Podcasts about goodwills

Mit Standorten auf der ganzen Welt, 51.000 Beschäftigten und führenden Marktpositionen bei Zement, Zuschlagstoffen und Transportbeton ist Heidelberg Materials einer der bedeutendsten Baustoff-Player der Welt. Das Unternehmen kann nicht nur mit starken Zahlen glänzen, sondern ist auch auf gutem Kurs, sein Geschäft auf CO2-Neutralität umzubauen. Christoph Beumelburg erklärt in diesem Video, welche Entwicklungen außerdem im Auge zu behalten sind. ⌚ Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (1:13) -- Beginn der Unternehmenspräsentation -- (2:14) Vorstellung des Unternehmens (10:00) Ein attraktives Investment (15:37) Dekarbonisierung & Nachhaltigkeit (33:55) -- Beginn der Q&A-Session -- (34:18) Wieso gibt es Aktienrückkäufe? (36:36) Ist das Rückkauf-Programm schon abgeschlossen? (37:34) Plant Heidelberg Materials eine Abspaltung des Nordamerika-Geschäfts? (40:46) Werden nachhaltige Produkte in allen Regionen nachgefragt? (43:30) Was bedeutet der Wandel zur Nachhaltigkeit für die Marge? (46:07) Warum sind nur 0,6% der Umsätze EU-Taxonomie-konform? (48:43) Können die Investitionen in CCUS-Anlagen durch Capex gedeckt werden? (51:34) Ist der Mangel von Bausand für das Unternehmen spürbar? (52:59) Was bedeutet die Kennzahl RCO? (53:27) Drohen Abschreibungen wegen des hohen Goodwills? (55:18) Wie ist die Laufzeit des Fremdkapitals? Wird mit steigenden Refinanzierungskosten gerechnet? (58:03) Sind die Green Bonds für Privatanleger handelbar? (58:41) Wie geht man mit Fachkräftemangel um? (1:00:20) Wie hoch ist der Zinssatz für die Green Bonds? (1:00:35) Wie sieht die Dividendenpolitik aus?

Musical duo Toasters 'n' Moose are touring Goodwills across Arkansas performing their new hit Take Me Thriftin' and they were nice enough to give Alice 107.7 a special performance! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host Bex Scott welcomes guest Danielle of The Mid-Century Maximalists on Instagram to the show for Bex's very first interview episode. Bex and Danielle talk about all things Pyrex, why Danielle started collecting, her amazing ceramics collection, and the joy of being a vintage collector in a modern world.In a similar story to Bex's, Danielle came to her love of vintage and Pyrex through her grandparents. She inherited several sets of Pyrex, including the Friendship and Butterprint patterns, and many of those pieces that hold sentimental value remain on display in Danielle's house. She explains to Bex that many of her thrifted or purchased pieces, however, she uses on a daily basis. Danielle describes the eclectic maximalist decor she prefers, some of the many ceramics pieces her grandmother and great-grandmother handmade, and trades stories about favorite Pyrex and vintage items with Bex. This episode sheds light on why collectors love the hunt of collecting, the value of the pieces that goes beyond financial, and how to decorate with vintage finds.Resources discussed in this episode:Danielle on The Mid-Century Maximalists on Instagram‘Merry Mushrooms' collectors guidePyrex Love Pattern ReferenceThe ‘Pyrex and Corning beaker-decorated mug'English (JAJ) Pyrex Reference Guide“Pyrex Passion” by Michael D. Barber—Contact Rebecca Scott | Pyrex With Bex: Website: PyrexWithBex.comInstagram: @pyrexwithbexContact Bex on her website—TranscriptBex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex With Bex podcast, where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat. Bex Scott: [00:00:30] Hey everyone, this is Bex Scott and you're listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. In today's episode, I'm joined by Danielle, the Mid-Century Maximalists on Instagram. We chat about why she started collecting Pyrex and vintage, her awesome ceramic collection, and what it's like being a vintage lover. Okay, so hey everyone, I'm super excited for today's episode because I'm here with my very first guest and I'd like to welcome Danielle to the show. Thanks so much for being here. Danielle: [00:00:58] Thanks for having me. Bex Scott: [00:00:59] And you can find Danielle on Instagram at the Mid-Century Maximalists. And it was actually on Instagram that we met. And I was impressed right away by your amazing Pyrex collection. And then I read your first post all about why you started collecting and why it's so important to you. And I'd love to start off with that story here today. Danielle: [00:01:20] So my entire life I've always been a bit eclectic, and I spent a lot of my childhood at my grandmother's house. Wasn't one that wanted to just go out and party or anything like that. I just loved spending time with my grandmother, and her entire house was decked out in 70s garb, a lot of Merry Mushroom, a lot of Pyrex that has been handed down. And so it's things that I was familiar with my entire childhood. And then about three years ago, I lost my grandparents within two weeks of each other due to Covid. And since then, it's just kind of spiraled, collecting things that remind me of them because it makes me feel close to them. So it's been a hobby that kind of hit me out of nowhere, but it's fun. Bex Scott: [00:02:12] Definitely. And I love stories like that, where it's more than just going out and finding things that you like. It's some kind of memory that's brought up when you find things or when they're passed down to you, and it's a great way to keep people in your life, even after they're not with us anymore. And that's kind of similar to my story. I got into it because of my grandparents, but it was more that we were cleaning out my granny and grandpa's garage, and we found some of my great aunt's Pyrex in a Rubbermaid bin. And that's kind of what set things off for me. And it spiraled into an addiction as well. Danielle: [00:02:50] What pattern was it? Bex Scott: [00:02:52] It wasn't anything super exciting. It was the lime green lasagna pan. And then I had some primary bowls. But after I found the primary bowls, that was my very first pattern or set that I collected. And I think I ended up with about 5 or 6 full primary sets. Way too many. You don't need that many ever. But I ended up selling them eventually, and I think I kept two and then a reverse primary. So I have those ones still. But yeah, it's easy to get swept up in it. Danielle: [00:03:24] It really is. Every antique store you go to. Bex Scott: [00:03:28] Yeah. Yeah. Danielle: [00:03:29] It's the thrill of the hunt, though. Bex Scott: [00:03:31] It is. It's a huge adrenaline rush. And then you have huge boxes and piles, and - at least I do. I have, I think, 60 banker's boxes of vintage items in my basement. Now that's become me having to resell things because I have so much. But it's fun, so it keeps me going. Danielle: [00:03:53] Yeah, I wish I had a basement so that I could hoard some more things, but I unfortunately live in a ranch so I don't have that much for like room for storage. So whenever I cycle things out, I have to purge. Bex Scott: [00:04:09] That's probably a good thing. That's what my husband would prefer, I think, because he's the one who helps me pack everything to ship and then pack it away in the basement, and he's a very patient man. Thank goodness. Danielle: [00:04:22] We love to hear it. Bex Scott: [00:04:23] Yeah. So do you have a specific pattern of Pyrex that was passed down to you that you really love? Danielle: [00:04:31] So my family, I live in Georgia, but my family is originally from Pennsylvania and up there it was really prominent to have Pyrex, so there was a lot of patterns. And predominantly my favorite one that I've gotten is the Friendship pattern, but I've inherited the Friendship, there's several primary sets, there's the Amish Butterprint. There's quite a few that are within my family line. In fact, my mother still uses what she was gifted as a wedding present almost daily. She has this really neat, it's a complete yellow set, and I've been searching for one as I thrift because she won't give it to me. But she has that. And then she has this really cool casserole dish that's like a hunter green, and it has gold detailing on it. So there's quite a bit of Pyrex that I have inherited. My partner actually inherited the Sunflower pattern, so we have that too. So a lot of what we have on display in our cabinets at home are things that we inherited because of how sentimental they are to us. Bex Scott: [00:05:56] That's awesome. And do you guys use them every day as well, or do you display them and keep them there? Danielle: [00:06:02] We don't use the ones that were handed down, but we do use ones we have thrifted and antiqued simply because while they may look the same, it doesn't hold the same sentimental value. So we keep those put up safe. We've got a zoo of animals. You'll probably see a cat or two pop in here at some point. So because of that, we like to keep those types of things safe and away from the animals. Bex Scott: [00:06:34] That's a good idea. My cat has definitely knocked a few knickknacks off of tables and desks before, so it's a dangerous hobby when you have pets. Danielle: [00:06:47] Yeah, and we've got three large breed rescues. Bex Scott: [00:06:51] Oh, wow. Danielle: [00:06:53] A pit/boxer, a lab/hound, and a husky. So they're not well behaved. Bex Scott: [00:07:02] That's okay. They sound very cute. Danielle: [00:07:08] They are. Bex Scott: [00:07:09] Nice. Most of my collection I keep in china cabinets, and then we ended up using the Homestead pattern as our daily Pyrex dishes. So all of those ones, I find that they wash really well, and they just go with pretty much everything in our house. So that ended up being something that we use and my husband likes them. Danielle: [00:07:33] So we use the Corelle dish set, the ones that kind of match all a lot of the Pyrex patterns. So we use those as our everyday dishes, which is fun. That and I've also got my grandmother's, they're the cubist glasses, Indiana glass. Bex Scott: [00:07:53] Okay. Danielle: [00:07:53] I can't think of the name of them, but I've got her set, so we use those as our drinking glasses. Bex Scott: [00:07:59] Nice. I've always wanted to incorporate some vintage glasses or barware into our kitchen, but we have three kids and they're pretty young still, so right now it would be too dangerous, I think. Danielle: [00:08:14] Yeah, we're lucky enough, I guess lucky enough, that we don't have kids yet, so we can dabble in all that type of stuff. Once we have kids, I will have to be a bit more careful with where I place certain things, because I have a lot of ceramics that have been handed down to me, and if a kid hurts them, I will cry. Bex Scott: [00:08:35] Oh, I think I would too. Yeah. And those are the ceramics that, was it your grandmother that made them? Danielle: [00:08:44] My great grandmother and my grandmother. Bex Scott: [00:08:46] Okay. And what kind of ceramics are they? Danielle: [00:08:50] Oh, I've got some for every holiday. So right now I've got a little village out that has a tree with a vulture on it, and kids trick or treating, a ghost popping out of a casket, a little graveyard. It's super neat. Then I've also got a ceramic pumpkin that she, my grandmother, painted, made and painted, so that's pretty cool. And then I have a couple different ghost ceramics, a black cat ceramic, a house that's very similar to the village, but it's set up inside of a house. Things that I've never seen other people have, which is pretty cool. I've also got a turkey and a pilgrim and an Indian, which probably isn't kosher anymore, but my grandmother made them, so I hold on to them. And then for Christmas, I've got all sorts of things. But you name a holiday - Valentine's Day, Easter - I've got ceramics for it. Bex Scott: [00:09:58] That's awesome. I would love to decorate my house for every season with ceramics like that, and I think I saw them in the little highlight on your Instagram story. Danielle: [00:10:08] Those were the ones that I most recently was able to convince my mother to let me steal. Yeah, that's the little graveyard and the house. I've never seen anybody else have anything like that. So they're super special to me because I can remember just being little and thinking they were the neatest things and playing with them and then getting yelled at for playing with them. Rightfully so. So, yeah. Bex Scott: [00:10:37] Yeah, I think I crushed some little reindeer figurines that my granny had when I was little, and my dad always brings it up when we're at family functions. And he reminds me that he told me just for looking, not for touching. And then I took them in my hand and I squished them. And so... Danielle: [00:11:00] Oh boy. Bex Scott: [00:11:00] Hopefully my kids don't do that with any of, I have a whole bunch of little bluebirds that I collect because my great grandma collected those as well. So I have to make sure the kids stay away from those. Danielle: [00:11:12] Keep them up high. Bex Scott: [00:11:13] Yeah. So what's the thrifting like where you live? Is it pretty good, or...? Danielle: [00:11:21] I'm right outside of Atlanta. So unfortunately the market's kind of like saturated around here. It just doesn't seem like as many antiques. There wasn't as much Pyrex down here. There wasn't a whole lot of ceramics down here. So you do, like, bump into those things from time to time. But that just doesn't seem to be what people's ancestors down here had. So anything that is down here pretty much migrated with someone from the North. I find that when we travel, we have better luck. We went to Louisville to visit my partner's uncle and I found a ceramic wall hanging Christmas tree, and I was really pumped about that, like found it at Goodwill. That type of stuff does not happen down here. Unfortunately, our Goodwills are dumbly overpriced, like 20 bucks for a pair of pants and they're picked over and they're just not that great here. But we've got family all over, so we've got to travel quite a few times throughout the year. So we hit those places up. So like Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Kentucky, just not, it's just not booming around here. I guess maybe too many resellers. Bex Scott: [00:12:43] Yeah, that's like my area as well. Everybody seems to be getting into reselling and collecting. And I'm in a small town between two large cities, and there's a nice little pocket of Salvation Army and a few other Value Village stores that are really nice for finding things. But the further out you get, the harder it is to find good deals, like you said, and especially with Pyrex, the price seems to be going up where they'll have a dishwasher damaged bowl for $20. And it's just, it's kind of ridiculous and it makes it not as fun in that sense. You have to start looking online for things that you want to add to your collection, but that's okay. It's all part of it. Danielle: [00:13:28] Yeah. I mean, I still enjoy the hunt. I still go to the antique stores. I've paid some stupid prices for things that I just wanted. Bex Scott: [00:13:37] Yeah. Me too. Danielle: [00:13:38] You don't see them every day, so, like, you know what? Bex Scott: [00:13:42] Yeah, it's worth it at that point. Danielle: [00:13:43] I'll take it. But whenever I try and purge things around here, like, I don't try and do that. Like, I'm not in it for the money. I just want to kind of get out maybe what I put into it or part of what I put into it. So I don't full blown re, like I wouldn't call myself a reseller. I just have to purge from time to time because I can't hoard everything. I know that I'm a maximalist, but, at some point... Bex Scott: [00:14:14] Yeah. What's the best piece of Pyrex you found thrifting? If there is one that you can think of. Danielle: [00:14:22] At an actual thrift store, I don't think I've ever actually found Pyrex, at least none that wasn't dishwasher damage, because I find, I find that kind of stuff all the time. I did find a pretty neat Corelle dish thrifting one time, but as far as like antiquing goes, the coolest one that I found, I'm trying to think, I've got several unique pieces, that I think the Pueblo pattern is the coolest one I've found out and about. It's probably my favorite piece in there. Bex Scott: [00:14:57] Yeah, that one's beautiful. And then I noticed you have the Kim Chee as well. Danielle: [00:15:03] I do have the Kim Chee. Bex Scott: [00:15:04] And then the Navajo. Danielle: [00:15:06] So the Navajo, fun story, we pretty much were given that one when we were in Ohio by someone we met. It was their grandmother's, and they made us swear up and down that we were gonna take care of it. Like absolutely! Brand new. Never used. And I was like, of course I will take care of this. It's in good hands. So I was pretty pumped about that one. Bex Scott: [00:15:32] Those are definitely ones that you would never find out in the wild here. That would be, maybe not even in an antique store. I don't think I've ever found any of those patterns. Danielle: [00:15:43] All three of those come from Ohio. Bex Scott: [00:15:46] Okay, I need to go to Ohio. Danielle: [00:15:50] My partner's father lives up there, and every single time we go up we make him take us to all of the antique stores. And he moans and groans while we have the time of our lives. Um, but good prices on them, too. The Pueblo we paid like 40 bucks for, it's pristine, was definitely never used. So we typically have really good luck when we go up there. So definitely hit up Ohio sometime. Bex Scott: [00:16:20] Yeah, I've never been. It's on my list now. We went to Portland, Maine just this past summer, and my aunt took me around to a bunch of different shops, and there was one, I still have regrets that I didn't buy way more at the store, but they had a whole bunch of the Pyrex Christmas mugs that were given to staff every year as gifts. And I only bought one, and this one mug was $54 US, which was way more because of the Canadian dollar. Our dollar is terrible right now, but I should have bought all five of them and I still have nightmares about it. Danielle: [00:17:05] Yeah, we have a pretty unique one that must have been only in-house, like Pyrex only gave it to their employees, but it has like beakers across it and it says it says Pyrex on one side, and then it says Corning on the other, which I thought was pretty cool. Bex Scott: [00:17:27] That is cool. I don't think I've ever seen that. Danielle: [00:17:30] I'll have to message you a picture of it. Bex Scott: [00:17:33] Yeah. That's awesome. Very cool. So do you have a specific style that you like to decorate your house in, or is it kind of just eclectic from the things that you've collected or...? Danielle: [00:17:46] It's very 70s. So the room I'm sitting in right now, obviously I've got this old Afghan, um, but we have a record cabinet, lots of vintage records, and our main living room is painted like a 70s bright orange, and it's all 70s garb. So pretty much anything that my grandmother would have had in her house, we have here, minus a couple things, because there were some things, like the Ivy dishes, that just never tickled my fancy. But we love cross-stitch. We have it all over our walls. Love ceramics, obviously love stained glass, love Pyrex, love... You name it, we probably have it. Bex Scott: [00:18:41] That's awesome. It sounds like I'd love your house. Danielle: [00:18:45] You'll have to come out sometime. Bex Scott: [00:18:49] My one room, my office that I'm in right now, is the one that I decorate. And the rest of the house is just... my husband doesn't have the same style as me, so we've kind of come to some kind of middle ground with decor. As long as I don't put brass in the house because he really doesn't like brass, which kills me because I keep finding some amazing brass pieces. Danielle: [00:19:12] Luckily, my partner and I have the same style. We both really caught on to certain things because of our grandmothers. So I mean, we've, I see you've got the Merry Mushroom canisters behind you, but we use ours. Bex Scott: [00:19:29] That's awesome. Danielle: [00:19:32] A lot of the things that we do collect, we try and make functional. If we can. Not everything, like some of the Pyrex obviously we don't want to touch, but yeah. Bex Scott: [00:19:49] If you had one, I guess, Pyrex pattern or dish and one just random vintage piece, what would you want? Like what's your unicorn or your holy grail piece of vintage? And then Pyrex? Danielle: [00:20:05] I'm going to stick with my Friendship dishes simply because those were passed down through my family. Like there was other ones, but for some reason I'm just stuck on those Friendship ones. I can remember, like my grandmother having them, I can remember my great grandmother having them. So it's one of those things that that would definitely be my Pyrex dish. As far as things that are hanging on the wall, I'm trying to think because there's several good things. Oh, I know what my other one would be. My cast iron cat that my partner hates. Bex Scott: [00:20:50] That's awesome. Danielle: [00:20:54] Yeah, I have, um, I have old vintage ceramic and cast iron cats almost in every single room. And my partner says they're creepy. Bex Scott: [00:21:05] Cats are great, and there's luckily a lot of vintage out there with cats. Danielle: [00:21:10] I actually just found a mug this past weekend, not this past weekend, two weekends ago, and it's an old piece of pottery and it has like cats painted on it. And my mom was like, oh God, please, no. And I was like, how much? And they were like $0.50. And I was like, done. Bex Scott: [00:21:28] Sold. Danielle: [00:21:29] Um, so yeah, no, I definitely would need to keep one of my cast iron cats. But that was also one of the things that my family members always had them. I have a great aunt, in Pennsylvania, and she's got quite a few of them. And I hate to break it to my partner, but they're all coming here. Bex Scott: [00:21:56] You can just start hiding things around the house. They'll just start appearing. Danielle: [00:22:01] She's tried to create, like a one item per room rule, that I can only specifically pick one item because I try and pick the most eclectic things. Bex Scott: [00:22:16] That makes it fun. Danielle: [00:22:17] If there's if there's a Bigfoot statue, definitely putting that in my house. So my partner has her opinions, but sometimes I get the veto. Bex Scott: [00:22:29] Yeah. And we have a running joke in the house right now. I have a horse cross stitch, it's huge, I don't know who made it, but it's in a massive wood frame and it keeps moving around our house. It started above our bed and then I think now it's above our toilet and I have no idea where it's going to end up next. But I have it listed for sale. But until it sells, we just keep moving it around because none of us like it. So. Danielle: [00:22:59] That's hilarious. Bex Scott: [00:23:03] Nice. Danielle: [00:23:03] Is that the only cross that you have? Bex Scott: [00:23:06] I have a ton of flowers and they're all listed for sale. I want to keep all of them because my goal was to make a big cross stitch, cruel needlepoint wall behind me at my desk here. But I have trouble committing to a certain style and a certain type of... Danielle: [00:23:26] You just got to throw them up like, turn mine, like ours doesn't match. Bex Scott: [00:23:34] Oh, that looks great. Yeah. I love that. Danielle: [00:23:35] But that we find things and we just throw it on the wall. Bex Scott: [00:23:39] Yeah. My hope is to find a mushroom needlepoint or cross stitch that will go with my theme that I have going on with the Merry Mushroom. Danielle: [00:23:48] That would be really cool. You could make one. Bex Scott: [00:23:51] That's true. I have to learn how to. Danielle: [00:23:53] My partner cross stitches. Bex Scott: [00:23:54] Oh, really? Danielle: [00:23:56] She loves it. Bex Scott: [00:23:58] Maybe she'll have to do one for me. Danielle: [00:24:01] I mean she would. She also sews. Bex Scott: [00:24:03] Oh, I'll hire her. She's hired. Danielle: [00:24:06] She's a jack of all trades. Bex Scott: [00:24:08] Nice. Yeah. I haven't gotten into the cross stitch yet, but I even have a bunch of kits that I could start. That might be my... Danielle: [00:24:15] We have a bunch of kits, too. Bex Scott: [00:24:19] Yeah, those ones are easy to collect as well. Danielle: [00:24:22] They are. You find them out and about quite frequently. At least I do around here, because I guess people will clean out their grandparents houses and they think that nobody knows how to do that type of stuff anymore. But like, there's plenty of people that do. Plus, it's pretty easy to like pick up if you put your mind to it. If you don't have ADHD like me because I started one and just haven't gone back to it. But maybe one day. Bex Scott: [00:24:56] It'll be there when you're ready. Danielle: [00:24:59] Yeah, it's how most of my projects go. I get about halfway and then I'm like, on to the next one. Bex Scott: [00:25:06] Yeah, next thing. Well, I picked up a bunch of Christmas cross stitch kits in an estate sale a couple of days ago, so maybe I'll do one for Christmas. Danielle: [00:25:17] That'd be awesome. You could also crochet some snowflakes to put on your Christmas tree. Bex Scott: [00:25:22] Yeah, I think I have some of those from my grandma. Those are nice. Danielle: [00:25:27] My partner's been on the hunt for a pink Christmas tree. Bex Scott: [00:25:31] Ooh, that would be amazing. Then would you do vintage decorations? Danielle: [00:25:35] We already have vintage decorations on one of our trees. We have a white one and then just a regular one. And I think, I think last year we put the vintage on the white Christmas tree. I can't remember, but we do have like vintage shatterproof ornaments. I actually have a bunch of ornaments my great grandmother handmade, but I'm too afraid with all of the animals that they'll get broken and they're kind of not replaceable. Our cats like to climb the trees and eat the trees, so we haven't found a way to stop them. We've tried all sorts of things to get them out, but because of that, I just keep them away safe. Bex Scott: [00:26:27] That's a good idea. Danielle: [00:26:31] Have you noticed any of your kids getting into, like, collecting? Bex Scott: [00:26:35] That's a good question. I've tried. My oldest son, he's 13, and he comes to Value Village and Goodwill and all the garage sales with me. He doesn't love anything vintage, really, but he likes coming and looking for things with me. And it's, I think it's the thrill of the hunt for him as well. And then when I go out and I come back home, he'll say, Oh, are those more bowls in that box, or Did you buy more bowls today? I definitely did, and then I threaten, we have a nine year old son as well, I threaten them that this will be their inheritance one day, that they're going to have all of these bowls and Pyrex bowls to give to whoever they want, and they can sell it if they want, but it's all coming to them. We have an 11 month old as well and I'm hoping that she'll be the one that kind of turns into the Pyrex vintage lover. So starting off early. Danielle: [00:27:33] I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure as they get older they'll get into it because it's something I never appreciated when I was younger. I was always like, why don't you, like, redo everything? Because this is kind of outdated. Bex Scott: [00:27:47] Yeah, yeah. And then you end up falling in love with the vintage items, and then you reverse time and then you don't go with the new, updated, renovated house stuff. It's like a blast from the past, which I really like. Danielle: [00:28:01] Yeah. My friends will come in the house and be like, whoa, these are some bright colors. And I'm like, you can go home to your agreeable gray walls anytime you want. Bex Scott: [00:28:13] Yeah, go home and stare at your white walls. Danielle: [00:28:18] Exactly. So, I mean, to each their own, I guess. Bex Scott: [00:28:22] Exactly. Danielle: [00:28:27] What's your favorite piece in your room? Bex Scott: [00:28:30] Oh. Good question. I have a cabinet on my right here that's full of all my pink Pyrex and my pink Gooseberry. So I'd say probably the pink Gooseberry. And then I have the glasses that go with the Duchess set. I think they're the Libby glasses. The Duchess casserole is my number one need to find one day Pyrex dish, so I'm always on the lookout for that. I found it online, but it's so expensive. Danielle: [00:29:02] Yeah, that one is rather expensive. Bex Scott: [00:29:04] Yeah, yeah. So maybe, maybe one day when I win the lottery, that'll be my next big collectible. Danielle: [00:29:15] When did you kind of get into collecting? Bex Scott: [00:29:18] I got into collecting at the beginning of the pandemic. So before that, I didn't really know anything about Pyrex. It was always just like the measuring cup that my mom had that I don't think was even very old. It just said Pyrex on it. And that's kind of what I thought it was. And then after we cleaned out my grandparents garage, that's when I realized that there was this whole world of vintage Pyrex out there, and it kind of just spiraled after that. And that's been fun collecting everything and finding new pieces. And at the beginning, when I first started collecting, I would essentially buy everything that I found, even if it was dishwasher damaged or it was way overpriced. So I was spending all of this money on things that probably weren't even in good condition or worth it. Now I'm way more selective, but it was, yeah, it's so easy to do when you're learning and trying to figure out what patterns are and what things might be worth, and if they're even Pyrex at all. So. Danielle: [00:30:25] Yeah, it really is, because, I mean there's some things that aren't even like marked Pyrex. I have one, I'm getting rid of it, but I have one that's I think it's from England. Bex Scott: [00:30:36] Oh yeah. The JAJ. Danielle: [00:30:37] It's their version, I can't remember what it says on the bottom, but it's their version of Pyrex. So like I have that and that's pretty cool. But I would have known nothing about it before I started getting into this. I would have been like, oh, that's not Pyrex, and just like, moved on from it. So the more you learn. My partner actually bought this really neat book off of Amazon, and it goes through like the history of each pattern and details it. We use that as a guideline at all times, because it tells you so much about different promotional pieces and stuff like that. Bex Scott: [00:31:20] Is that the Pyrex passion book? Danielle: [00:31:22] I think it is. Yeah. Bex Scott: [00:31:23] This one. Danielle: [00:31:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is our Bible. Bex Scott: [00:31:30] Yeah, I have it on my iPad. And then I went and bought the the paperback version. And then there's a second one that came out as well that has even more in it. So that one's great. Danielle: [00:31:41] I do laugh at their like suggested prices because I'm like, yeah, try and tell, try and tell most people that. Like they're not, I think I was looking and it had like the Butter print as like the entire set for like $75. And I'm like yeah, okay. Bex Scott: [00:32:01] Yeah. Danielle: [00:32:03] Tell me where you can find that for that. Bex Scott: [00:32:05] That would be great. But yeah. Danielle: [00:32:07] That's what I'm saying. So I do find the prices they list comical. Bex Scott: [00:32:14] Yeah. Pricing is one thing that's always very controversial, I find. I'm part of a bunch of Pyrex groups on Facebook, and there's a lot of them that just flat out say you're not allowed to ask if you did good buying this, because if you like it, it's worth it. And we can't tell you if the price is good or not. Danielle: [00:32:36] I am not a part of them on Facebook because I don't really have Facebook, but I am a part of a couple Pyrex groups on Reddit and some of the finds they post on there are insane. Bex Scott: [00:32:52] I haven't looked at Reddit for Pyrex groups. That's a good suggestion. Danielle: [00:32:58] On Pyrex groups and Animal Crossing groups. Gotta love it. Yeah, my partner actually named her Animal Crossing Island Pyrexia. Bex Scott: [00:33:11] That's great. Danielle: [00:33:13] Is there anything else that you collect other than, like, the mushrooms and the Pyrex? Bex Scott: [00:33:17] Mushrooms, Pyrex, little bluebirds. What else do I collect? Secretly, I collect brass. It's in a box that my husband can't, well, he found it the other day, but there's a bunch of - I thought he couldn't find it, but it was in a cereal box, I talk about this in one of my other episodes, but it was packed away in a cereal box in our basement, and he found it and opened it, and he said, What is this? I said, oh, that's just my brass. I'm selling it. Don't worry, it's going on Marketplace. But I do like brass. Danielle: [00:33:51] That's funny. I don't think we have much brass around here. Bex Scott: [00:33:55] It's heavy and it takes up space. Danielle: [00:33:58] Yeah, it does, it does. And we don't have, with all my ceramics we don't have that much like shelving. I know you said you had that horse. Do you have any other ones? Bex Scott: [00:34:14] No, none that I've really kept. I have one that's a little girl on a toilet reading a book, and it says something really funny. I think it's like a potty training needlepoint or cross-stitch or something. Danielle: [00:34:31] I have a cross-stitch. I have a cross-stitch in my bathroom that says, please don't do coke in the bathroom. Bex Scott: [00:34:38] That's awesome. Danielle: [00:34:42] And everybody always is like, did someone do coke? And I'm like, no, no, no, not to my knowledge, but... Bex Scott: [00:34:49] Yeah. Danielle: [00:34:50] It's a warning. Like please don't. Bex Scott: [00:34:53] And they won't now because that's up there. Danielle: [00:34:55] Yeah. I asked nicely. Bex Scott: [00:35:02] I'm trying to avoid getting into all the art glass and like the vases, and that's another thing that I really can't do because I don't have space. Danielle: [00:35:15] I think we have one swing base, but I haven't gotten a whole lot into that. But we do have quite the collection of nesting hens. Bex Scott: [00:35:29] Oh, I love those. Danielle: [00:35:32] And my partner insists on putting candy in every single one of them. Bex Scott: [00:35:36] That's great. Do you have a favorite one or a favorite color? Danielle: [00:35:42] So blue is my favorite color. Oddly enough, since most of the house is done in like yellow, orange, green, but we have a cobalt blue that has like the oil slick on it, almost like carnival glass. And it is my favorite. And it just so happened to be given to us by my partner's grandmother, which just makes it that much more special. Bex Scott: [00:36:11] Yeah, those are beautiful, I love them. I've had a few of them in the past, and it's always hard to tell if they're actually vintage or not. That's my biggest struggle is what year they were from and who made them. So I do a lot of research when I find them, and I think there's even some jadeite ones too that I've seen that are really pretty. Danielle: [00:36:34] Yeah, we have a small jadeite one, but we have quite a few. They're all over the house. Bex Scott: [00:36:41] What's the biggest one that you have? Danielle: [00:36:45] A turkey. Bex Scott: [00:36:47] Amazing. Danielle: [00:36:48] Yeah, it's a nesting turkey. And it's like orange and yellow and... It's pretty cool. I mean, I just think it's so funny, you go into most people's houses that are, you know, around our ages, and it's minimalist and boring and gray. Like, there's just not a whole lot of personality. Bex Scott: [00:37:17] Mhm. Danielle: [00:37:18] So, you know what? If I'm a hoarder, so be it. Bex Scott: [00:37:23] Yeah I agree, it's great for people coming over and starting conversations and especially like with our kids growing up, I'd rather them live in a house with memories and things to look at and ask questions about. Where is this from, and What year was this from, then see everything from, I don't know, we have, I don't know if you guys have HomeSense where you are. It's like a mass produced store or home decor store where people get just the run of the mill stuff, but I'd rather have all of the memories and the fun items. Danielle: [00:37:59] Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's a lot of what the newer generations are missing out on. Like they're not going to have the things that have been handed down generation after generation because so many people get rid of them. They're like, oh, this is ugly so I don't want it. But it's like, I don't know, these are my family's ceramics. So there might be some that I don't love. But my grandmother made it, and for some reason that means I can't get rid of it. Bex Scott: [00:38:33] Yeah. I'm the same. Yeah. All of the things that I keep, even if I don't like them, I keep them because they came from somewhere special. Danielle: [00:38:40] Yeah. So I just think that this next generation is going to be missing out on a lot of that. Bex Scott: [00:38:48] Yeah, I agree, and that makes it even more fun to hunt for items and just love vintage. Danielle: [00:38:57] It definitely does. It's definitely something that I want to be able to pass down. My brother doesn't have quite the same enthusiasm as I have about certain things, but he has asked for a couple of different things we have. Like my great great grandmother, we have her cookie cutters, which is probably weird because they have just been passed down. When I went down, I split the bucket with him and he has, like my grandfathers and my great grandfather's vices, which is like, I don't know if you do much woodworking, but he has that out in his garage, which is really neat because my brother does some really amazing woodworking, creates a lot of custom pieces. So it's pretty cool that he's able to incorporate my relatives vices into his work, which he definitely wouldn't have to. Like, he has other other ones, but when he was able to get those, he retired the other ones that he was using and just put those away so that he could keep using our family's. So I know that he doesn't have quite the same love for the ceramics as me. But, you know, hopefully one day when my niece and nephew are a bit older, I'm able to teach them about this kind of stuff and maybe they'll have an interest in a piece or two. Bex Scott: [00:40:34] Yeah, yeah, that would be great. Same with my family. My brother's not into all of the the same kind of things that I like. And he's more into the tools that our family had for woodworking and construction and that kind of thing. So that's his stuff. And then I've taken all of the the other stuff, so it's nice that way. Danielle: [00:40:58] That's been the divide for us. My brother's biggest one is like my father currently has a pool table that's been passed down. Why we have such, like, random things that get found in my family I don't know, but my brother is insistent on the pool table and the light that hangs above it that those are his. And I'm like, I don't even have space for them, so go for it. But it's just funny the things that you kind of get attached to. Bex Scott: [00:41:33] Mhm. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on the episode today and for chatting about vintage. It's really great to be able to talk to somebody else that loves similar things and understand what it's like to be a hoarder. Danielle: [00:41:52] Yeah, it was great jumping on and getting to chat with you. Yeah, it's definitely nice to talk to people that are like-minded. Bex Scott: [00:42:00] Yeah. 

But first, I'm gonna give you a narrative prior to watching this video so you can put it in perspective on the emotion that they're trying to generate. Let's first understand what AMLO did and said he attacked the Republican party because in United States, Mexicans are waking up and drifting away from the Democrat party.Ceaser   Chavez really wanted to bind him. He really trusted the Democrat party to give him. Give Mexicans a break in opportunities. But the reality is Cheez Chavez didn't realize that Mexicans were being counted in the US census until 1970. So SI Chavez didn't quite understand the power of what happens when you're not counted in the US census.A president in the United States in 1930 said he was for the Mexicans. He counted the Mexicans, the Chicanos, and the US census. But once. He stopped counting them until Richard Nixon did it a Republican in 1970. I'm not saying either party is good or bad, I'm saying you have to look at how they're treating Mexicans and then make your decision on what you're gonna do next.Because we've been 40 years, 50 years since I've been alive, I've hoped and dreamt that Mexicans could ride. So we rose, but we only rose to this level. We could never get to the next level, and there's a reason. , please watch this video, put it in perspective, and then I'm gonna talk after. And, um, they're trying to, um, start persuading people or getting that idea to start invading Mexico.Um, let me make one thing, one thing clear, um, Ms. Patriot as it gets, but make no. I'm a Mexican and I will defend my country, and two mistakes gonna happen again. Um, as the video that I stitched, um, what Santana did to Mexico was wrongful. What the US did to Mexicans was wrong to the Native Americans, was completely.and I'm starting to, um, you know, it was one of those advocating that let them talk, you know, let them But enough is enough. Enough is enough with this mediocre mentality, ideologies that us things that can fucking get away with anything. No, and I seen a lot of fucking videos where they're making jokes about, you know, they kill a lot of fucking innocent people.You fucking mor. A lot of fucking innocent people died, all because of the fucking land. This fucking morons, ignorant white sons of bitches wanted. Like I said, I, I'll defend this country, but once you start infiltrating my country, we're gonna have some.This guy video is propagated up to thousands of views on purpose, but as it sells the narrative, he's saying something. They want them to say what he, what they're saying is he's getting angry and said, I'm gonna attack, I'm gonna attack, I'm gonna fight. Because that's what they want. They want the divide between Mexicans on both sides of the Rio.When AMLO said Republicans, he did so, but he wants us to fight amongst ourselves in the United States instead of maintain the power that we have. So he's selling a narrative. And the narrative is really simple. The United States wants to steal again, the resources in Mexico, so they're trying to divide the people.They're trying to put a person in office named Chaia kba, who clearly is nothing but a globalist. She's a passive person like Trudeau. She's a passive person like the California governor. The all people and politicians that will do what they say so they can get what they want. . So we have to be smarter than that.When Caesar Chaz in 1980 in the Goodwills, oh my God, I forget their name. In his speech when the last major speech in San, in San Diego, he did so thinking the Republican party was against him. Cause he's right because all the land at the time was owned by Republicans in Mexico all the way to California, United.But he went to the Democrat party and the Democratic didn't help him. In 1930 when it was a Democratic president, he said he was for the Mexicans, but then when the US Census counted the Mexicans, he didn't count the Mexicans ever again in the US census. In fact, that wasn't an official count, so they still counted on everything before them.It wasn't until 1970 the Mexicans started being. And it was in 1980, we became Latinos once again dividing us amongst the people of both sides. The Rio in Mexico. The reason why the Mexican politicians don't C side with the Chicanos is because of power. There's 120 million Mexicans united in Mexico, 1%, maybe 1.2.Have money and they control all of the Mexico. Last year, last election, they said 60 million Mexicans voted. It's impossible because 60 million Mexicans of that only 1 million if that can read and. The 60 million's wrong. I know, but I'm just saying the co, the number of voters was absolutely upside down cuz they're using these horrible computers to count and to manipulate votes.And that's how they got this globalist mayor who was from the United Nations, not even living at U N M anymore to be mayor. And now they're trying to push her to being the president for the same darn. What AMLO said the other day is absolutely right. When he injected Republicans, he was absolutely wrong because he wants to divide the Mexicans in the United States with anger, just like that video just showed us because in Mexico, the pride is great for our culture.In the United States, Mexicans are proud of who they. This isn't a fight against Mexicans, don't let it be. This is a fight against the Democrat Party and those in the liberal, in the Republican party who are in the middle who want to maintain power and they fear us. Mexicans on both sides of the Rio don't get this messed.Put them in perspective. It's time to play chess, not checkers.

