomaia de bacalaureat Am mințit cu Nordisu O să-i spun să vină în emisiune cu tine Mi-e greu să răspund în numele lui La Victor Negrescu: toate aceste întrebări Acum am George Buhnici: aflat, o să-i zic de chestiunea aceasta Dar nu-i vina ta Numai că tu ești singurul pesedist De un pic de frunte așa Care a venit Victor Negrescu: Fără întrebări înainte Trec eu prin filtru acesta Dar eu cred sincer Că trebuie să gândim Ce vrem în următorii ani Pentru zona aceasta politică Și să fim foarte atenți La deciziile luate De exemplu sunt decizii greu explicat Ultima decizie a CNA Prin care s-a dat jos conținut Poate unele Videouri trebuiau date jos Probabil că reacția ta să fie mai rapidă.Dar poate altele nu trebuiau. Pentru că nu trebuie să închizi nici dialogul. Uite mă uit la tine și nu spun pentru că este invitatul tău, [00:41:00] dar m-am uitat pe platforma asta, Twitter X, cum te lupsi pentru ideile tale. Eu n-aș vrea ca X să te dea jos, Musk, pentru că nu ai acești opinii cu Musk. Adică trebuie să fie conținutul tău rămas acolo.Dar trebuie să găsim niște soluții ca această dezbatere să fie una reală. Și aici intervine și Europa. Sau cum e, intri într-o dezbatere cu boți sau intri într-o dezbatere cu oameni care folosesc profile false. Nici asta nu mi se pare normal. Adică să poți astăzi la cât de important este social media, să ai oameni cu nume false care spun absolut orice.Eu am trecut prin experiența asta. Să fiu amenințat cu moartea, să-mi spună lumea că îmi caută familia. Am primit mesaje de genul Și cu toate astea ai venit pe jos. Te-am văzut aici. George Buhnici: Ai parcat undeva? Ai șofer? Victor Negrescu: Nu George Buhnici: am Victor Negrescu: șofer. M-am mirat că aveam loc de parcare în curte. Ai venit pe jos, ai sunat la portă. Nu m-a atacat nimeni.Nici când merg cu metrou. Mi se întâmplă deseori. Mai sunt necunoscut. E adevărat că întâlnesc destul de mulți useriști prin metrou. Mai fac poză cu mine, mai fac o glumă cât ce cauți în metrou, dar nu mai contează. Mai vin și [00:42:00] cu mașina, evident. Încerc să fiu cât se poate de normal, fără să fiu radical sau extremist în vreun fel.Și toate aceste experiențe te ajută sincer. Foarte important pentru mine. Motivul pentru care încă predau, de exemplu, este acum după acest podcast, merg la ore. Și... Faptul că interacționez cu studenții, nu fac politică niciodată în clasă, îmi permite mie să înțeleg un pic cum văd ei lucrurile, cum le percep, cum reacționează și în trafic.Dacă stai în trafic și după ce ai stat în trafic două ore, și eu în jur toți politicienii, probabil și pe mine, pentru traficul din București, sunt niște chestiuni normale. Dar dacă nu ai aceste trăiri, nu poți să înțelegi, nu poți să vii cu soluții adecvate. George Buhnici: Dezbatere este într-adevăr importantă L-am avut recent pe Valentin Jucan aici care mi-a spus că pentru ei este o provocare uriașă să modereze, că nu sunt big brother, că nu au cum să urmărească toți și că prime se sizări.Și pe bază se sizările alea pe Digital Services Act, că știi de la nivelul în europene, ei pot [00:43:00] da jos doar conținut audio-vizual care conține chestii ilegale. Trebuie să fie ceva ilegal acolo să apară în codul penal, într-o lege încălcată și doar asta pot da jos. Chistii naziste, chestii pedofile, tot felul de nenorociri deci chestii care să fie cu adevărat ilegale și penale.Dar eu cred că suntem cu toți într-o supra-reacție la ce s întâmplat la sfârșitul anului trecut. Doar că încă nu ne-am votat toate elecțiile. Uite ai un CNA hiper-reactiv probabil în momentul ăsta, dar în același timp văd niște partide care încă nu au înțeles. Deci toate astea o dată ce se va termina și cu alegerile prezențiale o să avem în cele în dormul președinte cine va fi.Poate va fi Crin Antonescu, dar n-aș băga mâna în foc. Va trebui să ne reamintim totuși ce probleme reale avem. Pentru că tot ce discutăm acum, mai mult de 90% din tot ce este în spațiu public, este irrelevant Putem fi de Victor Negrescu: acord? Da, pot fi. Pot fi de acord. Și cred că sunt multe subiecte despre care nu vorbim.Nu vorbim despre problema sărăciei. Suntem pe primele locuri în ceea ce înseamnă numărul de [00:44:00] persoane care se află sub pragul acesta normal al sărăciei adică afectat de sărăcie severă. Cum transformăm economia noastră pentru a ține pasul cu competiția globală? Ce facem după ce o să dispare fondurile europene?90% din investițiile publice din România de la aderare până în prezent s-au făcut cu banii europeni. Deci noi suntem subvenționați de Europa. Asta este realitatea. Poți să explici George Buhnici: chestia asta pentru cei care înjură Europa? Că ne suntem într-o perfuzie de fapt? Victor Negrescu: E foarte simplu. 9 din 10 proiecte care se întâmplă într-un județ sunt făcute aceste proiecte cu banii europeni.Imaginează că dispar. Acele școli modernizate, acele companii deschise cu banii europeni, că sunt spitale care nu mai au echipamente medicale și totul e făcut din banii noștri. Asta s-ar întâmpla fără Europa. Deci noi am fost ținuți vii cu banii europeni. Ne-am dezvoltat cu banii europeni, care au generat un efect multiplicator în economie chiar consistent.Și asta a fost foarte bine. Fiecare euro băgat în România conform cifrele a generat [00:45:00] alți 3 sau 5 euro, între 3 și 5 euro în funcție de domeniu. Deci extraordinar că și-am folosit și banii unii dintre noi corect și s-au dus în economie. Deci în contextul acesta, noi nu am putea să mergem înainte inclusiv fermierii români.MULȚUMIT Și agricultura românească e ținută înviată și rămâne competitivă cu aceste fonduri care vin pe zona de agricultură pentru dezvoltarea zonelor rurale, dar și prin subvenții. Noi fără subvenții, nu am face față concurenței europene. Da, putem spune că nu-i normal ca fermiere din Franța să primească subvenții mai mari decât fermiere români, deși, ușor-ușor subvențiile românești au crescut.Noi am negociat, statul român a negociat nivelul acesta al subvenților, apropo, dar, în același timp Dacă nu am fi în Uniunea Europeană sau nu ar fi Franța în Uniunea Europeană Franța ar putea să subvenționeze fermierii și probabil că ar subvenționa și mai mult pentru că au bugetul pentru a face lucrul acesta.Europa împiedică să subvenționeze mai mult fermierii, menține o cuotă maximală pentru a menține [00:46:00] concurența la nivel european. Însă fermierul francez este subvenționat din bani francezi care trec prin Comisia Europeană. Fermierul român este subvenționat din banii francezilor și germanilor. Asta nu înseamnă că trebuie să stăm cu capul plecat.Nu cred lucrul ăsta. Să înțelegem totuși că avem beneficii și trebuie să profităm de acest moment pentru a fi și noi siguri pe bugetul nostru și pe banii noștri. Noi acum suntem o familie care în fiecare zi primim bani de la rudele noastre din străinătate și la un moment dat se taie robinetul. Și tot noi ne plângem, tot noi suntem nemulțumiți, tot noi suntem supărați că de ce lucrează aia în diaspora?Apropo de ce spun unii în stânga și în dreapta. Nu! Avem nevoie de această construcție comună, însă avem nevoie în această familie și de responsabilitatea din partea noastră. Au trecut, știi, 18 ani de la aderare. Nu mai suntem un nou stat membru. Deja suntem la început de viață de adult în Europa. Și aici e important.Care e job-ul pe care le vrem? Ce vrem să facem pentru [00:47:00] familie? Cât contribuim la chirie? Care este proiectul nostru pentru familia noastră? Lucrurile astea trebuie să fie definite astăzi, nu mai târziu Pentru că dacă ajungem la 25 de ani, o să apară un nivel de frustrare. Tânărul acela care la 25 de ani este din nou în casa familiei și nu-l ascultă nimeni.Despre asta este vorba. E simplu de explicat, dar trebuie să prezentăm acest proiect. Și asta trebuie să facă viitorul președinte a României și partidele din România ca oamenii să creadă în proiectul european. Pentru că dacă nu, recent s-a publicat barometrul european. Cel mai mare nivel de încredere în Uniunea Europeană în istoria Europei 74%.Da, România... Stă bine, 7% dar este sub media europeană și nu s-a mai întâmplat asta decât să ne lădărare să fim sub media europeană. George Buhnici: Românii se uită încă nu are către vest totuși, cele mai multe curse aeriene, eu am mai zis chestia asta că urmăresc că am fost pe transporturi multă vreme, mergeam la autopei, nu prea vedeam zboruri către est, cele mai multe mers spre vest.Deci românii se uită către vest și pentru muncă și pentru vacanțe și așa mai departe și toți banii ăștia europeni, [00:48:00] făceam un calcul, deci practic în balanța asta a fondurilor europene noi suntem net câștigători ca să zic așa cu vreo 70 de miliarde dacă nu greșesc. 