Podcasts about google suite

20250521 Office Space-Its a G suite thang Originally Broadcasted May 21, 2025, on ACB Media 5   Beginning this week, Office Space turned its sites (see what we did there) on the Google Suite and all of the productivity apps available. Participants tuned in to see what we covered first!   Sponsored by: ViperTech Training     Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

Os cuento como funciona Google Gemini en las aplicaciones de Google Suite con algunos ejemplos de uso que he realizado.Este podcast está asociado a la red de Sospechosos Habituales donde podréis encontrar otros muchos podcast de diferentes temáticas.

Os cuento como funciona Google Gemini en las aplicaciones de Google Suite con algunos ejemplos de uso que he realizado.Este podcast está asociado a la red de Sospechosos Habituales donde podréis encontrar otros muchos podcast de diferentes temáticas.

Welcome back to another episode of School Counseling Simplified! All April long, I'm sitting down with amazing guest experts to bring you insight, encouragement, and practical tools for your school counseling practice. Today's guest is the incredible Patti Hoelzle from Rooted Well, and we're talking all about something many counselors shy away from… data. But don't worry—Patti breaks it down in a way that's simple, empowering, and exciting! Patti Hoelzle is the owner of Rooted WELL and a National Board Certified School Counselor with a passion for building proactive, equitable systems of student support. She trains and consults on mindfulness in schools, trauma-informed practices, tiered interventions, and PBIS, working with educators and families nationwide. A sought-after speaker, Patti has presented at local and national conferences and teaches as an adjunct professor in a school counseling graduate program. Previously, she led social-emotional learning and MTSS efforts in a school district and has spent 18 years dedicated to being a professional school counselor. Recognized as Washington's 2021 School Counselor Advocate of the Year, Patti is dedicated to ensuring every student gets the whole-child support they deserve. Why Data Matters in School Counseling School counselors are in a unique position—we have to do the job, prove our impact, and often justify our position for the following school year. The good news? Data can do all three. Using data allows you to: Advocate for your role and time Communicate impact to stakeholders, families, and administration Support budget decisions and staffing Build confidence in your work Time Tracking as a Starting Point Patti recommends starting with one of the simplest tools: a time tracker. She's created an Excel spreadsheet workbook that allows counselors to track: Time spent on individual students Tasks completed throughout the day Graphs and charts that automatically populate from your entries This is perfect for sharing with admin, staying accountable, and noticing patterns in how your time is spent. You can find this resource in Patti's Teachers Pay Teachers store (linked in the show notes below). Using Google Tools for Easy Data Collection Another strategy Patti loves: Google Forms + the Google Suite. These tools are powerful for: Progress monitoring Sending surveys to students, teachers, and caregivers Collecting ongoing data during small groups Tracking changes in student behavior or academic progress And bonus—sending forms to caregivers via email often leads to higher participation rates than paper handouts. Advice for New Counselors Start small. Patti suggests: Begin with tracking your time, since it's something you're already doing Add in pre/post assessments once you're in the groove Use tools that already exist—no need to reinvent the wheel A Mindset Shift: The Slow Cooker Analogy “Our work is like a slow cooker, not a microwave.” Counselors often wish for a quick fix, but real change takes time. Don't be discouraged if you don't see growth right away. If your data isn't showing growth: Don't take it personally—there are many factors at play Use it as a learning opportunity Be willing to adapt and try new approaches Track student growth over time, especially with Tier 2 or Tier 3 students This conversation was such a great reminder that data doesn't have to be intimidating—it can actually empower us to better serve our students and advocate for ourselves. You can connect with Patti and find her time tracker and other amazing resources linked below in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week on School Counseling Simplified!  Resources mentioned: Join my school counselor membership IMPACT here! If you are enjoying School Counseling Simplified please follow and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Connect with Rachel: TpT Store Blog Instagram Facebook Page Facebook Group Pinterest  Youtube Connect with Patti: rootedwellcoaching.com TpT Store TikTok Instagram More About School Counseling Simplified: School Counseling Simplified is a podcast offering easy to implement strategies for busy school counselors. The host, Rachel Davis from Bright Futures Counseling, shares tips and tricks she has learned from her years of experience as a school counselor both in the US and at an international school in Costa Rica. You can listen to School Counseling Simplified on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more!  