Karen & Traci's podcast starts off with Ventura Downtown Lions member Don Fromberg talking about The Party Of The Year, it's the Crab Feast on April 1st at The Ventura Fairgrounds, Brain Zell steps in to tell us about the opportunities to purchase a new home in Ventura County with the expertise of The Zell group & Girls On The Air, years of experience and knowledge to put you in the home of your dreams.  Kendall Baker from All Valley Escrow tells you the many ways to get your escrow wrapped up, her expertise and creativity assures you of getting the best escrow possible.  Mary Morgan of Goodwill Industries talks to workers and businesses about The Goodwills employment opportunities that give job applicants and businesses a great hire with an awesome workplace. next Blas Hernandez  who specializes in Group Health Insurance explains why the cheapest policy ends up being the most expensive.  Blas an agent you will get to know, like & trust.  The podcast ends with the girls favorite psychic Pola who hwlps clients get clarity for breakthroughs in the month of March.  Another fun & informative podcast with Karen & Traci!

EP300 - GoodwillFinds CEO Matt Kaness In this interview, we cover the sale of ModCloth to Walmart, Matts's subsequent work at Lucky Brand and Afterpay, and his new role as CEO at Goodwillfinds. Goodwillfinds.com is an e-commerce site, which sells previously owned merchandise, which has been donated to Goodwill. We cover many of the tactical challenges (onboarding SKUs, product content, fulfillment, and curation), as well as the opportunities of this new "CircularCommerce" space. We also get some of Matt's predictions about what's coming next in digital commerce. Episode 300 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday January 4th, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 300 is an interview with Matt Kaness, CEO of Goodwillfinds.com. Matt was formerly on episode 79, when he was CEO of Modcloth, which later sold to Walmart. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is the much-anticipated episode number 300 being recorded on Wednesday January 4th, 20:23 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners Jason not only is this the first show of 20:23 it's a big milestone for us with episode what better way to celebrate than having one of our oldest friends for both you and I personally but also to the show back for an update Matt kaness he was last on the show back in episode 79 I think many listeners will remember that one and certainly your mom who's one of our biggest fans and back then he was CEO of ModCloth, a lot has changed since then so we're looking forward to getting an update some of the highlights Matt help sell ModCloth to Walmart he was exact chair and interim CEO at Lucky Brand he's on several boards yeah I've been advisory to several companies and since September of 2022 he has been CEO of goodwillfinds.com Matt welcome back to the show. Matt: [1:35] Great to be here guys thanks for having me. Jason: [1:38] Oh my gosh Matt we are really excited to catch up it seems like if you factor in the pandemic your last episode was about 15 years ago if I'm and so happy I'm happy to report we've added a bunch of listeners since then so before we jump into it can you kind of remind the listeners about your background and how you got in e-commerce. Matt: [2:02] Yeah have you too I like to think about my career or having two careers to date the first one was, very foundational for what I'm doing now but very quantitative, process-oriented mechanical engineering patent law Manufacturing, Ops Consulting things that had nothing to do with retail or fashion or e-commerce and then I. [2:32] Fell into the category when I was a full-time consultant at Burton Snowboards about 16 17 years ago, and fell in love with lifestyle Brands and have, try to stay in that lane for the majority of that time period since, from Burton Snowboards I went onto Urban Outfitters was there for close to eight years up sensibly and I had a growth roll my last title there was Chief strategy officer and then from there I went to ModCloth, where I was the CEO for three years and was running the company when we sold it to Walmart I will say that, I've been in hindsight found myself attracted to these amazing consumer lifestyle brands, that are experiencing inflection points either in their business or in the industry when I was at Burton snowboarding was really for the first time finding a mass audience crossing over into, the Olympics the next games and, when I was at Urban it was the rise of Web 2.0 and I got to ride that wave my entire time there and really, I'll be on the Forefront of pioneering you know what everybody know of calls omni-channel. [3:59] ModCloth the founder of their Susan Koger was one of the pioneers of inclusive fashion and so I felt personally accountable to try to scale that and I think we, if once the industry specifically plus size women's fashion and you know today you look around and it's become pretty normative, for Brands to design into extra extra small to 4X and I'm really proud of the work we did at ModCloth being on the front end of that and then. I do some Consulting work at after pay where buy now pay later was really just becoming a thing, we're younger consumers were focused more on debit versus credit products so with really fortunate to get connected with that team and enjoyed, partnering with them and being an advisor and then you know what I'm doing now at Goodwill where secondhand is really having a moment, in the culture and getting a chance to come in and lead a ground-up startup for the Goodwill Network and helping them to. It's a digitized so to speak and you bring this new Marketplace into the world, it's just for me it's like the next chapter in that really fortunate career second career that I've had. Jason: [5:23] Very cool and I know some of those roles were Bay Area based but you are a Philly guy correct. Matt: [5:29] Philly guy born and raised I'm probably on the short list of people who have moved back to Philly twice. I was in Boston the first time when my wife became. Preggers with our oldest and we wanted to be closer to family and then the second time was when we were in the Bay Area after I left Walmart, we had a break in the action and our oldest was about to start high school and we decide we want to be back here. For the high school years but we've lived all around and I'd obviously travel a lot for work so I have an affinity for the bay area as well as some other places around the country but but Phillies the hometown. Jason: [6:14] Yeah but I'm assuming it's Philly sports teams most importantly. Matt: [6:18] I have been an eagle season ticket holders 2000 yes. Jason: [6:23] Awesome and for people that don't know Philadelphia and Pennsylvania as a whole is a is is a weird e-commerce concentration Point like there's a lot of e-commerce kind of was born or gravitated in the area so I think of like Mark Rubin and Dick's Sporting Good and in Pittsburgh and urban obviously was a huge player there was Urban your first like hardcore e-commerce experience or were you doing a lot of e-commerce at Burton. Matt: [6:56] I was not at Burton Urban is really where I started to cut my teeth on e-commerce. Direct to Consumer more than e-commerce it was really about this when I got there this billion dollar Consolidated Enterprise across there are three main brands, Urban Outfitters anthropology and Free People and the business had started as a catalog, division of what was you know let's call it 95 percent of the sales came through their store Channel. For retail versus direct to Consumer and so when I got there or there was a there was a. [7:43] 100 million Consolidated direct-to-consumer business which was split between catalog and e-commerce, but it was nascent it was not a strategic focus and then you know the founder of their dick ain't really had. This put a natural understanding of consumer behavior and where the industry was going and he had a vision for how to scale the business multi-channel and so we were all, trying to make that that future reality every day for the eight years I was there and we had a lot of success going back to your point about Pennsylvania and Philly first round capital, one of their there I believe their original headquarters and then one of their major offices, is in Philly and so I think I think a lot of it stems from their presence as well not just decaying and Reuben and some others, but also Philly from a talent perspective is kind of like a six suburb or borough of New York, where you get a lot of folks in New York and then they realize that. It's just the standard of living the cost of living is so much better in Philadelphia and so you get a lot of transplants to come down to Philly as well working in e-commerce. Jason: [9:11] Yeah and I want to say I met you I think we all met on the shop dot-org board when you were at Urban later in your your tenure Urban and some of my Fondest Memories another good friend of the show Billy met who at the time was at Abercrombie is the two of you like heckling each other about like your two brands. Matt: [9:34] Yeah like that was that was really fun for me because you know Urban. Um was pretty insular you meaning that we were so obsessively focused on the customer, and on the fashion trends and on what we were doing internally, that we never really thought about competition so we didn't spend a ton of time looking around the industry, so for me that was that was kind of a an introduction to what else was happening across the industry and then Billy occasionally would call me and say. Hey you guys make me look bad because you just had another great quarter ecomp rowing and you know your your results are now The Benchmark that I have to deliver against. But you know what I what I found in that shop or Community which is now part of NRF, is that it was not very competitive it was very collaborative I couldn't believe. [10:46] How much everybody support each other and wanted to share strategies and ideas and Etc and I think that's one of the things that really drew me into this career path on the digital Commerce side, versus pursuing merchandising or. We're kind of the brick-and-mortar offline space is it's just how, how great that the digital Community has been in the US that I've experienced so that's one of the one of the things that I try to do now is to make sure that. Making myself available I'm kind of giving back and spending time with folks and helping them along and sharing ideas because I know that you guys and others certainly do that for me way back in the day. Jason: [11:32] Yeah I feel like we all have done that for each other and I feel like we've all obviously benefited greatly from that community, and so then you leave the Eagles behind and you go join what at the time was a Founder led a venture back pure-d to see is that, a fair characterization for Vermont cough if when you. Matt: [11:58] Yes my father my father is a pure pointy Taylor yeah. Like 10,000 uniques on the site all third party. The company was vertically integrated so homegrown Ruby on Rails codebase e-commerce. Order management system warehouse management system all the way down to the call center and the warehouse it was, um pretty pioneering on the web services side as far as. [12:35] Look it was an early social commerce player as far as leveraging Pinterest and things that you could do with. Facebook and some of the other platforms Tumblr to engage customers and get them to participate in the shopping experience we were one of the first to integrate, ugc from customers into the shopping experience into the carousels on the website, um we had personalization that was driven by customer reviews that were captured in the website versus outsourced to a bizarre Voice or the like so it was the technology is pretty pioneering, the business was was very underdeveloped and the brand I felt was. Had a lot of opportunity to broaden its appeal when I got there so it was a little bit of a turnaround, financially what I'm joined which having now done this a few times there's always a reason they bring in an outside CEO. Jason: [13:44] It's not because things are just going awesome and they just want to share the awesomeness. Matt: [13:47] Yeah I can't I can't think of a single time that CEO in a business that's humming and doing great he says you know what let's bring in somebody else to do this so I. Jason: [13:57] I think Andy jassy is saying that about Amazon right now by the way. Matt: [14:02] Yeah yeah yeah what I mean there's there's a there's a lot of chatter about looking at. It was on the Facebook and Tesla and what those Founders were doing the last couple years selling stock so I think they kind of all knew what was about to happen. But you know just quickly on ModCloth I'll say that you know we were able to quickly come in. [14:32] Turn around the business financially but more importantly we pivoted it to what then was called a DM BB model, a digitally native vertical brand model which was just meant that the vertical piece that you were procuring designing selling your own product or exclusive product versus, third party which you know in the world of Amazon it's really hard to scale a business that you know what you're selling you can find on Amazon or other larger marketplaces, so we build out a design studio and sourcing operation weary platform the entire Tech stack we developed, a showroom concept similar to what we're being bonobos had developed and tested that and rolled that out and had a really aggressive growth plan against that we went out to raise money and her wound up, getting an offer from the team at jet.com that 6-month previous had, I've been sold to Walmart and they came in and made an offer and the board accepted it and so we sold it. And and I stayed on at Walmart for a year and oversaw our integration into that that ecosystem. Scot: [15:51] Cool the that was kind of a chain reaction right where you guys several companies they Acquired and did you play a role in kind of that roll up. Matt: [16:01] We were like the third or fourth of six or seven Acquisitions and they did within a year and a half two year period. And then as part of my year there I did get involved in some of their business development MMA, conversations and and I did spend a little bit of time helping them, on one of the further Acquisitions but you know they what I learned about Walmart when I was there is. They have such a strong culture they have a real clear view of who their customer is and why they're serving them and you know I would tell you that. The Acquisitions that spray that they went on those two years was really a catalyst for. Something that W Mellon said at a meeting that I attended where he talked about convenience. [17:03] Being valued as much as low-cost in the kind of the online or multi-channel retail environment versus pre-internet, and so they had to find a catalyst under Mark Lori to accelerate their the cultural change, to understand how customers writ large were valuing convenience as much as low-cost when their Heritage had been, Yoda Point technology to make improvements in supply chain and sourcing and Merchandising so that they could always win on price now they had a win on price and convenience, and so though the individual Acquisitions You could argue whether there was an Roi on them or not against the purchase price. I would say that. Internally it was a massive success in creating that kind of cultural change that Doug. Mandated from. Mark and and then you know I was only there a year and I left but just watching what progressed and if you look at the moldable on Walmart stock I think it's hard to argue that it wasn't a success. Scot: [18:18] Yes tricky with Acquisitions you can't just look at the you know the interior ModCloth business you have to look at the whole halo effect and the stock price yeah there's a multi-faceted way to look at these things that's kind of complicated. Matt: [18:32] Yeah I think any business that they could grow if you could grow organically in definitely I think most businesses would do that there's a reason why companies you know use MMA to your point. Scot: [18:46] Did some point I think I saw a ModCloth working to the stores where you there for that. Matt: [18:53] No no that I left before any of those kind of process integration initiatives occurred. Scot: [19:03] Yeah and then didn't they do they sell it back out do they spin it. Matt: [19:08] Yeah they sold it back out there were some after I left there were some further leadership changes that occurred and and they wound up the best thing it and selling it to I want to say it was a fermented New York. Scot: [19:23] Like a private Equity Firm or another. Matt: [19:24] Yeah I think so yeah. Scot: [19:28] Did you didn't want to jump in there and take it over again usually they call the previous CEO I bet there's an 80% chance you got a call. Matt: [19:37] No comment. Scot: [19:41] All right we found something you don't want to talk about good it's part of my goal on this show is to see if we can we can find that you have any family safe Mark Lori stories I've spent a fair amount of time with him he's a he's a pretty wacky dude. Matt: [19:56] I mean I didn't spend that much time working for him but I mean man like talk about somebody who just has total belief in himself and the team and what's possible, and so much energy for. For Commerce for startups for Innovation so I mean it's it was contagious working for him, um working for his team's I wanted to takeaways I had for my time at Walmart and my time working with. [20:32] With Mark and his jet team is I just didn't have that kind of passion for the mass-market the way that, you had to have to be successful working at a Walmart or working at a jet before the acquisition, yeah I love the specialty space I love you know the Branded premium space I love, Yoda kind of the Middle Market where it's not based on price and it's not luxury it's somewhere in between. I just find that that it's super creative there's lots of opportunities for differentiation. There's always new things that you get to learn but you know Walmart I got there was a camera don't quote me on the exact number but. [21:27] Like there was a conversation about like how many millions of American flags are they going to sell between Memorial Day and and. And Fourth of July. [21:38] On one of their promos and I was just like I couldn't even fathom the scale of having to move that many units and so, yep so for me it was kind of a validation of the lane that I've been in and and enjoyed being in and so when I left. Eventually wind up going to Lucky that was kind of part of the calculus on my part was to get back into the into that that category that Wayne of specialty. Scot: [22:07] My one of my first Mark Laurie experiences I was at Jet and he was telling us how the Company motto was billions or body bags and I was like that's kind of a weird way to motivate, and then I talked to several employees I was like how do you like it here and there like billions of body bags that like they were just like it was a mantra like you know that they were just so focused on it was either going to be 0 or this huge outcome and sure enough it was billions. Matt: [22:31] Yeah there's there's definitely I mean I think think he was a successful High School athlete so there's definitely a lot of rah-rah with with him in the team it's that's not my personality I. ModCloth one of the investors accused me of being two column in the boardroom. They said you know Matt if you had slammed on the table a little bit more you know and I'm sitting there like like. That's the that never crossed my mind trying to make an argument to do something required me slamming my hand on the table. Scot: [23:14] A tantrum yeah. Matt: [23:15] My voice yeah but maybe that's Versa tween you know a founder and yeah an operator. Jason: [23:23] Scot was definitely a table Slammer. Matt: [23:25] I don't believe you. Scot: [23:26] Like man I have an engineering background and they drummed that out of us in those four years. Matt: [23:33] Totally yeah I think you're right I think the scientific method does not allow for that that level of emotion that come into into the argument. Jason: [23:44] Yeah but I will say a lot of mechanical things can be fixed by hitting them with a hammer I will, the so I'm super grateful that you guys didn't throw Mark Glory under the table because I at the moment have to totally pandor to him because his new business he has Starbucks trucks that will drive to your house and deliver coffee to your house, so I like I feel like I need to stay in his good graces, but so so the sale happens you transition out of ModCloth you've you've got kids in college and or in school and no source of free clothing so I'm guessing that's what drove the, you're interesting lucky brands. Matt: [24:28] Yeah well I got to say. When I worked at Urban my wife definitely took advantage of the anthropology discount. [24:43] And I act funny funny and true story, when I was considering the opportunity at ModCloth I was having a couple other conversations in the in the fashion space. And I showed my daughter who at the time was probably about seven or eight I showed her the apps for the shopping apps for, the three businesses that I was talking to and I won't say who but there was one in particular based in La that she was like Dad no way she was like you cannot work selling that fashion. But she approved of ModCloth and so so I got her endorsement so yeah when I went to Lucky it's really I wasn't necessarily looking. You're back into fashion as much as I really thought that there was this route there's a unique opportunity with lucky they were. Over a billion in gmv which is to say the direct to Consumer wholesale and the value of their licensing business in the market was over a billion dollars. So brand revenues and net revenue is like call it 650 million and it was independent. [26:08] And there were not a lot of businesses at that scale. In the u.s. that still were independent versus part of a conglomerate. [26:21] And we're had already gone public and so I had been friendly with one of the partners at Wintergreen. Who called me about the opportunity and after spending some time with them talking about it I said. You really need somebody in LA full time in the arts district where they were headquartered and I'm not moving to LA and moving actually back east and they said. Hey would you come in and manage the company to get us through holiday while we won for somebody. And also give us a strategy like a like a financial model a business case three-year strategy. And so that's how I initially got involved there was more as like a board advisor interim manager and then. By January of twenty I'd really seen this amazing Lane. For an older Millennial younger Gen-X. That we could reposition Lucky Brand to be a cause marketer the company did a tremendous amount of good work in Downtown LA taking. Old Denim and. [27:50] Giving it. Nonprofits that work with the homeless population there for clothing to for installation. And then other other efforts to help that population, and so I felt like we could reposition lucky to not mean like going to the casino getting lucky but meaning gratitude. Like I feel lucky I made it I have the ability to spend a hundred dollars in a pair of jeans and I want to support. [28:27] This this amazing company that does all this good work and so. That I had this vision for how you could reposition the brand the business was running like it was 2005 as far as. Go to market so there was a lot of heavy lifting that had to be done around digital transformation around merchandising around. Rationalizing the stores there was way too much discount so there's a lot of work to do, but I got really excited about the opportunity and wound up agreeing to stay on as exact chair in January 2020. And part of my remit would have been to hire a CEO and partner with that individual and I had to kill people in my network that I thought would be great for it who be willing to move to LA. But two months later the covid walk down start. And then it turned into something you know completely different than we were just trying to survive we lost ninety percent of our revenue and that April. And we wound up. [29:43] Making it through to July August that summer but at that point yeah the damage had been done and the private Equity Firm decided to. Sell it to a party that had been interested in the business for a number of years which was authentic Brands group out of New York so I stayed on to oversee that process and then once the deal is done I. Said that was a lot of work I'm exhausted and wound up turning down the opportunity to stay on with a b g and left but, I got to say I'm really grateful thankful for the team that I had there because they were amazing, to work with during such a difficult period that that Q2. And early summer of 2020 it was it was really really challenging to be in the market and I learned a lot about myself as a leader from it. Jason: [30:46] Oh my gosh I I am sure you did I'm laughing though because you think about all the work involved there and so you decided to do something easier in your next gig like oh I don't know like starting from scratch business in the middle of a really old non-profit. Matt: [31:08] Well I gotta say you know after after the lucky experience. Um I really felt drained I didn't have. The passion for retail for e-commerce digital for. Brands for fashion like I had for the previous you know well 15 years and. I was fortunate that I have the ability to do this but I basically gave myself 2021 off. I've been sitting on a few boards I did some Consulting work I had been Angel Investing for a few years so I had a number of startup Founders and CEOs that I was mentoring and Advising, and I just said to myself I really need to get re-inspired I need to like, get back out in the market broadly see what's happening see where the Innovation is occurring and and, get excited but also get lucky because a lot of these things from a career perspective is based on timing I was really fortunate that. [32:27] I went to Urban when I did I was really fortunate to be part of, ModCloth the journey during the years that was there the year that I was at Walmart was a really critical year in the Amazon the Walmart Battle. Um amazing timing too. Be available to do Consulting work with the after pay the exact summer that the founder moved from Australia to San Francisco. So you know I'm acutely aware that you can't control timing and, and yet the kind of put yourself out there so that was my plan last year and in doing so what I realized was I'm like I get the most energy and I do my best work when, back in the phase of a company where it's. [33:22] Focused on growth and Innovation and so no more turnarounds the end of Lucky business was a turnaround. ModCloth was a pseudo turn around, so I just said you know I want to get back to you know that stage where it's really about solving for customer needs and Market positioning and Prague service Innovation and deploying technology, and then a couple that with also wanted to get in a part of retail where I can learn. And you know secondhand what's happening right now the this whole cultural phenomenon around thrifting, and you're the pioneering work of a thread up and a real real Poshmark deep op-ed see ya the last decade, that was the that was the heavy lifting you know those Founders you know basically creating the category, but now there's a critical mass now there's a consumer acceptance so I don't see it as it as a, as hard as maybe it looks like from the outside it's I think it's the timing is great for the Goodwill Network to Rally around this new platform for us. As a separate entity to stand up this new company to launch this new Marketplace. [34:48] There's definitely engineering challenges to figuring out how do you successfully profitably scale. Um second-hand and vintage when you know every item is unique and we have a distributed model where our sellers are. Various. Goodwill members across the u.s. so we're not centralized so there's definitely some some challenges but to me that's part of the fun that's part of the learning. Jason: [35:18] I can imagine I want to take just half a step backwards to make sure the listeners are tracking with exactly what you're doing now because I think it's super interesting so, formal title is CEO of goodwillfinds and goodwillfinds is a new offering from Goodwill that is selling Goodwill Merchant previously owned Goodwill merchandise via a website is that the in my clothes. Matt: [35:44] Yeah yeah so I think it's worth kind of spelling out the context a little bit because it took me a little bit honestly to fully understand it and grasp it. Goodwill has been around for over 100 Years everybody knows Goodwill it's an amazing nonprofit franchise. There is a I call it a holding company I don't know that that's the right. Firm but there is a parent company that owns the Goodwill Master license in Metro DC and they have. License out the brand to I believe the numbers 155, individual territories across the u.s. and each of those territories have, Goodwill organization with their own leadership team their own operations around treasury their own board of directors obviously they vary in. Size and location and specification and you know mix the revenue and all those things but they all share the same Mission and the mission a Goodwill is. [36:57] To enhance lives for the Dignity of work, and it's my older brother was born with a disability and I've watched him go on and off disability a few times in his life and I tell you, that he's his best self when he's working. So when I first got connected with the folks at Goodwill earlier last year it really touched my heart like I really. I wanted this to be successful for them because I know how important their mission is but as I got to learn more about the network. [37:37] Of 155 Goodwill's and more about the opportunity and there are six founding. Good we'll see EOS that came together to organize this new separate entity called goodwillfinds where a virtual Delaware company. And those six are the ones that are the board that I report to and they've been working on this for years they were, ready to watch this last year and decided that they needed to hire a CEO, to come in build a team set up the company oversee the launch so I joined pre-revenue and we're now in our fourth month of selling, the consumer response has been. Unbelievable sales are more than doubling month-over-month it's it's really. A unique opportunity to build something that is not only. [38:39] In a part of retail that is innovating and growing and scaling rapidly but it's also doing it for this amazing Mission and you know really trying to redefine what does. Nonprofit in the circular economy look like to deliver social impact at scale so I feel like that's the Mandate that I signed up for and the team that I'm building. And the business model that we're designing right now to go with the marketplace are the is the execution of that but the bigger Vision here is to create this platform that not only. [39:24] Overtime all 155 Goodwill members will have access to be on as sellers but that. For the first time we'll have decentralized marketing funnel brands. Strategy content messaging 1p data and then. [39:48] But technical roadmap that were able to deploy that will integrate with the store operations and the back of house operations that will allow for scared investments in technology that all the good wolf can take advantage of. On the consumer side I think all the players and secondhand have the same goal which is to make the. [40:10] The option to buy second-hand versus new so compelling and so convenient and so exciting and cool. That more and more consumption dollars go towards second hand and move away from New and by, doing that, it has this incredibly measurable impact on the environment in creating sustainable. Impact and then in our case you add to it. The fact that every net dollar that we collect from our sales go back to the location where the Goodwill was the item was donated to fund the Goodwill programs I mean it's I feel like we're pioneering, this new this new kind of business model for circularity and so all that to me is like super compelling super interesting, and I'm really fortunate that this opportunity found me. Scot: [41:19] Cool hearing you talk about it I can tell you like to build stuff the channel visor we had a lot of customers that were kind of in this General space the challenge with this use Consignment World Is You Gotta you know I'm sure these Goodwills are getting, they're only going to sell online a fraction of what comes in so you got to figure out what what things do you want to sell in the store versus online you gotta create digital assets which are the descriptions and the pictures and then you gotta you know imagine you're not going to send them to a central location so then you've got to create a shipping method that works down at the store level how are you guys solving all those problems at scale. Matt: [42:00] Yeah well I'll tell you a couple of things and you're exactly right there's a ton of operational challenges we have a couple things going for us one. These Goodwills already have the physical infrastructure they already have, donation centers they already have Micro warehouses that are already selling online as a three-piece seller through Amazon and eBay and some other Regional marketplaces, so they have a lot of these physical operations setup, so we're leveraging that and we're not having to deploy Capital to do it. That's 12 there's a there's a maturity in the technology vendor Market you'd be surprised at how many. Providers are in the space to automate. We have a partner that we work with that leverages Google Lens technology and Leverage is the Einstein a I was Salesforce that allows us to, take a lot of the heavy lifting out of item creation we have vendors that we work with that. [43:15] Take images of items three-dimensional scans that send it to and Outsource in India where descriptions are being written for these items you know so there's, and I'm learning this right but you'd be shocked at how much software deployment automation deployment already exists. [43:38] So we're managing that to deploy in a way that integrates into these existing operations at and. The other thing that we have an advantage of is because we are nonprofit. [43:53] We're selling primarily me exclusively right now but overtime will be primarily selling donated items which have. Is this not a zero cost of goods but it's a near zero cost of goods. So we have room in the margin line to play with value-added services on each item, if we feel like there's a lift that we can justify with that you know with respect to photography with respect to. Metadata on each of the items with respect to Howard thinking about tagging, there's a lot there's a lot of players out there that we're evaluating right now and we watched with. [44:42] Over 100,000 unique items back in the first week of October. Mid-December we were at nearly 200,000 items. And our roadmap is to have a million unique items in our active. Catalog by October of this year so this entire endeavor. Has been from the start designed for scale. So we feel like that's giving us an advantage because we're able to do some things that, other startups that are venture-backed that are having to start from scratch with a lot of that infrastructure that have a cost of sourcing and and Supply acquisition that we don't, it would be financially prohibitive for them to make some of the Investments that we're making right now. Scot: [45:43] Yeah it's interesting to hear you say you're using some of the AI Jason's not a believer in AI but I'm a big proponent. Jason: [45:50] Haha I haven't said a word on this whole podcast I've just been using my AI Avatar. Scot: [45:57] Ugh. Matt: [45:58] For the record this isn't Matt talking this is Matt's chat TPT talking. Jason: [46:04] Yeah we tested both in the shed she'd Beatty was much more Salient so we went with that. [46:17] Yeah so it's interesting to me mad because, you mentioned a lot of the early Pioneers in our e-commerce and by the way just from buzzword Bingo like are you re Commerce person or you like do you have a favorite label for what you're doing now. Matt: [46:34] Yeah I'm. I'm back in the the interview circuit right now trying to get the word out about what we're doing and promoting the Goodwill Mission so I'm still trying some phrases on I mean yeah RI Commerce is definitely. [46:50] What. The buzzword but I think what we're doing at goodwillfinds and and in partnership with the Goodwill network is really about circularity you know in my mind's eye. Getting a Marketplace standing up a new Marketplace from the zero. You know it's the old Beezus flywheel the back of the napkin that I think about every day and in my version of it their supply demand admission and without the mission we don't get supply. And the better job we do partnering with our members sellers in acquiring the right Supply and and listing it. In a high-quality way, you know then that allows us to be able to meet demand in the market which the proceeds from those sales go right back to the Goodwill where we got the donation and there's the kind of the flywheels complete, and one of the stories around that and this is what we have to do a better job. [47:52] This year versus last year's to get these stories these amazing stories about the Goodwill Network out into the world, the more successful we are Google finds meaning the more that we're able to sell and scale demand. The more people each of the Goodwill sellers have to hire in their e-commerce operations. Because they're doing the listings they're doing the pick pack and ship on the on the outbound but those jobs are higher skill and they and they pay better. And so it actually accelerates the local mission. [48:27] The more successful we are because they have to hire more people and bring more people and train them into these higher value jobs that then they go get placed somewhere else they can go work within. The digital economy you know the digital retail industry and so we really I really think about what we're doing as pioneering circularity. We also are talking to some retailers and Brands you want to partner with us on they're both on the demand and supply side and part of it is because we're a nonprofit that there's a tax, right up Advantage for them but it's there's also this, PSG component to the large corporates that they have to think about especially in, in apparel where they had to think about you know what is their end to end environmental impact and. [49:27] It's it's really I can't believe the timing of this but it's really a moment right now not just with consumers but in the industry and so that's another aspect of circularity where you have. Yeah it's not Nike so but I'll just use them as an example to speak of Austria of Lee imagine Nike telling their full price customers. That they can buy second-hand Nike at goodwillfinds.com. Or imagine a Chanel it's not Chanel so I'll just use them electrically but imagine them. [50:04] Wanting to use us as their authentication partner so that when you find second-hand should now at goodwillfinds.com versus a real real or somewhere else, you can you can you know that you have this objective third-party authenticator that you can partner with to control, the the brand experience in the second hand market so it's, I'm really excited about the possibilities and and we have a really big vision for what we're doing I don't I think we Commerce to me feels, like a term that soap a little bit Limited. Jason: [50:41] Totally fair so maybe circular Commerce its, it's interesting to me though like so we've had a bunch of those Founders from the circular Commerce. Brands on and like their fundamental problem is not your fundamental like their biggest problem is sourcing, the goods by getting people to send them stuff and then when they curate it they're mostly interested in, luxury designer so they end up with a relatively poor yield and they don't have. [51:13] Any monetization or you know frankly like a ecologically redeeming way to deal with, all the goods they get that aren't they don't meet their criteria so it's like you you seem like they're like through the Goodwill Network you've got all these stores to put Goods in you've got a bunch of you do have luxury consumers that are searching for vintage and value but you also have more pure value consumers you it just seems like it's a really interesting fit because you saw some of the, problems that are endemic to the re Commerce guys you've got the first gen, Val you guys like the you know the fast fashion guys who are you know of course making stuff cheap but it's a psychological disaster and they only sell like half of it and the other half ends up in a landfill and all that and then you've got the, discount guys who I think is the funniest of all I don't know if you follow this but Burlington Coat Factory, right before the pandemic shut down their e-commerce and they shut it down because they fundamentally couldn't solve what you're doing like they couldn't figure out how to cost effectively make, product detail pages for all the super thin inventory that they had and so it just interesting like, because you built this business on top of the Google Network it feels like you got a nice sort of Head Start in the in all three corners of that problem if you will. Matt: [52:36] Yeah Jason so first off I know a lot of the players the founders execs at those other places and, again I want them all to be successful because the more successful the category is it's a tide that will lift all boats and I think we're all being led by the consumer who is voting yes yes yes, I also think that the consumer, um is not just the the deal Seeker the value Seeker but it really is a trend ribbon, style driven younger consumer who if you think about you know the. [53:19] Tick Tock and Instagram and this this viral social world that we live in where you nobody wants to look the same, wearing the same things that shopping vintage and second-hand is actually a way to differentiate yourself and show your, your individual style so it's there's a really interesting marriage there between second hand and kind of social morality, and what's happening there and then there's also a tell you a more affluent customer or aspirational customer who could Shop full price and does Shop full price but they really care about, about the impact in the narrative and they want to talk about the story, where they bought it not just what they bought and so there's it feels like there's this really. [54:15] Great timing of all three customer segments and then the last thing I tell you is compared to the Discounters. Do I have read about some of them struggling, with figuring out e-commerce and I think I've read the rational rationalization was that it's hard to do Discovery online versus in the store. What I would tell you is that what we're doing augments the in-store thrifting experience at goodwillfinds, now if you're shopping Goodwill at your local store. The assortment is very limited it's what just showed up that week or that month as far as donations go but, you can do that because there are certain categories of people like to touch and feel or try on because fit matters or Texture and finish and, and material matter you know how home goods and furniture and the like one of those big bulky items that you know are easier to buy and store but to be able to couple that with. [55:29] Now shopping you know I don't want to say the best but the that e-commerce. Assortment of other Goodwills across the country. We're now you're getting access to donations from New York to LA Seattle to Miami, Chicago to Austin and I mean wow like what a treasure Trove to be able to shop your Goodwill store and go online and get access to all these thrift stores in one place, in our case I think it's a massive value add and. Given the fact that the Goodwill brand has been around for 100 years and already has tens of millions of customers shopping their stores you know our primary focus to start is how do we, how do we complement the in-store shopping experience to those tens of millions of customers to convert them to be multi-channel customers with the brand, and at the same time how do we compete in the market too. [56:38] Solicit this this these other two audiences that I mentioned the style and Trend driven younger consumer that's looking for vintage that's looking for. For differentiated as well as this this aspirational and more affluent customer who loves the loves the purpose loves the mission loves the story of circularity and wants to participate. Scot: [57:03] Cool sounds like your you're fired up and it's going to be exciting to watch the progress we're running up against time but while we have you you've been that this over 15 years the whole e-commerce retail thing what are some of the other Trends you're watching other than this circular kind of recycling element anything anything interesting on your radar for example do you think the digitally native vertical brand thing has played out or is that still got legs any other trends that are interesting to you. Matt: [57:36] Yeah well on DM BB which just a an iteration of DTC. Did you see to me was always a go to market strategy was never a business model. Scot: [57:47] Yeah. Matt: [57:49] The the early players the first movers in that space who did the, you know go to the source and sell an item at the wholesale price versus the retail price because you're cutting out the middleman Zappos is kind of one of the one of the pioneers of that, um That was a momentum thing I've always viewed and again kind of sticking to my knitting here in this specialty premium you know Market space. I've always viewed, yeah the brand equity which is what we're all striving to create and grow and maintain. It gets generated by picking an attractive customer, that you want to obsess about and I don't and attractive I mean somebody that you think is a viable there's enough of them and they're viable to have a long-term relationship with. [58:56] And obsessing about them to the point where you understand their needs better than they and you can create differentiated product and service, where, they fall in love with your Solutions with your customer experience and they want to tell their friends and then you couple that with the right distribution, so that you can find more people like them which allows you to scale in an efficient manner and direct-to-consumer now going back 15 years, was just the new go to market to find more like-minded customers to ones that you already had so urban urban already had amazingly strong brands with a lot of brand equity, so what we did writing the Web 2.0 wave was really just figuring out you know how do we, how do we reach the same or similar customers and give them a better experience a different experience online than what they experience in store, and then Mark what was the opposite I got there and we had no physical experience and so the exercise was how do we take this brand love that exists. [1:00:07] At this website and and translate it into a three-dimensional experience that, the existing customers would love but would allow us to expand our market and introduce the brand and more people so I yeah so I don't I never saw DM BB by itself as a sustainable business model. [1:00:27] As far as other Trends in the market today I when I left Walmart I did a talk. [1:00:37] Where I said I felt like it was an amazing time, to start a brand and I really meant it and I really believe that the market was was so like there's so much sameness in the market that. That there's a huge opportunity for four new brands coming to the market Leverage The technologies that have matured and and really differentiate against the incumbents I tell you sitting here right now after. I feel like consumers. [1:01:12] Have now accepted the fact that their multi-line store is where they shop for everything. The whole idea of this retailers essential and that one's not and those shutdowns for a year plus I think really changed consumer. Perception of where's viable to shop the where it's not and I and so I think the bigger players, have a massive advantage in this market especially this year with inflation continuing going into a recession I think it's I think this year is going to be really hard, for smaller players to differentiate and survive so that's more from a consumer lens. From a technology lens I'm sorry to say Jason but I'm a big believer in AI, and I think it's early days and what I counseled a lot of folks who are earlier in their career is find a mega technology trend, in the market that you can get passionate about learning that you think is early Innings and ride it. [1:02:17] I certainly did that with e-commerce I was. They're early with the that whole Social Mobile Local, moment you know that was existing after the iPhone and Facebook launched, I'm I feel like marketplaces are like halfway up the s-curve I feel like there's still a lot more room to grow and so I'm working on that technology curve right now with goodwillfinds. But I would say that I don't I'm not a Believer it in web 3.0 today it feels like, the.com in the late 90s where it was five years too early, there just weren't enough participants to make it viable I think web 3.0 in whatever form it takes is five years out before becomes something that you could commercially work on. And then you know I'd say I think the subscription in. In a lot of categories is having a lot of success right now which is less about technology and more about, business model but that's that's that's an area as well that I think is worth exploring for a lot of businesses that are trying to figure out ways to monetize Their audience. Jason: [1:03:40] Matt that is awesome, basically we're mostly aligned I'm 100% with you on a I I'm also with you on web 3 / metaverse being too early the one thing I'm gonna just for the record disagree on is I I can't public admit that marketplaces are thing because that'll that'll go to Scott said too much if we admit that. But, it's going to surprise no one mat that has happened again we've used slightly more than our allotted time so we're gonna leave it with those words of wisdom from you as always if listeners found value from this show we sure would love it if you'd jump on iTunes and leave us that five star review but Matt, so awesome to reconnecting and congrats on everything you're doing it's it's fun to watch and and put your point like it's also adding a heck of a lot of value to the world. Matt: [1:04:33] Guys I really appreciate the time always great to reconnect congrats on the pot I'm a huge fan and let's do it again at number five hundred. Scot: [1:04:44] Sounds good Matt if folks want to find you online or you on the on MySpace where do you hang out. Matt: [1:04:52] Yeah have you heard of Tumblr no. Um yeah I would just say if anybody needs to get ahold of me reach out through Linkedin and my contact information is there. Scot: [1:05:06] Sounds good we really appreciate taking time and good luck with the new Venture sounds really exciting. Matt: [1:05:11] Thanks guys. Jason: [1:05:12] And until next time happy commercing.