70 de miliarde, da. 70 de miliarde care ne-au ridicat PIB-ul de vreo 10 ori și acum suntem la vreo 350.Deci și astea în condițiile în care multe din fondurile europene sunt fraudate, sunt cheltuite anapoda, sunt investiții care nu au făcut profit, cu toate astea cu toate astea îmulțim fiecare euro de la Uniunea Europeană de vreo 3 până la 5 ori. Am vorbit inclusiv cu fermieri care mi-au spus chestia asta, că este frustrant pentru ei să vadă terenul ținut de părloagă pentru subvenție, în loc să facem mâncare și agricultură în țara asta, pentru că banii nu se verifică.Uniunea Europeană este atât de generoasă cu noi încât ne dă bani și nici nu verifică suficient Cât de mult se fraudează pentru că știe că la un moment dat românii ăia vor deveni și ei niște europeni, ajung la majorat. După 18 ani ești major acum, nu? Și începi Victor Negrescu: să-și asume rolul ăsta, să intrăm în rol.Sunt beneficiile [00:49:00] acestea financiare clare pentru România. Însă trebuie să înțelegem că nu este vorba doar despre bani. Pentru că la un moment dat o să fim în situația în care noi vom contribui mai mult la bugetul european. Și ce facem Ne plângem? Sunt atât de multe state europene care contribuie mai mult la bugetul european decât primesc.Ar fi fost foarte simplu pentru ele să plece din lumea europeană. De 18 ani francezii și George Buhnici: ăștia ne dau bani. Ne dau bani așa. Luați, faceți ceva cu ei. Știm că mai și furați, ca și cum îi dai unui copil care știe că o să-și ia și dulciuri, dar poate învață cum să-i folosească mai bine. Da, Victor Negrescu: poate merge la școală poate e mai motivat.Acum nu putem vorbi de bani gratiste. Să faci și reforme, trebuie să le spui niște standarde Să fii la un nivel european O piață deschisă concurență, competiție, da, nu este simplu Sunt și avantaje și situații mai dificile. De exemplu o mare provocare pe care am întâmplat-o este cum să facem față plecării românilor din țară.Și aici înțeleg și de ce apare această frustrare. Pentru că, mai ales [00:50:00] bătrânii care au rămas acasă se gândesc, copiii mei au plecat pentru că există Europa. Fără să-și dea seama că, de fapt, copiii lor au o șansă pentru că există Europa și poate și-au construit o familie datorită Europei. Nu-și dau seama de multe ori că drumurile care au apărut asfaltate în satele lor sau canalizarea, toate acele elemente s-au făcut cu bani europeni.Nu s-au făcut cu bani de la primărie. Da, știu că mulți primari pun chestiunea asta. Am întâlnit și eu în țară inclusiv de la Partidul Social Democrat, primari care mergeau prin sat și spuneau eu am făcut, știu lucrurile aceastea, tu ai depus dosarul. Da. Cel mult. E bine că s-a depus și dosarul. Am întâlnit și niște comunități unde nu s-a depus dosarul.La ea e acasă. Eu am primit multe provocări în politică. Cred că una dintre cele mai grele provocări în ultimii ani a fost la alegerile locale de anul trecut. Colegii mei din partid au zis Negrescu e cu Europa, exact ce spuneai tu, imagine bună, dar a să mai muncească și el. [00:51:00] Și mi-au dat să gestionez cea mai slabă organizație a PSL din punct de vedere politic, organizație în care mă regăsesc Evident fac parte din ea de mult timp dar nu m-am ocupat de politica locală.E o organizație din Alba, o organizație locală. Să nu mă ocup doar chestiuni europene, o organizație pe care o conduc PSA Activism Român. Mi-am dat o organizație județeană cu 3-4 luni înainte de alegeri Am colegi care chiar cred în socialdemocrație. Acolo dați puțin slab, cea mai puternică organizație a PNL-ului în județul respectiv.Și a trebuit să o reclădesc de la zero. De la 14% cât avea tradițional PSD în județul Alba, am luat 24%, cel mai mare număr de voturi din ultimii 30 de ani pentru PSD acolo. Și am cadus oameni noi, mulți tineri și o să spun ceva straniu. Am câștigat comunități care cât cât arată bine să erau niște proiecte făcute cu proiecte mai bune.Dar comunitățile care arătau cel mai rău, unde am pus culmea tineri [00:52:00] pregătiți oameni cu experiență, n-am reușit să le câștig. De ce? De ce Oamenii pur și simplu au zis nu vor, gata, nu vrem bani europene, nu vrem să ne amestecăm, a fost o respingere față de nou, au spus noi rămânem noi cu noi, n-are rost să vină cineva în plus.Cum s-au creat niște microclimate de convingeri de opinii bule care sunt fie fizic în anumite comunități, fie virtuale online, oameni care pur și simplu sunt convinși că trebuie să respingă orice vine din exterior, orice idee nouă că modernizarea este ceva care se face împotriva lor. Și da, trebuie să explicăm toată modernizarea asta.De exemplu acum, la nivel european am decis ca în câțiva ani permisele de conducere să fie digitalizate. Și valuă pe internet. Wow, ne fură datele! Ce scult chestiune asta! De ce mi-anulează permisul în altă țară și mi-l anulează și aici acum? Da, adică nu poți să comiți o [00:53:00] ilegalitate afară că te prinde.Păi nu trebuie să faci nimic ilegal. Despre asta e vorba. Și mai apare portofelul digital. Pe lângă pandemie, al doilea subiect important pentru extrema dreaptă în Europa a fost opoziția la crearea portofelului digital european. Adică un site Securizat, unde tu poți să-ți urci documentele, evident l-ai și în format fizic și permisul o să poți să-l în format fizic dar ți le urci acolo ca să le ai digitalizate, să nu te mai cauți prin buzunare pentru documente și ai diploma, ai permisul, ai toate chestiunile care țin de experiența ta profesională intri acolo pur și simplu cod QR, foarte ușor foarte facil.O poziție pe internet, am avut oameni care mi-au scris Negrescu ai votat în Parlamentul European să ni se fure datele. Eu nu-i blâmesc pe oamenii care mi-au scris, dar ca o să înțeleg de ce au ajuns în situația asta și cât important e să-i explicăm. Și nu e simplu sincer, nu e simplu cu persoane radicalizate să explici.O poți face individual, George Buhnici: dar [00:54:00] trebuie faci statul. Corect? Victor Negrescu: Da, sunt lucruri structurale. Adică și aici mai apare chestiunea asta. M-am întâlnit cu ministrul francez al afacelor europene, a fost și România. A venit în România să prezinte raportul pe care l-au făcut serviciile franceze cu privire la influențele străine în campania din România pentru prezidențiale.Foarte ok. George Buhnici: Aș Victor Negrescu: vrea și România, apropo să prezinte un raport. A venit cu George Buhnici: jandarmii ăia care au participat la proteste aici? N-ai auzit-o pe aia cu jandarmii Victor Negrescu: francezi? Nu erau niciun jandarm dar erau niște buni profesioniști, niște cum ea, niște doamne care au lucrat la acel raport Și prezenta tot ce se întâmplă exact Care sunt efectele și cum s-a făcut această influențare manipulare.Și nu, oamenii se uită la noi, a, politicial, ne spune că a fost manipulat, dar noi credem în [00:55:00] ceea ce facem. Da, eu chiar cred că oamenii au crezut în Georgescu, cred în continuare în aceste idei și poate nu ne dăm seama Cred că și eu am fost supus acestor influențe. Când dai scroll mai vezi niște clipuri și vezi tot timpul același clip.Nu direct, adică nu spune cineva votează Y. Când vezi la un moment dat proteste care se repetă. La un moment dat remarcasem în România, anul mă cu câțiva ani, erau video ads prin Google, promovau niște proteste Adică nu vorbim de ceva incipient și nu contează volumul financiar că a fost 500.000 de euro, că a fost un milion că au fost 4 milioane de euro băgate.Nu volumul, contează tehnica și faptul că cineva a căutat să ne inducă anumite sentimente, să ne conducă într-o direcție și asta nu este normal. Care sunt emoțiile alea Care sunt sentimentele de care [00:56:00] vorbești? Cred că dezamăgirea față de democrație și de ce s-a întâmplat în ultimii ani și aici s-a speculat...O chestie care circulă des. 35 de ani nu s-a întâmplat nimic, doar s-a furat. Și pe această chestiune s-a cultivat sentimentul că democrația e de vină și partidele sunt de vină. Deși și partidele sunt de vină, recunosc lucrul ăsta. Dar scopul a fost împotriva democrației, cultivând ideea unui lider autoritar.Cred că asta a fost centrul, au fost mult mai multe George Buhnici: Nu a cultivat liderul autoritar. Îți spun că democrația e proastă și atunci alternativa care e? Un lider? Păi Victor Negrescu: nu, arătau că erau circulele acelea cu Ceaușescu care decide și l-a arătat pe Putin cât șmecheră Putin și așa mai departe Deci au fost chestii care cultivau ideea unui lider autoritar direct.