Google is out here doing the most—and you're probably not even using half of what it can do. These five AI tools inside Google Suite will blow your mind and save you hours. Inbox zero in five minutes (yes, really) Scheduling meetings with one click (no back-and-forth nonsense) AI workflow productive hacks that keep you on track Best AI apps built right into Google (no extra downloads) The sneaky new Google Docs trick that makes SOPs actually usable Hit play now if you're ready to ditch the busy work and start working smarter. PS: What's your favorite productivity AI hack? Drop it in the comments!   Mentioned In The Episode: Inbox Zero in Five Minutes – Blog Post Google's Built-in Meeting Scheduler Time Insights Feature in Google Calendar How to Use Google Shared Drive Google Docs' New Tabs Feature

Send us a textToday we are taking a deep dive into the Google Workspace Suite of tools. These free tools are cloud based and able to be accessed in minutes after the creation of a Gmail account. These tools are widely considered to be industry standard tools, as they make collaboration and asynchronous editing possible. Learn how the Punchmark team has been using these as well as how you can level up your own company's collaboration skills with them! Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com Inquire about sponsoring In the Loupe and showcase your business on our next episode: podcast@punchmark.com

Alessio will be at AWS re:Invent next week and hosting a casual coffee meetup on Wednesday, RSVP here! And subscribe to our calendar for our Singapore, NeurIPS, and all upcoming meetups!We are still taking questions for our next big recap episode! Submit questions and messages on Speakpipe here for a chance to appear on the show!If you've been following the AI agents space, you have heard of Lindy AI; while founder Flo Crivello is hesitant to call it "blowing up," when folks like Andrew Wilkinson start obsessing over your product, you're definitely onto something.In our latest episode, Flo walked us through Lindy's evolution from late 2022 to now, revealing some design choices about agent platform design that go against conventional wisdom in the space.The Great Reset: From Text Fields to RailsRemember late 2022? Everyone was "LLM-pilled," believing that if you just gave a language model enough context and tools, it could do anything. Lindy 1.0 followed this pattern:* Big prompt field ✅* Bunch of tools ✅* Prayer to the LLM gods ✅Fast forward to today, and Lindy 2.0 looks radically different. As Flo put it (~17:00 in the episode): "The more you can put your agent on rails, one, the more reliable it's going to be, obviously, but two, it's also going to be easier to use for the user."Instead of a giant, intimidating text field, users now build workflows visually:* Trigger (e.g., "Zendesk ticket received")* Required actions (e.g., "Check knowledge base")* Response generationThis isn't just a UI change - it's a fundamental rethinking of how to make AI agents reliable. As Swyx noted during our discussion: "Put Shoggoth in a box and make it a very small, minimal viable box. Everything else should be traditional if-this-then-that software."The Surprising Truth About Model LimitationsHere's something that might shock folks building in the space: with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, the model is no longer the bottleneck. Flo's exact words (~31:00): "It is actually shocking the extent to which the model is no longer the limit. It was the limit a year ago. It was too expensive. The context window was too small."Some context: Lindy started when context windows were 4K tokens. Today, their system prompt alone is larger than that. But what's really interesting is what this means for platform builders:* Raw capabilities aren't the constraint anymore* Integration quality matters more than model performance* User experience and workflow design are the new bottlenecksThe Search Engine Parallel: Why Horizontal Platforms Might WinOne of the spiciest takes from our conversation was Flo's thesis on horizontal vs. vertical agent platforms. He draws a fascinating parallel to search engines (~56:00):"I find it surprising the extent to which a horizontal search engine has won... You go through Google to search Reddit. You go through Google to search Wikipedia... search in each vertical has more in common with search than it does with each vertical."His argument: agent platforms might follow the same pattern because:* Agents across verticals share more commonalities than differences* There's value in having agents that can work together under one roof* The R&D cost of getting agents right is better amortized across use