Today's episode is sponsored by GoodwillFinds.com - a new secondhand marketplace where you can find great values on top quality clothing, tools, jewelry, home items and one-of-a-kind gifts online from select Goodwills across the country, all without having to leave home!  And, in addition to great values, you can feel great about shopping on the site as all of the net proceeds fund local Goodwill community programs! Go see the cute Elie Tahari designer wool top that I found at GoodwillFinds.com on my Instagram HERE!In this episode, I'm excited to be teaming up again with Krista Edwards from Ready to Roth to bring you the newest challenge starting on January 9, 2023! We are kicking off the 30-Day DIY "Money Makeover" Challenge!! Ask yourself the following questions:Do you ever feel:Stressed because you don't know where your money is going?A budget is necessary, but you're not sure how to create a realistic budget without feeling deprived?You could be saving more money if you made it a priority?Investing is important, but you have no idea how to get started?​If you answered yes to any of these questions, then the 30-Day DIY "Money Makeover" Challenge is for you!>>>>>CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE CHALLENGE!

GoodwillFinds is trying to bring the century-old Goodwill network to the era of ThredUp. The new e-commerce platform has only been live since October, but has already seen pretty steady growth. When it first hit the market, GoodwillFinds offered 100,000 items for sale from four different Goodwill locations around the country. Now, that number is approaching 200,000 items. CEO Matthew Kaness said the organization plans to have a catalog of over 1 million products for sale by the end of the year. GoodwillFinds is in the process of onboarding four more locations -- and Kaness said dozens of other locations are in the pipeline to be added in 2023. Kaness joined the Modern Retail Podcast to talk about the growing program. While most anyone in the U.S. knows about Goodwill, the organization has never had a centralized online presence. The idea with GoodwillFinds is to try and do just that -- as well as compete with other digital resale leaders like Thredup and the RealReal. While the platform has only been around for a few months, Kaness said that the struggle hasn't been finding customers, but instead making sure the program can run smoothly while scaling. "We didn't expect the consumer response to be as great," he said. "So we are chasing some of the operations -- staffing up customer service, and adding more staff at pick, pack and ship [sections] within the various Goodwills." The business is also trying to figure out what sells best on the online platform. While apparel has been one of Goodwill's most popular categories, Kaness said GoodwillFinds has seen "such a strong demand for non-clothing." In fact, apparel currently only accounts for one-quarter of the platform's sales. The platform is still constantly being upgraded, with more products and features being added everyday. But the hope is to create the Goodwill experience online. That being said, Kaness was clear that the well-known treasure-hunt Goodwill experience can't be mimicked by an online app. "What we're trying to do is augment and expand and enhance the experience," he said.

Today's episode is sponsored by GoodwillFinds.com - a new secondhand marketplace where you can find great values on top quality clothing, tools, jewelry, home items and one-of-a-kind gifts online from select Goodwills across the country, all without having to leave home!  And, in addition to great values, you can feel great about shopping on the site as all of the net proceeds fund local Goodwill community programs! Go see the cute Elie Tahari designer wool top that I found at GoodwillFinds.com on my Instagram HERE!In my opinion, people that have hobbies (especially creative ones!) are the happiest people. We don't need research to tell us that (it's pretty obvious if you're a crafter!), but there was a 2009 study that found that people who had hobbies (for example, hobbies, sports, socializing, or spending time in nature) are more likely to have lower blood pressure, lower levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone), and lower levels of depression. Individuals who engaged in more frequent enjoyable leisure activities had better psychological and physical functioning.With those kinds of results, why aren't more people engaging in hobbies? It could due to lack of time, health issues, lack of money, etc. But our physical and mental health are dependent on us engaging in some of these fun activities! And some of the best hobbies don't cost very much to get started, if you're strapped financially. Here are some ideas for hobbies to add to your list in 2023!Got a question? Email me at serena@thriftdiving.com!PRODUCTS AND LINKS MENTIONEDRavelry.com for knitting (Let's connect there! Look for "thriftdiving")Very Pink Knits for knitting helpWoodcraft woodworking classesCanva for scrapbookingDuolingo for learning a foreign languagePROJECTS & BLOG POSTS MENTIONEDWatch my Family Video that I made after learning some videography and filmmaking techniques! Subscribe to my email list for 5 ebooks, printable, and checkliSupport the showClick to send me an email to share your thoughts with me on this episode! Connect with me on Instagram @ThriftDiving. WANT TO LEARN TO USE POWER TOOLS? I'm creating an online power tools 101 course to help you get over the fear and intimidating of using tools to become empowered with power tools! Sign up here for more info! https://thriftdiving.com/toolsSubscribe to my email list for 5 ebooks, printable, and checklists: https://thriftdiving.com/subscribeSubscribe to my YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/thriftdivingLet's Connect! Blog YouTube Instagram Facebook Pinterest TikTok Twitter

What's up to my jocular jungle shrews and hubristic hagfish! Welcome back to the BNP everyone and thank you for joining! We got a dandy doozy of an ep for ya this week folks. In addition to some zany af audio tidbits and a soliloquy about a recent mind-blowing, er, mind orbiting meditation experience, we have returning champ, Oceanographic electrical engineer Sean Lastuka, back in the Barbarian Lair! This episode is Part 2 of our DIY EMP Device series, and we get into some juicy specifics (purely hypothetical & educational, Kyle) about how one can craft a device capable of zapping robot dogs, with just some basic electronics widely available at Goodwills and ReStores (I always knew I liked those boxy old Zenith TV's).We also chat about wedge issues dividing the working class, the UC Berkeley student strike, nitty gritty details and difficulties of  attempting to electrify the nation's fleet, and more!For our Outro reading this week we take a look at fresh evidence that corvids, such as ravens, crows and jays, actually have self-awareness and their own version of a cerebral cortex.So friends, twist up some flower in a quality tobacco-free wrap, heat up some chaga ashwagandha tea, pop open a bag of blue corn chips, hell, maybe even crack open a root beer kombucha, and enjoy the pod. Help the BNP stay on the air for as little as $1/month at www.patreon.com/noetics. When you sign up to be a patron at the $1/month tier, you receive:1) One Dream Interpretation, redeemable any time over email or phone 2) Original Haiku Poem 3) Unlimited Positive Karma! 4) Monthly cargo container shipments of invasive nutria from the Puget Sound. What, you're too good for water rats? Come on man!You can also sign up at other tiers, such as $2/month, $5/month (Two Dream Interpretations) or $50/month (Five Dream Interpretations) and become my own Personal Jesus! One time donation: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/noeticsIG @barbarian_noeticsEmail: barbarian.noetics@gmail.comCheck out Barbarian Yak Fest w/ Dr. Sylvie on Rokfin here! Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the BNP,  and thank you for spreading the word and telling a friend!!Until next week,be excellent to one anotherand compassionate towards yourself.One Love,little raven kawwwwTRACKLIST FOR THIS EPISODE Kraftwerk - The RobotsChekr Beats - Taking Forever (Synthwave Type Beat)Blurred - Sunset Nostalgia (Lo Fi Mix)The Creations - Make Me Feel So GoodDon's Guns - Indianapolis, Indiana Advertisement (1988)Dark Silence - Night Ride Lyde, Fisher and Giles - I'll Always Love YouBrenton Wood - Oogum Boogum (Slightly Slowed- Fair Use AF)Easy Star All Stars - Great Dub In The SkySynthwave Goose - Blade Runner 2049Lofi Girl - 9 AM Study Session (Lo Fi Mix)Young Ladies - I'm Tired of Running AroundFatback - Backstrokin' (Slightly Slowed n Verbed)LINKShttps://www.britannica.com/event/Falkland-Islands-War/The-course-of-the-conflicthttps://bigthink.com/neuropsych/crows-higher-intelligence/ Support the show

Today's episode is sponsored by GoodwillFinds.com. Find deep discounts on top quality clothing, tools, jewelry, home items, and one-of-a-kind gifts online without having to leave home! You'll find the best items offered from Goodwills across the U.S.!Don't go broke during the holidays! In this episode, I'll share with you some money-saving ideas, including gifts you can make,  gifts that are memorable and affordable, and other helpful tips.Got a question? Email me at serena@thriftdiving.com!EPISODES MENTIONED5 Wasteful and Toxic Effects of Buying "New" - #3PRODUCTS AND LINKS MENTIONEDBuilder's paperSanding block for pedicures after you soak your feetFree coupon templates (on Canva)PROJECTS & BLOG POSTS MENTIONEDHow to Make a Gift Box Out of Scrapbook PaperThrow a Scavenger HuntDIY Foot scrubberHow to Make a DIY Giant Jenga Game Subscribe to my email list for 5 ebooks, printable, and checklists: https://thriftdiving.com/subscribeSubscribe to my YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/thriftdivingLet's Connect!BlogYouTubeInstagramFacebookPinterestTikTokSupport the showClick to send me an email to share your thoughts with me on this episode! Connect with me on Instagram @ThriftDiving. WANT TO LEARN TO USE POWER TOOLS? I'm creating an online power tools 101 course to help you get over the fear and intimidating of using tools to become empowered with power tools! Sign up here for more info! https://thriftdiving.com/toolsSubscribe to my email list for 5 ebooks, printable, and checklists: https://thriftdiving.com/subscribeSubscribe to my YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/thriftdivingLet's Connect! Blog YouTube Instagram Facebook Pinterest TikTok Twitter

Seit langen warnen Analysten davor, dass gerade die Unternehmen im deutschen Leitindex DAX, aber auch andere europäische und US-Konzerne einen hohen Goodwill, sprich Firmenwert bilanzieren, dem nicht immer tatsächlich etwas gegenüberübersteht. Mit dem Goodwill beschäftigt sich auch das Flossbach von Storch Research Institute, die ihren jüngsten Newsletter passend „Goodwill- noch ist der Geist in der Flasche“ titeln. Wie kommen solchen Überhöhten Goodwills in Bilanzen zustande? Häufig bei Übernahmen, wenn das übernommene Unternehmen neu bewertet wird und festgestellt wird, dass mehr bezahlt wurde, als das erworbene Unternehmen an Nettovermögen in seinen Büchern verbucht. Der de facto fundamental ungedeckte Firmenwert ist dann eine Art Übernahmeprämie. Bis 2001 mussten auch die DAX-Unternehmen noch diesen durch Übernahmen entstandenen Goodwill in Etappen gleichmäßig abschreiben und so ihre Bilanzen bereinigen. Das ist seither, weil nach den US-Standards GAAP bilanziert wird, nicht mehr notwendig und wird auch kaum noch getan. Welches süße Nichts da auf der Soll-Seite in den Bilanzen steht, hat Flossbach von Storch sorgfältig zusammengetragen. Demnach haben allein die S&P-500-Unternehmen inzwischen 3,7 Billionen Dollar an Goodwill bilanziert. Bei allen börsennotierten US-Unternehmen zusammen liegt der Wert noch einmal rund zwei Billionen Dollar darüber. Und im europäischen Stoxx 600 liegt der Goodwill aller Unternehmen bei knapp 2,9 Billionen Euro. DAX-Konzerne hätten in den Jahren 2000 bis 2004 noch im Schnitt 8,5 Prozent des jeweils zuvor bilanzierten Goodwills abgewertet. In den 17 Geschäftsjahren danach waren es nur noch 1,4 Prozent, sprich einem Sechstel davon. Jetzt, wo bei steigenden Zinsen die Verschuldung wieder stärker zu bewerten ist, ist ein hoher Goodwill in der Bilanz eine gefährliche Drohung, umso mehr als dass das für die US-GAAP-Richtlinien verantwortliche Board angeblich überlegt, wieder Teilabschreibungen des Goodwills über zehn Jahre vorzuschreiben. Niemand hat gesagt, dass die Fundamentalanalyse von Unternehmen einfach sei ... Wenn Du den Podcast Börsenminute unterstützen möchtest, würde ich Dich bitten ihn auf einer Podcastplattform Deiner Wahl, auf Spotify oder YouTube zu liken oder ihn auch zu abonnieren und weiterzuempfehlen. Besten Dank! Rechtlicher Hinweis: Für Verluste, die aufgrund von getroffenen Aussagen entstehen, übernimmt die Autorin, Julia Kistner keine Haftung. #Aktien #Bilanzen #Unternehmen #Firmenwert #Goodwill #Stoxx600 #Dollar #Euro #DAX #S&P500 #FlossbachvonStorch #podcast #investieren #börsenminute #Abschreibung #GAAP #Übernahmen #Prämie #Nettovermögen #Fundamentalanalyse #Zinsen #verschuldung

$5 for weekly bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/WeAreAssholes Fartmouth -https://pod.link/1492741786 History Buffs - https://pod.link/1578761545 Yet Another Music Podcast - https://pod.link/1574961465