Și s-au dus aceste sentimente. Eu, de când au avut aceste alegeri prezidențiale, caut să fac întâlniri diferite cu cetățenii. Și mai nou, mai ales în alba și nu numai, îi rog pe colegii mei să ne întâlnim cu persoane care nu sunt afiliate politic pe niște caracteristici [00:57:00] comune. Și Prima întâlnire a fost cu circa 20 de tineri Grupe de vârstă diferite, unii angajați, unii la studii și unii mai tineri.Și i-am întrebat care este super puterea politică pe care ar vrea să o aibă fiecare dintre ei. Încerc să fac o discuție mai interesant. Și cei mai tineri din sală de 18 ani, mi-au zis vrem un lider autoritar să decide asta. Deci ei erau cei mai radicalizați. Unul dintre ei cântea la chitară foarte talentat, mi-a arătat și clipurile lui pe YouTube, dar un rock alternativ.Și nu m-am pus de abține și am zis, a văzut mișto ce cânt foarte tare, l pus să ne arate, chiar foarte talentat copilul. Și i-am zis, da știi muzica asta cu un lider autoritar Dar s-ar putea se spună... Că nu ai voie să cânti muzica asta, că nu este muzica aia structurală și pe vremea comuniștilor n-aveai voie să cânti sau să faci absolut [00:58:00] orice.Păi eu n-am înțeles așa. Păi da, că într-un sistem autoritar, liderul suprem decide. Dacă tu vrei asta, el îți spune ce muzică ai voie să cânti. Păi eu n-am privit așa. M-am gândit că e un lider autoritar care face curățenii. Păi ce înseamnă curățenie? Adică cred că trebuie să punem și noi întrebările de genul acesta.Ce înseamnă când scrie hashtag să facem curățenie sau ce-a folosit expresia asta extremiștii? Hai să întrebăm concret ce înseamnă. Nu au răspuns. Ce înseamnă vrem turul 2 înapoi? Ce înseamnă chestiunea asta? Adică să răstoane democrația, să nu se mai respecte nimic nicio regulă nicio decizie și așa mai departe Adică dacă intrăm în detalii Cred că extremiștii pierd dezbaterea De aceea trebuie să-i confruntăm.Clasa politică a decis să facă un pas în spate. Eu, motivul pentru care poate sunt și astăzi la tine în această dezbatere, este pentru că eu de când am avut loc ale acestei legile parlamentare, n-am avut o ezitare în a vorbi despre extremism, pericolul lor, numind Georgescu, [00:59:00] Simeon, Șoșoacă, Victor Ponta și așa mai departe N-am avut o problemă în interiorul partidului sau public.Și nu te ascund că am mai primit niște telefoane, inclusiv de la prieteni pe bune, chiar prieteni din partii sau din exterior sau de la alte partii de care mi-au zis Victor, nu vrei să o lași mai moale? Lasă-o mai moale, așa că nu e bine. Pierdem electorat. Dar ce vrei să posti tu lupta asta? Candidez la prezidențiale?Nu, dom'le nu candidez. Eu George Buhnici: cred că un PSD cu tine în frunte ar fi avut o șansă mult mai bună să iasă din blaștină asta. Și, din nou, not a big fan, da? Suntem aici doar că efectiv percepție Mă uit din afară Ca jurnalist mă uit la percepție în primul rând Lucrez cu oameni de multă vreme Mă uit la mass media Mă uit la felul în care se uită cei care îți pun ție întrebări Mă uit la felul în care se raportează oamenii la tine Tu nu ai hate Victor Negrescu: Decât George Buhnici: de la troll Victor Negrescu: Poate am și hate Se mai întâmplă Și mi-asum și oameni Care nu mă simpatizează Și e normal lucrul acesta Dar revenind la [01:00:00] chestiunea aceasta Trebuie să combatem Trebuie să fim proactiv Să fim prezenți în dezbaterea aceasta Și nu merg doar mesaje date la reuniuni de partii Adică trebuie să fii acolo La firul ierbii Să duci această luptă Cred că avem o responsabilitate liderii politici, mai inclus și pe mine prin prisma funcției acestea de vice-princip de la Parlamentul European, să-i apărăm și pe cei care sunt atacați.Eu, după ce s-a făcut în România lista celebra lui Soros pe care am fost și eu, am fost pe televiziune primul eram primul la reportajele. Te-ai întâlnit vreodată cu Soros îl știi? Două zile, nu, niciodată. Ai avut colaborări? Nu nu. Nu te-ai atins în niciun ONG de acolo? Acum nu știu câte ONG-uri au fost, dar lucrez și cu ONG-uri, sindicate, patronate.Acum m-am întâlnit cu unii care sunt de extremă dreapta, că am fost cu Victor Ponta la același partid. Deci nu e adevărat să spui George Buhnici: public chestia asta că ai sau n-ai legături directe sau

The world is completely different than it was before ChatGPT.

Alan was joined by the incomparable Melissa Obrotka, also known as "The Badass Hygienist!" They recorded this conversation live at the Chicago Midwinter Dental Meeting. The episode dives deep into Melissa's journey in dental hygiene, her passion for progressive care, and her insights on the current state and future of the profession. Melissa shares the story behind her "Badass Hygienist" nickname, stemming from her proactive approach to improving patient care and her willingness to advocate for better technology and techniques. She recounts her experience transitioning to a periodontal prosthetics practice and the steep learning curve involved in maintaining complex implant cases as well as how she discovered "Guided Biofilm Therapy" (or GBT) a techniqu that she now teaches and uses clinically. Dr. Mead and Melissa also tackle some of the challenging issues facing dentistry today, including the hygiene shortage and potential solutions, the complexities of insurance-driven care, and the need for better communication and understanding between dentists and hygienists. Melissa offers her perspective on how hygienists can move beyond "polishing a paycheck" and embrace a more therapeutic and patient-centered approach. Some links from the show: itsthebadasshygienist (Melissa's Instagram) Guided Biofilm Therapy from EMS Join the Very Dental Facebook group using the password "Timmerman," Hornbrook" or "McWethy," "Papa Randy" or "Lipscomb!" The Very Dental Podcast network is and will remain free to download. If you'd like to support the shows you love at Very Dental then show a little love to the people that support us! -- Crazy Dental has everything you need from cotton rolls to equipment and everything in between and the best prices you'll find anywhere! If you head over to verydentalpodcast.com/crazy and use coupon code “VERYDENTAL10” you'll get another 10% off your order! Go save yourself some money and support the show all at the same time! -- The Wonderist Agency is basically a one stop shop for marketing your practice and your brand. From logo redesign to a full service marketing plan, the folks at Wonderist have you covered! Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/wonderist! -- Enova Illumination makes the very best in loupes and headlights, including their new ergonomic angled prism loupes! They also distribute loupe mounted cameras and even the amazing line of Zumax microscopes! If you want to help out the podcast while upping your magnification and headlight game, you need to head over to verydentalpodcast.com/enova to see their whole line of products! -- CAD-Ray offers the best service on a wide variety of digital scanners, printers, mills and even  their very own browser based design software, Clinux! CAD-Ray has been a huge supporter of the Very Dental Podcast Network and I can tell you that you'll get no better service on everything digital dentistry than the folks from CAD-Ray. Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/CADRay!  