casesThis might explain why we're seeing early vertical AI companies starting to expand horizontally. The core agent capabilities - reliability, context management, tool integration - are universal needs.What This Means for BuildersIf you're building in the AI agents space, here are the key takeaways:* Constrain First: Rather than maximizing capabilities, focus on reliable execution within narrow bounds* Integration Quality Matters: With model capabilities plateauing, your competitive advantage lies in how well you integrate with existing tools* Memory Management is Key: Flo revealed they actively prune agent memories - even with larger context windows, not all memories are useful* Design for Discovery: Lindy's visual workflow builder shows how important interface design is for adoptionThe Meta LayerThere's a broader lesson here about AI product development. Just as Lindy evolved from "give the LLM everything" to "constrain intelligently," we might see similar evolution across the AI tooling space. The winners might not be those with the most powerful models, but those who best understand how to package AI capabilities in ways that solve real problems reliably.Full Video PodcastFlo's talk at AI Engineer SummitChapters* 00:00:00 Introductions * 00:04:05 AI engineering and deterministic software * 00:08:36 Lindys demo* 00:13:21 Memory management in AI agents * 00:18:48 Hierarchy and collaboration between Lindys * 00:21:19 Vertical vs. horizontal AI tools * 00:24:03 Community and user engagement strategies * 00:26:16 Rickrolling incident with Lindy * 00:28:12 Evals and quality control in AI systems * 00:31:52 Model capabilities and their impact on Lindy * 00:39:27 Competition and market positioning * 00:42:40 Relationship between Factorio and business strategy * 00:44:05 Remote work vs. in-person collaboration * 00:49:03 Europe vs US Tech* 00:58:59 Testing the Overton window and free speech * 01:04:20 Balancing AI safety concerns with business innovation Show Notes* Lindy.ai* Rick Rolling* Flo on X* TeamFlow* Andrew Wilkinson* Dust* Poolside.ai* SB1047* Gathertown* Sid Sijbrandij* Matt Mullenweg* Factorio* Seeing Like a StateTranscriptAlessio [00:00:00]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol.ai.Swyx [00:00:12]: Hey, and today we're joined in the studio by Florent Crivello. Welcome.Flo [00:00:15]: Hey, yeah, thanks for having me.Swyx [00:00:17]: Also known as Altimore. I always wanted to ask, what is Altimore?Flo [00:00:21]: It was the name of my character when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. Always. I was like 11 years old.Swyx [00:00:26]: What was your classes?Flo [00:00:27]: I was an elf. I was a magician elf.Swyx [00:00:30]: Well, you're still spinning magic. Right now, you're a solo founder and CEO of Lindy.ai. What is Lindy?Flo [00:00:36]: Yeah, we are a no-code platform letting you build your own AI agents easily. So you can think of we are to LangChain as Airtable is to MySQL. Like you can just pin up AI agents super easily by clicking around and no code required. You don't have to be an engineer and you can automate business workflows that you simply could not automate before in a few minutes.Swyx [00:00:55]: You've been in our orbit a few times. I think you spoke at our Latent Space anniversary. You spoke at my summit, the first summit, which was a really good keynote. And most recently, like we actually already scheduled this podcast before this happened. But Andrew Wilkinson was like, I'm obsessed by Lindy. He's just created a whole bunch of agents. So basically, why are you blowing up?Flo [00:01:16]: Well, thank you. I think we are having a little bit of a moment. I think it's a bit premature to say we're blowing up. But why are things going well? We revamped the product majorly. We called it Lindy 2.0. I would say we started working on that six months ago. We've actually not really announced it yet. It's just, I guess, I guess that's what we're doing now. And so we've basically been cooking for the last six months, like really rebuilding the product from scratch. I think I'll list you, actually, the last time you tried the product, it was still Lindy 1.0. Oh, yeah. If you log in now, the platform looks very different. There's like a ton more features. And I think one realization that we made, and I think a lot of folks in the agent space made the same realization, is that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I think many people, when they started working on agents, they were very LLM peeled and chat GPT peeled, right? They got ahead of themselves in a way, and us included, and they thought that agents were actually, and LLMs were actually more advanced than they