INTRODUCTION: Why Love? A couple of years ago, I heard about a man who committed to living like Jesus for an entire year. Wow! That's some commitment. I imagined the transformation that would undoubtedly happen. To find that joyful peace, or is it unwavering grit, insightful compassion, or humble adoration? Whichever way, each way, in all ways, life would never be the same.  I thought about how I would approach that challenge. How would I know that I was truly living like Jesus? Then it hit me; John says God is love. So to live like Jesus would be living love. But what is love? And how would I live love while crossing cultures with one foot on U.S. soil and the other in places like Haiti, where love is both obviously abundant and seemingly scarce, challenging and effortless simultaneously?  Not wholly unfamiliar, just listening to music, reading books, and sitting through many sermons, I have learned a thing or two about love. I know that it is universal, timeless, and ageless. It is a feeling, a choice, a given. It is all-encompassing, enduring, and everlasting. Love conquers all, never fails, and keeps us together. But it hurts, gets lost, and takes time. There are love bugs, love seats, and love boats. There are love notes, love songs, and love birds. Love is a dare, a game, a language. You can be lovesick, loveless, and lovely. You can fall in love, be addicted to love, would do anything in the name of love, playing the game of love with the power of love.You can't hurry it or buy it and don't know if it will be there tomorrow. Yet love is all you need. They say love the one you are with, and find the love of your life because love wins. There's even a “Love Chapter” in the Bible. We've heard the “Love Chapter” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) read and expounded on many times (mostly at weddings). It's one of the most memorized, admired, and well-known passages in all Scripture, even by non-church folk. We've heard this famous passage so often our eyes kind of glaze over. “Love is patient; love is kind, does not env…” Yeah, yeah. We know how this goes.        But what is love, really?  So John says God is love. Bob the Tomato says God is bigger than the boogie man, Godzilla, and the monsters on T.V. So the love that is God must be way bigger than my love of black licorice and movie theater popcorn.  Jesus named the number one law of all of the laws, and there were tons. Leviticus, the third book of the Torah and the Old Testament, lists most of the 613 rules of conduct. He could have picked any one of them. Murder is pretty heavy. Stealing isn't exactly harmless. Adultery can destroy families in a hurry. Lying about someone could get you and them into a heap of trouble. But with no hesitation, he picked the one that sat right in between “don't carry a grudge or seek revenge” and “don't mate two different kinds of animals.” (Leviticus 19:18) Jesus basically said, “That's an easy one. Love God and love people.” Just like that. There is no exception clause, no fine print, no room for interpretation, love people, all of them, every single one.+           Even deeper, Paul said that you can't go wrong if you love people because love is the fulfillment of the law. Fulfillment, like an Amazon order, picked out of the warehouse, loaded, delivered, fulfilled. It's complete, buttoned-up, stick a fork in it, done. All of it, all 613 laws, if you love with the same love that God is, you don't break any. So WWJD (what would Jesus do) is interchangeable with WWLD (what would love do).  It makes sense then if you understand love than live love, your life would change. If that love got a little contagious, the whole world could be a better place.  I will figure out love one word at a time, taking 1 Corinthians 13 to heart and feet. Live it, learn it, love it. It is quite a list, a list that I think I already know, but somehow I think I have a lot to learn.  “Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.” I Corinthians 13: 4-8 N.I.V. INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to): ·      The Benefits of Black Licorice ·      Becoming a Widow·      Success and Failures·      Surviving Cancer·      The Beauty of Death·      Leaving Medical Diagnoses on Voicemails·      The Pain of Mammograms·      Can't Pray the Gay Away·      The Difference Between God and the Church·      The Pressures of Living a Lie·      A Spotlight on Haiti  CONNECT WITH KIM: Website & Books: https://www.KimSorrelle.comYouTube: https://bit.ly/3vRFWXfFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/loveisbykim/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimsorrelle/?hl=enTwitter: https://twitter.com/Kim_SorrelleLinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3tEzK24 KIM'S RECOMMENDATIONS: ·      All You Need Is Love (The Beatles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7xMfIp-irg  CONNECT WITH DE'VANNON: Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.comYouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCMFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/SexDrugsAndJesus/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexdrugsandjesuspodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabooTopixLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannonEmail: DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com  DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS: ·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)o  https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370o  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs ·      Upwork: https://www.upwork.com·      FreeUp: https://freeup.net·      Disabled American Veterans (DAV): https://www.dav.org·      American Legion: https://www.legion.org ·      Black Licorice (consult your doctor):https://www.webmd.com/diet/black-licorice-health-benefits#1 ·      What The World Needs Now (Dionne Warwick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHAs9cdTqg  INTERESTED IN PODCASTING OR BEING A GUEST?: ·      PodMatch is awesome! This application streamlines the process of finding guests for your show and also helps you find shows to be a guest on. The PodMatch Community is a part of this and that is where you can ask questions and get help from an entire network of people so that you save both money and time on your podcasting journey.https://podmatch.com/signup/devannon  TRANSCRIPT: [00:00:00]You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your life.There is nothing off the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.De'Vannon: Hey everyone. And welcome to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast. I'm so thankful to have you with me again this week. God bless each. And every last one of you, Kim Sorrelle is my guest. Today. She is the author of two beautiful books and she has an incredible story. This is a woman has become like a sister to me and I am so excited to present her to the world.And in today's episode, we're going to talk about the benefits of black licorice. She's going to [00:01:00] tell us about how she became a widow. We're going to talk about the beauty of death and why doctors should not leave negative medical news on voicemails. Now, cam has a special love in our heart for Haiti.And so we spend quite a bit of time talking about Haiti, and then we get into a little bit about a voodoo, take a close, listen to this episode, and I hope you get a lot out of.Good morning. Good morning, Ms. Kim. So REL, welcome to the sex drugs and Jesus pod has today in the name of God. How are you doing woman?Kim: I am doing fabulous and I am so grateful to be here. And how are you?De'Vannon: I am fan fucking tastic van fucking tabulates and scrum daily. I'm shit. If I do say so myself, so I'm so happy to have you with me today. [00:02:00] I do believe that you're going to breathe in a shitload of value to my beautiful audience out there. Kevin likes to keep it real everybody. And so here we go. She's an author.She's an entrepreneur. He's a speaker. She's a cancer survivor and T the lover of black liquid. I'm going to give you a moment to talk about like your own history and your own way and adjust the second. But I wanted to dig into this a lover of black licorice, because never before what I've read into somebodies headlines on their profiles and things like that, that they mentioned any sort of candy or derivative of a, of a root or plant Loeser what licorice is.So I want you to tell me what is so special. What's so damn special about this black licorice, that it was worthy to go into your heading.Kim: How does a good question? Well, I feel like more people don't like black licorice than do like black licorice. And I can't imagine my life without it. It's just one of [00:03:00] those things I grew up. My, my favorite aunt, my aunt Rita, my great aunt always had black licorice in her pantry and she ran a home for old folks and I love going there and helping her out.And at the end of the day, having a piece of black licorice as a treat and I that's. Where am I love started for black licorice and it continued on. Apparently De'Vannon: Did you know, my dear that there are health, health benefits to black licorice. Kim: tell me. De'Vannon: So when I came across this, on your profile, it stood out to me. And so then I went digging around and shit as I do. And And so what I found, and I'm going to put a link of this link to web MD in the show notes of people can go and look it up, but it says it can help.It can help digestion blacklist by the laser. It's gonna help your digestive system work more [00:04:00]effectively. It can ease symptoms from indigestion, heartburn and ulcers. Black licorice extracts have been linked to a reduction in the bacteria that calls cause ulcers. And I could've sworn, I read something about this.Can have some sort of like maybe cancer-fighting qualities too. And so considering your history with cancer, which I'm going to let you tell us about, I was wondering if maybe a Lord was watching out for you. Early on in life before you got your diagnosis, because sometimes we have a taste for things that are going to heal us, and we don't necessarily realize it at the time.We just know we keep craving that for some reason. And so I'm wondering if perhaps you were drawn to that in order to help you overcome, you know, what you would be fighting later on in life.Kim: Interesting. Yeah. I love the idea of that. I have to say. Cause that's true. Like you hear about women that are expecting babies and crave certain things because there's [00:05:00] iron in it or there's something in it that, that they need or the baby needs or people in general. So yeah, couldn't possibly be for sure.De'Vannon: Yeah. So I'm just gonna read this real quick, then I'll hush and let, I was just so fascinated by this cause I'm a, I'm a licensed massage therapist and I like to get into natural healing and stuff like that. I have a shitload of essential Earls and everything like that. And so anything natural that we can do for ourselves, you know, sometimes the remedy that we need are like right there on the shelf in the house.And we don't know, you know, Kim: Right, right. De'Vannon: you know, then we go run into doctor via pumped, full all these drugs. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes it's not. So I'm just gonna read this here. So it says a substance extracted from licorice root little cow cone dash a has been shown to have antitumor activity and acute leukemia breast and prostate cancer cell lines by lowering the amount [00:06:00] of BCL two, whatever the fuck that is a drug resistant protein excessive amounts of this protein are frequently associated with these cancers.Licorice is actually a plant and is found in like a couple of different countries in the world. And then that's how they make that black licorice candy. But it's not all sugar. It's bitter. Isn't that like the sweetest thing on the shelf. So yeah. I want you to know that and everybody else let's get some licorice y'allKim: There you go, you just see a level bunch of people. De'Vannon: so, so tell us about like what you, whatever you want to say about your history, and then go ahead and segue into the cancer story.Kim: Sure. Yeah. So I was going to be the first woman. That was my plan. And so I had my life laid out before me and knew where I was going to go. And when I was going to do, and then may of my senior year in high school, this man walked through the door [00:07:00] and I fell head over heels in love with him after swearing, I would never get married and have children because I had my life laid out.And 10 days after I met him, I asked him if he'd marry me. And he said, yes. And then we got married a little bit less than a year later. And so I was 17 when I got engaged in 18. When I got married, he was 22 when we got married. And he was the love of my life. I mean, I felt like we dated for a whole bunch of years.A couple years later, the baby started coming. I've got five kids and 11 grandkids and So big family. I know it's fun. It's so fun. And I love taking them to Disney world. They have this place on earth and they do sell like licorice at this new world. So that's good too. So, yeah, and I started my first business right out of high school.I'm not, intrepreneur sure. I've had businesses my whole life and and I run a nonprofit organization. I coached [00:08:00] varsity volleyball for 25 years and just whatever, been active and busy. And I've written a couple of books. De'Vannon: You know what? That's not a bad life. Kim: No, It's a great life.De'Vannon: It's not a bad life at all because you've, you've taken risks. You understand failure. You tell me about, tell me about at any point in your life where you failed at something, maybe it was a business, something that you try to do, and it didn't work out. Cause I wanted to illustrate because clearly you didn't get discouraged and you kept trying, and business can be a bitch to get into all the obstacles, the paperwork, the documentation.There's not really a clear path. And in, so sometimes we fail and we don't try again. So tell me about a time that you tried to do something. It just didn't work out.Kim: Yeah. Well, there's more than one of those stories to tell. I'll tell you that. I tried different businesses over the years. I was in business [00:09:00] on some businesses with my, my brother and my dad and some businesses alone and whatever. But we one business that didn't work out for me was fine dining. I have a golf course and and banquet facilities. So we do events, but we had fine dining. And that was, that's a tough road, man. Anybody in the restaurant business, I have so much respect for. I've been in the catering business for years, you know exactly how many people are coming, what time they're coming and what they're eating.Restaurant business is a whole different game, even staffing and knowing what food to have on hand and everything else. And there's so much loss of food and you can overstaff, or you can understand it. It's the, there's such a science to it. And to have one standalone restaurant and survive is amazing miracle hats off to those people.A lot of times you need more than one to [00:10:00] share expense and true income coming in. So yeah, that's that's, that's somebody, I have a whole lot of respect for people in the restaurant. This. De'Vannon: Yeah, I've been a server I've worked in restaurants. I've worked for catering companies. Yeah, it's, it's a bitch of an industry to be in, especially in the states because of the attitude that, that is here. You know, this may be the last country on the planet that actually still tip servers rather than just paying them, being fucking done with it.So I've wanted to highlight that because you know, with the pandemic and everything, people, you know, the world has. Like a sun has arisen over us. And I'm thankful for the disruption of the Corona virus, because it's shaken a lot of people up out of their bullshit as lie of a life that they had told themselves they were.But what I'm saying is that they were living a life that they really weren't happy with in the first place, they were lying to themselves and [00:11:00] accepting that as reality, they weren't happy. So the Corona virus took them away from the delusion long enough to get a new perspective. And then so a lot of people didn't go back to the bullshit.However, just because they're on a new path, doesn't mean it's going to be all gravy and flowers. You know, Dick sucking and all of that, you know, this is going to be some fuckery along the way. And so what, what, what words of encouragement that you say to people who are new to entrepreneurship, especially in this time that we live with so many people are, are trying new things and it doesn't matter if it's, you know, starting your own Lyft or Uber business, you're still an entrepreneur, you know, what would you say.Kim: I would say, do not give up. Don't give up. Don't give up. No, there been so many stories, story after story of people who their first try failed for second, try failed. Their third thing failed, you know, whatever in the publishing world. There's one of the books that has sold more books than [00:12:00]practically any other book in the world, maybe any other book in the world is the chicken soup for the soul series.If you've heard of it, I'm Jack Canfield and they had 144 rejections before they got a publisher to publish their book 144 and they have sold 650 million books. 650 million books. That's Yeah.no kidding. And so, so you look at that and go, well, what if they would've stopped at 1 42. And just given up, right.Harry Potter was rejected 11 times before publisher said yes. What if she wouldn't? What if JK Rowling's would have stopped that number 10 and just didn't put it out there anymore. Just don't give up. Don't believe in what you're doing. Work your butt off. Realize that entrepreneurship is the hardest road you sometimes I think people look at it and go, oh gosh, you're [00:13:00] your own boss?True. Oh gosh, you can set your own hours. Yes. But your own hours are more than anybody else. That's going to work for you. And you have to do everything alone at first, you know, like it takes up a long time to be in business before you take a vacation. So it's it's the hardest work you'll ever do.The most rewarding work you'll ever do. And really you, your name, your own price, you know, however hard you decide to work, whatever you decide to put into it is what you're going to get at. De'Vannon: Correct. And I couldn't agree more from having my own businesses and everything like that. It's bittersweet in that aspect. Like you do call your own shots. So it depends on what your value system is. Like. I value freedom. I love to come and go as I please. And I don't like being told what to do.Therefore, even though I got to go out there and hustle and make my own money every day, [00:14:00]my mental health is in a better state because I would rather the pressure of having to make my own money than to have a dumb ass boss telling me what to do and dumb ass coworkers, fucking up my vibe. Kim: So the military was great for you then. De'Vannon: the military and suck my fucking Dick.But yeah, I was 17 when I went to the military. I don't recommend that. You don't recommend it at all. Nothing. Since we mentioned Ms. JK Rowling, I always like to say, fuck you, JK Rowling for for being a damn turf, you know, and tariff is a trans exclusionary radical feminist because he has those strong views against like in like, you know, people, women who transitioned because he's like, I'm a real woman.Those bitches are not. So she's. Kim: I didn't know that about her. De'Vannon: Oh, God Google it. This bitch has been being bragged for filth and by the gay community of the two S LGBTQ plus community [00:15:00] for quite a while now, because she has liked certain posts and say a certain things, especially on her damn Twitter, I think so we love her forgiving us, Harry Potter.We love her for giving us the gay Dumbledore that was at a cute little sneak attack that she, you know, did that, or at least the fact that he was gay after all the books came out. So I appreciate the fuck out of her for that, but so she's not like against the gay people, but I don't like how she is against the trans girls to, you know, Kim: Yeah, that's too bad. Yeah. De'Vannon: it is too bad, but, you know, so she's bittersweet, you know, you know, and that's just where I stand on that. So, so let's talk about. The cancer. So some of my research and you, it wasn't just you who had cancer, you had breast cancer and said your husband had pancreatic pancreatic cancer. Now it's not very often. I talked to a person who were two people in their household had cancer at the same time. So walk me through the emotion.I [00:16:00] want to know where you were when you found out he had cancer. When you had cancer, where you were physically and where you were mentally.Kim: Yeah, well, hopefully this will be valuable to people. I was 47 years old when I found out I had cancer and I Fought getting a mammogram because I thought, oh, it's just a medical system making money. There's no breast cancer in my history that I would know if I had cancer. Like I just, I fought getting them a grams.And so I did not get them every year. Like you're supposed to, they're painful. They're horrible. It was obviously a man who invented the machine that turns your breast into a pancake. It is not a comfortable thing to have to do. And so I, I didn't want to do it. So I, I had you know, but like every few years and you're supposed to go more often than I, I was going.So my doctor convinced me to go and I went, I actually went to the [00:17:00] doctor because I tend to sell well. And she said, you know, you've not had a mammogram for a while. You really need to go. And so I went kicking and screaming and I said, Poor sweet ladies that were working at the Betty Ford clinic. I said, I am not having to be here.Like, this is ridiculous. I, this is a waste of my time. I'm a busy person. I shouldn't even have to be here doing this. And they were very sweet and very nice and did the mammogram, and then they make you wait. And then they wanted to do an ultrasound and they did that and they scheduled me for biopsy. And I was like, this is such a waste of time.There is no way there's anything wrong. And then on a Friday afternoon, two days after my birthday, actually, I wish I had a couple of my grandbabies in the bathtub and my phone rang at like three o'clock in the afternoon. And and they said Kim, the biopsies back, and you have breast cancer.And [00:18:00] that's pretty much all I heard. It was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll call you on Tuesday. I was like, what? And they're calling me on a Friday afternoon, you know, and I watch lifetime movies. I like the lifetime good lifetime movie. And that never happens that way. You get called into the office.They tell you face to face. You can ask questions, you know, it's the big dramatic moment, right? No, they called me on the phone on a flip and Friday afternoon when I can ask no questions. That was frustrating to me. And so anyway, I didn't even know how to react. I started crying. I called my husband on the phone.He was at work and, and I could, could barely get the words out and, and it seemed like seconds later he was there and any did the right thing. All of you who have a significant other out there, he did, this is what you should do. He just grabbed me and held me. He just held me and we cried together.Cause we [00:19:00] didn't know what the future health and that cancer word is a scary, scary word. And so the next day I went to the bookstore and all the books about breast cancer were either very depressing or just medical. And I thought, I want to know what it's going to feel like. I want to know what it's like, you know, and I knew better than.Go tracing things on the internet because you see things you don't ever want to see. And so so I started writing actually, it was incredible therapy for me, but it was, I started out just as a way to inform friends and family. Instead of calling everybody, can't go to the doctor tomorrow, you know, whatever.But my writing turned into way more than, than just I'm going to the doctor tomorrow. It was what I was going through. And there are so many choices you have to make, like, one of the choices is I had the choice. I [00:20:00] had to have a mastectomy, but to take off one side or both. And I didn't know. I mean, how do you know what to do?I've never been through this before. I didn't know what the right answer was. And we were sitting around the table, a dinner table one night and talking about it. And I said, I don't, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I've got to make a decision. And one of my son said, mom, Would you get new siding on just half the house?And I went alcohol. Good point you're right. Yeah, we'll go for, we'll go for two here. So anyway, so like I was writing, continued to write my, my husband started having stomach issues. And so it was early September that I was diagnosed that I got the phone call and then the end of September, his stomach was hurting.He went to the doctor and they said, take some Rolaids it's because your wife has cancer, you know, whatever. You're just nervous. And then November, he went back again because it wasn't getting any better. And they told him the same thing, gave him [00:21:00] an appointment for a gastro guy. And the day that his appointment was not until January, it took forever to get into somebody.But the next day I was having a complete hysterectomy and so at a colonoscopy. So I was doing a clean-out the day that he went in. So I wasn't going to. Farther than five feet from my bathroom. And so he went by himself and I was the mouth. So I would have asked a hundred questions. He just went and didn't really ask questions and they did nothing.They basically told him the same thing. It's just, you're just nervous. You don't take some, Rolaids take some Tums, whatever. And I was so mad, but I couldn't really do anything about it. When he came home and told me, you know, whatever, and then the next day I had surgery and so week out of surgery and they found bladder cancer too, during my surgery, whatever.But anyways, so I was still healing and I [00:22:00] woke up in the morning. And he was sitting up in bed and did not look good. And he said, guy, my stomach, it kept me up. I just couldn't sleep. And I said, that's it go to the ER, because they'll do something, you know, at least they'll do something. The doctors are doing nothing.At least I'll run a test, they'll do something. So he drove himself to the emergency room. And my husband was a rule follower. So it said no cell phones in the emergency room. So his cell phone was off. So I'm waiting and waiting and waiting for him to call me. And as I'm still in pajamas watching reruns of Grey's anatomy or something, you know?And so he finally, he called and he said, Well, I guess they're going to keep me off or night. And I'm like, keep you overnight. They don't keep anybody overnight. Like, what are you talking about? Keep you overnight. And so I threw on like human clothing and ran out the door. And in my Vicodin ado, state drove like a bat outta [00:23:00] hell, down the highway to get to the hospital to find out what was going on.And shortly before I got there, my phone rang again and he said I guess there's a spot on my liver. I just started bawling. I could barely see to drive and I don't even remember parking. I just remember running in holding body parts because I had surgery after surgery and I was in pain, but I was, I went running through the door and they told me where he was and he was behind a curtain and I whipped back the curtain and he's just sitting on the edge of the bed.Like nothing is going on is I am balling, I'm sobbing. And, and he said I'm not going to invite you places anymore. If this is the way you're going to behave. And I said, wait a minute, you are not allowed to be funny right now. So it took us a couple of days. He spent a few more days in the hospital and they did some biopsies and a colonoscopy.They did whatever. And so it took [00:24:00] a few days for us to get a diagnosis. And I, I was fighting the doctors every step of the way they, they came in and said that his blood work, that they never saw levels like that. There's some, there's some cancer markers that they, they can tell on your, in your blood. And and the doctor came in and said he never saw the numbers like that.Never that high, never that high. And, and I'm like, well, then the lab screwed up re rewrite. When he said, no, no, no mistake with the lab. I said, really, your lab never makes a mistake. They must've made a mistake. You know, they, they act love if you've never seen numbers like this. And he's like, Nope, Nope, whatever.Anyway, I fought it and fought it, but you know, not that my fighting did any good of course, but so then when we got his diagnosis, I was actually back in the hospital again, because I was doing too much, I think, out of surgery and ended up with a bad kidney infection. And so he's [00:25:00] being released as I'm being admitted and it was just a mess.And but then we got his diagnosis and of pancreatic cancer. And that is just the worst kind. I mean, you know, with. Breast cancer has come a long way. You know, there's different kinds of breast cancer, but it sure has come a long way, you know, but pancreatic cancer just hasn't like, there just isn't a cure.And so we knew what that meant. And so we just. Started praying, man, you know, some miracle give us a miracle, like like the lame and the blind and the deaf got, you know, back in Jesus days and or the greatest miracle of heaven, but don't let them suffer was our prayer. And we had a great time together actually. Funny [00:26:00] as that may sound, we watched cash cab every day and we just enjoyed being together and spent the whole time together thinking that he had a year, they were saying probably a year. And six weeks, six weeks later, he all the whole six weeks were, were really pretty good. He, he wasn't in.And our prayer was being answered. And then but the last couple hours of his life, he was miserable. And he I called hospice to come and help with more meds or, you know, whatever to get them comfortable again. And I was holding him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed because it hurt to lay down and I was just holding him from behind.And I just felt his pain, just the agony, absolute agony that he was in at that time. And, and I just whispered in his ear as a baby, just go. And he did. That was it. He took his last [00:27:00] breath and, and that was, that was it. And it was crushing, because I was still in love with him. And after all those years, we were married a month shy of 29 years.That was 47 years old. And I expected to be that couple rocking on the porch, drinking lemonade, you know, too old to do anything else. And we were going to grow old together. And so it was quite a shock loose him because it wasn't just losing him. It was losing the dream of our future. We had just become empty-nesters and we're so looking forward to that, and I don't know why if you get to run around and make it, or I don't know what it is about that, but we were so looking forward to that, and finally it happened for us.And I believe in [00:28:00] an afterlife, I believe in heaven. And my husband was. An amazing guy who was faithful and true and a great friend of people, an incredible boss people who had great respect for him, he was generous and kind. And so I've never begrudged him. I've never like been angry at him for dying.Like I'm happy for him. Like at 51 years old to never pay a bill again, you know, or have to worry about illness or anything. Go him. Like he did it, he ran the race and finished strong and, and I miss him like crazy. If he walks through the door right now, I'd be the happiest person on earth. But I know it's not going to happen.And so I still had to deal with my stuff. You know, I had to deal with, with my cancer still, and I had to deal with life [00:29:00] now without the love of my life. And. Wasn't sure what life was going to bring. And, but I was sure one thing, I was not gonna stay in the grief. I wasn't gonna let that bring me down.I've known people that stay there. You know what I mean? Do you know people like that, that they lose somebody and they just kind of can't overcome it. They, they don't see a way out of it. And I was determined that, that I, I know there were things that happened that I wouldn't choose. I wouldn't choose to have cancer.I wouldn't choose to lose my husband and I wouldn't choose for him to have cancer, but the choices that I can make are how I'm going to live now. And I can choose to be joyful. And I can choose to embrace life and enjoy it and, and I can choose to be happy. And [00:30:00] though, so those are the choices I decided I would make.De'Vannon: Well to answer your question. Yes. I do know people who tend to get stuck in grief particularly over the death of people with. You know, it's perspective and our value system, you know, well, one thing you have in your favor is that you have an understanding of the life to come in the world to come.Usually when people die, they don't actually see still exist, you know, and, and we get people coming back to visit us in dreams and all sorts of stuff who have passed on. And this is evidence of what I'm telling you. You know, our more permanent form is our spirit form anyway. So when we die, we really become our truest selves.At that point, you know, we here on the earth are actually not yet at our highest state of evolution. So when people, and I'm seeing people cry and fall all over the casket at funerals and everything is all very dramatic, you know, what, what, what, what I feel like people really cry [00:31:00] for it. Death is the fact of.Whatever this person brought to their lives. You know, there are people who are crying over what that person can do for them anymore. Whether it's not bringing them, whether they're bringing them some sort of comfort or whatever, you know, oh my God, this person has gone. How am I going to move on? We'll see.That's really all about you. You know, from there, from the dead person's perspective, they're like peace out, you know, hell yeah. You know, I get the rest now. So I don't cry for the dad anymore because I was, I was at the hospital when my pastor died and she was like a mother to me. And that's what changed my perspective on it because she was like, okay, Yep.Yeah. She's 80 years old. She's like Bundy getting my wings. I'm not leaving this hospital, but y'all y'all are then it was just me, her and her husband was sleeping on the couch and I had served them as like their alter bore and assistant throughout high school. And so I w I went to the hospital that night.I wasn't expecting her to die. You know, it was like, okay, she'll get a miracle, you know, really [00:32:00] powerful prophetess, you know, religious woman and everything like that. I'm like, you know, very clever way and everything, you know, she can't die, you know? So she just had me like, call like one of her daughters and, you know, her daughter that lived in Texas. And, you know, and then everything is kind of like when, you know, went from there and then she did die. And I'm like, you know, I heard that last, like some call it like a death, how that lasts like gas. Life, you know, the part from her, but she was so happy. She wasn't regretting anything to you. Like I'm not in any pain.I feel totally great. Life's been great. Bye. Kim: Yeah. De'Vannon: You had like the best attitude ever. So, and then I cried because okay. I was okay. I was just been with somebody, they die. This is a first. And so but now I was like, you know what? She was really happy about this whole death thing. Old, what the fuck am I crying for?Kim: Yeah, [00:33:00] right. I mean, yeah. I, I think you're absolutely, you're hitting the nail on the head. I mean, we do, we, we mourn for ourselves, right. I cried for?them and we, they got it made, you know, we're the ones. In fact, during the time during that six weeks with my husband, there were times I would just start crying because I just couldn't help it.And, you know, try to be all tough for him, whatever. And I just started crying and he just would me and hold me. And he'd say, don't cry for me. Cry for me, cry for you. But don't cry for me. De'Vannon: He told you, right. And he had a good mind. He's like a very wise Sage. And look, I get that kids are going to die and stuff like that. And it really rips my heart apart when, when marriage is in ended because of the death of a child, I've never been in that situation only once in my life have I heard heard it said where a couple lost the kid.And they were like, you know what, we're thankful for the time God gave us what that kid made, the kid [00:34:00] was 17, but, and then they move it on. Not saying it was just that either. I don't know if they went to counseling or whatever, but you know, it's about perspective even in the death of like a kid, you know, that kid belongs to God first, before it does to the, before that he, before that individual does to the parents.And so. You know, we can have a plan for our child, but God might have other plans. And so we gotta be willing to let those plans go, you know, you know, shit, something in, and you know, sometimes we're just too married to how we think someone else's life is supposed to go supposed to end or even our own, you know, but they're there in lies the differences between somebody who has surrender to God and who not, you know, so Kim: Right. De'Vannon: it's easier to deal with the bad things in life.If you understand it all, doesn't have to go in whatever sort of way that you've already processed it in your head. Like it's going to be. And so. You mentioned [00:35:00] that they left your cancer diagnosis on a voicemail. So they left my, my doctors left my HIV diagnosis on a voicemail. It was a Saturday night, new year's Eve and much the same way, like man, really on a Saturday night, new year's Eve, you couldn't have would've fucking waited until like Monday on like on the second, you know,Kim: Oh, my word De'Vannon: So let me say to doctors in medical professions out there, just because we may or may not sign some shit that says you can leave voicemails.We mean, we still need you to exercise some modicum of discretion about what you choose to. It doesn't mean you're just billing everything on there. We like to hear good shit, good test results, appointment reminders. If it's a life altering diagnosis, even though we may have given you permission, just because you can doesn't mean you should.We would very much like you to bring us into the office and tell us if we have HIV cancer or something else, do not leave it on a voicemail and not on a Friday or Saturday night when we're trying to enjoy our [00:36:00] damn wine.Kim: Yeah, new year, happy new year. Oh, my word. I think too, like with the medical profession, like they have to deliver news like that. So often that maybe they just become a little, yeah. A little callous. Right. And so they're not necessarily paying attention to the calendar or time of day or you know how they're doing It but man, if it's something that two days or three days, isn't going to make a difference in your life, you know, health wise wait the two or three days for goodness sake.Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy.De'Vannon: It matters how we deliver bad news to people. And I didn't learn this or know it until I got that voicemail. It just does like the setting, the atmosphere, you know, I never talked to a psychologist, smart doctors bring a person. And even in the case of cancer, I would imagine you want to have the mental health staff.You want to have everybody [00:37:00] right there in the room, so that that person doesn't run out and go do something to hurt themselves. You know, something like that, you know, cause you never know what a per house person might react. And by leaving a voicemail, you Rob with the patient of the luxuries, I'm not even the luxury of the bare minimum necessities of having all the care there or at least set the appointments before they leave.I never talked to a doctor about it again, really. I never went to a, a mental health. I decided that I was going to die. And so then I became homeless and then I started getting arrested and everything. And so, you know, I had the wrong perception of what HIV was, but I wasn't in a doctor's office to get any education.And they told me the word infectious disease. And I was like, fuck, I don't want to go talk to those people. It sounds disgusting. So I was freaked out by the name of everything and I just ran. I ran ran from it.Kim: I, I can't say as I blame you, I mean, you know, HIV is certainly things have [00:38:00] changed a lot over the years, right? As far as medications, treatments and whatever, but there was a time, not that long ago that that was a death sentence. And I would think that's the first thing that's going to come to your mind is, oh my gosh, it.HIV I'm going to die.Is that what you thought? Like, is that what you were thinking?De'Vannon: It did, because at that time in Houston, when I was living in Houston, Texas, I would walk into like a gay bar and be like, Hey, where's Timmy or whatever. And they'd be like, oh, he died. He had aids or another fellow drug dealer of mine die from aids. Someone when I was growing up, when I was younger, died from aids, everyone I knew had died from aids.And so it doesn't matter how far the medication has come and the science has come and how well something can be treated if somebody doesn't know that that is just like, well, they don't know that. So, and so if you, and I didn't know that. And I didn't know anyone living a healthy life that I was good friends with.You know, [00:39:00] I might've talked to at many, met a guy on a hookup app that may have had HIV, but having sex with somebody and being okay that they're HIV positive is not really, they didn't really give me insight into exactly how they were living it. And I pushed that out of my mind because I just wanted Dick.And so I, didn't never, I didn't look at that as an opportunity to explore how one could live healthily with the virus, because I was just horny and trying to fuck, you know, so I let an opportunity pass me by, but you know, I have a different perspective about things now. I want you to you've mentioned that the mammogram was like turning like the breast and into if the pancakes and that it's a painful experience that, you know, a woman isn't probably gonna look forward to.What, what can you, what can you tell me about this machine and what it, what it does, but I'm trying to imagine the sort of torture device that you see.Kim: It's exactly what it is. You you like, you put your arm [00:40:00] up and try to get as close into the machine as you possibly can. And then it literally squishes you from the top and bound me, you know, like turn a knob or something and it goes farther and farther, farther, and it. Wishes you in there. It is painful.And I I don't know if it's better, if you're big busted or small breasted, I don't know what the difference would be. I've always known Ben well, in doubt. And so I, I had a lot to squished and it hurts. I mean, it, it, other women, maybe we're fortunate enough to have different experiences than I did, but any mammogram I ever had her like, crazy, like that was one of the blessings of may having a double mastectomy is I would never have to have another mammogram and I'm okay with that.But cause there's gotta be some silver lining. Right. But yeah, it just, it just goes squishes. Yeah. And yeah, that hurts. [00:41:00]De'Vannon: Damn. I wish I wish I thought you were telling me like what the blood work that they can detect, you know, there's cancer markers, but I wish that y'all could just get blood work done instead, but clearly that's not the case. Otherwise they wouldn't be making you go through the mammogram. So gosh, girls, I, I have the utmost respect for women, you know, from the, from having studied the the period, the menstrual cycles during the massage therapy, which.I'm telling you become a massage therapist, you have to learn so much, so much about the anatomy, things that in the body you'll never touch. And so just learning about how y'all's bodies change when you're trying to bear a child and everything like that and everything that's going on, you know, in the different, or, or Oregon's in the different anatomical structure of a female, you know, I have so much respect for women.You know, y'all are, y'all are strong, you know, mentally and physically and everything like [00:42:00]that. And in my opinion, quite unbreakable.Kim: Ah, I love that. I agree. I think women, we have to be strong and I think we need to support each other more than what we do sometimes. Like there should be a sisterhood, you know, like we should be supportive of each other and, and aren't always, you know, we can be, sometimes we can be the worst enemies and it shouldn't be like that.Like, There should be this strong bond between us. Cause we, we do have to put up with a lot. So then what happens is we put up with a sense from the time we were 10, 11, 12 years old, right. We have to deal with, with periods and cramps and pain. And then childbirth is no joyful moment. You know, it's nice.You get a baby at the end, but but it's hard, you know, and painful and pregnancy can be tough and all of that. And so then later in life, when men, you have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom more often because of [00:43:00] prostate issues, it's sort of payback in a way. It's like, oh, the one thing that the money I have to deal with kind of my, yeah, De'Vannon: Well boys, boys with better mind what energy we send out there, because it's going to come back to us later on. Kim: that's right. De'Vannon: So I played women, great respect. I identify more women than I do men, nothing against men. I mean, I like to go both ways and all the different ways that I can in the world sexually speaking, and, you know, spiritually speaking and energetically speaking for them to feel like a man to another, feel like a woman I'm not confused.I just want it all. AndKim: know, you know, the beauty of that is that I really believe that God created people to be who they are. And there are so many people out there that don't feel like they can live their authentic self, their real self, right. Because of things that they were taught growing up, or a lot of times churches doing so.much damage to [00:44:00] people saying, oh gosh, you can't be like that.Like my daughter had probably, I don't know if I should be saying this on the radio, but it's okay. But my daughter married a man. And she got pregnant on her honeymoon and when she was in the hospital delivering. He told her he was gay and wanted out of the marriage. And, but he grew up in the super strict Baptist home where you're not allowed to be gay.You know that that's a sin. Well, not all that creates you. How God creates you. You be who you are. Like there's beauty in that there's beauty in the diversity, right? People should just be allowed to be who they are without judgment or condemnation. Just be who God created you to be. De'Vannon: Fuck. When I was in California, I went through this phase where I was trying to pray the gay away, and there is a documentary and I I've been keeping this in my show notes for. Shit since it came out. So it's been a running thing [00:45:00] that I've had in my show notes for quite some time, it's called pray away.There's a documentary on Netflix about the old exited Exodus conversion therapy movement. The people who used to run that who supposedly got converted and were ungay and told everybody else has changed their ways, which resulted in suicides and deaths. Well, now they're still gay and they've come back to spill all the tea about the Exodus movement and how bullshit conversion therapy really.And so I do recommend that, that, that fucking documentary to everybody, it is some tea being spill, pour your wine, get your favorite beverage out, roll you up a blunt, whatever it is that you do, because that shit is to piss you off. But it's real. But I went through that too. I got me a girlfriend. I hung out with straight guys. I tried to fast and pray as Jesus to make me ungay and it didn't work. And I dated this girl for six months and ultimately I ended up just breaking her heart because the shit wasn't real, you know? And so where did I ever learn that something was wrong with me from the church? You know, God never [00:46:00] told me that, you know, it, look, y'all not every preacher is preaching.The truth is that we've got to get past this believing this, that somebody is on a pool pit or on television or in a suit up on a platform like they know better than, than, than you do. They don't Kim: Right. Exactly. Yeah. That, that, and and that is not the church, you know, it's churches that hurt people. God's not hurting. Right. And so sometimes people get angry about what they've been taught in church, and then they realize that they've been taught wrong, or the church that they went to can be so harsh or, you know, whatever.And that's church's fault. You know, that that unfortunately reflects on God in some people's eyes, but it's not God that God loves that is love. That's what it says in John, that God is love. Not that he loves, but that he is loved. Like in love, love, doesn't do that. Love. Doesn't [00:47:00] make people fit into some box because people are more comfortable with it loved to let you be who you are love.Just allows you to live your real self and without judgment, without thinking that you're better than, or higher than, or no more or whatever. De'Vannon: I agree with what you're saying, Kim, it, and it will take some time for people to accept that sort of truth and then internalize it, you know, because we're, we believe what we are taught growing up until we come into independent thinking. That's why I appreciate the mindfulness movement that's happening right now.And the, the push for autonomous mental thought. When I got kicked out of Lakewood church in Houston, Texas for not being straight, it caused a rift between me and God. Now I hadn't been in church. And like I said, serving my past and all of that until I was in high school and went to the military, I always held a volunteer position in church.They kicked me out and that [00:48:00] stopped me from praying is a, why did that happen? Because I had conflated. The God in the church as to one. And no, that was not, I was not as mature as I thought I was. And I was not as spiritually strong as I thought I was because had that happened. I should've just said, okay, well fuck this church, but not fuck the God.And I just said, fuck everything you see. And so, but now I would never do that because now I finally get, as I'm almost 40 years old, you know, that there's a difference in between the physical church and God himself. And the two should never church, as I say, a church is nothing more than an accessory to your spiritual walk, your most valuable time to be your alone time with God, so that when these pastors show up in their fucking scandals and when they do dumb shit, like kick us out for not being straight and the, in the straight people see them, see their friends getting abused by churches for not being straight.You know, we can still keep our relationship with God. So Jerry [00:49:00] Falwell, Jr. Did you see his latest bullshit? You know, after all of his shit, he finally came out in an article and said that he, that it was all a ruse, him running the that fucking seminary that his dad created and trying to do all that.He said, it's all a lie. He wasn't ever about all that. He wants to just, you know, do him. And that is not who he is. He ain't about all this Jesus stuff. So finally just fucking admitted it, bitch. Should we knew that because you know, when he had to address the pool boy scandal, you got, you got the pool boys running around and you got your, your pants unzip.And while you taking selfies with a bitch, that's not your fucking wife. We knew. So that whole message was to his brain fucked church followers and his evangelicals and everything like that. Like boy, and by we already knew.Kim: Yeah.but knowing, and then somebody admitting meeting two things, right? Like it can be hard when you're, when you're in the [00:50:00] spotlight and, you know, I think it can be easy for people to get wrapped up in ego. And I mean, how many people we've seen fall and it, and it can, the higher you build your pedestal the longer the fall is down.And it's sad to see. It's sad to see for sure. De'Vannon: His pedestal was fake though. But what you said is what he said. He was like, it was so much pressure to live up to this expectation of his dad, but you know, or he could have said, you know what, dad, fuck you. This is not who I am. I'm going to go have my pants up and on cruise ships and fucking pool boys.That's what I want to do. Okay. That's what you want to do, Jerry. Then go have your three ways and bring whatever, you know, we always have a choice. And so the let's make sure our pedestal is built on truth and not on a lie.Kim: Yeah, for sure. For sure. De'Vannon: So, [00:51:00] so, so we're going to close to the end of our hour here. We're definitely going to have you back on because you wrote two books one's called love is, and the other one's called cry and tell you lab. And we haven't had time to get into them at a feeling this would happen because you have so much substance going on with you.And sometimes I might have to have someone back on my show two or three or four times or whatever the case may be. And if that's the case, you know what, so be it then. But I want to talk about Haiti a little bit because God bless that nation. You know, they've been through so much. And I really want to shine a spotlight on, on Haitian people.I really, really do. And it seems like you have a strong heart for Haiti, and I love how then I was reading your book. You went there for the first time in the year 2000, and you were like talking about the poverty and the, the, the, the rank air and everything. And you it's like, you were fighting, falling in love with it, but nevertheless, here you are.And you're still in love with it. Sometimes in life. I've had that experience where my [00:52:00] first brush with something I'm like, I feel indifferent for it, or like I'm propelled by it. And really at the end of the day, I was falling in love with it. And I was like some of my favorite things, things that I hated at first, I find love now more than anything else.And I read that in the story. So the hate has been through so much. And when they had that last earthquake, a relative in my family said some stupid fucking shit like this. He was like, okay, just because of all that witchcraft they have down there, this is why this punishment has come upon them. And which I responded to his ignorance just a little bit.I was like, I'd probably say, it's something like, if you're not going to pray about them or speak something positive, then shut the fuck up because you don't know what the fuck they're doing. You know, he's never been Haiti. You know, he doesn't have, he's drawing all these conclusions from a distance yet.We'll speak about it as if it's fact. And so that shit pisses me off. And so [00:53:00] you've lived among the people. And so you have every right to have written the things that you have written. So I want you totell, to speak to me about your joy and your love for Haiti. And then I want to talk about the voodoo before we, before we wrap up, and then we're going to talk about the book in depth. The next time I have you back on and we're in really, really, really talk about Haiti alive.Kim: Yeah, I do. I love, I love Haiti. You know, people are people all over the world and we tend to put labels on people, right? Republican, Democrat, Bexar anti-vaxxer Haitia and America, and, you know, whatever, we, we put labels on people, but people aren't, their labels. You know, a person is not a label that we all have our names.We're all individuals. We all have our names and people are people all over the world. Haitian. [00:54:00] People, unfortunately, that are living in Haiti. You know, it's the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. The average Haitian eats three meals a week. Most do not have clean water. So they've got water that makes them sick.They had an earthquake in 2010 that killed over 200,000 people. And then the UN police that are there are supposed to be peacekeepers there. They end up putting their latrines way too close to the river, which is a source of water for people. They bathe in it, they wash their clothes in it, like it it's life to them.And because their latrines were too close, they introduced cholera into the country, Colorado that had, hadn't been in the country for a hundred years now, cholera's back in Haley and lots of people, thousands of people have died because of cholera because of the UN police. And it's it's. It is it's kind of thing after thinking of, to saying.Haiti is wonderful, wonderful, [00:55:00] incredible, loving people that are living in really tough conditions is really what it comes down to. And I think there's a misconception, like in some people's minds, poverty and laziness go together and poverty and laziness have nothing to do with each other. There, they shouldn't even be in the same sentence.What, what people in Haiti lack is opportunity. There are no jobs. We've done so much damage to Haiti. The world bank has done a lot of damage to Haiti. Other countries have done the understand Haiti because people make money on poverty. And so it's two people in this world's advantage financially, take heap people down and keep them living in poverty, which is. The biggest crime of all probably. Right. And so it's not a lack of intelligence. It's not a lack of [00:56:00] work ethic. It's that keeps them in poverty. It is it is lack of opportunity. It is lack of opportunity. I don't know, a lazy Haitian I'm sure. You know, like anything else there's going to be lazy people, but I don't know any people that I know work hard and, and take opportunities to work when, when the opportunity is there.It's just not always, there is the problem. And voodoo, I think is so misunderstood. You know, w we, if we break a mirror at seven years of bad luck, or, you know, a black cat crosses your path or Friday the 13th, or don't walk under a ladder, like we have our own superstitions. Right. And they're just sort of cultural superstitions within our country.And We have movies based on our cultural superstitions. Well, voodoo there's cultural voodoo. It's not all just on a [00:57:00] religious voodoo there's cultural voodoo. And so some of the beliefs, some of the, you know, things like if you pick up a baby from behind that baby is not going to grow to haul, you know, some things like that, that we'd go, what are they talking about? Well, they go, what are you talking about? You can't walk under a ladder, right? You can open an umbrella inside. You know, I mean, each culture probably has their own set of those kinds of things, but people love Jesus and have voodoo in their life at the same time. And one does not have to exclude the other because voodoo, I think people think of zombies or they think of, of animal sacrifice or human sacrifice, whole.Buddha is so much more than that. There are so few doctors and so little healthcare in the entire country that there are Buddha doctors and you don't just become one. You know, your dad was one. So your one, your grandpa, your great grandpa, and it [00:58:00] is herbal remedies and different ways to handle health issues.That's what a voodoo doctor does. It's not about curses and whatever. It's about, you know, they're in a community, there's no healthcare anywhere that you can walk to that you can get to at all. So there's a doctor basically in the community and there are some I'm sure, very valuable things we could probably learn from them with natural remedies. like you were talking about Blackwood for sure earlier, right? And that's Buddha, they're a voodoo doctor, but they're not. Skin and animals, you know what I mean? It's, there is some of that, certainly some extreme voodoo like there's extreme, anything else. But I would say, I mean, I don't know the statistic, but I know a whole lot of people in Haiti and people that I know it's they're culturally, there's voodoo, but they're not sacrificing [00:59:00] anything.They're not, you know, some of the stuff you see in movies or read in books or whatever, that's not happening. They're just people living like we're living in and it's part of their culture.De'Vannon: Well, like you said, there's two sides to everything. You have the extreme size of it and the bad side of it. When I have you go on the next time, we're going to get more into the vote. And I'm going to talk about the experience that I had when I was in high school, where somebody practiced the negative side of voodoo on me.Kim: Oh, I can't wait to hear about it. De'Vannon: And because they're both, they're both the true, you know, you have a, and then, you know, I have a couple of voodoo stories that I live here in Louisiana and voodoo is a big thing, voodoo who do whatever you want to call it, especially down in new Orleans, you know, it's serious. We, we actually still have a place called Marie.Lavos a house of voodoo, which I think is the house she used to live in. And it was soon turned into like a [01:00:00] store in her honor. You can go there and buy candles and voodoo dolls and different sort of magic accessories to do your magic craft with and stuff like that. And I love American horror story.Season three is about the a, which is the new Orleans. And and there Angela Bassett plays Marie Laveau in in, in American horror story coven is what it's called. And it's just very, it's very entertaining as the kick ass, the way that they portrayed her. But you mentioned two, two things that I wanted to touch on, and then I will let you have our last word. You mentioned that poverty and laziness, you know, you're not overly fond of those two things being coupled together. I wanted to give you a nod on that because the same, the same dumb ass relative who was talking shit about the Haitian people after they suffered the tragedy of the second earthquake than a reason of relatively short amount of time. We were driving around one day and somebody was like [01:01:00] homeless and he was all like, oh, I know they just go somewhere. And like in a program, you know, like fix that or whatever. Okay. And I think at this point I had already been homeless before that he said this stupid shit in my presence. And so I agree with you.It's not about laziness. It's about access opportunity. And then I'm going to add to that and say, state of mind, having lived amongst the homeless people and not everybody wants to become homeless, that everybody out there is unhappy. You have people living in mansions who go and fucking kill themselves or other people in the house.You know, there, there could be chaos, you know, in the richest places, but somebody out there shit. When I was in California to see the homeless people, sleeping, sleeping under the Palm trees in Cal, in Santa Monica, you know, They look fine, you know, just because we see somebody and what we consider to be the greatest state doesn't mean that they consider themselves to be in a degraded state of that they're unhappy, or that we need to go run, trying to fix them, or that there's anything [01:02:00]wrong with them being like that.And so, but it's not just because they're lazy or they don't want to work. Maybe they've had everything before they are. They don't want the pressures that come with having a successful life. Maybe they just fucking don't want anyone calling them. They don't fucking want any appointments. They don't want any meetings.They just want to round the street, get high, fuck and just go to fucking sleep.Kim: So funny that you say that I live, I live not in a huge city. It's the second biggest city in Michigan grand rapids. And there are home. We have homeless and I know a lot of them, I live right downtown. I know a lot of them by name and I know people that are afraid of homeless people. And it's like, when was the

This week I have two amazing guests, Dave and Laurie Bilyeu, who run eBLISS, a storage and fulfillment center for eBay and Poshmark sellers. They're here to talk about how their fulfillment service can boost your reselling business by reducing the time and stress of dealing with your back-end. I kick things off by asking how Dave and Laurie got into e-commerce and eBay, and Dave shares how he started out flipping items he found in Goodwills before Laurie came on board, and they grew into a full-time business. They then talk about scaling up by hiring staff, setting up dedicated space, and setting up systems and processes to help manage your business and any new people you bring on board. Next, Dave and Laurie go into more detail about eBLISS and the gap it fills by providing fulfillment services for eBay, something that resellers have been sorely lacking. They explain their process and pricing structure and how eBLISS removes the storage bottleneck that is such a major hurdle to eBay sellers growing their businesses. We also discuss the eBLISS philosophy, which is to restore the joy in reselling by giving you back the freedom to go out and source treasures to resell. And finally, we talk about one of my favorite subjects, time as money, and break down how outsourcing your back-end will give you more time to spend on the money-making aspects of your business. You can find out more about running an eBay business from the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you're ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today. This week on the Amazon Files: Mommy Income is coming to a city near you, including Grand Rapids and LA, with workshops and tradeshow walkthroughs How Dave and Laurie got started in e-commerce and eBay How to scale up your eBay business by hiring people Setting up systems and processes for your business Dave and Laurie's eBay fulfillment service The process of eBay and Poshmark fulfillment The storage bottleneck Fulfillment and freedom eBLISS' pricing structure Dealing with long-tail items and handling inquiries The challenges Dave and Laurie have experienced The benefits of outsourcing your back-end “This is such a needed thing in this world, to be able to grow and scale.” - Kristin Ostrander Quotes: “I love wholesale, and wholesale just makes life so much easier. It's not complicated. It's not scary. It's not hard, you can do it.” “I found myself going to Goodwills and finding North Face jackets in Colorado for $4 at a Goodwill and flipping them on eBay for like $50 or $60. And I was hooked.” “We hired a couple part-time listers and shippers so that we could fully source 100% of the time and really built our inventory up from when, I think I started, you might have had twelve hundred listings, we quickly almost tripled that in probably a year-and-a-half or so.” “The whole managing of people is very daunting because it takes a certain kind of personality and skill set to be able to manage other people well.” “It comes down to systems and processes. You need to map this out for yourself and for anyone else that would want to come on board and help.” “I think everybody should have their processes in their brain written down.” “I think the biggest bottleneck for a lot of eBay sellers is they love the treasure hunt. They love the buying part. And then they have what I call the death piles or the, you know, overflowing eBay closet where they love to buy it and got it for a great deal. But then it's not being listed because that's the time-consuming part.” “We allow them to free up anywhere from three to five to seven hours a week because they no longer have to ship. And they use that time to source more and list more, and they get their death piles done, they get all that stuff lifted and sent into our warehouse. And when it sells, we ship within the same or next business day.” “It's so fun to me to source with other resellers because they have knowledge over here, and I've got knowledge over here, and between that, like, we're all making a lot of money.” “The level of genius that a lot of sellers have is in their eye for the thrift, their eye for the treasure, realizing this is going to make money. And that could just be a wealth of knowledge someone has about a specific category, or they could be like a freak of nature, which I've been called when it comes to thrifting.” “I think our clients really appreciate the time they save, the fact that they can scale without worrying about cluttering up their own home. Because I mean, let's be honest, everybody has some space limitations at some point.” “At the time, there was honestly no fulfillment service, and I think there still isn't, that caters to this kind of reseller, the reseller who buys one-off, used, thrifted items of many sorts, whether it's clothes, books, games, electronics.” “We love to restore the joy in reselling to all of our clients.” “We don't have spikes in storage like Amazon FBA. We're not going to gate people from selling anything.” “Basically, the higher your ASP, average selling price of your items, the less our service is going to cost you as a percentage of your overall sales.” “I'm going to resurrect the eBay business that I have because of you guys. And now I know that I can have the location freedom that I want to not have to ship those things, that's going to kind of resurrect that.” “Since we are resellers, we understand that there's value in long-tail items.” “We love the fact that we deal with all types of clients, those that just want those items out of their house and don't plan on growing and those that want to grow. And we have the ability to accommodate them if they want to scale.” “We'd like to speak to everyone prior to signing on with us because we are resellers. We want to hear about their goals, their objectives. And if we're a great fit, awesome. If not, not a problem.” “We wanted to be able to provide the service for resellers. We're not really interested in housing people's items who just want to source, and they don't want to do the work of actually being a reseller. So that's why it's called reseller solutions because we feel like we are a solution for a lot of these issues that resellers have, not the casual thrifter-flipper.” “You guys are just innovators. You're, like, ready to solve the next problem before people even ask the questions.” “That's business. You have to adapt whether you're a reseller or someone like us with eBLISS, you have to adapt, and it's okay to adapt.” “I suggest you outsource, if anything, you outsource the back-end of that first, which is the storage and the shipping. Because there's no money to be made in there.” “You can't write off your own time that you're doing this yourself on your taxes, right? But if you outsource it, that is an expense that you can write off. So you're actually even saving money even more by having somebody else do it.” “Reselling is our first entrepreneurial experience ever. And it's been the most fulfilling experience in my life. Fulfilling, no pun intended.” Related Content: 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50 Wholesale Bundle System Email questions Learn With Us Coaching The Amazon Files Hub More info about eBLISS eBLISS on Instagram eBLISS on YouTube Grow Your Amazon Business! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don't forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword [CODEWORD] to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don't forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

Nicole Suydam has more than 20 years of management and leadership experience working with local and national nonprofits dedicated to meeting human service needs. She currently serves as president and CEO of Goodwill of Orange County, one of Orange County's largest nonprofits by revenue. Suydam leads Goodwill's social enterprise operation that employs nearly 1,800, manages 24 local thrift stores and ShopGoodwill.com – the online e-commerce marketplace for Goodwills across the country – and serves more than 18,000 individuals annually through its innovative programs and services aimed at providing purpose through employment. Suydam has received several accolades for her commitment to creating a better and brighter Orange County for all, including being named to the Orange County Business Journal's “OC 50” list for 2020 and 2021 for her influence and impact in the community. She was also named one of just six 2019 Women of Coast by Coast Magazine and received the 2018 Women of the Year Award by the Orange County Business Journal. Suydam graduated from Vanguard University in Costa Mesa and lives in Aliso Viejo with her husband and two teenage daughters.  In this edition of Critical Mass Business Talk Show, Nicole Suydam joins host Ric Franzi for an update on Goodwill of Orange County's work in our community. -- Critical Mass Business Talk Show is Orange County, CA's longest-running business talk show, focused on offering value and insight to middle-market business leaders in the OC and beyond. Hosted by Ric Franzi, business partner at Renaissance Executive Forums Orange County. Learn more about Ric at www.ricfranzi.com. Catch up on past Critical Mass Business Talk Show interviews... YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gHKT2gmF LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/g2PzRhjQ Podbean: https://lnkd.in/eWpNVRi Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gRd_863w Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gruexU6m

Carolyn Becker put a new spin on vacation. She fused her love of thrifting and adventure by embarking on a solo Road Trip, driving to 40 Goodwills in six states over 10 days.

Carolyn Becker put a new spin on vacation. She fused her love of thrifting and adventure by embarking on a solo Road Trip, driving to 40 Goodwills in six states over 10 days. In this funny and informative episode, she shares her vintage Goodwill finds, tips on planning a safe thrift trip, and what she learned about how Goodwill operates.