The above title does not do Dan Swift justice. Dan also has his own podcast, successful Youtube channel and he has released seven music albums. Talk about being unstoppable! I met Dan when I appeared as a guest on his podcast, Time We Discuss and I knew he would contribute to a fascinating story here.   Dan grew up with an interest in music. For a time he thought he wanted to write music for video games. Along the way he left that idea behind and after graduating from college he began working at designing websites. He has made that into his fulltime career.   As he grew as a website designer and later as a supervisor for a school system coordinating and creating the school sites Dan took an interest in accessibility of the web. We talk quite a bit about that during our time together. His observations are fascinating and right on where web access for persons with disabilities is concerned.   We also talk about Dan's podcast including some stories of guests and what inspires Dan from his interviews. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I.       About the Guest:   Originally wanting to write music for video games or become an audio engineer, Dan Swift graduated from a small Liberal Arts college with a degree in Music Composition (Bachelor of Arts) and Music Recording Technology (Bachelor of Music).  Dan went on to release seven EP albums between 2003 and 2024. Most recently, "Parallels" dropped on Leap Day, 2024.  Dan has always had a passion for shaking up genres between Eps writing classical, electronic, and modern rock music.   While creating music has always been a passion, Dan took a more traditional professional path as a web developer. While on this path, Dan had a lot of experience with accessibility standards as it relates to the web and he values accessibility and equity for everyone both inside and outside the digital workspace. Having received his MBA during COVID, Dan went on to a leadership position where he continues to make a difference leading a team of tech-savvy web professionals.   In early 2024, I created a podcast and YouTube channel called "Time We Discuss" which focuses on career exploration and discovery. The channel and podcast are meant for anyone that is feeling lost professionally and unsure of what is out there for them. Dan feels that it is important for people to discover their professional passion, whatever it is that lights them up on the inside, and chase it. So many people are unfulfilled in their careers, yet it doesn't have to be this way.   When not working, Dan enjoys spending time with his wife and three kids. They are a very active family often going to various extracurricular events over the years including flag football, soccer, gymnastics, and school concerts.  Dan's wife is very active with several nonprofit organizations including those for the betterment of children and homelessness.  Dan enjoys playing the piano, listening to podcasts, and listening to music.  Dan is very naturally curious and is a slave to a train of never-ending thoughts.   Ways to connect with Dan:   Time We Discuss on YouTube Time We Discuss on Spotify Time We Discuss on Twitter/X Time We Discuss on Instagram Time We Discuss on BlueSky   Time We Discuss Website Dan Swift Music Website   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everybody. Welcome once again. Wherever you may be, to unstoppable mindset, I am your host, Mike hingson, sometimes I say Michael hingson, and people have said, Well, is it Mike or Michael? And the answer is, it doesn't really matter. It took a master's degree in physics and 10 years in sales for me to realize that if I said Mike Hingson on the phone, people kept calling me Mr. Kingston, and I couldn't figure out why, so I started saying Michael Hingson, and they got the hinckson part right, but it doesn't matter to me. So anyway, Mike hingson, or Michael hingson, glad you're with us, wherever you are, and our guest today is Dan Swift, who has his own pine podcast, and it was actually through that podcast that we met, and I told him, but I wouldn't do it with him and be on his podcast unless he would be on unstoppable mindset. And here he is. Dan is a person who writes music, he's an engineer. He does a lot of work with web design and so on, and we're going to get into all that. So Dan, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Dan Swift ** 02:25 Michael, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am. I'm super excited.   Michael Hingson ** 02:30 Well, looking forward to getting to spend more time with you. We did yours time to discuss, and now we get this one. So it's always kind of fun. So, and Dan is in Pennsylvania, so we're talking across the continent, which is fine. It's amazing what we can do with electronics these days, telling us not like the good old days of the covered wagon. What can I say? So, So Dan, why don't you tell us a little bit about kind of the early Dan, growing up and all that.   Dan Swift ** 02:57 Oh, geez. How far   Michael Hingson ** 02:58 back to go? Oh, as far as you want to go,   Dan Swift ** 03:02 Well, okay, so I am, I am the youngest of five. Grew up just outside of Philadelphia as being the youngest. You know, there are certain perks that go along with that. I get to experience things that my parents would have previous said no to the older siblings. And you know how it is with with, you know, if you have more than one kid, technically, you get a little more relaxed as you have more but then I also had the other benefit of, you know, hearing the expression, there are young ears in the room, I will tell you later. So I kind of got some of that too. But I grew up outside of Philadelphia, had a passion for music. Pretty early on. I was never good at any sports. Tried a number of things. And when I landed on music, I thought, you know, this is this is something that I can do. I seem to have a natural talent for it. And I started, I tried playing the piano when I was maybe eight or nine years old. That didn't pan out. Moved on to the trumpet when I was nine or 10. Eventually ended up picking up guitar, bass, guitar, double bass revisited piano later in life, but that's the musical side of things. Also, when I was young, you know, I had a passion for role playing games, Dungeons and Dragons, was really big when I was a teenager, so I was super excited for that. Yeah, that's, that's kind of those, those memories kind of forced me, or kind of shaped me into the person that I am today. I'm very light hearted, very easy going, and I just try to enjoy life.   Michael Hingson ** 04:30 I played some computer games when computers came along and I started fiddling with them, the games I usually played were text based games. I've never really played Dungeons and Dragons and some of those. And I I'm sure that there are accessible versions of of some of that, but I remember playing games like adventure. You remember? Have you heard of adventure? I have, yeah. So that was, that was fun. Info con made. Well, they had Zork, which was really the same as adventure, but they. At a whole bunch of games. And those are, those are fun. And I think all of those games, I know a lot of adults would probably say kids spend too much time on some of them, but some of these games, like the the text based games, I thought really were very good at expanding one's mind, and they made you think, which is really what was important to me? Yeah, I   Dan Swift ** 05:21 completely agree with that too. Because you'd be put in these situations where, you know true, you're trying to solve some kind of puzzle, and you're trying to think, Okay, well, that didn't work, or that didn't work, and you try all these different things, then you decide to leave and come back to and you realize later, like you didn't have something that you needed to progress forward, or something like that. But, but it really gets the brain going, trying to create with these, uh, come up with these creative solutions to progress the game forward. Yeah, which   Michael Hingson ** 05:43 and the creative people who made them in the first place? What did they? Yeah, they, I don't know where they, where they spent their whole time that they had nothing to do but to create these games. But hey, it worked. It sure. Did you know you do it well. So you went off to college. Where'd you go? Sure,   Dan Swift ** 06:02 I went to a small liberal arts college, Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. It's near, it's near Hershey. It was, it was weird in that my the entire school was about half the size of my entire high school. So that was very, very weird. And then you talk to these other people. And it's like, my high school was, you know, very large by comparison. But for me, it was like, well, high school, that's what I knew. But yeah, it was I went to, I went to 11 Valley College near Hershey. I studied, I was a double major. I studied music composition and music recording,   Michael Hingson ** 06:35 okay, and, oh, I've got to go back and ask before we continue that. So what were some of the real perks you got as a kid that your your older siblings didn't get?   Dan Swift ** 06:45 Oh, geez, okay. I mean,   Michael Hingson ** 06:49 couldn't resist, yeah, probably, probably   Dan Swift ** 06:51 some of the more cliche things. I probably got to spend the night at a friend's house earlier than my oldest brother. For instance, I know my parents were a little more concerned about finances. So I know my oldest brother didn't get a chance to go away to college. He did community college instead. And then, kind of, my sister was a very similar thing. And then once we got, like, about halfway down, you know, me and my two other brothers, we all had the opportunity to go away to college. So I think that was, that was definitely one of the perks. If I was the oldest, I was the oldest, I probably wouldn't have had that opportunity with my family. Got   Michael Hingson ** 07:24 it well, so you went off and you got a matt a bachelor's in music, composition and music recording. So that brought you to what you were interested in, part, which was the engineering aspect of it. But that certainly gave you a pretty well rounded education. Why those two why composition and recording? Sure.   Dan Swift ** 07:43 So if we talk about the music first at that time, so this is like the the late 90s, early 2000s any kind of digital music that was out there really was, was MIDI based, and anyone that was around that time and paying attention, it was like these very like, like that music kind of sound to it. So there wasn't a whole lot going on with MIDI. I'm sorry, with music as far as how great it sounded, or I shouldn't say, how great it sounded, the the instruments that are triggered by MIDI, they didn't sound all that great. But around that time, there was this game that came out, Final Fantasy seven, and I remember hearing the music for that, and it was all, it was all electronic, and it was just blown away by how fantastic it sounded. And And around that time, I thought, you know, it'd be really cool to get into writing music for video games. And that was something I really kind of toyed with. So that was kind of in the back of my head. But also, at the time, I was in a band, like a rock band, and I thought, you know, I'm going to school. They have this opportunity to work as a music engineer, which is something I really wanted to do at the time. And I thought, free studio time. My band will be here. This will be awesome. And it wasn't until I got there that I discovered that they also had the music composition program. It was a I was only there maybe a week or two, and once I discovered that, I was like, Well, this is gonna be great, you know, I'll learn to write. Know, I'll learn to write music. I can write for video games. I'll get engineering to go with it. This is gonna be fantastic. Speaking   Michael Hingson ** 09:07 of electronic music, did you ever see a science fiction movie called The Forbidden Planet? I did not. Oh, it's music. It's, it's not really music in the sense of what what we call, but it's all electronic. You gotta, you gotta find it. I'm sure you can find it somewhere. It's called the Forbidden Planet. Walter pigeon is in it. But the music and the sounds fit the movie, although it's all electronic, and electronic sounding pretty interesting.   