actually were. And so the first version of Lindy was like just a giant prompt and a bunch of tools. And then the realization we had was like, hey, actually, the more you can put your agent on Rails, one, the more reliable it's going to be, obviously, but two, it's also going to be easier to use for the user, because you can really, as a user, you get, instead of just getting this big, giant, intimidating text field, and you type words in there, and you have no idea if you're typing the right word or not, here you can really click and select step by step, and tell your agent what to do, and really give as narrow or as wide a guardrail as you want for your agent. We started working on that. We called it Lindy on Rails about six months ago, and we started putting it into the hands of users over the last, I would say, two months or so, and I think things really started going pretty well at that point. The agent is way more reliable, way easier to set up, and we're already seeing a ton of new use cases pop up.Swyx [00:03:00]: Yeah, just a quick follow-up on that. You launched the first Lindy in November last year, and you were already talking about having a DSL, right? I remember having this discussion with you, and you were like, it's just much more reliable. Is this still the DSL under the hood? Is this a UI-level change, or is it a bigger rewrite?Flo [00:03:17]: No, it is a much bigger rewrite. I'll give you a concrete example. Suppose you want to have an agent that observes your Zendesk tickets, and it's like, hey, every time you receive a Zendesk ticket, I want you to check my knowledge base, so it's like a RAG module and whatnot, and then answer the ticket. The way it used to work with Lindy before was, you would type the prompt asking it to do that. You check my knowledge base, and so on and so forth. The problem with doing that is that it can always go wrong. You're praying the LLM gods that they will actually invoke your knowledge base, but I don't want to ask it. I want it to always, 100% of the time, consult the knowledge base after it receives a Zendesk ticket. And so with Lindy, you can actually have the trigger, which is Zendesk ticket received, have the knowledge base consult, which is always there, and then have the agent. So you can really set up your agent any way you want like that.Swyx [00:04:05]: This is something I think about for AI engineering as well, which is the big labs want you to hand over everything in the prompts, and only code of English, and then the smaller brains, the GPU pours, always want to write more code to make things more deterministic and reliable and controllable. One way I put it is put Shoggoth in a box and make it a very small, the minimal viable box. Everything else should be traditional, if this, then that software.Flo [00:04:29]: I love that characterization, put the Shoggoth in the box. Yeah, we talk about using as much AI as necessary and as little as possible.Alessio [00:04:37]: And what was the choosing between kind of like this drag and drop, low code, whatever, super code-driven, maybe like the Lang chains, auto-GPT of the world, and maybe the flip side of it, which you don't really do, it's like just text to agent, it's like build the workflow for me. Like what have you learned actually putting this in front of users and figuring out how much do they actually want to add it versus like how much, you know, kind of like Ruby on Rails instead of Lindy on Rails, it's kind of like, you know, defaults over configuration.Flo [00:05:06]: I actually used to dislike when people said, oh, text is not a great interface. I was like, ah, this is such a mid-take, I think text is awesome. And I've actually come around, I actually sort of agree now that text is really not great. I think for people like you and me, because we sort of have a mental model, okay, when I type a prompt into this text box, this is what it's going to do, it's going to map it to this kind of data structure under the hood and so forth. I guess it's a little bit blackmailing towards humans. You jump on these calls with humans and you're like, here's a text box, this is going to set up an agent for you, do it. And then they type words like, I want you to help me put order in my inbox. Oh, actually, this is a good one. This is actually a good one. What's a bad one? I would say 60 or 70% of the prompts that people type don't mean anything. Me as a human, as AGI, I don't understand what they mean. I don't know what they mean. It is actually, I think whenever you can have a GUI, it is better than to have just a pure text interface.Alessio [00:05:58]: And then how do you decide how much to expose? So even with the