Link to article: https://bit.ly/3zxNaOiThey Found 100K In Games My A$$Their YT Channel: https://bit.ly/3ACvOkOLike a real-life Tomb Raider run sans picturesque vistas from an ancient civilization, a pair of YouTuber game hunters found themselves in an extremely messy room that had been locked for close to 20 years. But amid the filth, they found a treasure trove of factory-sealed video games, including mainstream hits like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, cult classics like Drakengard for PS2, and just plain weird stuff like a limited edition Resident Evil 4 chainsaw controller.Aimee and Korbin, who prefer not to share their last names, are the full-time reselling duo behind the YouTube channel Cheap Finds Gold Mines, and usually make their finds through Goodwills and yard sales. But after a viewer tipped them off about a house that was “kind of nasty,” the pair found themselves scouring a very gross environment like Uncharted's Nathan Drake and finding all sorts of video games, collectibles, and Blockbuster-branded VHS tapes. They've made three videos about the experience so far.Support the show (https://bit.ly/2XdAlJC)

Ep 16 – Fellow Gamecock Gray Thomas is an advertising major and the founder of Soda City Thrifts, your new favorite thrift account. Gray hops on the pod to talk about how a $93 shopping tour through all the Goodwills in the area turned into a thriving side hustle. Don't expect to find any old school Redskin's gear from his shop…he keeps them all to himself. From pop-up shops at his front porch to table spreads on Greene Street, Gray tries to be everywhere when he can. LESSON OF THE POD: It's the Washington Football Team now... Host: Griffin McDonald & Grace Patton Producer/Editor: Joshua Tekle & Sydney Daigle Music: Lucy by pilotkid

Riley and Meredith talk about a lot of different things, including Virgo Season and the rising prices of clothing at our local Goodwills. Where to find us: Finders Keepers: @finderskeeperspod (instagram) Riley Phillips: @rileysgrotto (intagram/personal), @rileyphillipsart (instagram/art) Depop: @rileysgrotto Meredith Vaughn: @meredithlvaughn (instagram/personal) Depop: @merelily Credits: Editing/Producing: Meredith Vaughn Cover Art: Riley Phillips Episode Links: Petition to Remove Sexual Predator from WFU Campus: https://www.change.org/p/wfu-students-resolution-demanding-action-on-wfu-s-decision-to-jeopardize-the-safety-of-their-students-10f501ac-1c5b-442d-9de1-1210884313cd?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_30492993_en-US%3A3&recruiter=1223579984&recruited_by_id=421bf6a0-081f-11ec-a5f3-5581b3e0cdf5&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=share_petition Affiliate Links: Parade Underwear Discount Code: meredith-946 Sweats and the City Code for $5 off First Monthly Membership: MEREDITHVSWS https://sweatsandcity.com/subscribe/ Girlfriend collective: http://rwrd.io/zuzyhsw to get $10 off your first purchase!

Today I sit down with an expert in all things Vintage Clothing Mr John Lofgren of John Lofgren Bootmaker Company. This mans story is unbelievable, From growing up on a farm in love with Mod Music to hunting down Vintage clothing in Goodwills and flee markets to working in a Rag House this man has done it all. Eventually John found himself living in Japan and starting a Boot Company and now he is one of the leading forces in Handmade Boots. We sit down and talk about what it takes to start a company in Japan and how his hard work and passion paid off. Brought to you by https://www.manscaped.com use the code Grail  for 20% OFF all your grooming needs. 

Who doesn't like to find that 1 of a kind item that has a completely different use than what it was created for? I love searching Goodwills and Saint Vinny's, or garage sale cast-offs, looking for items that I can turn into something useful in my life. Today's Podcast talks about recreating yourself. Coming into the person that you are meant to be. Letting go of old thoughts and opinions that you may have had about yourself or somebody else, and rethinking them, as to see them in a different light. Creating something beautiful from something that was once thought ugly or unuseful. We all hold the power within us, to turn our lives into what we image then to be. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paula-julson/support

Roger Bryan has worked with some of the world's largest companies as an SEO consultant. He sold his first website in 1998 before he knew what SEO was, and spent years working with nonprofits. His agency Enfusen was recently acquired by Growth Foundry and now he joins us to talk about how he has led agencies to great success and failure, and analyzing both. Roger also explains why generating revenue is the real focus of SEO. He also shares tips from his book and even a few crappy jokes. 3 Golden Nuggets Rebuilding the team is key. After resetting his entire team, Roger started from scratch by filling three major roles. First, he hired an office manager that would handle HR and systematize everything they were doing in the business. After that, he hired a general manager to take care of hiring both divisions of the business. Finally, he looked for someone that could assist him in marketing and sale for tasks like managing outsource vendors and content teams. Pay people what they're worth. As Roger's first mentor used to say, the salary you pay someone is what keeps them at their desk and the money that you pay them after that is what you pay them to help you earn more. Some people will take their salary and sit at their desk, but a few will work very hard to make you money and you should compensate them in return. SEO is not all about ranking. If you're in SEO and you think your job is ranking websites, you've already failed. SEO is about generating revenue, so any task has to be correlated to a data point that leads to revenue. Anything that is not revenue-related it's just busy work and so much of what SEO professionals are doing is busy work. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit/ to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Why Did One Agency Owner Fire His Entire Team? Jason: [00:00:00] All right. I have an amazing interview with one of my old clients who has sold a couple of agencies in the past. And we talk about a lot of the mistakes he made in running his SEO agency. Then we go into a lot of different tactics about how he fired his whole team in one meeting and then a year later he was at $3 Million. And what are the three major roles that he brought in to help? What did he pay them? What was the framework that he used for success and how he really positioned his agency from just being an SEO agency, to being a revenue agency for his clients? And that was a huge, huge thing. You're not going to want to miss out this episode. It's really great. Roger did an amazing job. So let's jump into it. Hey, Roger. Welcome to the show. Roger: [00:00:54] Hey, thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:55] Yeah. I'm excited to have you on, you know, we were reminiscing about how many years ago was when you came out to Atlanta for a workshop with me. Can't believe how long ago that was. But, uh, for the people that don't know who you are, tell us who you are. And, uh, tell us a little bit about the agency. Roger: [00:01:11] Perfect. Uh, my name is Roger Bryan. I'm an SEO consultant. My former agency, Enfusen, was just acquired by a company called Growth Foundry. We do enterprise-level marketing, a lot of multi-location, franchise marketing, a lot of lead gen, SEO pay-per-click, specialized in healthcare, nonprofits, all across the gambit on the different industries that we work with. Jason: [00:01:35] Awesome. Well, let's kind of jump into it and we're kind of trying something new and you're the, you're the first guinea pig. So welcome to being the first guinea pig. And it's really kind of a thing of like a how-to series to figure out, you know, if you're an SEO agency because your agency that you sold was that, talk about how did you specialize in that? Because a lot of times people will start an agency and they start trying to do everything. You know, design pay-per-click, everything under the sun. How did you pick SEO? Let's start there. Roger: [00:02:10] I sold my first website in 1998 and it sold pagers in long-distance service. And what I found was is then I didn't know, I had never heard of SEO. I don't know that I even had met someone that had ever said the term before, but you're putting on content onto those pages to try to get people to find them. Uh, to me, it was no different than making your company AAA in the phone book a hundred years ago, so that people knew, would find you first. It was just as kind of simple. I got into the auto auction industry after that, and we had a website and we were working with nonprofit organizations and it was like, well, how do I get us to come up first so more people find us? I didn't get into paid traffic until 2005. So I spent seven or eight years just living off of organic traffic, not even knowing that that's what it was called. I've always just been… I've stayed focused on it, and always hired people to do everything else. Because I was good at it. To me, my left brain works. It's a science to me. And if you follow certain rules and you do the right competitive analysis, it's easy. Jason: [00:03:14] Walk us through some of the team structure, because obviously, you got amazing results for your clients because you were able to sell the agency. So walk us through, how was the team structured? Roger: [00:03:26] Yeah. I've gone through a couple of different iterations of this. So my first agency, when I sold it, we had 12 people on the team, but we also had a call center and we're taking in calls for the leads that we were generating. So it was a little bit more robust than just SEO services. Typically, when I think of an SEO agency, let's say sub-seven figure versus seven to eight-figure the, the differences between the two. The sub-seven figure, really you are the thought leader. You're the one that's looking at the data. You might have somebody else doing the research. You're making strategic decisions and you're allocating resources to certain people on your team. For me, that would be a content team, whether you have full-time, or part-time, outsource a link-building source that compliments your content team. Uh, one good web developer. We tend to, I used to tend to stick to WordPress until I started working with Growth Foundry. Now it's a whole different game with the clients they deal with and then one person that's going out and doing some type of syndication. So syndication means taking that content and putting it out into places. I've tried all of the different tools out there for social syndication or engagement syndication, or even manipulated social signals, a little decent outreach to the right outlets never, it never worked better. So especially in today's world where everybody uses automation on those things. And I think Google has found most of those. Getting one blog post picked up by one real news article is going to give you a hundred times the results of all of the automation tools that are out there. So I think I hit like 4 different people there. When you get into a larger agency and you're working with larger clients, say your retainers are six figures or more per year, you're going to have a strategist in there. You're going to have an account manager in there and they're going to be different. The account managers dealing with the relationship, the strategist is dealing with the success. You're going to have the same underlying. Four core sections that you're going to deal with, but those teams might be larger and have different points of interaction. I don't like having larger teams for the sake of larger teams, but you have to provide a level of service that demands the type of revenue that comes from working with those larger clients. Jason: [00:05:34] And then how was it structured? Like where you guys broken up into pods? Did these a strategists and the account managers, did they report up to an operations director? How was all that, you know, once you get above the seven-figure mark. Roger: [00:05:48] Yeah. What's nice is I've done this successfully once I've and done it completely wrong once. So I can compare and contrast. Jason: [00:05:55] So let's talk about the wrong first, like, and then get into the right way. Roger: [00:05:58] Absolutely. The wrong way is for you as an owner to be in the mix. And I there's a period at the end of that statement. There's no if ands or buts about it. So when I went and I sold my first agency, my team dealt with the customers. I signed checks and I looked at monthly reports. And if my team had a problem, we would talk about it. I had very little interaction with clients other than conferences, or once in a while, maybe I would chat with some of our larger clients. Now fast forward to my last agency Enfusen, I did everything wrong. I kept hiring kids straight out of college or interns, which there's nothing wrong with that, but I would want to be the point of contact. I didn't trust them enough. I didn't go out and hire the best people. Now with that being said, some of, one of them now runs Halle Barry's e-commerce business. So they've gone out and done amazing things. And if I would have trusted them more, Infusion would have probably flourished more. But I had, every week I was talking about each and every client to some extent, and it was exhausting and we never scaled that agency, no matter how hard I tried, we would scale and we would implode, we would scale and we would implode. So the worst part was I knew what I was doing. I look back now and I'm like, why the F, I don't know if you swear on your podcast, was I doing that? And the nice thing about Growth Foundry is I'm the Chief Revenue Officer, so I'm responsible for growth and strategic alignment within the SEO team between our software and services. So they've taken me away from the thing that I was doing bad in the last agency and giving me a chance to excel at what I'm good at. Jason: [00:07:33] No, you can always cuss. Uh, no kids are listening. You know, I look at it as. Thinking back at all the agencies I've chatted with and all the agencies we've done. I look at it like the first stage is like the doer, right? Like you're doing everything. And then you get to another stage. You're like the barker, like you're barking orders to everybody, but you're still the only one making decisions. Then you get to the delegation stage, and this is where you're delegating and you're trusting people. And then there's one above that where I see only a select few actually make it there. You know, one of our clients, Zach has actually made it there where he's starting to transition out of being the CEO and more to, you know, the chairman. And it's exciting to get to that leadership stage where now all you're doing is coming up with the vision and direction, passing it to your leadership team and that's it and you're hands-off. And that's total freedom where you can scale. You have the freedom, you have profitability, like let everybody else worry about all that shit. Cause there's always shit. It's just a matter of who's doing the shit, right? There's always like, I guess we use another analogy of like cleaning out the barn. There's always someone that has to take the shit out. Like it just doesn't evaporate. So let's talk about kind of the right way that you, you've seen it. Now you've kind of talked about like why you guys were going through that roller coaster, right? The ups and downs, because that's where you're focused. What do you think the better model for SEO agency is? Roger: [00:09:13] Yeah, it focuses almost too simplistic of a word. But when you focus in on a specific type of client in a specific service with a specific deliverable, that problem kind of works itself out over time. If you allow it, of course, if you're arrogant and your ego is this big, you're going to make that problem exist forever. But when I look at those ebbs and flows, I could see them dictated on the partnerships that we were in and the service that we were providing. And it was different enough each time that it created that need for like a recalibration of the underlying offer and then the implementation and the systems and procedures, if that is not a way to scale and grow an agency. When you get to that point where you've got a dependable, predictable revenue stream from the service that you provide, and you know that every client you sell it to has a 100% chance of success, then you have this model that people can go implement. And there's bumps, there's hurdles, there's hiccups. It's not perfectly easy every time, but you can overcome them better if you're working towards the same strategic goal each time. So starting with that focus element is going to make things so much easier. Jason: [00:10:16] Then how is the team structured? The right way. So, you know, a lot of agencies listening and be like, all right, man, that sounds like me, Roger. Like, man, I'm doing everything. I'm the doer. I'm the Barker. Like we're in this red zone here. So how do we get to the yellow and the green? Roger: [00:10:32] Yeah, the campaign managers a big part of it. You can call them client success, managers, campaign managers, cat herders, whatever you want to call them. But they're the, they're the face. They're the ones talking to the client. Whether some large clients, you have weekly calls with most clients you have monthly calls with and their responsibility is to gather up all of the information. And make sure that as they're going into that call, that they're presenting success, not problems. And if they're focusing in on that, then they spend the whole month building up their data, looking at the reports, making sure everything's going well. And then most importantly, we've got 10 data points that define success for every campaign. They go in and they look well, this one wrong, is this one-off? Why is this one going down? And they're talking to the team, they're talking to the people running paid traffic. They're talking to the people that are building links or writing content and saying, why is this data point off of what are we going to do to improve it? And their questions are what drives success from the underlying team doing the work. Jason: [00:11:27] And these people, are they acting as an Account Manager and a PM or are these two different people? Because there's a lot of, a lot of people struggle with, and I have my own kind of 2 cents on that too. So like, are they the same person? They're different, they're the unicorns, what are they? Roger: [00:11:43] The unicorns are nice. I have one that I wish I could get back. But they are managing both. Now, I've scaled up to right around $5 million. I don't know, at $10 million, if that dynamic would change, I'm going to assume that it will. And with the work that we're doing at Growth Foundry and the trajectory that we have, um, you do have an SEO department that's responsible for SEO, that reports up to the campaign manager now. But the campaign manager still needs to reach down at certain points and find when things need to be done. Now, there's a head of SEO, there's a head of Facebook and there's a head of, um, Google marketing, and then there's a head of IT and software development here. So I knew into that with them and I see that different structure. And it's interesting for me, I'm not an exact, I mean, I'm Chief Revenue Officer. I'm not involved in any of that now. So as I bring my clients over and I bring over relationships, I'll probably see how I fall into that mix. Jason: [00:12:39] Yeah, no, I love that. And I always saw like, I guess it would work really well for where you guys were with if they had really good SOPs to follow. But I guess you would have to probably find that Account Manager that really understood this and understood the strategy and could actually probably challenge the client. I mean, that's kind of why a lot of us as agency owners, we've kind of fallen into that role because we know exactly how to help them. Like we're not order-takers. If you hire like an order taker, you're just going to get a Big Mac, like, you know what to expect with a Big Mac, but you're not getting that most amazing burger that like, you start smelling it and your mouth starts watering and foaming, right? Like we can like taste that burger. And that's really what we want those Account Managers. So I presume that and you learn your lesson from the first one where you probably hired experienced people. So. Where did you find these people? And then, you know, what was the kind of levers that you would pull in order to make sure that they were right? And how did we move them out? Roger: [00:13:45] Yeah, it's interesting because this was, it was not a smooth process. So I started my last agency in Summer of 2005. And I remember coming in, it was April of 2007 and we were growing exponentially. We had, we were in one niche. We had one product offering. It was a home run. We were trying to scale. And I, it was just, the wheels were coming off. Like everything was wrong. So I walked in one day and it just, the tension was there. One girl in the office started an argument with me and I'm like, you know what, that's it, everyone just leave. And the entire company was fired. And then I spent the next six months going out and finding the right people. At that time I was based in Washington DC, and I don't recommend that anyone walk in and fire their entire staff in one day, but it was, it was a year in the making. And we went from that year doing $1.2M, and remember that was the beginning of the year. The next year we did $3.2M. So it was the right decision to make. Now there was a lot of fresh out of college. In fact, the girl that I brought in her, name's Amy to run marketing for us at the macro level. I sold that company in 2012, nine years later, she's still there running marketing for that company. And they've grown exponentially since then. The Office Manager that I hired in that timeframe, still there, the General Manager that's running the company since I sold, was my GM. So those right people helped me get to the point scale, sell, and then they continued to run the business for the investors that bought it. Where did I find them? I plugged into the universities. I would go and do the job fairs, but I wasn't looking for like interns. I was looking for the people that had gone out and done something. In 2005, 2007, when you're trying to hire digital marketers, there wasn't a lot that they could have done. So if they had a LinkedIn profile and they were doing any type of content creation online, they were, they were first in line. Jason: [00:15:34] Yeah. I mean, I remember when we hired designers. You didn't have to like, and this is where I kind of failed at school. I didn't really kind of create any side hustle while I was in school. But the people that we would bring in, if we brought them in right after they got their degree, which wasn't really a requirement with us. They had to, or had that side hustle and they were already having a portfolio that they could show us. They weren't just like this is their first pony, you know, the first rodeo. Was what I was trying to say, right? I was like first pony? Like where did we get a pony? Roger: [00:16:11] Like, I don't know. You got cows behind you. So maybe the pony's not too far. Jason: [00:16:14] That might be it. Maybe it was because I was watching Seinfeld. And, uh, when Seinfeld was at the table, he was like, I don't like anybody that has a pony. And then the, this, the old lady was like, I had a pony. Why don't you like me? So maybe I think of that. I don't know, listening on the show, make sure you guys come and go to the website and tell me if you have a pony or not. Roger: [00:16:36] We won't judge you. Jason: [00:16:38] We won't judge you. But getting back to, I don't even know where we were actually going since the pony. I guess that's where I show you my ADD, like pony, what? Go over here. Roger: [00:16:47] You took me for a ride on your pony and now we're lost in the woods. Jason: [00:16:50] We are so screwed. We were talking about hiring out of college. So I like what you were talking about. Like they already had the expertise there. They were already doing it. How did you make, after you evaluated that, what was kind of the first task that you had them do to make sure that they're right? Because I'm sure you probably hired some people that, you know, like, oh man, that was a wrong hire. Following this method when you reset the whole company. Cause that's fascinating. Like that's so fascinating. You come in, everybody get out and then a year later you bring on new people. So let's talk about that. Roger: [00:17:24] So there's been a couple of different iterations here too with the last agency and this was good or bad. The first 30 days that someone was hired, they would go through a whole set of tests, whether that be the digital marketer tests, some of the HubSpot certifications. And only about 70% of them would be able to complete the first set of tests. So a lot of them, it was just a natural, you know what? You can't pass these tests. You can't work for us. Including my brother, he tried to come work for us. He couldn't pass the test. He didn't get to work for us. Jason: [00:17:51] That's probably a good thing. You never had friends or family. Roger: [00:17:53] Yeah. I hired him in other businesses before. I don't even know why I tried. But that was a decent way. So you had something to show me now, can you do what we do? I had tried in the past, letting them launch a campaign. That was always a disaster because I wanted, I didn't want to spend money on my stuff. I wanted to spend money on customer stuff. I had one guy, he had a $250 a week budget to generate leads. You spent like four grand in the first week and didn't generate any and it was on my credit card. That was when I learned that that probably that wasn't going to work anymore. So every person is going to be a little different. Now we're trying to hire people that are coming from other agencies. That have been in the game for a little while. We don't have the luxury of time to train up from the beginning. If you can come in, maybe there's a little bit of retraining, but we need to put you in a role and we need you to go and then we'll figure out how to make it better and how we can scale. I learned that by watching one agency grow from like nothing to like a hundred million dollars over the last seven years. And I've worked with them on a couple of projects. I'm not going to name them because I don't want to say it's a good or a bad thing, but most of the projects I worked with them on failed. But the same people that were working on those projects five years ago are still there. And I bet you they're better now, now that they're a nine-figure agency. But that says it's, it's a choice, they chose to just take on every client, take on every project and then they found their niche once they hit scale. Again, not recommending that, but that's just another dynamic that I've seen people do. Jason: [00:19:20] Yeah. I probably know who they are. They will be nameless, but, um, let's talk about when you reset the whole darn team, who was the first three people and why they brought on. Like, the role, the roles. Roger: [00:19:35] Yeah. The first role was the office manager, because I needed someone to handle like the HR side. Obviously, if you go in and you fire everybody, you probably aren't thinking about HR too much. So they came in and their job was to help me systematize everything that I was doing in the business. From the way the clients are coming in. We had to have like insurance policies in every state that we were working in because of the space we were in. Getting that done, then the general manager to hire both divisions of the business, because there was a service and there was an e-commerce business. By the way, I didn't fire anybody in the e-commerce business side, they were fine. This was just the office and service staff. And then I needed someone that knew marketing and sales a little bit. Uh, I didn't expect them to go out and sell. I was the one going to the conferences. I was the one in the booths, I was the one building the relationships. And I enjoyed doing that, taking people out to dinner, buying them drinks and like, it's not that hard. And when she came in and got to work, and then she started managing our outsource vendors and our content teams, and at that time we were using a third party to do our paid traffic. It was just, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. Like, why did I ever try to do all this myself? But finding that person's hard because it, especially today, because in 2007, entrepreneurship wasn't as hot as it is now. And people weren't as willing to take as much risk as they are now. So there's that balancing act of if you're going to find that person now, you're going to need to pay them very, very well. You can't ask them to bootstrap with you as you're growing this thing, you're going to have to give them all the money, even if it means you're taking less. Uh, to grow the business because what's stopping them from going out and doing it themselves? It's not that hard anymore. Jason: [00:21:13] As an agency owner, it's hard to know when you have to make those big decisions. And I remember needing advice for thinking like hiring or firing or reinvesting. And when can I take distributions without hurting the agency? You know, we're excellent marketers, but when it comes to agency finances like bookkeeping, forecasting, or really organizing our financial data, most of us are really kind of a little lost. And that's why my friend Nate created Agency Dad specifically to solve these exact problems. You know, at Agency Aad, they help agency owners handle the financial part of their agency so they can focus on what they're really good at. Nate has spent years learning the ins and outs of agency business. He understands everything from how to structure your books, to improving the billing process and really managing your financial efficiencies. Agency Dad will show you how to use your financial data to make the key decisions from making your agency more successful and, most importantly, more profitable. If you want to know how your agency finances stack up to the rest of the industry Agency Dad can tell you how to do that. A lot of my listeners have already gotten their free audit from agency dad. And if you haven't yet go to agencydad.money/freeaudit before August 30th and get your free financial metrics audit. Also, just for smart agency listeners, find out how to get your first month of bookkeeping or dashboarding and consulting for free. It's time to clean up your agency finances and listen to dad. Go to agencydad.money/freeaudit. I love that you said pay them what they're worth. Because there's a lot of people that I see. That are like, well, just we'll give you equity. I'm like, no, like you believe in this, right? Do it all yourself. But like you were saying, it's very easy for other people to do it. So walk me through, like, we don't know who they were. So can you walk us through, what were you paying the office manager? What did you pay the GM or like, what would you pay right now? I guess let's do that since we're in 21. Roger: [00:23:26] So right now, I'm in Ohio and our agency's based in Pennsylvania, not in a big city, so we do have a little bit of luxury there. You're not going to get quality under 52 a year. And this isn't even people working remote. Jason: [00:23:40] For an Office Manager. Roger: [00:23:41] Oh, well, when we talk about people now? Jason: [00:23:44] Well, let's talk about the office manager, the GM and the marketer, the three roles, and then you can go into the other roles too. Roger: [00:23:51] So right now we pay our office manager probably makes around probably in the 46 to 48 range. We do and, it's interesting, I'm trying to not get sidetracked. We've got three service businesses here. We have two 20,000 square foot buildings here and play 65 people. So it's a little different, that's not agency work. On the agency side, I don't even know what they pay anyone yet, which is interesting if I think about it. Jason: [00:24:18] Well, go back to like when you hired those three people. Roger: [00:24:21] Those three people all started at 52. Jason: [00:24:24] 52, wow. Even the GM. Roger: [00:24:25] That was in 2007. Yep. Jason: [00:24:28] Wow. Of you had to do that now. Roger: [00:24:30] I'd probably be 80ish. Jason: [00:24:32] Good. I'm just trying to give someone a context. Roger: [00:24:34] Yeah. There's a part to that too, that no one stayed at 52. Within a year you were dramatically different. In fact, at 90 days, things started changing, uh, especially for the marketer who was handling all the client business. You figure if she was managing millions of dollars a year in revenue, I think she was getting dropped like 10 K every quarter, as long as our numbers were going up. And I'm sure she's a six-figure earner now having been there so long. Jason: [00:24:59] Yeah. And that's the crucial thing is, is like pay them a fair salary. That's what we always did. Fair salary and then do bonuses on performance quarterly. And you know, you'll get them above, you know, rather than pay someone, you know, some people come in for a GM and be like, I want 200K I'm like, sure. You know, crap in one hand and wish on the other. See which one fills that first. Roger: [00:25:24] You know what's interesting about this? My first mentor was a gentleman named Patrick Morsillo, he was a really old-school Italian guy. He's about 80 now. He owned the Greater Cleveland Auto Auction, which was the first real job that I had after the military. And he kind of trained me on business. If it wasn't for him, I'd probably always have the employee mindset coming from where I came from, but he told me he's like the salary that you pay someone is what keeps them at their desk. And he's like the money that you pay them after that is what you pay them to help you earn more. And he's like, not everybody wants more. Some people will take their salary and they'll sit at a desk and they'll plug, plug, plug, but there's a few of them in there that will bust their ass to make you money and you'll compensate them in return. I mean, and I've had that mentality. I mean, that was 2001 when I first started working for him, I was 23 years old and that never… they have something about cows going down and having sex in the field. Those two sayings have always stuck with me. Jason: [00:26:16] You just keep looking at the cows behind me. Roger: [00:26:20] I know, I can't. But it really was. You'd have this thing about patience and cows having sex, but it was a whole ordeal. Jason: [00:26:25] I kind of want to go there. I kind of want to go there, but I won't because it was such a good, like, I loved the saying that, that he said about like, people stay there because of what you pay them, but they'll make you money for what you pay them above that. That's brilliant. I love that. Let's talk about. Was there a framework that you guys used at the agency in order to get people success? Because a lot of times I talked to some agencies that they're just kind of winging it and they really don't have a framework for specifically for rankings. Can you talk a little bit about that? Roger: [00:26:59] Yeah, it comes down to a deliverable. So what we had then, the compelling offer with a guaranteed deliverable. So we did non-profit fundraising. So I could walk into a Goodwill and I could say, hey, I want to help you raise money by doing car donations online. Here's the deal, you're never going to pay me a penny. I'm going to invest all of my own money in advertising. If it works, we're going to split the profit 50, 50 after expenses. If it doesn't work, you just wash your hands of us and I walk away and never problem. The offer dictated the implementation strategy. Over time, we had a campaign for Goodwill, we had a campaign for Red Cross, we had a campaign for Salvation Army. They were different enough to be representative of the brand, the markets and the style of marketing that they were willing to do. But every Goodwill I walked into and there was 140 Goodwills at the time and we were working with 52 of them. So we were almost at 50% of Goodwills in the US were working with us. We made that offer and then it was a dependable, predictable model. We knew you set up a landing page, you launch a separate website. You set up a landing page on our site, you set up a separate website, you set up a landing page on their website. You rank all three of them, the top of Google, so that no matter where they donate, it's coming through us. And then you later on paid traffic for broad keyword terms. And it's the same keywords every time, just in a different market. And then you adjust your bids relative to the competition in that market. And that was it. I mean, there's intricacies of how you got them to rank, but we're going back to 2008. If you sneezed your websites ranked, it's a little bit more complicated today. Jason: [00:28:30] Yeah, it was so frustrating back then. Roger: [00:28:33] I know. Well, I had eight websites on the first page of Google ranking for Goodwill car donation. You could not donate a car in the United States without it coming through us. And three of them are still on the first page today. I mean, that's, that's all you had to do to win. I mean, that was, that was, uh, that was a seven figure ranking campaign right there. Jason: [00:28:52] I like that you had the success. What are some of the gotchas that you've learned with that? Because. I love that strategy. That's very easy for them to commit and especially of how you phrased it too, which I elegantly picked up on. I was like, well, we'll split the profits after our expenses. So probably it was maybe they were getting 30%, but they're 30% is better than zero, which was really good. So walk us through some of the gotchas there. Roger: [00:29:21] So some of the, the, some of the gotchas there is at a macro level, the only way that an SOP or a campaign strategy works is if you have a defined outcome, like you can't go into SEO with the idea that your job is to rank websites, you've already failed. If you even started that. In fact, internally in our organization, we kind of, we don't use the term SEO. We use organic revenue optimization. Our job is to deliver revenue to our customers. So any task has to be correlated to a data point that leads to revenue. And if somebody starts talking off tangent about this thing, okay, how does this get me to revenue? Nine times out of 10, that will bring them back. And honestly, they'll realize you went, I don't even need to be worrying about this because it's not revenue-related. It's just busy work. In so much of what I see SEO professionals doing is busy work. They read something in a Facebook group. They want to go try it to see if it works, but they don't sit down and write down, okay. How is this going to get me from where I am today to more revenue because the client's being need for revenue. Very rarely does a client pay for rank. And I say rarely because there are some doctors and lawyers that will actually pay for it because their ego says they just need to outrank the guy down the street. They don't care about money. They're few and far between, but they do exist. Jason: [00:30:31] And there are bad clients. Roger: [00:30:32] They are bad clients. They stick with you until they get there. Then they fire you and then they yell and scream at you six months later when they're not there anymore. So you know that there are short ride, six-month to 12-month client, which isn't what you should be going after. Anyways, if you have a dependable, predictable model that leads to revenue, your scaling capabilities completely open up. If you're chasing a different result for each client on a different traffic strategy on a different type of offer, you will continue to be stressed out. You will never scale, no matter how much you try to put SOPs and people in place. It's that, that single, dependable, predictable deliverable that makes business scalable and repeatable. Jason: [00:31:09] I love that you focused on the revenue. Because a lot of times an SEO agency will be like, we'll get you on the first page. We'll get your ranked. But you're doing things after that to control that. Because a lot of times, even with a pay-per-click agency, right, will be like, let's use dentists. They're a great example of a very hard client to work with. Right. We send a ton of leads to them, but their, their dumb staff never answers the phone. They never get back and they're like the leads are shit. Right. But you're kind of taking that out of going, like, we'll take it to here by picking the right market too. Right? Like it's very important. That's important. You pick a really bad market you have to be resourceful and figure it out. Like, I'm sure someone's going to figure it out. And I have some clients that really rock the dentist world, but they are a little bit more challenging, but I like how you did the solution. Roger: [00:32:06] The big thing that we needed to do in the nonprofit space that we're repeating now in the space that we're attacking right now is that we started answering the phones warm. So we set up a call center and answered the phones, got all of the information and went right into their scheduling system and put people in. It's not that hard to do. It's not that expensive to do. It can actually just be a couple hundred dollars a month. And if you've got multiple clients in the same space, that's nothing relative to the overall value that it creates. And it completely eliminated, like I remember one of my first clients when I moved back to the Ohio area after selling my agency, because I wasn't allowed to work in the nonprofit space for a certain number of years was a dentist. And to me, it was, it was a breeze. He went from said he was getting five phone calls, of course, no tracking in place. So like one week I generated like 76 phone calls, you know how many he answered? Three. So I drove to his office an hour away and I went in and I talked to his secretary or assistant, and I realized she wasn't there to answer the phones. And I was like, you know what? We should probably just stop spending your money cause we both wasting our time. But now we see like we're, we're scaling really large in the septic industry right now because we have the largest residential septic company in the state of Ohio. Jason: [00:33:14] Is it a shitty client? Roger: [00:33:16] It is. I get crappy jokes like that all the time. Jason: [00:33:19] Oh, I had to like, literally everybody listening was like, when is Jason going to say shit? Roger: [00:33:25] And the first key was setting up a call center. We quadrupled the number of conversions by adding in the phone calls. That means we didn't change anything with the marketing. But four times more end result just by setting up a call center and we use answerconnect.com. They're great. They're inexpensive sort of, we're kind of at that point now where we're asking ourselves that we want to have our own people doing this, but 24 hours a day, seven days a week you can get a live voice. If you call for services through any of our websites or partners, and in most cases we can direct schedule, not all of them, we're working on that. Jason: [00:34:00] I can only, I can imagine the call center would be like, you got shit? We'll help you with your shit. Roger: [00:34:06] I should throw that up on our tagline. We just, we just bought septictank.com. So we're going really heavy into growing this business. Jason: [00:34:15] The tagline should be like “we help you with your shit.” Sorry. Roger: [00:34:22] I don't know if that'll fly with like the Facebook mods or anything like that. Jason: [00:34:26] I know, I kknow. I just, hey, I got. Roger: [00:34:27] And when the team did their brainstorming under taglines for septictank.com. Don't worry, a lot of those came out. Jason: [00:34:33] Oh, I'm sure like how it would be such a fun project to be on. Roger: [00:34:36] Our engineers call themselves poop inspectors, so. Jason: [00:34:38] Oh, that's brilliant. Oh, that's awesome. That should be the title of the podcast. Let's talk about your book that's coming out or it's already out now, so, yup. “Local SEO secrets” Tell us a little bit about it. Roger: [00:34:53] So we've been putting out content for a long time and I'm pretty vocal in a lot of the Facebook groups that I'm in. We decided to take our top blog posts and put them together into a book and then reformat on them around a specific goal. And then I reached out to a couple people that I knew in the space that might be better at things like we got one guy to come in and talk about GMBs. Another one to call in and talk about the Google My Business, or Google Guarantee Program. One on e-commerce landing, page optimization, and one on PR for SEO. And we put them all together and just kind of packaged it so that we could give our customers a premier on SEO. So if you read this book, you're probably not going to be ready to do enterprise SEO, but you're going to be able to have a conversation with us about the different tactics that we're doing. Uh, it's the same thing. I published a book called “Data-Driven Marketing” in 2017 and it was written for the Microsoft partners that we were working with. It was like, hey, last year we generated $56 million in sales leads for Microsoft partners. Here's how we did it. Do you want to do it? Here's the book. It sold 10,000 copies on its own, but it was never really designed to be like a revenue stream from sales. It's, hey, I want to educate my clients cause educated customers actually stay around longer. I always hear agency people say I don't want to make them too smart because they might fire me. And you know what that happens from time to time, we had a customer paying us a quarter-million dollars a year for four years. And they're finally like, you know what? Roger, we got this. We'll come to you for one-off consulting. And I was like, okay, that's awesome. I just trained a multi-billion dollar company and how to do their own SEO. It took four years. They made me a million dollars, but. They moved on and that'll happen. Jason: [00:36:28] Yeah. Everything transitions. It's, it's kind of like when I work with people, like even yourself, like you bake it in, you, you help them out. And then they transitioned, they graduate and they get to the next level, they sell. You know, it's just, it all happens. And, and everybody should celebrate that. Not like I always hate when I hear, well, I don't want to teach them everything I know. I'm like, then what are they paying you for? Like, what are you even helping them for? Like, why are you throttling it? Like literally, it as much pressure as they can take, give it to them. And then they'll be your biggest advocates when they have a success, because that's why we're doing it. Right? Roger: [00:37:07] The head of marketing at that healthcare organization, it actually worked with me at a different company before that and brought me in because he's like, I like the way that you teach what you're doing, you don't just do it. And you know what. He left there and went to another company and guess what they hired me to. And another person from that health care company texted me over the weekend. He's was like, hey, I'm at a new organization. These are the problems I have. Can you come in and help consult? You actually get more business by training your customers to fire you. Then you do less. Jason: [00:37:34] Exactly. Give us one really killer thing in the book. And then we'll tell everybody where they can get the book. Roger: [00:37:40] Perfect. If there's one killer thing from the overall strategy in here, it's like flip it upside down. Don't try to read it upside down, you'll get a headache. But SEO, isn't about ranking websites. It's about generating revenue. So the one strategy that I tell everyone before you even start SEO is implement call tracking. Now, again, this is local SEO. So we're usually talking about a conversion path that is calls. I probably wouldn't work with the pizza shop. I can't track the revenue that comes in from that. Implement call tracking and figure out where you are before you do anything else. It only takes 30 days. If your customer is telling you, they're getting 50 phone calls a week, you implement call tracking. They're probably getting five and you're going to have a real benchmark set now you're also going to listen to do they answer their calls. If they get a hundred calls and answer five, you've got to fix that. There's so many things you have to fix in order to make SEO successful. And we charge, we charge maybe 1500 or $2,500 a month for our additional audit roadmap and data capture. But after that, you will know for certain, if you can help that person and what agencies chase money. Most of them do and it's why their lives are so stressful and so miserable. Because they'll take money from anyone. Be willing to say no. If the data doesn't tell you, you can make them successful. Uh, Travis Saga has a great thing. He's like you only take on someone if he's willing, and this goes back to poop, to give them a bucket of poop that they can dump on his head if he, if he doesn't make them successful. And knowing that he only works with a certain number of people and the ones that work with him and brag about working with them. But pretend there's a bucket of poop sitting next to you. Don't take that customer on if they're going to dump that bucket on your head. Jason: [00:39:15] I love it. I love that there's so many different things to break down, but I love how you were like, just do one thing to see if they're going to beat an amazing client and do that in early on, rather than invest all your time and you getting paid a great deal from them. And then you're like, this is miserable. You're gonna lose your team. Right that you're going to get bad clients and it's just a constant rollercoaster ride. But if you do it and you reset it and you think, how can I make sure? And even going to the prospect, I want to make sure you're good for us. You know, it goes back to an interview I did with Seth Godin, where he was like, look, there's this one agency that only want, doesn't want to hire over 50 people. And if they only have 50 people, there's only so many clients they can take on and they tell the clients, if you ever do anything, if you dump a pile of poop on us, we're firing you. Talking about shit the whole episode. Roger: [00:40:11] Going back to poop. Jason: [00:40:13] You like how I came back to the poop. That's what I did. That's what I do. Where can the audience go check out the book? Roger: [00:40:17] I mean, I'll give you a link. They can go to rcbryan.com/localseobook. And I'll just leave it up for a limited amount of time, but they can actually get the digital copy for free. So we took the whole book. We turned it into like a course format on teachable. And what's nice is we're actually there's conversations going on in there. There's been tweaks. There's been additions. Some chapters have been dropped to the bottom because people didn't find them useful. Some chapters have been moved up, we've redone some of the intro stuff, things that you can't do once you have a hard copy, but there's a great community building around it of SEO professionals and amateurs, just learning and trading, uh, skill sets and, uh, swapping ideas in order to create the best strategies for people. Jason: [00:40:56] Awesome. Well, this has been amazing. Everybody go to that URL, go to it now and go check it out. And, uh, is there anything Roger, I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Roger: [00:41:09] No, but I think we did 3 million, no, 300 billion cubic feet of poop last year. You forgot to ask me about that. Jason: [00:41:19] All right. Well, if, if all you listening, if you enjoyed this episode and you want to stay away from getting the bag of poop thrown on you, you need to be surrounded by amazing agency owners. And we're only looking for five agency owners that are over 500,000 and under 20 million. If, if that is you and you guys want to add multiple millions on, we want to invite you to go check out the Agency Mastermind. This is where we share the strategies that people are crushing it on and you'll be able to see the bags of poop that you can throw away. So make sure you go to, you guys can tell it's not a script cause I'm putting poop in there. But make sure you guys go to digitalagencyelite.com and request the invite, put in your application. And if I feel that we can help you out and you'll be amazing for the mastermind, we'll invite you to come on and uh, so you can stay away from the shit. All right, until next time have a Swenk day.