Dan Swift ** 09:37 Now, is that from, I know, like in the 50s, 60s, there was a lot of experiments. Okay, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:45 yeah, and, but again, it fit the movie, which was the important part. So it certainly wasn't music like John Williams today and and in the 80s and all that. But again, for the movie, it fit. Very well, which is kind of cool. Yeah,   Dan Swift ** 10:02 I'll definitely have to check that out. I remember when I was in school, we talked about like that, that avant garde kind of style of the the 50s, 60s. And there was a lot of weird stuff going on with electronics, electronic music. Um, so I'm very curious to see, uh, to check this out, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 10:14 You have to let me know what, what you find, what you think about it, when you get to chance to watch it, absolutely or actually, I I may have a copy. If I do, I'll put it in a dropbox folder and send you a link. Fantastic. So you graduated. Now, when did you graduate?   Dan Swift ** 10:32 Sure, so I graduated in 2003 okay,   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 so you graduated, and then what did you do? So,   Dan Swift ** 10:41 backing up about maybe 612, months prior to that, I decided I did not want to be a I didn't want to write music for video games. I also did not want to work in a recording studio. And the reason for this was for music. It was, I didn't it was, it was something I really, really enjoyed, and I didn't want to be put in a position where I had to produce music on demand. I didn't want to I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to lose my hobby, lose my passion in that way. So I decided that was out. And then also, when it came to working in a studio, if I wanted to be the engineer that I really wanted to be, I would have to be in a place where the music scene was really happening. So I'd have to be in like Philadelphia or Los Angeles or Nashville or deep in Philly or something like that. And I do not like the cities. I don't feel comfortable in the city. So I was like, that's not really for me either. I could work in like a suburb studio. But I was like, not, not for me. I don't, not for me. So when I graduated college, I ended up doing freelance web work. I had met through, through a mutual friend I was I was introduced to by a mutual friend, to a person that was looking for a new web designer, developer. They lost their person, and they were looking for someone to take over with that. And at the time, I did a little bit of experience doing that, from when I was in high school, kind of picked it up on the side, just kind of like as a hobby. But I was like, Ah, I'll give this a shot. So I started actually doing that freelance for a number of years after graduation. I also worked other jobs that was, like, kind of like nowhere, like dead end kind of jobs. I did customer service work for a little bit. I was a teacher with the American Cross for a little bit, a little bit of this and that, just trying to find my way. But at the same time, I was doing freelance stuff, and nothing related to music and nothing related to technology,   Michael Hingson ** 12:29 well, so you learned HTML coding and all that other stuff that goes along with all that. I gather, I   Dan Swift ** 12:35 sure did, I sure didn't. At the time, CSS was just kind of popular, yeah, so that. And then I learned, I learned JavaScript a little bit. And, you know, I had a very healthy attitude when it when it came to accepting new clients and projects, I always tried to learn something new. Anytime someone gave me a new a new request came in, it was like, Okay, well, I already know how to do this by doing it this way. But how can I make this better? And that was really the way that I really propelled myself forward in the in the digital, I should say, when it comes to development or design.   Michael Hingson ** 13:05 Okay, so you ended up really seriously going into website development and so on.   Dan Swift ** 13:15 I did. So I continued doing freelance. And then about five years after I graduated, I started working as an audio visual technician, and also was doing computer tech stuff as part of the role as well. And while I was there, I ended up developing some web applications for myself to use that I could use to interact with our like projectors and stuff like that. Because they were on, they were all in the network, so I could interact with them using my wait for it, iPod Touch, there you go. So that was, you know, I kind of like started to blend those two together. I was really interested in the web at the time, you know, because I was still doing the freelance, I really wanted to move forward and kind of find a full time position doing that. So I ended up pursuing that more and just trying to refine those skills. And it wasn't until about about five years later, I ended up working as a full time web developer, and then kind of moved forward from   Michael Hingson ** 14:09 there, iPod Touch, what memories? And there are probably bunches of people who don't even know what that is today. That   Dan Swift ** 14:16 is so true, and at the time that was cutting edge technology,   Michael Hingson ** 14:21 yeah, it was not accessible. So I didn't get to own one, because was later than that that Steve Jobs was finally kind of pushed with the threat of a lawsuit into making things accessible. And then they did make the iPhone, the iPod, the Mac and so on, and iTunes U and other things like that, accessible. And of course, what Steve Jobs did, what Apple did, which is what Microsoft eventually sort of has done as well, but he built accessibility into the operating system. So anybody who has an Apple device today. Troy actually has a device that can be made accessible by simply turning on the accessibility mode. Of course, if you're going to turn it on, you better learn how to use it, because the gestures are different. But it took a while, but, but that did happen. But by that time, I, you know, I had other things going on, and so I never did get an iPod and and wasn't able to make it work, but that's okay. But it's like the CD has gone away and the iPod has gone away, and so many things and DVDs have gone away.   Dan Swift ** 15:31 Yes, so true. So true. You know, just as soon as we start to get used to them   Michael Hingson ** 15:35 gone. I think there is, well, maybe it's close. There was a blockbuster open up in Oregon. But again, Blockbuster Video, another one, and I think somebody's trying to bring them back, but I do see that vinyl records are still being sold in various places by various people. Michael Buble just put out a new album, The Best of Buble, and it's available, among other things, in vinyl. So the old turntables, the old record players, and you can actually buy his album as a record and play it, which is kind of cool. Yeah, they've been   Dan Swift ** 16:07 very big with marketing, too. It's been kind of a marketing, I don't want to say gimmick, but in that realm, you kind of like, hey, you know, this is also available in vinyl, and you try to get the people that are like the audio files to really check it out. I never really took the vinyl personally, but I know plenty of people that have sworn by it. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 16:25 I've heard a number of people say that the audio actually is better on vinyl than typical MP three or other similar file formats. Yep,   Dan Swift ** 16:35 yep. I had a friend growing up, and actually, I shouldn't say growing up, so I was already, like, in college or post college, but a buddy of mine, Craig, he was all about vinyl, and he had, he had the nice, the amplifier, and the nice, I think even, like, a certain kind of needle that you would get for the record player. And you know, you'd have to sit in the sweet spot to really enjoy it, and and I respect that, but um, for me, it was like, I didn't, I didn't hear that much of a difference between a CD and vinyl. Um, not very. Didn't have the opportunity to AB test them. But now I will say comparing a CD to like an mp three file, for instance, even a high quality mp three file, I can tell the difference on that Sure. I would never, you know, I'd use the MP threes for convenience. But if I were to have it my way, man, I'd have the uncompressed audio, no doubt about it, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 17:27 wave forms, yep, yep, yeah. Obviously that's that's going to give you the real quality. Of course, it takes a lot more memory, but nevertheless, if you've got the space it, it really makes a lot of sense to do because mp three isn't going to be nearly as high a level quality.   Dan Swift ** 17:43 Absolutely, absolutely true. And that the way I rationalize it to myself. It's like, well, if I'm going to be though in the car or probably walking around and listening to music, I'm going to be getting all kinds of sounds from outside. Anyway, it kind of offsets the poor quality of the MP justify it.   Michael Hingson ** 17:56 That's true. Well, you know when and mp three is convenient if you want to put a bunch of stuff in a well on a memory card and be able to play it all, because if you have uncompressed audio, it does take a lot more space, and you can't put as much on a card, or you got to get a much bigger card. And now we're getting pretty good sized memory cards. But still, the reality is that that for most purposes, not all mp three will suffice.   Dan Swift ** 18:26 That is true. That is true. And I think too, you have a that the next battle is going to be mp three or a streaming,   Michael Hingson ** 18:33 yeah, yeah, that's going to be fun, isn't it? Yeah? Boy. What a world well. So one of the things I noticed in reading your bio and so on is that you got involved to a great degree in dealing with accessibility on the web. Tell me about that.   Dan Swift ** 18:55 Absolutely. Michael, so I've very strong opinions of accessibility. And this really comes back to, you know, I was, I was at my job, and I was only there as a full time developer. I wasn't there all that long, maybe a year, maybe two, and my supervisor came over to me and she said, you know, we want to start to make things more accessible. And this is like, this is like, 1012, years ago at this point, and I was like, okay, you know, and I did my little bit of research, and there wasn't a whole lot going on at the time. I don't think WCAG was a thing back then. It may have been. I can't remember if 508 was a thing at the in the Bible. It was okay, yeah. So I was doing my research, and, you know, you learn about the alt tags, and it's like, okay, well, we're doing that, okay. Then you learn about forms, and it's like, okay, well, they need to have labels, okay, but, but the turning point was this, Michael, we had a person on staff that was blind, and I was put in touch with this person, and I asked them to review like, different, different web applications. Applications we made, or forms or web pages. And the one day, I can't remember if he volunteered or if I asked, but essentially the request was, can this person come into our physical space and review stuff for us in person? And that experience was life changing for me, just watching him navigate our different web pages or web applications or forms, and seeing how he could go through it, see what was a problem, what was not a problem, was just an incredible experience. And I said this before, when given the opportunity to talk about this, I say to other developers and designers, if you ever have even the slightest opportunity to interact with someone, if they if, if you meet someone and they are using, let me, let me rephrase that, if you have the opportunity to watch someone that is blind using a navigate through the web, take, take that opportunity. Is just an amazing, amazing experience, and you draw so much from it. As a developer or designer, so very strong opinions about it, I'm all about inclusivity and making things equal for everyone on the web, and that was just my introductory experience about a dozen years ago.   Michael Hingson ** 21:07 And so what have you done with it all since? Sure, so   Dan Swift ** 21:11 with our website, we went from having about a million success criterion failures, and we've gotten it all the way down to, I think my last check, I think was maybe about 10,000 so it was huge, huge change. It's hard to get everything as because as content changes and newspaper, as new pages come online, it's hard to keep everything 100% accessible, but we know what to look for. You know, we're looking for the right contrast. We're looking for, you know, the all tags. We're looking for hierarchy with the headers. We're making sure our forms are accessible. We're making sure there aren't any keyboard traps, you know, things that most people, most web visitors, don't even think about, you know, or developers even thinking about, until you know, you need to think about them   Michael Hingson ** 22:00 well and other things as well, such as with other kinds of disabilities. If you're a person with epilepsy, for example, you don't want to go to a website and find blinking elements, or at least, you need to have a way to turn them off, yeah.   