tools, you have Slack, you have Google Calendar, you have Gmail. Should people by default just turn over access to everything and then you help them figure out what to use? I think that's the question. When I tried to set up Slack, it was like, hey, give me access to all channels and everything, which for the average person probably makes sense because you don't want to re-prompt them every time you add new channels. But at the same time, for maybe the more sophisticated enterprise use cases, people are like, hey, I want to really limit what you have access to. How do you kind of thread that balance?Flo [00:06:35]: The general philosophy is we ask for the least amount of permissions needed at any given moment. I don't think Slack, I could be mistaken, but I don't think Slack lets you request permissions for just one channel. But for example, for Google, obviously there are hundreds of scopes that you could require for Google. There's a lot of scopes. And sometimes it's actually painful to set up your Lindy because you're going to have to ask Google and add scopes five or six times. We've had sessions like this. But that's what we do because, for example, the Lindy email drafter, she's going to ask you for your authorization once for, I need to be able to read your email so I can draft a reply, and then another time for I need to be able to write a draft for them. We just try to do it very incrementally like that.Alessio [00:07:15]: Do you think OAuth is just overall going to change? I think maybe before it was like, hey, we need to set up OAuth that humans only want to kind of do once. So we try to jam-pack things all at once versus what if you could on-demand get different permissions every time from different parts? Do you ever think about designing things knowing that maybe AI will use it instead of humans will use it? Yeah, for sure.Flo [00:07:37]: One pattern we've started to see is people provisioning accounts for their AI agents. And so, in particular, Google Workspace accounts. So, for example, Lindy can be used as a scheduling assistant. So you can just CC her to your emails when you're trying to find time with someone. And just like a human assistant, she's going to go back and forth and offer other abilities and so forth. Very often, people don't want the other party to know that it's an AI. So it's actually funny. They introduce delays. They ask the agent to wait before replying, so it's not too obvious that it's an AI. And they provision an account on Google Suite, which costs them like $10 a month or something like that. So we're seeing that pattern more and more. I think that does the job for now. I'm not optimistic on us actually patching OAuth. Because I agree with you, ultimately, we would want to patch OAuth because the new account thing is kind of a clutch. It's really a hack. You would want to patch OAuth to have more granular access control and really be able to put your sugar in the box. I'm not optimistic on us doing that before AGI, I think. That's a very close timeline.Swyx [00:08:36]: I'm mindful of talking about a thing without showing it. And we already have the setup to show it. Why don't we jump into a screen share? For listeners, you can jump on the YouTube and like and subscribe. But also, let's have a look at how you show off Lindy. Yeah, absolutely.Flo [00:08:51]: I'll give an example of a very simple Lindy and then I'll graduate to a much more complicated one. A super simple Lindy that I have is, I unfortunately bought some investment properties in the south of France. It was a really, really bad idea. And I put them on a Holydew, which is like the French Airbnb, if you will. And so I received these emails from time to time telling me like, oh, hey, you made 200 bucks. Someone booked your place. When I receive these emails, I want to log this reservation in a spreadsheet. Doing this without an AI agent or without AI in general is a pain in the butt because you must write an HTML parser for this email. And so it's just hard. You may not be able to do it and it's going to break the moment the email changes. By contrast, the way it works with Lindy, it's really simple. It's two steps. It's like, okay, I receive an email. If it is a reservation confirmation, I have this filter here. Then I append a row to this spreadsheet. And so this is where you can see the AI part where the way this action is configured here, you see these purple fields on the right. Each of these fields is a prompt. And so I can say, okay, you extract from the email the day the reservation begins on. You extract the amount of the reservation. You extract the number of travelers of the reservation. And now you can see