on this new episode of the MIND SAFE podcast I hope to provide an honest, thoughtful, meaningful perspective with these answers to common questions about what happens during therapy with my Guest Jacob Kountz , it was such delight to have an unscripted conversation with Jacob about human connection , healing , expectations and seeing from the perspective of a therapist what can be done when the patient doesn't feel connected to his/her therapist Jacob Kountz is a clinical therapist who works for a non-profit mental health clinic that treats adults in Southern California. His passion is facilitating 'aha moments' that help client's shift their mindset and open up to new possibilities. While away from work, Jacob is working on his Doctorate of Psychology, writes mental health content for a variety of companies for fun, and enjoys finding hidden treasures such as used books at Goodwills or other secondhand stores. you can connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobkountz/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXhy1avyXvV1Dp4WH8laAlg Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jake_Kountz Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobkountz/ Website: https://kernwellnesscounseling.com/ If you would like to be featured on this podcast please email me at rachida@mindsafe.space

Wondering what we did on vacation? Lucky for you, we give a day-by-day (hour-by-hour?) breakdown of all the ins and outs of our week away! Nick finally had K&W Cafeteria, we went to countless Goodwills, and we met a Waffle House with five-star restaurant aspirations. Plus, s’mores, beers, and walks in the woods. This and more on today’s pod! Want more Reality Blows? Join our Patreon!: Patreon.com/RealityBlows

Automate Your Listings and Grow Your Business With Hammoq Services Get Started ➡️ https://hammoq.com

Ever thought about thrifting in the music city? Make your next trip cowboy boots with a side of Goodwills. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thecheaptique/support

BEYOND BARRIERS: SECOND EDITION by Anne Davey Koomans This book is about David Davey whose life changed when he was stricken with polio in 1948—go into the thoughts of a twelve-year-old as he lay in an iron lung, recovering. Read how he recognized that God gave him a purpose and how he spent the rest of his life fulfilling it. Witness Dave's Christian leadership skills as he joined Goodwill Industries and set about to change laws and attitudes of American people regarding those with disabilities. Dave was the liaison for all Goodwills and many other organizations to assist Senator Bob Dole's office in the passing of the Disabilities Act. Anne Davey Koomans “The book exposes difficult times that Dave and others experienced by everyday barriers and how Dave volunteered to make a difference taking out those barriers, with a sense of humor. Read through the heart of a man whose love is not only limited to his love of family, but to others who have barriers to beat. Be encouraged to live a good life, always seeking ways to reach that goal. Anne Davey Koomans received her first copyright in 1994 for her Christian drama Witness of the Innkeeper. She has performed this forty-two-minute drama over 200 times in many countries, states, aboard ships, and at churches, schools, and nursing homes. Being in God’s will for her life has always been her greatest desire. Traveling and photography with family and friends to forty-nine states (sorry North Dakota), and cruises and flights to more than fifty countries and islands have provided fond memories. Anne has taken photos from the wheelchair lift on Dave’s van, helicopters, hot air balloons, planes, or lying on her back to get unique shots of light houses, Notre Dame Gargoyles, and many other positions needed to get the photo she wanted.” https://www.readersmagnet.com/product/beyond-barriers/ http://annedaveykoomans.readersmagnet.com/ http://www.bluefunkbroadcasting.com/adkoomans.mp3

Thrift stores, flea markets, Estate Sales, Goodwills - they're my Kryptonite. I can't stop myself from getting a good bargain at these places, neither can my friend Grace Carpenter. You've heard me talk about Grace multiples times before: she's an interior designer, fellow house flipper, Airbnb owner, the founder of Grace Carpenter Designs, and just like myself, loves the thrill of the thrift.In this episode you'll hear all about the adventures of two thrifters looking for lost treasures, the different types of shoppers, and how we've become friends and 'Master Thrifters'. We discuss the tips and tricks of bargaining with sellers, how to spot good pieces and the best way to negotiate.Also, learn how you can get pieces restored and reupholstered on a budget, the best spots to thrift in Phoenix and Scottsdale, and all the shenanigans we got ourselves into because 'the item was so worth it'!Grace reveals her home staging and vacation rentals decor tips, how to perfectly integrate vintage with new and secondhand, and the joys of dumpster diving. Key takeaways from this episode:-Train your eye to spot good items.-After you've thrifted great deals is hard to pay full price for things!-Thrift consistently and on different days to find the best patterns.-Good design is all about mixing and matching old with new. -You can be a seasoned thrifter and still not being sure what items are super valuable.-Stay open-minded: an item may not fit your home (now) but could be a great talking piece for your home rental!-Ask your local Auto Shop if they Lacquer furniture: the finish looks very high end and it's a service that many shops take on during weekends (as a side job).-Think outside the box when thrifting abroad: review luggage allowance prices and consider shipping items via shipping containers!-Store-bought cushions never fit right in vintage pieces, so you'll always have to get them custom-made.Where to find the best deals in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Arizona:Goodwill, Humane Society, Craigslist, Savers, Offer Up, Facebook Marketplace, Online Auctions and Dumpster diving.Connect with Grace:https://www.instagram.com/gracecarpenterdesigns/https://www.gracecarpenterdesigns.com/https://www.instagram.com/p/BpSNrL_lsQU/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_linkFor show notes and Wendy's properties please visit:http://flippinwendy.design/blog/podcast-episode-8

"W"elcome to another chapter of my Audio Thrifting Diary. Quarantine continues. Goodwills are closed. OOPS, ALL GAMES! rolls on. There are some evil in some of tricks played against each other. Toddy and Josh time. Games / Show Topics : THRIFTY THRIVIA TRIVIA - A head to head multiple choice answer game, about the items in our thrift haul. VINTAGE vs. MODERN - Comparing and contrasting the value of older items versus their modern counterpart. THE RETAIL CHAIN - After being given one items' value, you must decide whether it's value is higher or lower than the next item in it's chain. Four items items total. Special thanks to : BLUFFS for "Alternate Reality", the theme to our show for many reasons. (https://steveberes.bandcamp.com) Subscribe on iTunes : THRIFTY Find us on Facebook : THRIFTY Podcast Our Dirt Sheet Twitter : @thriftypodcast We do thrift haul vids on Youtube : @thriftypodcast

"W"elcome to another chapter of my Audio Thrifting Diary. Quarantine continues. Goodwills are closed. OOPS, ALL GAMES! rolls on. There are some evil in some of tricks played against each other. Toddy and Josh time. Games / Show Topics : THRIFTY THRIVIA TRIVIA - A head to head multiple choice answer game, about the items in our thrift haul. VINTAGE vs. MODERN - Comparing and contrasting the value of older items versus their modern counterpart. THE RETAIL CHAIN - After being given one items' value, you must decide whether it's value is higher or lower than the next item in it's chain. Four items items total. Special thanks to : BLUFFS for "Alternate Reality", the theme to our show for many reasons. (https://steveberes.bandcamp.com) Subscribe on iTunes : THRIFTY Find us on Facebook : THRIFTY Podcast Our Dirt Sheet Twitter : @thriftypodcast We do thrift haul vids on Youtube : @thriftypodcast

Hey, what's happening everybody on YouTube? Steve here with Raiken Profit coming back to you with another video from live in my kitchen. And I'm actually getting ready to make some potatoes. I'm pretty excited about that. But in any event, in today's video I want to answer a question that I got in one of my latest videos. As you can see, here's a video of myself talking about some beginner tips on buying and selling books on Amazon. And I got a question, saying ... It's actually from [Tanya Gonzalez] asking, "Where do you get all these books? I know thrift stores. I went to three different Goodwills, and didn't find anything that was worth reselling on a bookshelf. Should I just go more often? Any tips on finding books? Thank you." So, Tanya Gonzalez, want to thank you for this question. Appreciate you checking out my channel and everything. Click To Watch This Video On YouTube... So let me get right into this question. So, let's talk about, where do I get my books. I live in Connecticut, first of all, to give you some context to this conversation. But primarily I go sourcing for books at my local thrift stores. So I'm lucky enough, in Connecticut, to have a bunch of Savers thrift stores in the area. And if you don't know what Savers is, it's kind of like a Value Village on steroids. What's the other one called? I forget what it's called, but there's another one that's somewhat like Value Village as well. But Savers is big. It's a huge thrift store, and they got tons of items. Electronics, toys, clothing. But their book section is massive over there, and the thing I like about Savers, at least in the Savers in my area, I've seen different ones, but the Savers in Connecticut, they usually price their books at $1.99 or $2.99, even for the big textbooks. Now, granted, there are some Savers where they'll put, like, $10, $12, $15 prices on their textbooks. But the ones around here at Savers, I could get a textbook for three bucks. Two to three bucks. I do really good at Savers. There's a tons of books, a lot of them fall through the cracks. Nonfiction, fiction. My mother, Momma Profits, if you've seen her on some of my videos, she actually does a lot of kids' books, and children's books as well. So, I get a lot of my books from Savers, I get a lot of my books from Goodwills. Salvation Army, I used to do really well with books over there. But they've been kind of going, like, down the drain. They changed up their pricing structure. Before, you used to be able to get like three books for a dollar. But now they're doing this new thing that, the price of the book will be 90 percent off the MSRP. So if the book's coming in at 30 bucks, then it'll be $3. Which isn't bad, but a lot of the textbooks might have prices on at like 70, 80, 90, hundred bucks. And they are ... it just gets crazy. Still, don't discriminate against Salvation Army. It's really different based on the location and whatnot. So, yeah, thrift stories is primarily where I get my books. Now, you did ask a question, Tanya, asking, "Should I just go more often?" And to answer that, I'd say yes. You definitely have to go more often if you want to find more books, obviously. But even more importantly, you gotta find the best days and the best times. For me, I've always found that I do best in the morning to afternoon time. Typically like Monday through Wednesday. It seems like when Thursday hits, Friday, Saturday, like, people are getting out of work early. There's more competition over there. And I just don't find as much. But again, that's just me, my location and how I've been doing. But you're going to have to figure out, Tanya, when's the best time for you to go. Right? When do the Goodwills or the Savers, when do they bring out the new inventory. When is the competition most likely not going to be there. And one thing I want to say is, there is a lot of competition now with booksellers and book scanne...

Goodwill strives to enhance the dignity and quality of life of individuals and families by helping people reach their full potential through education, skills training and the power of work.Goodwills meet the needs of all job seekers, including programs for youth, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities, criminal backgrounds and other specialized needs. In 2017, Goodwill helped more than 288,000 people train for careers in industries such as banking, IT and health care, to name a few — and get the supporting services they needed to be successful — such as English language training, additional education, or access to transportation and child care.Goodwill Industries International is committed to inclusion and diversity and respecting the people we serve, our community members, and the people with whom we work. We believe in putting people first, providing a safe space for our employees and creating environments where people have the support they need to build their work skills and care for their families. We are proud that people from diverse backgrounds have come to Goodwill to build their skills and their career goals. We will continue this tradition of serving others and building communities that work.goodwillnwohio.com

Dinosaur of the day Ampelosaurus, a "dwarf" sauropod that was only 52ft long and weighed 8 tons. In dinosaur news this week: The first ever diplodcoid from East Asia was discovered, Lingwulong shenqi, and it's also incredibly old for an advanced sauropod The new Deep Time exhibit coming to the Smithsonian in 2019 will feature a T. rex biting the frill of a Triceratops Dickinson Dinosaur Museum in North Dakota has a new claws exhibit to show the correlation between dinosaurs and modern birds The Dinosaur Room in Rio’s National Museum recently reopened after a renovation In the month of August, if you donate to certain Goodwills, you can get free kids tickets to Dinosaur World A 16-year-old in the UK built a replica Allosaurus from scrap metal In Las Vegas a man setup projectors outside his daughter's window to simulate dinosaurs looking at her A real estate agent made a listing go viral using an inflatable T. rex costume There’s a Stegosaurus that holds nachos (the nachosaurus) Robert Kirkman, who created the comic The Walking Dead, is now working on a new project called Super Dinosaur Our five-year-old listner Remy was featured in a University of Alberta article after choosing Alberta as his birthday destination—for the dinosaurs of course This episode is brought to you in part by TRX Dinosaurs, which makes beautiful and realistic dinosaur sculptures, puppets, and animatronics. You can see some amazing examples and works in progress on Instagram @trxdinosaurs To get access to lots of patron only content check out https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino For links to every news story, all of the details we shared about Ampelosaurus, and our fun fact check out https://iknowdino.com/Ampelosaurus-Episode-192/  