Dan Swift ** 22:13 Or or audio that starts automatically, or videos that start automatically, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 22:19 So many different things, or video that starts automatically, and there's music, but there's no audio, so you so a blind person doesn't even know what the video is, yes, which, which happens all too often. But the the reality is that with the Americans with Disabilities Act, it's it's been interesting, because some lawyers have tried to fight the courts and say, well, but the ADA came out long before the internet, so we didn't know anything about the internet, so it doesn't apply. And finally, the Department of Justice is taking some stands to say, yes, it does, because the internet is a place of business, but it's going to have to be codified, I think, to really bring it home. But some courts have sided with that argument and said, Well, yeah, the ADA is too old, so it doesn't, doesn't matter. And so we still see so many challenges with the whole idea of access. And people listening to this podcast know that, among other things I work with a company called accessibe. Are you familiar with them? I am, Yep, yeah, and, and so that's been an interesting challenge. But what makes access to be interesting is that, because it has an artificial intelligent widget that can monitor a website, and at the at the low end of of costs. It's like $490 a year. And it may not pick up everything that a body needs, but it will, will do a lot. And going back to what you said earlier, as websites change, as they evolve, because people are doing things on their website, which they should be doing, if you've got a static website, you never do anything with it. That's not going to do you very much good. But if it's changing constantly, the widget, at least, can look at it and make a lot of the changes to keep the website accessible. The other part of it is that it can tell you what it can't do, which is cool,   Dan Swift ** 24:16 yeah, that's a really good point. You know, there's a lot of tools that are out there. They do monitor the stuff for you, you know, like we on our on our site, we have something that runs every night and it gives us a report every day. But then there are things that it doesn't always check, or it might, it might get a false positive, because it sees that like, you know, this element has a particular color background and the text is a particular color as well. But there's, you know, maybe a gradient image that lies between them, or an image that lies between them. So it's actually okay, even though the tool says it's not, or something like that. So, yeah, those automated tools, but you gotta also look at it. You know, a human has to look at those as well.   Michael Hingson ** 24:52 Yeah, it's a challenge. But the thing that I think is important with, well, say, use accessibe. An example is that I think every web developer should use accessibe. And the reason I think that is not that accessibe will necessarily do a perfect job with with the access widget, but what it will do is give you something that is constantly monitored, and even if it only makes about 50% of the website more usable because there are complex graphics and other things that it can't do, the reality is, why work harder than you have to, and if accessibility can do a lot of the work for you without you having to do it, it doesn't mean that you need to charge less or you need to do things any different, other than the fact that you save a lot of time on doing part of it because the widget does it for you. Absolutely, absolutely.   Dan Swift ** 25:47 That's that's a really, really good point too, having that tool, that tool in your tool belt, you know, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:55 yeah. And it makes a lot of sense to do. And there are, there are people who complain about products like accessibe, saying artificial intelligence can't do it. It's too new. You gotta start somewhere. And the reality is that accessibe, in of itself, does a lot, and it really makes websites a lot better than they otherwise were. And some people say, Well, we've gone to websites and accessibe doesn't really seem to make a difference on the site. Maybe not. But even if your website is pretty good up front and you use accessibe, it's that time that you change something that you don't notice and suddenly accessibe fixes it. That makes it better. It's an interesting discussion all the way around, but to to deny the reality of what an AI oriented system can do is, is really just putting your head in the sand and not really being realistic about life as we go forward. I think that is   Dan Swift ** 26:52 so true. That is so true, and there's so many implications with AI and where it's going to go and what it will be able to do. You know, it's just in its infancy, and the amount of things that that the possibilities of what the future is going to be like, but they're just going to be very, very interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 27:05 I interviewed someone, well, I can't say interview, because it's conversation. Well, I had a conversation with someone earlier on, unstoppable mindset, and he said something very interesting. He's a coach, and specifically, he does a lot of work with AI, and he had one customer that he really encouraged to start using chat GPT. And what this customer did, he called his senior staff into a meeting one day, and he said, Okay, I want you to take the rest of the day and just work with chat, G, P, T, and create ideas that will enhance our business, and then let's get together tomorrow to discuss them. And he did that because he wanted people to realize the value already that exists using some of this technology. Well, these people came back with incredible ideas because they took the time to focus on them, and again, they interacted with chat, GPT. So it was a symbiotic, is probably the wrong word, but synergistic, kind of relationship, where they and the AI system worked together and created, apparently, what became really clever ideas that enhanced this customer's business. And the guy, when he first started working with this coach, was totally down on AI, but after that day of interaction with his staff, he recognized the value of it. And I think the really important key of AI is AI will not replace anyone. And that's what this gentleman said to me. He said, AI won't do it. People may replace other people, which really means they're not using AI properly, because if they were, when they find that they can use artificial intelligence to do the job that someone else is doing, you don't get rid of that person. You find something else for them to do. And the conversation that we had was about truck drivers who are involved in transporting freight from one place to another. If you get to the point where you have an autonomous vehicle, who can really do that, you still keep a driver behind the wheel, but that driver is now doing other things for the company, while the AI system does the driving, once it gets dependable enough to do that. So he said, there's no reason for AI to eliminate, and it won't. It's people that do it eliminate any job at all, which I think is a very clever and appropriate response. And I completely agree   Dan Swift ** 29:29 with that, you know, you think of other other technologies that are out there and how it disrupted, disrupted different industries. And the one example I like to use is the traffic light, you know. And I wonder, and I have no way of knowing this. I haven't researched this at all, but I wonder if there was any kind of pushback when they started putting in traffic lights. Because at that point in time, maybe you didn't have people directing traffic or something like that. Or maybe that was the event of the stop sign, it took it took away the jobs of people that were directing traffic or something like that. Maybe there was some kind of uproar over that. Maybe not, I don't know, but I like to think that things like that, you know. It disrupts the industry. But then people move on, and there are other other opportunities for them, and it progresses. It makes society progress forward.   Michael Hingson ** 30:06 And one would note that we still do use school crossing guards at a lot of schools.   Dan Swift ** 30:11 That is so true, that is true. Yeah, yeah. And especially, too, like talking about idea generation. I was talking to ginger. I forgot her last name, but she's the the president of pinstripe marketing, and she was saying that her team sometimes does the same thing that they they use chat GBT for idea generation. And I think, let's say Ashley, I think Ashley Mason, I think was her name, from Dasha social. The same thing they use, they use a chat GPT for idea generation, not not necessarily for creating the content, but for idea generation and the ideas it comes up with. It could be it can save you a lot of time. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 30:48 it can. And you know, I've heard over the last year plus how a lot of school teachers are very concerned that kids will just go off and get chat GPT to write their papers. And every time I started hearing that, I made the comment, why not let it do that? You're not thinking about it in the right way. If a kid goes off and just uses chat GPT to write their paper, they do that and they turn it into you. The question is, then, what are you as the teacher, going to do? And I submit that what the teachers ought to do is, when they assign a paper and the class all turns in their papers, then what you do is you take one period, and you give each student a minute to come up and defend without having the paper in front of them their paper. You'll find out very quickly who knows what. And it's, I think it's a potentially great teaching tool that   Dan Swift ** 31:48 is fascinating, that perspective is awesome. I love that.   Speaker 1 ** 31:52 Well, it makes sense. It   Dan Swift ** 31:55 certainly does. It certainly does. And that made me think of this too. You know, there's a lot of pushback from from artists about how that, you know, their their art was being used, or art is being used by AI to generate, you know, new art, essentially. And and musicians are saying the same thing that they're taking our stuff, it's getting fed into chat, GPT or whatever, and they're using it to train these different models. And I read this, this article. I don't even know where it was, but it's probably a couple months ago at this point. And the person made this comparison, and the person said, you know, it's really no different than a person learning how to paint in school by studying other people's art. You know, it's the same idea. It's just at a much, much much accelerated pace. And I thought, you know what that's that's kind of interesting. It's an interesting   Michael Hingson ** 32:45 perspective. It is. I do agree that we need to be concerned, that the human element is important. And there are a lot of things that people are are doing already to misuse some of this, this AI stuff, these AI tools, but we already have the dark web. We've had that for a while, too. I've never been to the dark web. I don't know how to get to it. That's fine. I don't need to go to the dark web. Besides that, I'll bet it's not accessible anyway. But the we've had the dark web, and people have accepted the fact that it's there, and there are people who monitor it and and all that. But the reality is, people are going to misuse things. They're going to be people who will misuse and, yeah, we have to be clever enough to try to ferret that out. But the fact of the matter is, AI offers so much already. One of the things that I heard, oh, gosh, I don't whether it was this year or late last year, was that, using artificial intelligence, Pfizer and other organizations actually created in only a couple of days? Or moderna, I guess, is the other one, the COVID vaccines that we have. If people had to do it alone, it would have taken them years that that we didn't have. And the reality is that using artificial intelligence, it was only a few days, and they had the beginnings of those solutions because they they created a really neat application and put the system to work. Why wouldn't we want to do that?   Dan Swift ** 34:23 I completely agree. I completely agree. And that's, again, that's how you move society forward. You know, it's similar to the idea of, you know, testing medicine on or testing medications on animals. For instance, you know, I love animals. You know, I love dogs, bunnies. I mean, the whole, the whole gamut, you know, love animals, but I understand the importance of, you know, well, do we test on them, or do we press on people, you know, you gotta, or do you not test? Or do just not you like you gotta. You gotta weigh out the pros and cons. And they're, they're definitely, definitely those with AI as well.   