when I look at the task history of this Lindy, it's really simple. It's like, okay, you do this and boom, appending this row to this spreadsheet. And this is the information extracted. So effectively, this node here, this append row node is a mini agent. It can see everything that just happened. It has context over the task and it's appending the row. And then it's going to send a reply to the thread. That's a very simple example of an agent.Swyx [00:10:34]: A quick follow-up question on this one while we're still on this page. Is that one call? Is that a structured output call? Yeah. Okay, nice. Yeah.Flo [00:10:41]: And you can see here for every node, you can configure which model you want to power the node. Here I use cloud. For this, I use GPT-4 Turbo. Much more complex example, my meeting recorder. It looks very complex because I've added to it over time, but at a high level, it's really simple. It's like when a meeting begins, you record the meeting. And after the meeting, you send me a summary and you send me coaching notes. So I receive, like my Lindy is constantly coaching me. And so you can see here in the prompt of the coaching notes, I've told it, hey, you know, was I unnecessarily confrontational at any point? I'm French, so I have to watch out for that. Or not confrontational enough. Should I have double-clicked on any issue, right? So I can really give it exactly the kind of coaching that I'm expecting. And then the interesting thing here is, like, you can see the agent here, after it sent me these coaching notes, moves on. And it does a bunch of other stuff. So it goes on Slack. It disseminates the notes on Slack. It does a bunch of other stuff. But it's actually able to backtrack and resume the automation at the coaching notes email if I responded to that email. So I'll give a super concrete example. This is an actual coaching feedback that I received from Lindy. She was like, hey, this was a sales call I had with a customer. And she was like, I found your explanation of Lindy too technical. And I was able to follow up and just ask a follow-up question in the thread here. And I was like, why did you find too technical about my explanation? And Lindy restored the context. And so she basically picked up the automation back up here in the tree. And she has all of the context of everything that happened, including the meeting in which I was. So she was like, oh, you used the words deterministic and context window and agent state. And that concept exists at every level for every channel and every action that Lindy takes. So another example here is, I mentioned she also disseminates the notes on Slack. So this was a meeting where I was not, right? So this was a teammate. He's an indie meeting recorder, posts the meeting notes in this customer discovery channel on Slack. So you can see, okay, this is the onboarding call we had. This was the use case. Look at the questions. How do I make Lindy slower? How do I add delays to make Lindy slower? And I was able, in the Slack thread, to ask follow-up questions like, oh, what did we answer to these questions? And it's really handy because I know I can have this sort of interactive Q&A with these meetings. It means that very often now, I don't go to meetings anymore. I just send my Lindy. And instead of going to like a 60-minute meeting, I have like a five-minute chat with my Lindy afterwards. And she just replied. She was like, well, this is what we replied to this customer. And I can just be like, okay, good job, Jack. Like, no notes about your answers. So that's the kind of use cases people have with Lindy. It's a lot of like, there's a lot of sales automations, customer support automations, and a lot of this, which is basically personal assistance automations, like meeting scheduling and so forth.Alessio [00:13:21]: Yeah, and I think the question that people might have is memory. So as you get coaching, how does it track whether or not you're improving? You know, if these are like mistakes you made in the past, like, how do you think about that?Flo [00:13:31]: Yeah, we have a memory module. So I'll show you my meeting scheduler, Lindy, which has a lot of memories because by now I've used her for so long. And so every time I talk to her, she saves a memory. If I tell her, you screwed up, please don't do this. So you can see here, oh, it's got a double memory here. This is the meeting link I have, or this is the address of the office. If I tell someone to meet me at home, this is the address of my place. This is the code. I guess we'll have to edit that out. This is not the code of my place. No dogs. Yeah, so Lindy can just manage her own memory and decide when she's