EP078 - Amazon News http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. In Episode 78, we catch up on a lot of the new Amazon news including: Amazon Bookstore opens in Chicago (very near Jason's home) A number of analyst raise their guidance on Amazon stock, which is now almost double Walmart's market cap Amazon hosting a summit to help brands sell direct Amazon Private Label update Amazon Go store delayed Amazon gets NFL Thursday night football Amazon hiring work from home customer service people New Product - Amazon Connect, AWS cloud SaaS callcenter application New Product - Amazon Chime, AWS cloud SaaS video conferencing application  Amazon Opening 1m sq-ft FC facility in VA Amazon acquired Souq.com - middle east marketplace - Dubai, Abu Dabi, UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain  Amazon shuts down Quidsi Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 79 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday April 6, 2017. New beta feature - Amazon Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 78 being recorded on Thursday April 6th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and hey Jason Scot show listeners Jason was looking at our logs out on iTunes and we've been so busy interviewing retail luminaries that we you and I have a report on since early March so I have a ton to catch people up on. Jason: [0:56] That I told you I'm super excited and I'm equally excited to be talking to you with my full voice. Scot: [1:05] Yeah yeah it's good to have normal Jason back and put froggy Jason kind of into the, into the catalog there on time hopefully listeners went to put off by it I hear that Mr lister's listen to a set 2X anyway so you were still at Chipmunks on I'm sure it's fine. [1:22] Just kick off you I have been quite the world traveler I haven't done anything since shop talks up and kind of boring but tells about you any interesting World travels through portal. Jason: [1:33] I have been on the road quite a bit since shop talk mostly customer visits but I did get to do an event I like to do every year in New York City. Did may not be super for me or do a lot of our listeners so it's called the path to purchase Institute and they put on this annual show called The Shopper marketing Summit and it has stork Lee is not been a very digital Summit it's a long time event, targeted at Shopper marketers that focus on on marketing inside of brick-and-mortar retailers in what was in. Scot: [2:06] Circulars or like a circular makers work. Jason: [2:10] Other. There's a little bit of that it yeah but it's a it's a lot more like product displays like temporary point-of-purchase materials like promotions and in-store promotions products samples. I'm all all the sort of the traditional tools are retail or would use to promote products and more so Brands than retail or so the show is really focused on. Like what it what is the best tactics for Mondelez are Procter & Gamble to use to help their their product get disproportionate attention on the Shelf. [2:49] Yes I would I just found interesting is you know that, how much digital had permeated the conversation there so they were first they asked me to speak so we actually did, I was on my co-workers from this we did for our workshop on digital disruption and talking about all the ways that the. The we filled the whole discipline a shopper marketing has been fun and I disrupted by by digital and then you don't evolve impact of purchase, but they were a lot of other another you like speakers from Kimberly-Clark talking about digital merchandising and then frankly a lot more presentations that you would have extradition Alee expected to see at Academy show your now starting to see if some of these traditional shows in their ways to go though. If you like the sessions that were most popular with the audience where we would probably be pretty rudimentary touch are average listener but it is interesting that these traditional disciplines are now you know really starting to focus on our space. Scot: [3:52] Digital is eating World As We predicted. Jason: [3:55] It is indeed in while I was there are our friends at Amazon open the new book store 2 blocks from my house. [4:21] As I said Amazon open their Chicago bookstore and I presume because Jeff is such a loyal listener that he carefully selected a location only a few blocks from my house. Scot: [4:32] Tell Sam to you've been just to refresh listeners in case they shame on them missed the episode when last you were travelling Amazon book stores you went to the Seattle and right. Jason: [4:43] Yeah yeah we've been in Seattle want a couple times now but I was there. Scot: [4:47] The New York. Jason: [4:48] Recently didn't I don't think the New York one is open yet. Scot: [4:52] I think that one Telus about Chicago and I'll do some research. Jason: [5:00] Yes I have been the two personally I've been in the Seattle won in the San Diego one which are very similar and they have evolved over the times I visited them until then, looking at Chicago Chicago is a little different than the last two in a couple of regards the most notable difference is that it has a coffee shop at. So he has an expresso bar they're serving Stumptown Coffee which is a favorite. Coffee brewer from my old Hometown to Portland Oregon. [5:31] Omen none of the other Amazon site been to have a cafe or any food I'm so so you know. That was certainly an interesting evolution. [5:43] Also had a few new categories in it so one of the things that I hadn't seen before is there was a popular kitchen accessories Gondola in the store. [5:57] And that is a little interesting like traditionally another merchandise books in the store physical books and. Quick refresher for pubs that will talk to you before then listen to some the other shows it's not. [6:11] Designed a traditional bookstore would be design right see a couple thousand square feet you want to get as many books as you can into that that's 2000 square feet so normally most of the books are. Merchandise down their spine and only a few promotional books are merchandise facing you this Amazon store has very few books in it because all the books on merchandise facing you so that it's a much more attractive presentation the print. Paper price tags next to every book in that price tag. Orwell fact tag has the reviews from Amazon on its what has the star rating in in a couple select customer reviews reviews play an important part in merchandise in the store and no actually have gondolas. For merchandising books by rating like these are all books that are rated over 4.8 stars who are the top rated books for the city of Chicago things like that that you know it's a real clever social merchandising, pricing is really weird any stores they charge list price if you're not an Amazon Prime member. I'm in if you are an Amazon Prime member you get the online price, but because as we all know the online price changes so often they don't print the online price in the store so you literally have to use the Amazon app on your phone to scan the fact tags, to see what the current prices of the book you're going to buy or use one of the scanners that they have built into the store. Scot: [7:34] Cool so you were right I was wrong I think this is a Jason and Scot first the that have not opened the first location in your cat's Columbus Circle and its opening in the spring so I think they have like. William another month here and then the second one they announce is going to be across from Empire State Building so they announced to open none in New York but opening one soon. So Columbus Circle will be first and empire state will be second tell me more about the the kitchen section of the store. Jason: [8:04] Yep so as I was saying like you know you have that kind of book presentation and then the book of all the Amazon stores is really that Amazon branded. Electronics rights of the stores really about Kindle and Echo and you know I would call it a consumer electronics store dressed as a bookstore. And so on certain they're happy to sell books in that store but it really feels like the job of the stores to educate customers about the the candles and The Echoes In The Fire tablets. [8:34] And so the center of the store is around that they have their sort of equivalent of a Genius Bar where you can get Live help they do you know scheduled live demos and tutorials a lot of those kinds of things and so you know traditionally. Those are the two kinds of things that are in the store that Electronics including accessories and third-party products that work in the. In the Amazon Alexa echo system in the inbox inside this Chicago store with the first story I have seen that had other, hard Goods in addition to Amazon products and the books and so they would have had a gondola that's like best selling kitchen appliances on Amazon and it's showing things like. Immersion blender smoothie machines KitchenAid mixers think things like that and so they would really like. The bed you know 10 of the best selling products in another category and put them in the front of the store. Scot: [9:31] Did you see I'm a some tweets that and I visited the Amazon store and December of 62, been a while Minnesota and the baby with the tweets of Sean a lot more of the Amazon basic showing up in the store did you see evidence of some of the private label stuff kind of creeping. Jason: [9:50] Yes in categories that are related to electronics right so that they get a lot of the Amazon basic bike cables and batteries are our merchandise but they're really merchandise as accessories for. The fire tablets and things like that. There's not a display that's like I sorted based on being Amazon basics for sample there just interspersed on the on the displays where they would be most appropriate. Scot: [10:16] Yeah we're going to talk about a little bit later but they've got enough private label and apparel I wonder in those New York stories if we can't magically see a little infection section open up and be kind of nurse in to see how that progresses. Jason: [10:27] Yeah it it's only well-liked into Italy the stores they design so far are lacking some amenities you'd normally expect in a Apparel Store like dressing rooms and things like that but like. Could easily be retrofitted or or more to your point like the next door could easily Adam. Scot: [10:43] Anything else from from the roof. Jason: [10:46] Nope I think given all the other exciting stuff we have to talk about that it should probably cover it on the Jason trip reports for this week. Scot: [10:55] Cooper Center in the Amazon new section I wanted to go back to shop talk and that was kind of late March. They had Amazon had two speakers at shoptalk this year which is interesting bit been notoriously shy about going to conferences but, they were pretty bold today had Stephanie Landry in this was her second year at shot talk and she talked about prime now I didn't really get much knew from that other than that continues the area where they are aggressively expanding, I'm in one of the things I like two references you know they sent really once they decided to put. Pedal to the metal on Prime now they opened up in 4245 markets in the span of two two and a half years so a lot of people, talk about these experiments are doing in the coffin so it's just an experiment but I always caution people that, Amazon decides this out of the experiment they can scale it really quickly so it was good reminder, program and what they can do and you're one of the guy thats decided to build a consumer-oriented business one of the most interesting quotes from that was it when someone looks good. Question from the audience about, the profitability of it and she said well it Amazon know we really focus on the customer first and then we can we saw for profit II, and that in the cooler that was the interesting part and she said, it's much harder to sell the customer problem then a customer experience problem kind of meeting you this whatever they're building isn't lighting customers versus a profit problem. [12:31] That's really kind of an interesting talks about putting the customer first but Amazon really really does it and, the donut since day one when they could afford to now they obviously have the luxury of being able to do that but you know they really don't care about the probability this thing they want to really don't know that customer experience and then they'll kind of get there on the profit side and that's how it started when Prime launch never thought they were crazy and it could never, make any money and I. [12:58] When I heard from Amazon and sit there is a lot of controversy as a launch that the basis was really into it and a lot of people could you do the math on Prime you can kind of say. Our best people aren't going to pay for shipping and are worse people are going to get free shipping and there's no way this economic make sense but I think they didn't those people didn't count on was. It was such a delightful program for customers their volume when up connects and then it going to match Pace herself so it was kind of interesting it was, but I like that one comment. The second speaker was the first to stop talking it's Peter Pharisee and Peter for a while and he works for Sebastian gunningham and runs the marketplace part of, Amazon and the surprise from me is when I've seen him speak at our conferences and and I think it's been an internet retailer wants it's usually about the other sellers on the marketplace. Did this talk at shoptalk was 100% about brands, talking it essentially the whole thing was targeted to Brands how they're an important constituent Amazon and then he talked about, for reasons why they should saw on the platform they're all pretty obvious no shipping we have the scale we're friendly DeBrands these kinds of things it was a real surprise because I've never seen Amazon talk that way about Brandon Sac to know if. If one of the questions I get a lot is what does Amazon have any chinks in their armor that kind of thing. And the relationship with brands has been strained and you know some some Brands I talked about it in my panel where you know a lot of Brands we talk to you. [14:31] Go with the nuclear option I call it where they essentially say look we're going to yank our stuff Nike is kind of most famous or they've decided not to work with Amazon and a 1st or 3rd party relationship and they prohibit people from selling any authorized resellers from Sun their stuff on Amazon, so so I think Amazon realizes that's a challenge and they kind of had a softer messaged for Brands than I've ever heard. [14:52] Did you a catch either this. Jason: [14:55] Yeah I got both of them and I would totally agree with you on the Amazon Prime now you know both how fast they were able to scale that and 18 months getting to them when they have to us but also you know the shocking thing is, it was like a hundred and eleven days from the first meeting where they discussed doing one hour delivery opening that first. 1 hour delivery concept ride in so that that level of agility is super impressive and terrifying. And I just like to quote someone was asking when she describes Amazon Prime now the think the picture of when has in their mind is that's the service you use to deliver the cold medicine when you're sick because you physically can't go out of the house, and you need to quickly, and she was pointing out that those kind of emergencies are are part of the service but that the overwhelming majority of the service is not for those things that need to be delivered in an hour but rather for things that consumers just wanted an hour and so it's it's less about. You know it only gets used as a necessity and more than it's a delightful customer experience that people appreciate I also. So that you know that sort of reminded me of another Super recent Jeff Bezos Square where he was talking about how they had lots of great Innovations over the years that they loved inventions that Amazon loved. Consumers didn't really care about and he is talking about the fact that like I can assure you that no no invention that consumers don't adopt has ever been disruptive in so just sort of. [16:27] Focusing on the fact that like the hardest part of this whole equation is is figuring out an experience that that's magic to Consumers and that they want to do. Scot: [16:36] Yeah you just reminded me to that I think some breaking news Stephanie put out there is that occasionally if possible on Echo orders they will if it's in pruritus that and Delight customers by delivering it in an hour, did you did you catch that Amazon. Jason: [16:54] I think you're exactly right I think she said that like if if you order from from Echo and it's available in Prime now they'll deliver in an hour that sort of surprise and Delight you. Scot: [17:06] Cool and then another thing that's been really interesting is so so since October unrelated but what happens is that kind of screwed into the corner of Wall Street and kind of, you know that check their channels and they update their models and, right towards the end of March and early April everyone started doing that and several analysts came out and said you know we we actually think Amazon underpriced here and a, the time Amazon was out about a hundred $800 the stock price and some analysts came out and, for that I follow are there kind of called what's the axe on Wall Street which is kind of the leading analysts they really but that price Target up to over $1,000 so one went to, 1025 and even kind of sad you know we think. The Amazon probably will be the first trillion-dollar market cap stock so then a couple other in-laws followed suit and then the stock took off and as of this recording it's about $900 so that's. Pretty big run from 800 to 900 what is that, yeah I'm about 15% and yeah when you're dealing with a company decides a Amazon that that is a material change so Amazon is worth about twice the market cap of. Not now market cap for one thing and revenues are different you know Walmart has more Revenue than Amazon all these kinds of things we're just talking about the what Wall Street thinks the two companies are valued at, I'm in if you do those notes so that's a good headline right now to lead our company thousand 25 on the stock in the stock reacts but. [18:43] I make a habit of reading these things and it is pretty nice thing you know they talk about different colors that that Amazon has now the one that it's been pretty crazy about is the cloud computing Amazon web services. That it continues grow faster than people have thought and be more profitable the prime business with Amazon is having to disclose more about prime than they ever have and in their annual report, they gave some new disclosures that essentially let people back into that there's between you can get a range it's not exactly have to kind of make some assumptions, between 50 and 70 million Prime users so it's kind of putting it about 65 million Prime users show, that's bigger than some people thought it's smaller than others but it puts a real number there with people are pretty excited about and then the other thing that the new disclosures did is a. Put some boundaries on the ad business I just kind of two parts to the Amazon advertising business there's. [19:39] ICBC peace and that's broken out in their financials one way and then there's a banner key switch is broken out another way up and it's a pretty material business it's it's you know it. [19:50] Any projected growth forward it'll be the number three as business behind Facebook and Google next year so it's already bigger than Twitter. For example show. People get pretty excited by that now scale wise it's in the single-digit billions and Facebook and Google or in the very high double-digit billions so it's going to take a long time to catch them and I don't know if it ever will be I think. It was pretty excited by that because it's also extremely high margin business along with AWS season. [20:23] In kind of another color. Is it that's interesting is and yeah we talked about it here on the Jason Scot show first is this kind of Alexa and when Wall Street talks with Alexa their kind of wrapping a lot in their there. [20:36] Not only talking about the personal assistant but all the things behind it the semantic engine the machine learning the all all the natural language processing in those kinds of things, and what about analyst Mark mahaney he's kind of said that. 10 billion dollar business in when you report it is not just the sales of Alexa devices but all the ancillary things around the same time Amazon also announced Alexa for the iPhone which is. [21:03] To boxing I want to talk about I'm just talk is. You know that Wall Street is also waking up to the fact that at the same time where these analysts upgraded Amazon they downgraded Google which I thought was interesting and I specifically in the Google Beyond grade called out and said, we believe the Goodwills on a crash course with Amazon and decided the study of United Site a lot that shows that products arches really switch from Googled Amazon but they also talked about that business and they did make a pretty compelling argument that a, you know in a world where Amazon news whatever the buying that ad. Business could be more valuable than Google for Google has some search intent but Amazon has a product intense that was kind of interesting take and you and I have talked about early on. Is it go to this voice is just your voice, so we're going to call it kind of world Amazon monetizes by selling stuff and Google they announce recently too then. Montage by ads and there now putting ads into you know some of the different things you do on the Google home assistant which is pretty cheesy to be honest with you show. [22:07] Really interesting. Example of of Amazon having someone's back against the wall in a funny way and no Google trying desperately like let's forget the customer experience through some ads right in here when you ask. Does the home assistance for the weather kind of thing it's this really really terrible so I thought show, I know we have some Wall Street folks listening but I thought it was really interesting to hear a lot of what we talked about really summarize really well as it's kind of you know the pillars behind this this upgrade, and then when you we look at that the result of that Amazon is now worth a Walmart at Target a Costco BestBuy and CBS all together so that's another kind of interesting thing the other result of that. Is that Jeff Bezos rocketed up the Forbes 500 list two number two jumped over Warren Buffett and a second only to Bill Gates so. To put that in perspective and haven't seen when do this this is a Jason Scot exclusive show, Bill G is at 84 billion and Bezos is now at 76 billion as of recording this so I did the math and if they Amazon stock gets over a thousand, assuming that there's no big change and let me a Bill Gates is doing then he will be the richest person so there you go. Jason: [23:29] That is crazy I asked you for the Jason Scot show and I'm I believe that those two guys live like a mile apart so that's a pretty affluent square mile in Seattle. Scot: [23:41] Yeah yeah on if they like check each other's mail in their gun and stuff. Jason: [23:46] If they are I would hope that people that do that. Scot: [23:48] Yeah you never know hey Bill could you check my did you watch the dog one at a time. Jason: [23:56] Exactly I think Jeff would have a robotic dog. There's a bunch of other Amazon stuff going on as well as one that. Got a lot of attention in my world is there some leaked invites the Amazon has invited a bunch of the, the brands and protect the consumer packaged Goods Brands to West Summit at Amazon where Amazon wants to talk to them about getting more serious and selling direct and give them some advice about what they need to do to, successfully sell Direct. Scot: [24:38] What's what's the buzzer you heard any some scoop on that whole thing. Jason: [24:42] Yeah well so the. The sort of clickbait headlines then because you know Amazon wants to partner with Procter & Gamble to bypass the Walmart and Kroger and all those those things and well. I think that's certainly true, I actually think that Amazon is is less worried about like stealing those customers from Amazon or from from the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers and Amazon some more interested in, setting those those Brands up to be more successful on Amazon in the digital era so I think this this is a lot more about. Kid convincing and controlling these companies to change their product configurations to be more e-commerce friendly so, think about the bundling sizes think about how they package their products you know in a lot of other product categories Amazon very successfully was able to get manufacturers to change how they package their goods to make them more, consumer-friendly on Amazon so they had this whole frustration free packaging program for example and, consumer consumer packaged goods are predominately designed to Market to customers on a store shelf and so their package really isn't very friendly too. A shipping in that Amazon cardboard box and I think Amazon interested in convincing them to fix that. Scot: [26:11] Yeah yeah yeah and then no Jason Del Rey who's been on the show had some interesting kind of reaction from the brands that felt like. Another too caught up in this Amazon vs Walmart war and everyone wants lower prices so that's certainly not a not a pleasant place to be what would you advise to brands that are kind of. I'm sure you guys get a lot question about this one how do you tell folks to avoid that. Jason: [26:36] Yeah well I mean to twofold I got I do think of you a brand that that's in that space that you you do want to be on Amazon at this point right. Like more than half the growth in that category over the next three years is coming from digital and Amazon is today more than 50%, of that that digital pie so pretty expensive mistake to, not be where all that customer demand is on the Amazon platform obviously we did we did show a couple weeks ago with Melissa talking about the a lot of the fundamentals of being a. On the Amazon platform and Jason does article really sort of. Emphasize one of the points from that show right and that's that there's this this really real negative cycle at the moment where. [27:30] You sell products on Amazon and so you don't party yourself to dream with Amazon is that that you'll give Amazon the best pricing and you won't sell it less than them and they have all these algorithms that watch your price and react to them, so so did when you give a different bundle to Costco and Costco selling a case of Campbell's Soup and the price per ounce in that case is very low. Amazon sees that and drip drop the price on quantity one of that that can of soup to that super low price and then they're selling a super low and then Walmart emergence kick in, and start beating you up for selling the product much lower on Amazon then you're offering the quantity one price to Walmart, so that the challenge at the moment is. Is that you when you think about these products of you really think about reconfiguring the products for. E-commerce you probably want to think about more than packaging like you you probably want to create. Different skews that are different enough that they don't trigger that that's where the pricing cycle. [28:42] And so that potentially even means like you know different formulations are different flavors or or you don't. [28:50] Different sized squares of Swiffer on Amazon than the squares at Swiffer that you buy. In Walmart so that those aren't the same skew and they don't they don't get caught in that pricing cycle. Scot: [29:03] Any definitely wanna make sure your Warehouse bundle isn't comfortable feeling so good that stuff. Jason: [29:09] Exactly and I do it in the long run that's just not sustainable like that you know the both Amazon and Walmart or someone. Benefiting from that at the moment and then warm in the margins just aren't there for the manufacturers to get squeezed between those two guys and so you know either. The manufacturers will have to find some other way to survive by selling direct without those guys and those guys are both launch private labels and you know I think we're seeing the Collision Course between these product manufacturers in these in these products resellers. Scot: [29:43] Another Hot Topic kind of in this vein is Amazon truly ramping up private label as we talked about at the top of the show so suppose folks are familiar with Amazon basic switches things like HDMI cables and whatnot, another Washington lest I follow has done a lot of research and it's fascinating start some usually the trademark, the bowels of the trademark database and Amazon this is hard because Amazon uses a lot of shell corporations. [30:13] Misdirection let's just very legal misdirection to try to hide what they're doing so these folks kind of trying to get down and they know that. This agent to really works and Amazon and there's ways they can get back into it then they searched on Amazon and they kind of, figure out that if these things they find our exclusive on Amazon to prime or or there's a certain you can kind of tell how the age of the pages are written the. It's actually private label so they've identified a good kind of. [30:42] 15 to 20 private labels that a lot of people don't know about one we talked about on the show is Amazon elements um and you know. We we talked about that but the area where there's the most growth is in apparel so there's things like. All of moon is a woman's Bohemian inspired casual clothing it was hurting both of these are prime exclusive which means that if you're not on Prime you you see them but you can't buy them and there's a lot of worry, and the way the way I seen it now is. So Amazon has you have the name brand so let's see all pick on one I don't know a good Bohemian brand but let's say dress shoes show. Men's dress shoes so they'll have. Cole Haan or someone like that and that'll be the name brand and let's say that's like $125 then we'll be a Chinese kind of just no no straight from the manufacturer and it will have a brand but it's brand you ever heard of, I'm in it is clearly in a clearly a Chinese brand so it'll be Brand X and it'll be. $30 Lynnwood Amazon will do as that's a big Golf Mill kind of split the middle so somewhere in that 60 to $70 is were there and check their private label. And it will it will have a much more kind of now it feels Amazon it feels like it's backed up by Amazon Prime exclusive, doesn't exactly say Amazon all the time so like to have one Franklin and Tremont some kind of sounds like was at Johnson and Murphy so that Franklin and treatment which is men's dress shoes and that that will be in that 60 to $80 great show. [32:18] And asked me to hell, why how do they decide where to do this and what I've heard from folks is its data driven so they can actually know their database gotten smart enough where it will go identify, and balances between supply and demand so they'll see there's demand in men's dress shoes for an $80 shoe and they will go. Godin work with manufacturers and create what they think is a missing by looking at the data and put it out there so that's really you know. [32:49] Everyone in cpg in grocery stores does private label but I think the way Amazon is doing it is is pretty unique by for a couple reasons the way the way they're laying it in with the Chinese manufacturers going directly to Prime and those kinds of things. Jason: [33:03] Yeah and I think what's interesting is even you talk to release a few people and they they have you know they want to talk about Amazon private label strategy and I like to point out no no no no. Private label strategy it's a label strategy. [33:19] That way you know a lot of the traditional private label it's about like in all the same feature set at an alternate a price point. And you know a lot of these products like their they're targeting alternative price points not necessarily lower by the way in and they're they're optimizing features for that price point so you know these are. These are not just knock-off products of a national brand and Mini cases. And so you know and many of them they're putting marketing behind trying to build the brand and the most notable today of course this is Alexis is a total credible, billionaire brand that that Amazon has built and so. I wouldn't necessarily say there a great brand Building Company yet but they're getting consistently better and they're iterating and so I don't rule out the day that that's some of these apparel brands. You know how are legitimate brands on their own that that stand out and have customers that are interested in buying them. [34:22] I think I'm pretty interesting one you mentioned. [34:27] Amazon elements day I just got an email they have launched a vitamin D products so this is entering the nutrition space which is. Another space that I think. Their data has shown then there's an opportunity and right now it's an exclusive invite only products you have to apply to buy it which I did and I just got accepted and one of the novel features. Is it that they have sort of the Amazon Firefly x-ray technology built into their product packaging in so I haven't received the bottle yet but like when you ain't Amazon app. With your camera at these new bottles you get a ton of supplemental information about the product so it sort of. Enhanced virtual packaging for a for these products. Scot: [35:20] Yeah that's kind of a page out of the on this Playbook right but they. It's hard to put that all in a little vitamin bottles eyemagine that's kind of part of it is bye bye running out of real estate they can and it can be dynamic too I guess if they can. Jason: [35:35] Yeah and change it all the time and again it goes back to this in the old world where you printed the label on the package and that was your marketing and then that label lived on a Walmart show, that you know there was one approach but in this new world where it's coming in a cardboard box that that packaging plays a different role right like it's it's not the zero the first Moment of Truth for you anymore it's a post ownership experience that's most important on that bottle and so you know it's pretty interesting that Amazon is is obviously the first move there but I think a lot of what they do talk to the cpg companies about in their Summit, is a sort of moving in that direction. Scot: [36:16] And then the big news since shop talk I'll let you jump into that one. Jason: [36:22] Yep so we've been talking about this for a little while that that Amazon had another store concept it was under construction and they unveiled it last week. And it is called Amazon Fresh pick up. [36:35] Inside this is a extension of Amazon Fresh do you build a cart of products in in your app. [36:44] On Amazon Fresh and instead of having them delivered to your home. They are available at this Amazon fresh pickup location and you drive through what amounts to sort of a drive-through stall. [36:57] I'm at this location and someone comes out and puts the groceries that you ordered in the trunk of your car so you never have to get out of your car. You don't have to perfectly synchronized being home when the Amazon Fresh guy comes to your house so that you can get the milk and put in the refrigerator you go and pick it up from Amazon when you want. But it is a lot more convenient than having to shop and bag for all your groceries yourself. So we we talked in this show a lot that buy online pickup in-store is probably going to be the dominant model for digital Grocery and you know that that's one area where the traditional grocery stores have a big advantage over Amazon because they have a bunch of stores. Amazon doesn't I think what we're seeing here is Amazon's first generation answer to that problem. [37:43] I'm delayed open a store and the most notable thing I think we expected all of that we were curious whether you be able to walk in the store and buy anything which at the moment you can. But the big sword of fire across the customer experience is that they are implying a 15-minute guarantee. So 15 minutes after you quick check out on your mobile app your groceries can be ready to put in your trunk and so what that means is. You're just leaving your friend's house from dinner and you realize you need some stuff for breakfast in the morning, you know you can order it and likely swing by that the Amazon Fresh pick up location on your way home or you can remember at the end of soccer practice that you need some stuff. Order it on the soccer field and pick it up on your way home none of the other grocery pick-up have anything like a 15-minute guarantee like most of them don't have a guarantee, some of the best service levels are you have your groceries ready in an hour and much more typical is will have your groceries ready in like 4 or 5 hours and so. You know once again this is kind of like you know the industry shipped everything in one to two weeks and Amazon comes out and says will ship everything in 2 days. You know they're saying will do buy online pickup in-store but we'll do it in 15 minutes. Scot: [39:00] Yes the grocery I had like 3 questions for you so the first one of watch the video like 50 times the, it seems like it's very shoppable the store do you feel like actually go in and Shop or will it be restricted to just pick up area. Jason: [39:16] So I expected before they announced it that there would be some limited use cases of going into the storm shopping but might take from the video in the folks I've talked to is than this first generation that's not the intent that the that the inter the store is exclusively for, the merchandisers to do product picking and take the product out to your store, car so there is no get out of your car experience in the store at the moment is my understanding. Scot: [39:45] Looks like there's this kind of bank it's almost like a Sonic drive-thru where there's like, these Banks of places drive-through rights instead of this linear model that my grocery stores to have you going to parallel model and it looks like there's two 15 Lanes but that's interesting, that makes the scheduling kind of thing make more sense right because you get this window you go up there and that your understanding and. Jason: [40:13] Yeah are you want to serve customers and parallel Nazi really red so, the more of those pick up Windows like they're not windows but if you know you saw that the more of those Lanes you have the more simultaneous customers you can serve, oh I would suspect that there's not a fixed number of those lines I would suspect that that the number of lanes they offer is going to totally depend on the. The footprint of the site they have for the store and and you know that. Demand density in that in that go I would say that a bunch of the other grocery guys that have gotten serious about grocery pickup, do something similar so you go to the market where Walmart is doing grocery pick-up you will see like a big Bank of drive-thru stalls, that frankly was very similar to the the Amazon model but the big difference at the moment would be that that 15-minute guarantee. Scot: [41:08] Got it and then so no one else is close to that because my frustration is our local Harris Teeter offers it and, you know what you go through you carefully pick all your groceries and then it says oh I'm sorry this is like Friday and I'm getting my weekend groceries in it'll say we're sorry there's no slots open for the weekend your kids your Tuesday hot. Jason: [41:29] Yes so you've hit on a super sore subject most of the grocery pick-up have like two flies right like the window is too long so you you didn't. Do a big advance planning thing and you want to pick that up pretty soon after you ordered any Mini cases and so in very few of the grocery stores have a guarantee they have service levels they shoot for right like so. The shoot for that hour but they don't guarantee that our, I mean that's a problem but then the bigger usability problem that you just highlighted it is almost all of them won't tell you what the pickup window is until after you build the list and check out and so you don't find out that they can't meet your needs and till after you've invested a bunch of work with him which really, frustrated customers and makes customers mad. Scot: [42:16] How does Sohail how does Amazon get around that by just kind of saying I feel like the grocery store must they must want to know how much is in the car to know how much time so Amazon something. Jason: [42:29] Yeah I mean my assumption and it again it's not. 4 slice of the video implies that they can do it in 15 minutes it does not explicitly say they have a guarantee. And so at the moment it's for employees only somewhere to go store so we haven't actually gonna try it or even yet talk to someone that's been through it all I'll be back out in Seattle in a couple weeks an alternate logo, go stock the site and see what I can work but. If it's a true 15-minute guarantee then you know that puts all the onus on Amazon and it takes all the burden off of the customer right like you don't. You don't need to worry about if you know you're never going to get have to wait longer than 15 minutes so you just you just jump in order the stuff to do it. But we'll have to see to your point like if you can't know your pick up time until after you build your list then that really limits that utility. Scot: [43:26] Yeah so who do you think the main company is going to step up and kind of this are using people just aren't worried about it cuz he's just an experiment. Jason: [43:35] No I so I think the two people that are most worried about it have already been countering it before they want to store right like so I think I mean. That Walmart sells the most groceries of anyone in the country and they have. [43:52] Probably three or four hundred of these pickups tours and you know they do have quite a few that dedicated pickup locations, similar to the store that aren't even Walmart store and you know frankly if I showed you a picture of it and took the branding off you'd be hard-pressed to tell the Walmart pickup store apart from this Amazon Fresh pick up store so so you don't Walmart is certainly doing the play from their side, Kroger has now rolled out pick up in store to 400 stores Kroger's the largest. [44:23] Actual grocery retailer in the US and for Tampa Bay on your Harris Teeter Teeter is what is one of their brands. I think they were actually the first ones to do pick up I think they did pick up before trigger bottom but the. Both of those companies understand that that's going to this is going to be a huge use case they have to get it right in there both investing a lot of money along with Amazon you don't I think. Before Amazon watches store they wouldn't you know you would have said hey hear the things where Amazon has a huge advantage and and we have some huge advantages to we have 4000 stores are we have 2000 stores we have much bigger parking lots in all all of these sorts of things, you know I think the big the big fear here is. The Amazon recognizes the pickup is a significant opportunity in their opening a couple stores and. You going back to RR Prime now conversation. If these stores work well for Amazon and they they demonstrate customer demand that this is delightful experience for customers and frankly like I've seen a lot of evidence that customers really do like grocery pickup. [45:33] I think they could scale those store super quick right like I think they could either buy a retail and convert all that the that retail footprint into these pickup stores. Or you I think like they did with Amazon Prime now they could easily open $2,000 things in 12 months of if they decided that the market supported. Scot: [45:55] Yeah speaking of Amazon go there was some news there what's up what's going on with you. Jason: [46:00] Yep so you know they watched it last year in 2016 and it was for employees only and just supercoat reminder this is, the convenience store will you grab the items in you you walked out of the store and you don't have to check out or pay or do anything and artificial intelligence in the cameras in the store. Figure out what you took with you and charge you for it so it's just walk out technology hashtag jwalk. [46:24] So that was supposed to be for employees only last year and was supposed to open to the public early this year and as of now it's still hasn't opened and there is a lot of internal rumors that it's not going to open to the public for a while and the reason is, but they are struggling to support some of the edge cases and one of the biggest cases they're struggling as support, is apparently when they get more than about 20 people in that store the time they lose the capacity to accurately track all those people and their purchases. And so like you have a few people in that store and that the technology seems to work very well and you know again I can neither confirm or deny that I have myself been in the store and tried it and it worked quite well. But it's easy to imagine that that there's not an unlimited capacity to track people and so you know. Scaling could be one of the problem then so you know that the rumor is hey this is super interesting technology but it may be further away from. Being totally commercialized because they need to sell some of these these ads cases in this capability problems. Scot: [47:30] To get some computer problem or you think that 20 people the chances of being able to date they can't tell them apart if you think it's more. Jason: [47:38] I think it's both of those things I got like the number of people is just one of the edge cases they talk about other education as wife. I got it takes off his jacket when he's in the store or guy puts on a hat when he's in the store. And you know all of all of those things can be hard like as I pointed out in the fact this is kind of a mock store it's only three gondolas there's no blind spots in the store you're not allowed to use the restroom in the store you know how all these other things. I'm inside you don't from day one I looked at this and said hey this is totally cool technology. But I don't think we're going to see a fleet of these stores competing with 7-Eleven in the near term because it. [48:16] Even if you nail the experience in this little prototype with the three walls of Prada. [48:22] You're still a long way from being able to do it in a 7-Eleven and you're much for the way from doing it in a 200,000 square-foot Walmart store. So it's cool technology is you think we might see parts of that technology before we ever see the whole store so one thing is. Does cameras take perfect inventory and every retailer struggles to know what their inventory is every retail loses a ton of money because they have out of, they have soup in the back of the store in the store room but they're out of stuff on the shelf and customers are shopping for soup, and it takes 6 hours for a quick to notice that they're out of soup and they have to go get more and bring it out but with this technology you know exactly what your inventory is so it makes it better for buy online pickup in-store it makes it better for, showing your inventory to people that are pre shopping and don't want to drive to the store until they know you have it in stock and it makes it better for all these out of stocks and all these sort of other use cases so I think was on commercial that piece of the technology before they completely. Commercial ice JJ Watt. Scot: [49:25] Cool I'm picturing all these Amazon guys watching the security tapes and they're like who is this guy taking off his jacket look at this hat and like to juggling apples and I have a feeling that guy looks a lot like our very own retailgeek. Jason: [49:39] You you you do you don't even have to pick her if you go to the store in the far corner of the store like this the stores all windows and so you can actually see the back room with all the guys dressed in Orange, they're watching tablets and frankly that's that's exactly what they're doing they're helping, teach the machine the edge cases so it's not like they're the computer can follow you in there and it and they're replacing the computer with humans but what happens is when the machine gets it wrong a human. Audited and tells the computer what's right so the computer can get it right next time in and you you could watch those guys work if you stand in that corner. Scot: [50:17] Call Lisa friend told you. Jason: [50:21] You can see that from outside the store so. Scot: [50:23] Okay good. Jason: [50:27] Couple other little things I know we were burning on time but Amazon was pretty interesting new influencer program so that they've always had an affiliate program, where you know you can you can blog about stuff or put stuff on your social network and put a link in it and you'll get a commission on the sales on Amazon. And you know if anything they're tightening up that affiliate program and I think you know if you months ago that they will wear their commissions on a lot of stuff but they Now launch this bespoke influencer program which is targeted at. High-volume influencers and it gives them custom vanity urls, I think it rewards than more generously for sales and it's just it's an interesting invite-only program and the reason I say it's interesting is. The news influencers are really becoming the new product marketing vehicle so like in the old world what you generate product for demand for a product is you buy Super Bowl ad are you run a TV ad and you, you reached 30 million people in one shot now the way you generate demand for a product is, you know through these micro influencers in and finding the woman that that talks about the particular makeup style, that suits your product and getting her to blog about your product and put links in it and Amazon appears to really recognize that Trend in is building better tools to support that trend. Scot: [51:51] Yeah we've we've talked about them and if folks had a chance to listen to the coast program for example we talked about kind of the death of the the merchant King of the merchant Prince and forget all we got, and I. [52:03] Merchant Prince so this is this is you read about these influencers replacing and it's kind of Amazon saying yeah this is this is a thing. Jason: [52:13] Yep yep so that's interesting Amazon did the first drone delivery in the US last month so I thought that Mars space conference the Jeff Bezos was that, date they do it hurt some sunscreen and then I thought the first time they got FAA approval to do a commercial delivery in the US I think one that got a bunch of bugs this week is, did they stole the NFL deal from Twitter. Scot: [52:38] Yeah so the scoop there is last year Twitter bought the streaming rights for the Thursday night games I think there's four or five of these games the kind of itsfunneh, they didn't play out but there's notoriously that the running joke is the Thursday night games and up being like. The worst games out there because it's usually like the worst two teams in the league kind of think so. Jason: [53:02] I know you're talking about my team is on every Thursday night away. Scot: [53:05] Yes the Chargers and the I don't know all the Cleveland Browns. Jason: [53:13] Cleveland Browns we play the LA Chargers play the Cleveland Browns every Thursday. Scot: [53:17] Will guess what and now it's going to be on Amazon Prime and the Twitter deal never made sense to me and there was there some interesting scuttlebutt that you know to Twitter paid 10 million. And when they pay that a lot of news folks reported that folks are scratching your head, they knew any of the other people that been on this would be like Google with YouTube Amazon bit on that last year imagine with Facebook is now in the running for these things that you have a bit more and there was scratching your head why did Windows, Twitter didn't do much with it and now Amazon has won it this year and they're paying 50 million so 5x with Twitter page, obviously that's a lot of money and you know the people are kind of saying we'll why would they do that. And what's interesting is if you think about Amazon prime number one that Amazon has already announced it's going to be prime exclusive content. They have a lot of data on this so you know they've done another number of programs that driving program his name I can't remember you pray noticed. [54:19] And you know they've picked it up for these things and it brings in enough subscribers that have more than paid for itself so to do the math of this if you kind of think of, hundred dollars for Prime which is where Prime is right now you really only need about 50,000 new Prime members to come in and justify that $59 price tag, those are big numbers but when you have 65 million Prime people get another 50k actually isn't that. [54:45] Doesn't seem like that hurdle and I would imagine there's if you're an NFL fan you're sitting on the fence and, this is as you get access to your games and you get free shipping and all the other things that come along with prime so I imagine it'll actually be pretty lucrative for them and and possible so that's kind of a call I guess. The other thing I saw just quickly Amazon is really hurting a lot of customer service folks they announce they're going to hire 30,000 customer service reps, and they're doing a lot of customer service reps working from home, this is interesting we're hiring a customer service rep at my company spiffy actually interview the lady that had done this before, show you what Amazon does this they essentially they train you that give you an online training program on how to be a good front line customer service, person and then they just have some basic requirements for you to do this at home usually its high-speed internet desktop, or laptop that's higher end and then you need to get a mic with a headphone and a mic cept they actually tell you the ones that they recommend, and then, they actually will turn you on you know you you've been kind of run this program you check in and you're getting a customer service calls and then you log out and you get paid on kind of an hourly and ratings and and performance bases 3 inputs I found that fascinating and kind of funny, right after I talk to this lady Amazon announced that they were productize in this so anyone can use this functioning functionality now it's part of AWS. [56:20] And it's that this call center that lives in the cloud and it's called Amazon connect, and then before that they took another internal to over they have there and videoconferencing Build-Off AWS called Amazon Prime so Amazon is now kind of putting out these things and then release him to AWS which is which is itself. [56:41] A TBI system it is really kind of small Lego blocks to couldn't do anything with unless your developer and now they're actually kind of releasing these pretty robust applications on top of AWS, another quick one is the announcer opening yet another for Film It Center this was a million square feet in Virginia. And finally they made what's one of their bigger Acquisitions in a while and it's this Marketplace from the Middle East called so I think I'm saying that right Sou. Tube.com that started in the UAE and then, Calibre where it has like lots of countries in the Middle East that a cover so it covers Dubai Abu Dhabi Egypt Saudi Arabia Kuwait and Bahrain, there's it's rumored that this was a $659 acquisition of the company had raised, money at kind of north of a billion so she could have a bit of a Down Round but I think a good outcome for those folks there is some other really big Marketplace that's launching out of Saudi Arabia that has in a billions of dollars of investment, think it's this is kind of Amazon playing a little bit of defense and suit kind of thing on this is a good time to find a safe. Courtney storm I looked can't find the DMV for that but the Middle East is it your 50 million people, lots of opportunity there so so but interesting play on Amazon Amazon news day. [58:05] They also shut down I'm sure you saw this some Curious we think they should down Quincy.com the whole not just good you.com but the diapers and all the subs, things are weird news about this so they they shut it down because it wasn't profitable and but then several people, Channel each to the press that well we just had Amazon zigzag here at the annual kickoff which I imagine would be like, January I'm saying that you know where this path to profitability and we've had a profit month so a lot of people scratching their heads and so people reading the tea leaves there that this is some kind of a, Bezos messed around with Mark Lori who's over the founder of jet that's not Walmart not really sure I buy that but any thoughts from you on that. Jason: [58:51] Yeah I know I have the same thought as you I got I just don't think that. Did Jeff Bezos is going to screw around with a bunch of people's Alive's just to play a game and Mark Laurie right and you know there are people that are losing their jobs at Quincy. And I think there has to be a sound or business reason that they're moving away from it and I've heard the same rumors you that they haven't been profitable but that there, Basie profitability in 2017 so that that makes you scratch your head why they closed it and the ones out that occurs to me is. Did the Dave they vacillated back and forth on this idea of having all these separate URLs and. Distributor sort of Distributing there traffic across all those other URLs versus aggregating it all in the. Amazon property and I do think it's possible that in the early days they felt like Amazon wasn't a credible source for some of these these specific product niches and so having a dedicated. URL on a dedicated site made sense in there you know where moms that would want to join the. The diapers.com program that wouldn't want to be Amazon moms and you know that back then there was the SEO advantages to having diapers in the URL and all these sorts of things and I think I think of Donna way I think. I think. The Amazon bran is much bigger and stronger today and I just think Amazon may have decided that makes more sense to aggregate all the Shoppers on the Amazon platform and have him get access to all. [1:00:24] 400 million products and then it's just it's just not worth continuing to work hard to get quizzy to profitability when the core platform is going so well. Scot: [1:00:34] Yeah and I'm not sure they Consolidated the back in like some of the other things like they definitely have Zappos but I've never heard that they - Consolidated that I think it was still running out of a warehouse New Jersey and stuff so. Jason: [1:00:45] No I need all the employees for sure where New Jersey so I don't I don't I'm not certain about the tech. But I think that's true and the other thing I would just went out as I think all the employees that Mark Lord knows the web from Quincy he took from them long ago and they were to check which was also it would New Jersey show. Scot: [1:01:01] And they're all at Walmart now. Jason: [1:01:02] Yeah it just doesn't make sense that that that that Jeff is doing that for out of any malice for Mark. Scot: [1:01:09] Couple that was a heck of a lot Amazon news they've been busy busy little guys up there in Seattle any non Amazon news you want to hit here at the bottom of show. Jason: [1:01:19] Given time I think just a couple of things there continues to be that this mall again and talk like this, this is shaping up to be a really rough time to be in retail so, there are lots of early indicators that q1 sales for retail just going to be horrible across the board and that's really scary and we're just seeing announcement after announcement about you know retail orders that are. Taking these austerity measures and cutting stores and things like that and so you know, Payless's bankruptcy announcement you you add up all the announced clothes stores and it's over 2,500 stores that already been announced to close this year and we're only in April, last year the major retailers closed 1600 store so where. We're way ahead of last year's store closing and I'm sure we haven't seen the last of that I have a feeling after all the q1 earning reports that we're going to see a lot more negative news before it starts to turn around. Scot: [1:02:26] Yeah couple quick ones from me on the marketplace at so eBay was also shop talking that they had their see you again and when again I had, the head of advertising on my panel and you don't it's going to see eBay is not out of swinging pretty hard he made some political statements there was really excited about but they in the world e-commerce their big announcement was, and then but no you know I think the shop talk trucks I have done a really good job of getting people to announce things at the show that that's kind of. Makes it extra special worth going to so they announced at the show, two things essentially that you don't number one they have a new program where they're going to guarantee 3 day delivery on about 20 million items on eBay and they had a program called Fast and free, I was kind of like a loose kind of promised United it wasn't like. Primate you stuff in two days I was kind of this thing kinda gets to you usually on three days we think it will. Jason: [1:03:26] I get to you faster than other stuff. Scot: [1:03:28] Yes me that you kind of fast this is like, it into a launch and hasn't launched yet but you know at least the verbage from the executives is we're going to guarantee 3 day delivery on 29 items.. So that's good you know it's not 2 days but also you don't have to do it so it's free 3-day show, so that's interesting and then use the rest of his time to really talk a lot about machine learning and you're talking about how. If you were seller and you wanted to sell a widget you could take a picture that widget in the email recognize it and kind of say, hey Jason are you selling this podcast microphone and it looks like a roadie 200 and and no do you want to is that right and you want to spend list it for some pretty interesting things you know they're around morning and he pretty much said. You're not going to do machine learning now you're going to be if actually dead and three years when this is kind of the table Stakes so I agree with that, yeah he talked to some skeptical kind of long-term eBay kind of folks and you know the the Starkey kind of answer to that as well you know you go to eBay and search for something you can't find it why don't they put the machine on that part of the site so, yeah that that it is honeybaked continues to cut under invest in that part of the shopping experience so, they had some of the dishes they haven't really known as best I can tell taken root yet but they are working on it but it does feel like, some of the stuff they're doing is nibbling at the edges if you, if I'm what you're looking for so I'm a huge fan so I thought they came out swinging in an aggressive I just I just worry that they really need to prove that customer experience it Scot several iterations. [1:05:08] Not only Amazon but you know how many channel in and all the other players out, the last thing is so Amazon is been investing at this is kind of a backdoor more Amazon news I guess, I've been Amazon really know that they don't break out the numbers but, from all the data that's available like from comscore and things it seems like they're really true that market up there Bill, tennis centers of invested billions of dollars there they were to start up there that they were unicorns mean that over a billion dollar valuation Snapdeal and Flipkart, not news lot of rumors that those two guys are considering merging two kind of have a viable alternative Amazon so it's pretty interesting in in in of the only Market that Amazon is lost in his chinaware Alibaba, had a bit of a head start and Amazon couldn't you know it's a good country for Amazon but it's the one area where they're like number two or I could argue number 3 or 4 actually behind, attention JD show. [1:06:07] Amazon didn't like that and I think they've decided they're going to win an Indian this is a really ended Good indication that they they are. Even though there's some bureaucratic things where they can't do first party there they can only do third-party but they've they've launched FBA so it's a weird country it's it's, spa and third party but no first party but that model seems to be work