Michael Hingson ** 34:56 Well, I agree, and I. With animals and people. Now, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, we ought to be doing tests on politicians. You know, they're not people. Anyway. So I think when you decide to become a politician, you take a special pill that nobody seems to be able to prove, but they take dumb pills, so they're all there. But anyway, I'm with Mark Twain. Congress is at Grand Ole benevolent asylum for the helpless. So I'm an equal opportunity abuser, which is why we don't do politics on unstoppable mindset. We can have a lot of fun with it, I'm sure, but we sure could. It would be great talk about artificial intelligence. You got politicians. But the reality is that it's, it's really something that that brings so much opportunity, and I'm and it's going to continue to do that, and every day, as we see advances in what AI is doing, we will continue to see advances and what is open for us to be able to utilize it to accomplish, which is cool. I   Dan Swift ** 36:04 completely agree. Completely agree. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 36:06 so it'll be fun to see you know kind of how it goes. So are you, do you work for a company now that makes websites? Or what is your company that you work for? Do, sure.   Dan Swift ** 36:16 So I'm still in the education space, so I'm still, I'm like, in a state school managing a team of web professionals.   Michael Hingson ** 36:23 Okay, well, that's cool. So you keep the school sites and all the things that go along with it up at all that   Dan Swift ** 36:31 is correct. And we have lots of fun challenges when we start to integrate with third parties and got to make sure they're accessible too. And sometimes there's dialog that goes back and forth that people aren't happy with but, but it's my job to make sure, that's one of the things that we make sure happens, especially since I'm sure you've been following this. There's the Department of Justice ruling back in April, but I think it's anyone that's receiving state funding, they have to be. They have to follow the WCAG. Two point, I think, 2.1 double A compliance by April of 26 if you are a certain size, and my my institution, falls into that category. So we need to make sure that we were on the right path   Michael Hingson ** 37:06 well. And the reality is that has been around since 2010 but it took the the DOJ 12 years to finally come up with rules and regulations to implement section 508. Yep, but it's it's high time they did and they do need to do it for the rest of the internet, and that's coming, but people are just being slow. And for me personally, I think it's just amazing that it's taking so long. It's not like you have to redesign a box, that you have to go off and retool hardware. This is all code. Why should it be that difficult to do? But people throw roadblocks in your way, and so it becomes tough. Yeah, it's   Dan Swift ** 37:47 interesting, too. I remember reading this article, oh, gosh, this is probably, this is probably about a dozen years ago, and it said that, you know, the original web was 100% accessible, that it was just, you know, just text on a page pretty much. And you could do very, very simple layouts, you know, and then it got more convoluted. People would start doing tables for layouts, and tables within tables within tables, and so on and so forth. Like the original web it was, it was completely accessible. And now with, with all the the interactions we do with with client side scripting and everything like that, is just, it's a mess. If   Michael Hingson ** 38:19 you really want to hear an interesting thing, I like to look and I've done it for a long time, long before accessibe. I like to explore different sites and see how accessible they are. And one day I visited nsa.gov, the National Security Agency, which, of course, doesn't really exist. So I could tell you stories, but I went to nsa.gov, and I found that that was the most accessible website I had ever encountered. If you arrow down to a picture, for example, when you arrowed into it, suddenly you got on your screen reader a complete verbal description of what the picture was, and everything about that site was totally usable and totally accessible. I'd never seen a website that was so good contrast that with and it's changed. I want to be upfront about it, Martha Stewart Living. The first time I went to that website because I was selling products that Martha Stewart was interested. So I went to look at the website. It was totally inaccessible. The screen reader wouldn't talk at all. Now, I've been to Martha Stewart since, and it's and it's much more accessible, but, but I was just amazed@nsa.gov was so accessible. It was amazing, which I thought was really pretty cool. Of all places. You   Dan Swift ** 39:41 know, it's interesting. Before I started my my YouTube channel and podcast, I actually thought about creating a channel and or podcast about websites that are inaccessible, and I thought about calling companies out. And the more I thought about it, I was like, I don't know if I want to make that many people angry. I don't know if that's a   Michael Hingson ** 39:58 good idea. I'm. Would suggest going the other way, and maybe, you know, maybe we can work together on it. But I would rather feature websites that are accessible and tell the story of how they got there, how their people got there. I would think that would be, I hear what you're saying about making people angry. So I would think, rather than doing that, feature the places that are and why they are and and their stories, and that might help motivate more people to make their websites accessible. What do you think about that as an idea?   Dan Swift ** 40:28 I actually thought about that as well, and I was going backwards between that and and the other the negative side, because I thought, you know, bring that to light. Might actually force them to like by shedding light on it, might force them to make their site more accessible, whether what or not or not, no, but I definitely thought about those two sites.   Michael Hingson ** 40:45 Yeah, it's, it's, it's a challenge all the way around. Well, what was the very first thing you did, the first experience that you ever had dealing with accessibility that got you started down that road.   Dan Swift ** 40:58 I think it was like I said, when I work with that, that blind person, when I, when I first had that opportunity to see how he used the different web applications, we had the different web pages, and he was using a Mac. So he was using VoiceOver, he was using the, I think it's called the rotor menu, or roto something like that. Yeah, yep. So then after that happened, it was like, whoa. I need to get them back so I can, like, learn to use this as well and do my own testing. So the IT department had an old I asked them. I said, Hey guys, do you have any any old MacBooks that I can use? I was like, it can be old. I just need to test it. I need to, I need it to test for accessibility on the web. They hooked me up with an old machine, you know, it wasn't super old, you know, but it was. It worked for me. It gave me an opportunity to do my testing, and then I kind of became like the person in the department to do that. Everyone else, they didn't have the interest as much as I did. They recognized the importance of it, but they, they didn't have the same fire on the inside that I had, so I kind of took that on, and then like that. Now that I'm in the position of leadership, now it's more of a delegating that and making sure it still gets done. But I'm kind of like the resident expert in our in our area, so I'm still kind of the person that dives in a little bit by trying to make my team aware and do the things they need to do to make sure we're continuing, continuing to create accessible projects. You   Michael Hingson ** 42:20 mentioned earlier about the whole idea of third party products and so on and and dealing with them. What do you do? And how do you deal with a company? Let's say you you need to use somebody else's product and some of the things that the school system has to do, and you find they're not accessible. What do you do?   Dan Swift ** 42:42 So a lot of times, what will happen, I shouldn't say a lot of times. It's not uncommon for a department to make a purchase from a third party, and this is strictly, I'm talking in the web space. They might, they might make a purchase with a third party, and then they want us to integrate it. And this is a great example I had. It was actually in the spring the this, they had essentially a widget that would be on the on their particular set of pages, and there was a pop up that would appear. And don't get me started on pop ups, because I got very strong opinion about those. Me too, like I said, growing up, you know, late 90s, early 2000s very, very strong opinions about pop ups. So, but, but I encountered this, and it wasn't accessible. And I'm glad that in the position I'm in, I could say this unit, you need to talk to the company, and they need to fix this, or I'm taking it down. And I'm glad that I had the backing from, you know, from leadership, essentially, that I could do, I can make that claim and then do that, and the company ended up fixing it. So that was good. Another example was another department was getting ready to buy something. Actually, no, they had already purchased it, but they hadn't implemented it yet. The first example that was already implemented, that was I discovered that after the fact. So in the second example, they were getting ready to implement it, and they showed us another school that used it also a pop up. And I looked at it on the on the other school site, and I said, this isn't accessible. We cannot use this. No. And they said, Well, yes, it is. And I said, No, it isn't. And I explained to them, and I showed them how it was not accessible, and they ended up taking it back to their developers. Apparently there was a bug that they then fixed and they made it accessible, and then we could implement it. So it's nice that like that. I have the support from from leadership, that if there is something that is inaccessible, I have the power to kind of wheel my fist and take that down, take it off of our site. Do   Michael Hingson ** 44:31 you ever find that when some of this comes up within the school system, that departments push back, or have they caught on and recognize the value of accessibility, so they'll be supportive.   Dan Swift ** 44:45 I think the frustration with them becomes more of we bought this tool. We wish we had known this was an issue before we bought I think it's more of a like like that. We just wasted our time and money, possibly. But generally speaking, they do see the. Value of it, and they've recognized the importance of it. It's just more of a when others, there's more hoops everyone has to go through.   Michael Hingson ** 45:05 Yeah, and as you mentioned with pop ups, especially, it's a real challenge, because you could be on a website, and a lot of times A pop up will come up and it messes up the website for people with screen readers and so on. And part of the problem is we don't even always find the place to close or take down the pop up, which is really very frustrating   Dan Swift ** 45:30 Exactly, exactly the tab index could be off, or you could still be on the page somewhere, and it doesn't allow you to get into it and remove it, or, yeah, and extra bonus points if they also have an audio playing or a video playing inside of that.   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 Yeah, it really does make life a big challenge, which is very, very frustrating all the way around. Yeah, pop ups are definitely a big pain in the butt, and I know with accessibility, we're we're all very concerned about that, but still, pop ups do occur. And the neat thing about a product like accessibe, and one of the reasons I really support it, is it's scalable, and that is that as the people who develop the product at accessibe improve it, those improvements filter down to everybody using the widget, which is really cool, and that's important, because with individual websites where somebody has to code it in and keep monitoring it, as you pointed out, the problem is, if that's all you have, then you've got to keep paying people to to monitor everything, to make sure everything stays accessible and coded properly, whereas there are ways to be able to take advantage of something like accessibe, where what you're able to do is let it, monitor it, and as accessibe learns, and I've got some great examples where people contacted me because they had things like a shopping cart on a website that didn't work, but when accessibe fixed it, because it turns out there was something that needed to be addressed that got fixed for anybody using the product. Which is really cool.   