The show's two hosts discuss what will be covered in future episodes of the Bally Alley Astrocast. Recurring links: BallyAlley.com - Bally Arcade / Astrocade Website What's New at BallyAlley.com Orphaned Computers & Game Systems Website Bally Alley Yahoo Discussion Group Bally Arcade / Astrocade Atari Age Sub-forum Bally Arcade/Astrocade High Score Club Episode Links: Bally Arcade / Astrocade FAQ Bally Software Downloads - Cassette TapesAudio Recordings from Bob Fabris Collection Arcadian Newsletter Software and Hardware for the Bally Arcade - A Technical Description Picture of the Crazy Climber homebrew cartridge Picture of the War homebrew cartridge ZGRASS Documentation Arcade Games Based on the Astrocade Chipset Gorf Arcade Game Seawolf II Arcade Game Space Zap Arcade Game Wizard of Wor Arcade Game Full Bally Alley Astrocast - Episode 0 Transcription Adam: Hi, everybody.  My name's Adam Trionfo, otherwise known as BallyAlley on the AtariAge forums.  And I'm here with... Chris: Chris, otherwise known as "Chris." Adam: And you're listening to the zero-ith episode of Bally Alley Astrocast.  See, I barely know the name of it yet. Chris: I think me and Adam believe that we thought up the name Astrocast ourselves, and we came to find out that there had already been one, it just hadn't been started. And I guess it was Rick and Willy (I think it was only those two). Adam: Yup. Chris: And, it kinda sat there for a year.  Hopefully they will be contributing to Adam's podcast here. Adam: I don't think of this as "Adam's podcast." (And I just used finger-quotes, sorry about that.)  This is our podcast.  Chris and I are recording this right now.  Also, Paul Thacker, who is a regular of the Bally Alley Yahoo group (which we can talk about at a later time).  We're hopefully going to do this together at some point.  I wanna sound natural as possible for this podcast.  So, I'm trying to not read anything off a piece of paper.  I don't like the sound of my voice, and the fact that I'm letting you hear it means that I love you guys. Chris: It's a great level of trust he's exhibiting, you guys.  Plus, I would immediately take his script away from him if he had one because... Adam: Oh, thanks, Chris! Chris: Yeah.  Extemporaneous is more fun to do, and I think it's more fun to listen to. Adam: So, in saying that, we do have some notes we wanna talk about. For this episode we wanna basically go over what we want to cover.  Which is what people seem to do in these episodes.  Saying, "Hey, there's gonna to be an episode of a podcast called 'this'."  And, that's what we're doing here.  So, here's what we're going in our podcast number zero. Chris: It was always funny to me, like oxymoron, like: episode number zero. Adam: Right.  Right. Chris: Let's go negative one.  Let's be rebels. Adam: You may or may not know what a Bally Arcade, or an Astrocade, is.  It was a console that was developed in about 1977.  It was released in 1977, but the first units were not actually shipped, for various reasons, until January 1978.  And very few people got them.  They were first released by catalog-only, by a company called JS&A.  Those systems had overheating problems.  Most of them were returned-- or many of them were returned.  JS&A only sold approximately 5,000 units (so it says on the Internet).  I don't know where that number is quoted from.  I've never been able to find the source.  Bally eventually started selling them through Montgomery Ward.  Now, Bally also had something called the Zgrass that it wanted to release.  This was going to be expanding the unit into a full-fledged computer.  This never was released.  The Bally system itself did not come with BASIC, but it was available nearly from the start.  Many people used it.  A newsletter formed around it called the ARCADIAN.  The system has 4K of RAM and it does not use sprites, but it could move object just as well as the Atari [VCS] and other systems of its time period.  It could show 256 separate colors and through tricks and machine language, it could show all of them on the screen at once, but not normally in a game.  Although there are a few screens that did it (but not actively during a game).  The system is fun to play... if you can find one that works.  If you don't already have one, you're going to discover (if you go searching for one) they're not inexpensive.  They're becoming pricey on the Internet because of the overheating problems they had, since the beginning (with the data chip), you will find that if you own [should have said buy] one now, you're getting a unit that "has not been tested," which means, of course, it is broken.  If you find one on the Internet that says, "Not tested," please, do not buy it.  Just let it stay there and let someone else buy it.  And, when they get it and it doesn't work, if they're surprised then they did not read the "Bally/Astrocade FAQ."  We'll go into much greater depth about this system in the next episode.  I just wanted to let you know that's the system we'll be talking about.  It has a 24-key number pad.  It has a controller that is-- is it unique?  Well, I think it's unique. Chris.  Um-hum. Adam: It has a paddle built into the top knob.  It's a knob-- it's called.  And it has a joystick-- an eight-directional joystick.  It's built like a gun controller-style pistol.  It's called a "pistol grip."  It's sorta shaped like one, if you picture a classic arcade-style gun, and then just cut off the barrel.  That's basically what you have.  Something that was originally mentioned, and I think Bally might have called it that for two years, are Videocades.  Videocades are the cartridges.  These were actually also referred to as cassettes.  These are not tapes.  These are about the size of a tape, but they are ROM cartridges.  In the beginning they held 2K and later on they held 4K for Bally.  Astrovision, or Astrocade, Inc., later released some 8K games in about 1982.  Those were usually considered the best games on the system because they had more ROM to spare and to put more features into the games.  Now, BASIC was available from about the third or the fourth month after the system was released to the public.  It was originally called BALLY BASIC.  It did not come with a tape interface, but one was available for it.  BALLY BASIC cost approximately $50.  The tape interface, which could allow the user to record at 300-baud... which is pretty slow.  To fill the 1.8K of RAM, which is available to BASIC, would take about four minutes to load a complete program.  Better than retyping it every time, isn't it?  But, it's not a great speed.  Later on, the system (when it was rereleased), it actually came with BASIC.  It was still called BALLY BASIC, but today to differentiate it from the original BASIC cartridge, most people call it ASTROCADE BASIC or AstroBASIC.  The reason for this is the later BASIC has a tape interface built into the cartridge itself.  This can record and playback information at 2000-baud, which is an odd number because it's not a multiple of 300.  Because when 300-baud tapes were speeded up by a newer format later, they were 1800-baud.  Tapes were available, which meant the user community was able to grow because they could share programs.  It was sometimes a problem for them because I could record a program on my tape drive and I could send it to you in the mail.  And you'd say, "It's not loading.  It's not loading!"  Well, you'd sometimes have to adjust your read and write heads to match it.  Imagine having to do that today?  To having to... uh, I wouldn't want to think about doing it.  So, even if you can believe it, with that kind of an issue, with users having to adjust their tape systems in order to load programs sometimes, there were commercially released tapes.  These have been archived and are available and you can download them from BallyAlley.com. Chris: So, the play and record head on anybody's tape recorder... there was the possibility that it had to be adjusted to play a tape his buddy had sent him because he had a tape recorder with differently aligned play and record heads in it-- I mean, that's something else! Adam: Now, the recorders that were normally used were called shoebox recorders.  These were recommended.  If you tried to record to a home stereo, maybe Chris can understand this better and tell me more about it in a later episode, but you really couldn't record to one and then get that information back.  I'm not sure why.  But, the lower quality that was available from the low-end tapes that were less expensive were actually better.  Just like there were better audio tapes available, which you should not have used for data because... because, I don't know why!  So, ideal podcast length.  In my mind I see about an hour, or an hour and a half.  While I listen to many podcasts, among them Intellivisionaries (and others) that are not short.  And, as has been discussed on the Intellivisionaries, there's a pause button.  So, if somehow we do end up at five hours, please understand that there is a pause button.  If we end up less, you don't need to use the pause button.  Isn't that great?  Technology... right? Chris:  Well, a very good idea that you had was obviously to conduct interviews with some, I guess, what, Bally game writers, people who are really knowledgeable about it. Adam: Well, there's quite a few people I'd like to interview.  If we can find people from the 70s and the 80s, and even now, there's some people who have written some modern games-- at least written some programs for the system. Chris: It would help if they're still around. Yeah. Adam: Something that's interesting, that I wanna use, is that there's actually recorded interviews that we have from the early 80s and late 70s of phone conversations that Bob Fabris did (from the ARCADIAN publisher).  There was a newsletter called the ARCADIAN and it published for seven years (from 1978 to 1984 or 85, depending on how you view things a bit).  He recorded some conversations with some of the more prominent people of the time. Chris: That's cool! Adam: We've made WAV files of those or FLAC files and they're available for download (or many of them are already) from BallyAlley.  But, it might be interesting to take out snippets from some of those and put them in the show.  I hadn't thought of that before, but that's why we're going over this. Chris: Yeah.  Absolutely. Adam: Right. Chris: That's really cool.  We say Bally Astrocade, like we say Atari 2600, but it was never actually called the Astrocade when Bally owned it. Adam: Not when Bally owned it; no.  But after it was resold they had the right to use the name Bally for one year. Chris: Oh. Adam: And Astrovision did do that.  So, for a short time, for one year, it was known as the Bally Astrocade.  And it actually was called that. Chris:  Oh.  Okay. Adam:  But, somehow that name has stuck.  And that is what the name is called.  And many people think it was called that from the beginning.  It was originally released under a few different names, which we'll get into at a later date.  I think of it... I like to think of it as the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. Chris: Yeah. Adam: It depends on how you look at it.  Sometimes I go with either.  Sometimes I go with both.  Sometimes I call it the Bally Library Computer.  It just on how I'm feeling at the time.  So, we also don't plan to pre-write episodes.  You might have noticed that by now.  We do have a list that we're going by, and we do wanna use notes, but reading from a script is not what I wanna do.  I don't want to sound dry and humorless.  I like to have Chris here making fun of me-- well, maybe not making fun of me, but, you know, Chris here... helping me along to give me moral support.  And I enjoy that I'll be doing this with him, and hopefully Paul as well. Chris:  It is strange for you and I to sit around talking about old videogames. Adam: Oh... isn't it!  Isn't it though! Chris: [Laughing]  Some of the sections that Adam has come up with are really interesting.  They sound like a lot of fun.  And what's cool is that they are necessarily unique to a podcast about the Bally console.  For instance, we were talking about the ARCADIAN newsletter.  There's going to be a segment-- it will probably be every episode because there is a LOT of source material.  This segment will delve into ARCADIAN notes and letters that did not make it into the published newsletter.  It's kind of a time capsule.  In some ways it will be fascinating even for people who don't know a lot about the Bally Astrocade because what you're getting is correspondence from the 70s and 80s, before anybody really knew what was gonna happen with the 8-bit era, you know? Adam: There's material in the archives.  All of this material is from Bob Fabris.  He was the editor or the ARCADIAN.  Two people, Paul Thacker and I, we bought that collection from an individual who had bought it in the early 2000s directly from Bob.  It was never broken up, so it's all together in about eight boxes-- large boxes-- all in different folders.  Bob Fabris kept a really, really detailed collection and in great order.  He kept it in that shape from 1978 until, what?, about 2001 or 2002 when he sold it. Chris: Wow. Adam: So the fact that it survived and then someone else bought it and didn't want to break it up and sell it is pretty amazing to me.  We were able to pool our funds together, Paul and I, and purchase it.  All of it has been scanned.  Not all of it is available.  Oh, and by the way, BallyAlley, in case there are some listeners who don't know... BallyAlley is a website that I put together.  It's mostly from the archives of the ARACADIAN.  But, there's a lot, a LOT, of interesting material there.  If you're interested in the Bally Arcade, you should check it out.  It's BallyAlley.com. Chris: Adam is being kinda modest.  He's done a lot of work on this.  You're gonna find archived materials that will make your eyeballs pop out of your head. Adam: [Laughing] Chris: You know, he's... Adam: If you saw Chris, then you'd know that's true. Chris:  Yes.  Absolutely.  I'm recording blind.  You know, he's very picky about high quality scans (as high as possible only).  He's vey meticulous about it.  And I definitely recommend that you guys visit BallyAlley period com.  I know it's a lost battle; humor me.  They're not dots.  All right... anyway. Adam: All right.  Cartridge reviews.  The Bally Arcade... it has a lot of perks, one of them is not it's huge library of games.  I take that back.  It has a huge library of games.  Many of them, as some people may not even know who are listening to this, were released on tapes.  But the vast majority of games, that people would think of as the console games, are cartridges.  The Bally could "see" 8K at once.  It didn't have to bankswitch or anything like that in order to do that.  There was never a bankswitching cartridge that was released for the Bally.  At least at that time.  Since the library is so small, I'm not sure if we're planning to cover a game per episode, or since we plan to cover all of the games (and there are certainly less than fifty, if you include prototypes) and some of them are not games.  Some of them were... BIORHYTHM, so that you could know when it would be a good time to get it on with your wife to have a baby.  You know... [laughing] So, if that's what you wanna talk about and listen to... write us and say, "That's sounds great.  I want you to tell me when I can get my wife pregnant." [laughing]  The other day my wife was taking a look at a game I was playing for a competing console, the Atari 8-bit game system. Chris: I thought you were gonna say the Arcadia. Adam: No, not the Arcadia.  I was playing a SUPER BREAKOUT clone.  She took a look at it and didn't know what it was.  I said, "You know, it's a BREAKOUT clone."  She's like, "I don't know what that is."  I said, "No.  Look at the game for a minute.  It looks like BREAKOUT."  And she still didn't get it.  And I said, "Okay, so you're gonna have a ball that bounces off a paddle and it's gonna hit the bricks up above."  And she goes, "I've never seen this before."  And I said, "Okay.  You've heard of PONG, right?"  She's like, "Well, yes I've heard of PONG."  I said, "It's that." Chris: [Laughing] It's that... except better.  Between you and all of the people you're in contact with from the Bally era, and people like Paul.  People who actually wrote games back then... Adam: Um-hum. Chris: Information about how the console works and its languages and stuff... is that pretty-much taken care of, or are there more mysteries to be solved. Adam: There's some mysteries.  The neat thing about this system was that even in the ARCADIAN, in the early issues, you could get access, for like $30, to the photocopies that were used at Nutting Associates.  These are the people who actually designed the Bally system for Bally.  They did arcade games-- we'll go more into that in another episode.  This information was available to subscribers... almost from the get-go.  So, if you wanted to have a source listing of the 8K ROM, you could get it.  Of course, it came with a "Do Not Replicate" on every single page, but... it was... you were allowed to get it.  You could purchase it.  It was freely available and it was encouraged for users to use this information to learn about the system. Chris:  The reason I ask is that I'm wondering what the next step is.  Whenever I think of this console... do people refer to it as a console or a computer, by and large? Adam: A game system in my eyes.  I mean, it's a console.  People don't think of it as a computer.  No. Chris:  I'll start over.  Whenever I think about this system, what usually comes to mind is the fact that it is unexploited.  And that is perhaps the, not quite an elephant in the room, but that is the only real disappointment about the Astrocade is that there are these amazing, vivid, brilliant, games.  I mean, the arcade conversations on the Astrocade are, for all intents and purposes, arcade perfect.  This was a superior machine.  And yet, players were teased with a handful of astonishing games and then that was it.  So, "what could have been," comes to mind for me a lot.  And the phrase tragically untapped.  What I'm wondering is why nobody has brought up the initiative of making new games.  The last two were arcade conversations.  They were not original, but they are, of course, phenomenal.  I mean, two of the best titles, you know are WAR (which is a conversion of WORLORDS) and, of course, CRAZY CLIMBER.  You were in charge of all the packaging and EPROM burning for those.  I'm not saying... Adam:  Partially.  Partially.  For all of one of them I was, but the other one was handled by a man name Ken Lill.  I did... I came up with the package design and stuff like that, and made a lot to make it happen.  But, I didn't program the games.  No. Chris:  Right.  But I mean, somebody else did the coding, but didn't you have all the cartridge shells.  And you were burning... Adam:  I made sure it all happened. Chris:  Okay. Adam:  Yeah.  I mean, I didn't do all the work though. Chris:  Okay. Adam: It helped that I was there.  Put it that way. Chris:  We're talking about CRAZY CLIMBER, mainly, right?  Because you helped with WAR as well. Adam: Yeah.  I did both.  Yeah. Chris.  Okay. Adam:  Um-hum. Chris:  And you wrote some of the back of the box copy. Adam:  I did all of that.  Yeah. Chris:  As expensive and limited as such a run would be, that's not really quite what I'm talking about.  As having to go through all that to give people physical, boxes copies, I guess.  Another reason why people might not have written anymore Astrocade games is that the relatively few surviving consoles could be prone to overheating themselves to death at any time.  But, then there's emulation. Adam: Right. Chris:  MESS is all that we have, and it's not perfect.  So, wouldn't that be the first step for somebody to write a really good Astrocade emulator?  I would do it, if I knew how. Adam: Yes.  If there's one of you out there who's like, "Who couldn't write an Astrocade emulator?" Chris: Yes. Adam:  Please, would you do me a favor and send that to me tomorrow? Chris:  It's time.  ...Tomorrow... [laughing] Adam: Something that I wanna get at is that MESS does work for most games.  There are a few that don't work.  Some of them used to work and now they're broken.  MESS was updated to make it "better," and now some games don't work.  I don't understand why that happened.  The biggest drawback to MESS is that is doesn't support the tape.  It doesn't support-- it supports BASIC, but you can't save or load programs.  And since they're hundreds... there's probably over 500 programs available.  And there's... many, many of those have already been archived and put on BallyAlley.com.  So you can try them out on a real system, but not under emulation.  And it's quite easy to use under real hardware.  We'll get into that at another time too. Chris: In terms of cartridge reviews.  And I'm only going to say this once.  Thanks, by the way, for saying that this is our podcast Adam: Sure. Chris:  I thought I was just being a guest.   Adam:  No.  No... you're just a gas. Chris:  I'm just a gas.  So, should I help you pay for the the Libsyn? Adam: I think we'll be okay. Chris: All right. Adam: All of our users are going to send donations every month. Chris:  Oh, that's right. Adam: [Laughing] Just kidding there, guys. Chris:  So, I'm just going to say this once.  And you're welcome.  Review is a word I have a problem with when it comes to my own, well, stuff I write.  But now, apparently, stuff I talk about.  Because I associate the word review with critics.  I think I was telling you the other day, Adam... Adam:  Yes, you were. Chris:  I would never hit such a low level of self-loathing that I would ever call myself a critic.  Talk about a useless bunch.  For me they'll be overviews.  It's very picky.  Very subjective.  It has nothing to do with anybody else.  You wanna consider yourself reviews-- totally respect that-- but I don't do reviews.  So, either that, or I'm in some sort of really intense denial.  But, personal reflections on games, reviews leaves out... when you call something a review, it leaves out the fact that taste is subjective.  It's a personal thing.  I can't review food for you and have you think, "Oh, now I like that food I used to hate."  One's tastes in games, music, etcetera is just as personal.  So, Adam was saying that there's so few of them, that we're not going to cover a game every episode.  So, what we're going to do is alternate, so that you don't go completely without game "content" (isn't that a buzzword, a frequent word online now: "content"). Adam:  That is.  Yeah. Chris:  Everybody wants content.  I gotta table of contents for ya.  We're going to alternate actual commercial cartridge games with commercially available tape games and even type-in programs, because there were a lot of good ones. Adam: Most of them were written in BASIC. Chris:  Which is just awesome to me. Adam:  Yeah. Chris:  We were thinking of alternating the games stuff I was just talking about with this: Adam:  The Astrocade system, well, the Bally Arcade system, as it was originally designed for home use, it had two versions.  There was an arcade version, which came out in 1978 with the first game, Sea Wolf II in the arcades. And there was the version that was released for the home.  It had 4K of RAM, while the version in the arcades had 16K (and some additional support), but they use the same hardware (like the data chip). They're so similar in fact, that many of the systems games were brought home as cartridges.  They don't use the same code.  They are not-- you can't run code for the arcade and vice-versa.  You can, for instance, take a Gorf and run Gorf on Wizard of Wor hardware.  It'll look the wrong direction, but you can do that.  The systems are very similar in that respect.  But, you can actually take an Astrocade (and it has been done before) that is a 4K unit, and actually do some fiddling with it, change the ROM a bit, give it more RAM (there's more that you have to do)-- there's actually an article about it, it was written in-depth (it's available on BallyAlley, the website).  And you can make it into an arcade unit.  It wouldn't be able to play the arcade games, but it would have access to 16K of RAM and that sort of thing. Chris:  When you say Sea Wolf II, you mean the arcade game was running this hardware that you're talking about. Adam:  Right. Chris: Much of which was also in the console. Adam:  Yes. Chris:  Okay.  And that goes for WIZARD OF WOR, GORF, SPACE ZAP.  Well, that explains why there are so many arcade perfect home versions. Adam.  Um.  Right.  They don't share the same code, but they are very similar.  The Hi-Res machine could display, in what was considered then a high resolution.  The Bally display in 1/4 of that resolution.  I think perhaps will have the first episode cover specifically the hardware of the astrocade. Chris: So, you are saying that this segment would cover the arcade games that used the astrocade hardware, and I find that really, really interesting (because I never knew that).  I thought that they were just, you know, very similar and some of the same people created the home versions, but I didn't realize that... I never realized they were so close. Adam: So, another segment that we plan to do is called, "What the Heck?!?"  It's going to focus on unusual hardware and maybe even released items, but something that, while it was released through the Arcadian newsletter or perhaps the Cursor newsletter (and maybe even one of the other small newsletters that were around for a short time for this system exclusively).  When we're talking about a released product here, we are probably talking about in the tens-- the twenties.  I mean, new homebrew games get a wider release than games that are considered released back then.  Maybe not the games, but hardware peripherals.  There was something called the Computer Ear which could do voice recognition-- sort of.  But the software for that isn't available, I don't think… maybe it is.  I have the hardware, but I've never tried running before. Chris:  We're also gonna-- I say "we," even though Adam's knowledge about, well pretty-much all of this stuff is much greater than mine, hoping to cover the Zgrass keyboard/computer.  Is that a fair description? Adam:  Yeah.  That's what you would read on the Internet about it.  And if you can call that true, then that's what it is. Chris:  Right.  And not just on the WikiRumor page. Adam:  Yeah. Chris:  It's a very unusual system and it's worth learning about.  See, you don't hear about any of this stuff anywhere else and that's what's really cool about this podcast.  Everything you've got archived, everything you've learned, you just never read about it back then, you know? Adam:  It was available to read about, but not in the normal sources that people read about the Astrocade.  Which would have been Electronic Games and some of the other computing magazines at the time.  But they didn't talk about, I mean, it was mentioned briefly... but only as a product that was supposed to come out.  But, in a way, ZGrass did come out.  The product, the language, ZGRASS, was available.  There was a hardware system, a computer (which could cost upwards of $10,000) that used some of the custom chips that were available in the Astrocade.  It was called the UV-1.  It was-- I'll get more into that when I cover the Zgrass system in some future episode, which is why we're talking about it here.  I would like to discover more about it.  I wanna learn.  I want-- I don't think I can use it, because it has not been archived.  But, the documentation is available on BallyAlley.  I have that.  Maybe I'll go through that a little bit.  It was... something to learn about and share... Chris:  Yeah.  Really cool. Adam:  It's all about sharing, man.  And caring.  Okay.  The Bally Arcade and Astrocade history.  History of the month is something that we are going to have.  It's going to start with the "Arcadians" #1, which was the first available newsletter.  The "Arcadians" was a newsletter that published for just four issues.  And it was published-- and it was only two pages.  The first one, I think, was only front and back.  Then, I think, maybe the next one was four pages, but that was only two pages front and back.  It was really just a round-robin letter.  It predates the "Arcadian."  It was only available to a few people.  These have been archived.  You can read them online.  I'm gonna start there.  As soon as BASIC was released, it took a few months after the Astrocade came out (excuse me, before the Bally Arcade came out).  Once that system came out with Bally BASIC (which required a separate BASIC interface so that you could record to tape), then Bob Fabris, the editor, said, "We've got something we can explore together.  Let's do this.  Let's pool our resources and come up with a way to share information.  That was what they were all about.  They did this very early on.  That's something that interests me greatly about the system, and I want to be able to share that and compare it with knowledge of other systems that were out at the time. Chris:  That's really cool.  I mean, it's one of the earliest systems of any kind, that I know of, that actually did have a community.  You know, that were really trying to goad each other into doing new things and write programs and stuff like that.  I mean, I can't imagine there was an Altair community.  I'm trying to... Adam: There was an Altair community. Chris:  Oh.  Well, but they were all very rich.  And they had a lot of time on their hands! Adam:  ...those switches, right? Chris:  I hope that you're gonna to do a "What's New on Bally Alley" I know I keep going on about this, but that is just an amazing website to me.  You do a lot of updates to it, so when you do add new things to the BallyAlley website.  And, who knows, maybe this will give you a reason to add more things to the website. Adam:  It could.  The website isn't updated very frequently.  I have great intentions, everyone.  So, if you've been wanting to see updates, give me some motivation to do some.  I don't mean send me money.  We, as the two of us (and other people on the Yahoo group), we do like to BS about the system.  But, there's so much information in my archives, and there are only a few people who share it with me.  Basically, two other people.  We're thinking about putting it up on archive.org, but some of it is kind of-- I think it should, might remain hidden from viewers, even though it might be archived there.  Because, it's personal letters that, I think, probably shouldn't be shared.  Because, there's personal information there.  I mean, when I got the collection, there was actually checks still that were un-cashed in it that were written in the 70s. Chris:  Wow! Adam:  Those kind of things I did not scan.  Because I was like… what? [sounds of exasperation and/or confusion], it was very strange to me.  They are un-canceled, unused checks out there in some boxes that were people subscribing to the newsletter.  I'm not sure why he didn't cash the checks, but... they're there! Chris:  So you could have them in the archive, I guess. Adam:  Right.  But I don't think I wanna-- I don't think that sort of information should be shared. Chris:  Oh, I agree.  But, you know, I mean back then a dollar, back then, was the equivalent of fifty grand today.  Don't you love it when people say stuff like that?  It's like... well, you're going a little overboard. Adam:  Right.  [Laughing]  We had to walk up and down the hill both ways... Chris: Both ways! Adam:  ...in the snow.  Pick up the coal from between the tracks. Chris:  Any Cosby reference, I'm on!  What I'm hoping... do you think that Paul is going to take part in some way in this first episode? Adam:  I would like him to.  If we take a long time, then probably. Chris:  Well, I'm hoping we're going to hear a lot from Paul Thacker. Adam:  Paul Thacker, he will definitely join us, at least, for the... if he can't make it into this zero episode, he will be in for the first one.  He's a good guy.  He has helped me-- more than helped me!-- he has... he is in control of archiving tapes.  That is his department.  After I wasn't really updating the site too much anymore (I actually had even pulled away from it), in about 2006, Paul Thacker came forward and he introduced himself to me through an email.  He said he would like to help with archiving tapes.  And... he really, really has.  He's the leader in that department.  He has contacted people to make archiving programs possible.  He has followed up with people with large collections.  He has archived them.  Not all of it is available on the website yet, but it is... it has been done.  They're truly archived.  And, what's neat about Paul he has tapes that were available between users.  If you're familiar with growing up with these old systems, you might have had a computer like an Atari 800 or a Commodore 64.  Maybe you had some tapes that you recorded to (or disks).  You would write a "Game Number 1."   And then that was what you'd name the program-- even if the program was a type-in from a "Compute!" magazine or an "Antic" magazine. Chris:  Oh, you would save it as "Game Number 1" Adam:  This is how these tapes were.  People would write one program on it... maybe, maybe even give it a clueless name, that meant nothing to either Paul or I.  Paul would record the whole side.  Paul would go through and say, "What's on here?"  Paul would find a program.  Paul would find SIX different versions of that program!  Paul would find programs that had been halfway recorded over.  Paul made sure to archive all of that, separately (and as efficiently as possible), document it.  So, something I want to cover... there are so many topics... I should back up here, and I should say that there are a lot of topics available to anyone who is starting a podcast.  Something that has to be zeroed in on (and that's not supposed to be a pun on the zero episode) is that you have to choose.  You have to narrow.  You have to focus.  I am no good at that.  I am not good at that... I can't do it. Chris:  How many fingers am I holding up? Adam:  Chris is holding up a finger, and I'm supposed to see one.  And I'm hoping that is what he was doing-- and not giving me the finger. Chris: [Laughing] Adam:  So, I would like to cover the ancestry of the Bally Arcade.  Something that came up and about 2001, perhaps 2002, is someone named Tony Miller, who was responsible for working on the Bally Arcade when it was created, mentioned that the Bally Arcade's chipset is actually a direct descendent of "Space Invaders" arcade game's... the CPU for "Gun Fight".  Or something to that affect.  I didn't understand it then, I might be able to understand it better if I find those exact posts (which are definitely archived).  Now, "Gun Fight" used the Intel 8080 CPU, which is why the Astrocade uses the Z80.  Because it's compatible... sort of.  The Z80 can run 8080 but not the other way around.  As you can see, my knowledge of all of this is completely limited.  What I just told you, is pretty much what I know.  There's obviously a story there.  If I could find people to interview, if I can dig into this, there is a GOOD story there.  And I would like to discover it and present it. Chris:  Yeah, 'cause that would mean Taito took some technical influence from Midway.  Because it was Midway that added a CPU, at all, to "Gun Fight," right?  So... that's pretty interesting. Adam:  We'll find out, Chris. Chris:  Yeah.  So, I've already talked about writing new games as the next logical step once one has a lot of information about any game system, or any computer (or anything like that).  So, are we going to encourage activity in the homebrew Astrocade scene?  Because, there is a latent one there.  You should definitely cover the two released games that we've already talked about: WAR and CRAZY CLIMBER.  Those were pretty big deals.  The first new Astrocade game since... what?... 1985-ish?  I mean, on cartridge... Adam:  It depends on how you look at it.  There were actually some people in the community, who were just sending cartridges back and forth to each other, who were sharing code in the 80s.  They're not considered released cartridges.  Something that is available to the public… yes. Chris:  In terms of talking about homebrew programming, you can also talk about people who just play around with this system, or even interview them.  What do you find interesting about the… Adam:  Yeah.  I would like to do interviews with people who actually have a lot of experience with the system and maybe grew up with it, which I did not do.  I didn't learn about it until... the 90s.  About homebrew programming: I believe, and I would love to make you guys believe, that homebrew programming did not start in the 90s.  I would like to let you know that homebrew programming has been around since 1975 (in my eyes) and earlier.  The very, very first PCs, and by that I mean "Personal Computers," not "IBM Personal Computers," (alright?)... these systems were programmed in people's living rooms, in people's kitchens.  If that is not homebrew programming, I don't know what is. Chris:  Right. Adam:  These people were learning for the sake of learning.  They were playing for the sake of the experience of touching the hardware, learning the software-- they weren't doing this for work, they were doing this for pleasure.  This is the same exact reason people are homebrewing games today.  They were doing this back then.  An insight that you get to see very clearly is in the in the "Arcadian" newsletters, and in the "Cursor" newsletters as well, is people want to teach other people.  They are about sharing.  They are about, "Hey I wrote this.  This is great.  You guys should type it in and try it out... and if you find out anything about it, let me know what you think.  If you can add something to it… if you can cut off six bytes and add a sound effect, please do that, because there's no sound."  These people wanted to help each other, and through that it is available in archives, and we can look at this and learn today.  I would like to have that happen, so that people of today, people who have the knowledge, have modern computers that can cross-compile and create new games-- that would be neat... to me. Chris:  Yeah. Adam:  It has been neat, went two have been released already.  But, even if new games don't get created, what about MESS?  Let's make that better. Chris:  Before we go any further, I think you should "share" your email address so that you get feedback. Adam:  My name is Adam, and you can reach me at ballyalley@hotmail.com Chris:  You can private message me on AtariAge.  I'm chris++. Adam:  Now we expect to get loads of email.  We are gonna be clogged.  We're going to have to have the first episode be nothing but reader feedback. Chris:  I'm telling ya, we really got a good thing going, so you better hang on to yourself. Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  That's a Bowie quote.  Well, before we wrap this up, let's cover the obvious thing.  How did you get so involved in the Bally Arcade/Astrocade? Adam:  When I first began collecting some of these older consoles and home computers... I never stopped playing them, but when they started becoming available for a quarter, I said, "You know, why don't I just buy each one of them."  I had a very large collection for awhile, until I finally gave some of it to Chris... got rid of most of it, and... I am glad I did, because now I play the games I own.  What I don't play, I get to eventually.  In about 1994... '93... I read about this system in one of the books I had that was from the early 80s that covered the Zgrass, actually.  It was the system, I was like, "I want to get a Zgrass, that'd be neat."  I don't have one.  I did find out that it was related to the Bally Arcade.  From there... I wanted one.  I found my first one for a quarter.  I picked it up at a flea market. Chris:  Oh. Adam:  It came with a few games.  In fact, I saw the games first, and I was like, "How much you want for these?"  Each game was a quarter.  I think there was four or five of 'em.  Then I saw the system, but I didn't have that much money with me.  I had like a dollar left or something (I'd already bought some other things).  I was talking to a friend that I'd gone with, and he said, "Why don't you go back there and offer him your buck for it?"  I went back, and I said, "How much do you want for the game (the system)?"  And he goes, "A quarter." Chris:  Wow. Adam:  So, I still had change to go by another: 2600, an Intellivision... no... [laughing]  But, I didn't find anything else that day. Chris:  Those were the days before you people let eBay ruin that part of the hobby. Adam:  So, I did know that there was an "Arcadian" newsletter.  But, I was a member of an Atari 8-bit user group here in town.  It so happened, I was bringing it up... talking with someone there, and they said, "Oh, I've heard of that!"  I'm like, "Oh, you've heard of the Bally?"  They said, "Oh, sure.  You should talk to Mr. Houser" (who was the president of the Atari club).  Then he said, "I think he wrote some games for it."  I said, "Hmm.  That sounds interesting."  So, I approached him.  By 1994, there were very few users left in the Atari 8-bit group.  Who was left, we all knew each other very well (or, as well as we could-- even though some of us only knew each other from meetings).  We started talking.  He told me that he'd been involved with the "Arcadian."  He had published tapes.  He had something called "The Catalog" [THE SOURCEBOOK], which I now know was the way most people order tapes (but, back then I didn't).  He kept track of all this, and he still had all of his things.  He invited me over one Sunday afternoon and he showed me what he owned, which was... pretty-much everything for the Astrocade that was released.  We went through it one Sunday afternoon, and his son (who was in his early 20s) shared his memories of the machine.  I fell in love: I thought, "Wow, this system is great!"  While I was there Mr. Houser, his name was Richard Houser, he said, "Hey, you know what... we should call up Bob."  I said, "Bob, who?"  He said, "He was the person who used to publish the "Arcadian."  I said, "... Really?"  He's like, "Yeah, let's call him."  So, he called up Bob.  They chatted a bit (for a while) and he told him who I was-- I didn't talk to Bob.  But, he was available back then.  I thought that was great, so I wrote Bob a letter.  I said, "Would it be okay if I get some of your information..."  Later on, in the late-90s, he gave me permission to do that.  At the time, I just said, "Hey.  Here I am."  What's really neat, is I started sending him ORPHANED COMPUTERS & GAME SYSTEMS (which was a newsletter I did in the early-90s.  After three issues, Chris, here, joined me on board).  I sent them to him.  When I bought the Bally collection from him, those issues that I'd sent to him brought back to me.  Which, was, like, this huge circle... because it came through several people, in order to come back.  I found that really neat. Chris:  Yeah. Adam:  Eventually, with Chris, we discovered the system together.  We played around with it.  What was it...?  About 2001, I started BallyAlley.com.  It doesn't look great now, and it looked worse then.  Now, here I am... having a podcast.  How about you, Chris? Chris:  I never stopped playing all the way through either.  You know? Adam:  Why should've we? Chris:  Well, yeah.  I kept playing the old games through the period when they started to be called "classic" and "retro."  This happened at some point in the mid-90s. Adam:  During the HUGE crash during in the 80s (that none of us saw). Chris:  Yeah... that none of us knew about, except for the great prices (which I attributed to over-stock). Adam:  I didn't even think about it. Chris:  Well, they weren't all cheaper.  Even into '83/'84, I remember spending thirty-odd dollars on PITFALL II: LOST CAVERNS for the 2600. Adam:  Yeah, right.  I got that for my birthday, because it was $30... and I didn't have $30, I was a kid. Chris:  Right.  'Cause... that was about two-million dollars in today's money. Adam:  Also, for us, I think, we went onto computers, like many people our age at the time.  So, we sort of distanced ourselves.  The prices for computer stock stayed about the same, as they had for Atari cartridges, and things like that. Chris:  That's a good point.  Yeah.  In coming across "classic," after I hadn't really stopped playing my favorites (and discovering new favorites, thanks to the advent of thrift shops and video games at Goodwill, and stuff), I'd read that and say, "Oh, they're classic now.  Oh, all right.  If you say so."  I thought that was really funny.  So, by the late 90s, I thought I was the only person on earth (not literally, but pretty close) who is still playing these "old" videogames.  All I had when we started hanging out again, Adam, was an Atari 2600 and a Commodore 64.  That was all I wanted.  I didn't want to know about anything else, I didn't want to know about this new CD-ROM, with the "multimedia." Adam:  So, let's... this time period would have been...? Chris:  This is 1997.  By this point, I had been writing my own articles and essays for my own amusement (saving them as sequential files on 1541 floppies using the Commodore 64).  I wrote a file writer and reader program.  I thought I was the only one doing nerdy stuff like this, but I had fun doing it.  And I was still playing all the old games, picking 'em up for a buck or less, while making my rounds at the thrift shops and at Goodwills and everything like that.  I was in a subsidiary of Goodwill that was attached to the largest Goodwill store in Albuquerque.  I ran into a buddy of mine, from ten years previous.  He and I have been freshman in high school, and then I went to another high school and lost touch with all of my friends.  This guy's name, if you can believe this goofy name, was Adam Trionfo.  The store had an even goofier name: the U-Fix-It Corral, but then it changed into Clearance Corner.  Is that right? Adam:  Correct.  Yes. Chris:  Adam was working there.  So, I'm going through a box of... something... from the 80s.  He came over, "Are you Chris?"  I said, "Yeah.  Adam?"  He and I, you know, sort of shook hands.  I said, "Well, that's cool, you're working at Goodwill."  "Yup."  Then I left, and I never saw him again... Adam:  [Laughing] Untill today. Chris:  Until today.  That's why it really sounds improvised here.  He gave me a newsletter he had written about... old videogames (and they weren't even all that old yet, at the time).  He started ORPHANED COMPUTERS & GAME SYSTEMS (on paper, kids!) in 1994.  I asked him, "So, you write about video games too?"  He said, "Yeah."  We started hanging out playing games... a lot.  I didn't know anyone else at the time who liked to play Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 games.  He eventually nudged me to the Internet (or, dragged me... kicking and screaming).  When I encouraged him to start up his newsletter again, he said he would if I'd collaborate.  We did that for couple of years.  Sent out a lot of paper issues.  Had a ball writing it.  Going to World of Atari 98 (and then CGE 2003).  Using interviews that we had conducted at those to feed the material for the newsletter.  In 1999, it became a website.  We've actually been pretty good about adding recent articles... Adam:  Recently.  Yeah. Chris:  ... which is good for us.  I don't know what any of this has to do with what you asked me.  In 1982, we took a trip back East to Buffalo to visit family.  My mom's sister's best friend had a son named Robert, who was a couple of years older than me (I was ten, he was probably twelve or thirteen).  He was the kid who first showed me Adventure. Adam:  Never heard of it. Chris:  Summertime of '82 [mumbling/talked-over??] I got my mind blown by it.  This same guy, Robert, took me into his basement to show me his Atari computer (I believe).  He said not to touch it, because he had a program in memory.  He was typing in a program and he had a magazine open.  That's all I remember.  I wish I had focused on the model number or which magazine it was.  It looked like all of this gobbledygook on the screen.  I was absolutely captivated because-- who didn't want to make his own videogames?  I'd been playing Atari VCS games since February of '82.  It became an obsession with me, on par with music (believe it or not).  He said not to touch it because he hadn't saved it yet.  I said, "How do ya save it?"  You know what I mean?  I didn't ask him any smart-ass questions: "Okay, ya gonna take a picture of the screen?" Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  He said, "I save them on these."  He showed me just a normal blank cassette, like you would listen to music on.  That just entranced me: all of these innocent music cassettes hiding videogames on them.   Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  I learned how to program in BASIC that summer from a book checked out from the library.  I mean, I just really got interested in talking to this new thing.  This home computer: the microcomputer (as it was called quite often).  The "micro" to separate them from "mainframes," because, you know, a lot of our friends had mainframes in their bedrooms. Adam:  Right. Chris.  Then he brought me over and showed me one more thing before we had to go.  This was the Bally Professional Arcade.  I thought it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  We played THE INCREDIBLE WIZARD.  He let me play for a little while.  I said, "This is just like WIZARD OF WOR!"  He said, "Yeah, it is."  I can't remember if he had an explanation, or had read an explanation, of why the name was changed.  That was my only experience with the Astrocade.  I loved the controller.  To this day, it is still one of my favorite controllers.  I love the trigger thing, and I love the combination of a joystick and a paddle in one knob on top of it.  I didn't see another Astrocade until I started hanging out with you again in '97.  It figures that you were able to collect all of that amazing stuff because you worked at Goodwill. Adam:  I didn't use that to my advantage. Chris: [sarcastically] I'm sure you didn't! Adam:  I wasn't allowed to do that. Chris:  Yeah, well, I'm sure you didn't steal it... Adam:  No. Chris:  But I mean, come on!, you probably made note of what came in. Adam:  There was actually a rule that I had to follow.  When anything came in, it had to sit on the shelves for 24 hours before it could be purchased by an employee.  That didn't mean we had to show everyone where it was, but it had to be out.  And, that was true: it was out.  That didn't mean we said...  (because there were people that came in every single day, just like I used to like to go around too).  It would be on the shelf, but that didn't mean it would be right on the front shelf, saying, "Buy me please, Atari game collector."  It was in the store somewhere! Chris:  You put it in the back, near the electric pencil sharpener! Adam:  No, I didn't hide it either.  I didn't want to get in trouble. Chris:  Nah.  I know.  Adam had an original Odyssey with all of the layover-- the "layovers?"  With all the airplane stops.  No, with all the overlays. Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  Which, is pretty amazing!  You had an Odyssey, with original 1972 Magnavox console, with everything else: an Intellivision, he had an Odyssey 2 (with boxed QUEST FOR THE RINGS)... and... Adam:  I had 43 different systems. Chris:  Holy cow! Adam:  I am so glad that I don't have that anymore! Chris:  That is a lot for an apartment. Adam:  So, now I have a few left. Chris:  Yes, folks, he does have an Astrocade. Adam:  I do. Chris:  He does have all of the original cartridge games for it.  I think you got all of them? Adam:  I had them, but now I have a multicart.  I got rid of most of them.  I feel... I kept some of my favorites.  I kept my prototypes. Chris:  Which is cool.  Obviously, you have WAR and CRAZY CLIMBER. Adam:  Right. Chris:  THE INCREDIBLE WIZARD. Adam:  I think, I have number 2's, because the programmer got number 1's. Chris:  That's pretty cool.   Adam:  Yeah.  But, honestly, I don't care about the numbers on them.  They were hand numbered, because collector seem to like that.  Personally, since I did the numbering, I found it annoying. Chris:  Well, there were fifty sold? Adam:  There were fifty each.  Yeah.  There was a run of 20 for WAR, because we didn't have any cartridge shells.  We got more, and we did the second run.  The run of CRAZY CLIMBER was always 50.  It was released all at once. Chris:  You have number two, and [sarcastically], that's a collectors item.. Adam:  Right! Chris: ...if anyone knew what it was. Adam:  I should have got number 0!  Think of this, this episode is a collector's item already! Chris:  You taught me a great deal about the Astrocade and how it worked.  You've told me some things that I just find...  so cool.  Like, you had to use the screen for code, because part of your available RAM was the Screen RAM, right?  (And still is.) Adam:  Under BASIC, that's correct. Chris:  That's how I became even more interested in the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. Adam:  We are about finished wrapping things up here.  Just for the last few things to say.  We are going to have an episode every two weeks (or so).  So, that would be bimonthly.  I hope you guys... if you have any ideas that you want to come up with, will send in some feedback.  If we get no feedback by the first one, that's okay... because we expect... a couple of people... to listen to this.   Chris:  Thanks for listening, and thanks for inviting me along, Adam. Adam:  Good to have ya! [End of episode]

The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR)podcast series profiling the winners of its 2011 Excellence in New Communications Awards continues with a conversation featuring Beth Perell, Vice President of Communications and Information Management (left) and Arlene McCrehan, Senior Director of Online Media from Goodwill Industries International, which won an award for Internal Communications. Beth and Arlene collaborated on Goodwill's more user-friendly and better organized intranet (case study), recognized with the SNCR Excellence in New Communications Award for Online Reputation Management. [powerpress] The podcasts are being produced by Steve Lubetkin of Lubetkin Global Communications LLC, a Senior Fellow of SNCR and a member of the SNCR Advisory Board. The podcast series appears weekly on Thursdays over the next several months.   Beth Perell, Vice President, Communications and Information Management, Goodwill Industries International, Inc. Beth joined Goodwill portal team in 2005 to make information accessible to local Goodwills and help develop a culture of knowledge sharing. In 2007, she became the Director of Learning Solutions which also oversaw the in-person training events and technology-based learning initiatives. In 2009, she became the VP of Communications and Information Management overseeing web development, media relations, social media and communications strategies. Beth has over 15 years of communications and knowledge management experience and has held positions at Mercer Human Resource Consulting and A.T. Kearney. Beth holds a B.A. from Miami University and a Master's degree from Dominican University. Arlene McCrehan, Senior Director of Online Media, Goodwill Industries International, Inc. Arlene leads a team responsible for Goodwill's social media initiatives and its public web sites, including the award-winning My Story blog. She is the co-inventor of the Donation Impact Calculator, located at donate.goodwill.org. Collectively, her team's online reach extends to more than seven million visitors annually.               Subscribe to the RSS feed for the SNCR podcast. Subscribe to these podcasts in the Apple iTunes Music Store.