Dan Swift ** 47:07 Yeah, that's really neat. I definitely appreciate things like that where, you know, you essentially fix something for one person, it's fixed for everyone, or a new feature gets added for someone, or, you know, a group of people, for instance, and then everyone is able to benefit from that. That's really, really awesome. I love that type of stuff.   Michael Hingson ** 47:22 Yeah, I think it's really so cool. How has all this business with accessibility and so on affected you in terms of your YouTube channel and podcasting and so on? How do you bring that into the process? That's that's   Dan Swift ** 47:37 really, really good question. I am very proud to say that I take the time to create transcripts of all my recordings, and then I go through them, and I check them for for accuracy, to make sure that things aren't correct, things are incorrect. Make sure things are correct, that they are not incorrect. So I'll make sure that those are there when the when the videos go live, those are available. Spotify creates them automatically for you. I don't know that you that I have the ability to modify them. I'm assuming I probably do, but honestly, I haven't checked into that. But so that's that's all accessible. When it comes to my web page, I make sure that all my images have the appropriate, you know, alt tags associated with them, that the the descriptions are there so people understand what the pictures are. I don't have a whole lot of pictures. Usually it's just the thumbnail for the videos, so just indicating what it is. And then I just try to be, you know, kind of, kind of text heavy. I try to make sure that my, you know, my links are not, you know, click here, learn more stuff like that. I make sure or they're not actual web addresses. I try to make sure that they're actual actionable. So when someone's using a screen reader and they go over a link, it actually is meaningful. And color contrast is another big one. I try to make sure my color contrast is meeting the appropriate level for WCAG, 2.1 double A which I can't remember what actual contrast is, but there's a contrast checker for it, which is really, really helpful   Michael Hingson ** 49:00 well. And the other, the other part about it is when somebody goes to your website again, of course, accessibility is different for different people, so when you're dealing with things like contrast or whatever, do people who come to the website have the ability to monitor or not monitor, but modify some of those settings so that they get maybe a higher contrast or change colors. Or do they have that ability?   Dan Swift ** 49:28 I They do not have that ability. I remember looking into a tool a while ago, and it was and actually, you know, at the school, we thought about developing a tool. It would be like a widget on the side that you could adjust on different things like that. You could do, you could remove images, you could remove animation, you could change color, contrast, that sort of thing. And it just be like a very predefined kind of kind of settings. But in my research, I found that a lot of times that causes other problems for people, and it kind of falls into the the arena of. Um, separate but equal. And there's a lot of issues with that right now in the accessibility space when it comes to the web. So for instance, there was a company, I forget what the company name was, but they had one of their things that they did was they would create text only versions of your pages. So you'd contract with them. They would they would scrape the content of your site. They would create a text version, text only version of your pages. So if people were using a screen reader, they could just follow that link and then browse the text only version. And there was litigation, and the company got sued, and the the person suing was successful, because it was essentially creating a separate argument.   Michael Hingson ** 50:34 And that's not necessarily separate, but equal is the problem, because if you only got the text, pictures are put on websites, graphs are put on websites. All of those other kinds of materials are put on websites for reasons. And so what really needs to happen is that those other things need to be made accessible, which is doable, and the whole web con excessive content. Accessibility Guidelines do offer the the information as to how to do that and what to do, but it is important that that other information be made available, because otherwise it really is separate, but not totally equal at   Dan Swift ** 51:11 all. That's absolutely true. Absolutely true. Yeah. So it   Michael Hingson ** 51:15 is a, it is something to, you know, to look at well, you've been doing a podcast and so on for a while. What are some challenges that someone might face that you advise people about if they're going to create their own podcast or a really productive YouTube channel,   Dan Swift ** 51:31 be real with yourself with the amount of time you have to dedicate to it, because what I found is that it takes a lot more time than I originally anticipated I thought going in, I thought, you know, so I typically try to record one or two people a week. When I first started out, I was only recording one person. And usually I would do, you know, record one day, edit the next day, you know, do the web page stuff. I would go with it, you know, I can knock it out in like an hour or two. But I wasn't anticipating the social media stuff that goes with it, the search engine optimization that goes with it, the research that goes with it, trying to so if I'm if I'm producing a video that's going to go on YouTube, what's hot at the moment? What are people actually searching for? What's going to grab people's attention? What kind of thumbnail do I have to create to grab someone's attention, where it's not clickbait, but it also represents what I'm actually talking to the person about, and still interesting. So it's a lot of a lot of that research, a lot of that sort of thing. It just eats up a lot a lot of time when it comes to like the transcripts, for instance, that was those super easy on their number of services out there that created automatically for you, and they just have to read through it and make sure it's okay. I know YouTube will do it as well. I found that YouTube isn't as good as some of the other services that are out there, but in a bind, you can at least rely on YouTube and then go and edit from that point. But yet, time is definitely a big one. I would say, if anyone is starting to do it, make sure you have some serious time to dedicate several, several hours a week, I would say, upwards, you know, probably a good, you know, four to 10 hours a week is what I would estimate in the moment. If you're looking to produce a 30 minute segment once or twice a week, I would estimate about that time.   Michael Hingson ** 53:11 Yeah, one of the things I've been hearing about videos is that that the trend is is clearly not to have long videos, but only 32nd videos, and put them vertical as opposed to horizontal. And anything over 30 seconds is is not good, which seems to me to really not challenge people to deal with having enough content to make something relevant, because you can't do everything in 30 seconds exactly,   Dan Swift ** 53:41 and what I found too. So this was very this was a little bit of a learning curve for me. So with, with the YouTube shorts that you have, they have to be a minute or less. I mean, now they're actually in the process of changing it to three minutes or less. I do not have that access yet, but it has Go ahead, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so. But what I'm finding Michael is that the people that so I might create this a great example. So I was interviewing a comedian in New York City, Meredith Dietz, awesome, awesome episode. But I was talking to her about becoming a comedian, and I made about four different shorts for her from her video, and I was doing a new one each week to kind of promote it. And the videos, for me, they were getting a lot I was getting anywhere between maybe 315 100 views on the short for me, that was awesome. For other people, you know, that might be nothing, but for me, that was awesome. But what I found was that the people that watch the shorts aren't necessarily the same people that watch the long form videos. So I'm or, or I might get subscribers from people that watch the shorts, but then they're not actually watching the video. And in the end, that kind of hurts your channel, because it's showing, it's telling the YouTube I'm gonna use air quotes, YouTube algorithm that my subscribers aren't interested in my content, and it ends up hurting me more. So anyone that's trying to play that game. And be aware of that. You know, you can't get more subscribers through shorts, but if you're not converting them, it's going to hurt you.   Michael Hingson ** 55:05 I can accept three minutes, but 30 seconds just seems to be really strange. And I was asked once to produce a demonstration of accessibe on a website. They said you got to do it in 30 seconds, or no more than a minute, but preferably 30 seconds. Well, you can't do that if, in part, you're also trying to explain what a screen reader is and everything else. The reality is, there's got to be some tolerance. And I think that the potential is there to do that. But it isn't all about eyesight, which is, of course, the real issue from my perspective. Anyway.   Dan Swift ** 55:41 Yeah, I completely agree. I think what YouTube is trying to do, and I believe in getting this from Tiktok, I think Tiktok has three up to three minutes. Actually, there might be 10 minutes now that I think about it, but, but I think they're trying to follow the trend, and it's like, let's make videos slightly longer and see how that goes. So be very curious to see how that all pans out.   Michael Hingson ** 55:58 Well. And I think that makes sense. I think there's some value in that, but 30 seconds is not enough time to get real content, and if people dumb down to that point, then that's pretty scary. So I'm glad to hear that the trend seems to be going a little bit longer, which is, which is a good thing, which is pretty important to be able to do. Yeah, I completely   Dan Swift ** 56:21 agree. Because like that, the trend right now, it's, you know, people, they want stuff immediately, and if you don't catch them in 10 seconds, they're swiping onto something else, which is which is very challenging, at least, especially for me and what I do. Who's   Michael Hingson ** 56:32 the most inspiring guest that you've ever had on your podcast?   Dan Swift ** 56:37 Michael, this is a good one. This is a good one. So the video for Ashley Mason. She is a social media marketing she created a social medi

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that God is working on us to get us ready for the Rapture. As we grow in this saved life, we must strive to get to a point to where Satan cannot use anything within us to cause us to fall into temptation. In order to do this effectively, we not live in our feelings and emotions, and allow all of our senses to be influenced by the power of the Holy Ghost. Learn more in this important series for our saved lives!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that God is working on us to get us ready for the Rapture. As we grow in this saved life, we must strive to get to a point to where Satan cannot use anything within us to cause us to fall into temptation. In order to do this effectively, we not live in our feelings and emotions, and allow all of our senses to be influenced by the power of the Holy Ghost. Learn more in this important series for our saved lives!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

Here's what chat GBT wrote about today's podcast. This morning on the Mai Morning Crew, we dove into a deep (and slightly quirky) debate. You’ll be surprised by some of the answers! We also took on an accent challenge that left us sounding... well, interesting. And, of course, we uncovered some of the most absurd reasons people have had to make an unexpected U-turn. It’s the kind of show that’ll make you laugh and think—sometimes at the same time!

Tell us what you think about this podcast!In this series, Bishop Rader Johnson teaches that God is working on us to get us ready for the Rapture. As we grow in this saved life, we must strive to get to a point to where Satan cannot use anything within us to cause us to fall into temptation. In order to do this effectively, we not live in our feelings and emotions, and allow all of our senses to be influenced by the power of the Holy Ghost. Learn more in this important series for our saved lives!For more lessons and sermons, follow our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@GBT

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