remembering things between executions. Okay.Swyx [00:14:11]: I mean, I'm just going to take the opportunity to ask you, since you are the creator of this thing, how come there's so few memories, right? Like, if you've been using this for two years, there should be thousands of thousands of things. That is a good question.Flo [00:14:22]: Agents still get confused if they have too many memories, to my point earlier about that. So I just am out of a call with a member of the Lama team at Meta, and we were chatting about Lindy, and we were going into the system prompt that we sent to Lindy, and all of that stuff. And he was amazed, and he was like, it's a miracle that it's working, guys. He was like, this kind of system prompt, this does not exist, either pre-training or post-training. These models were never trained to do this kind of stuff. It's a miracle that they can be agents at all. And so what I do, I actually prune the memories. You know, it's actually something I've gotten into the habit of doing from back when we had GPT 3.5, being Lindy agents. I suspect it's probably not as necessary in the Cloud 3.5 Sunette days, but I prune the memories. Yeah, okay.Swyx [00:15:05]: The reason is because I have another assistant that also is recording and trying to come up with facts about me. It comes up with a lot of trivial, useless facts that I... So I spend most of my time pruning. Actually, it's not super useful. I'd much rather have high-quality facts that it accepts. Or maybe I was even thinking, were you ever tempted to add a wake word to only memorize this when I say memorize this? And otherwise, don't even bother.Flo [00:15:30]: I have a Lindy that does this. So this is my inbox processor, Lindy. It's kind of beefy because there's a lot of different emails. But somewhere in here,Swyx [00:15:38]: there is a rule where I'm like,Flo [00:15:39]: aha, I can email my inbox processor, Lindy. It's really handy. So she has her own email address. And so when I process my email inbox, I sometimes forward an email to her. And it's a newsletter, or it's like a cold outreach from a recruiter that I don't care about, or anything like that. And I can give her a rule. And I can be like, hey, this email I want you to archive, moving forward. Or I want you to alert me on Slack when I have this kind of email. It's really important. And so you can see here, the prompt is, if I give you a rule about a kind of email, like archive emails from X, save it as a new memory. And I give it to the memory saving skill. And yeah.Swyx [00:16:13]: One thing that just occurred to me, so I'm a big fan of virtual mailboxes. I recommend that everybody have a virtual mailbox. You could set up a physical mail receive thing for Lindy. And so then Lindy can process your physical mail.Flo [00:16:26]: That's actually a good idea. I actually already have something like that. I use like health class mail. Yeah. So yeah, most likely, I can process my physical mail. Yeah.Swyx [00:16:35]: And then the other product's idea I have, looking at this thing, is people want to brag about the complexity of their Lindys. So this would be like a 65 point Lindy, right?Flo [00:16:43]: What's a 65 point?Swyx [00:16:44]: Complexity counting. Like how many nodes, how many things, how many conditions, right? Yeah.Flo [00:16:49]: This is not the most complex one. I have another one. This designer recruiter here is kind of beefy as well. Right, right, right. So I'm just saying,Swyx [00:16:56]: let people brag. Let people be super users. Oh, right.Flo [00:16:59]: Give them a score. Give them a score.Swyx [00:17:01]: Then they'll just be like, okay, how high can you make this score?Flo [00:17:04]: Yeah, that's a good point. And I think that's, again, the beauty of this on-rails phenomenon. It's like, think of the equivalent, the prompt equivalent of this Lindy here, for example, that we're looking at. It'd be monstrous. And the odds that it gets it right are so low. But here, because we're really holding the agent's hand step by step by step, it's actually super reliable. Yeah.Swyx [00:17:22]: And is it all structured output-based? Yeah. As far as possible? Basically. Like, there's no non-structured output?Flo [00:17:27]: There is. So, for example, here, this AI agent step, right, or this send message step, sometimes it gets to... That's just plain text.Swyx [00:17:35]: That's right.Flo [00:17:36]: Yeah. So I'll give you an example. Maybe it's TMI. I'm having blood pressure issues these days. And so this Lindy here, I give it my blood pressure readings, and it updates a log that I have of my blood pressure that it sends to my doctor.Swyx [00:17:49]: Oh, so every Lindy comes with a to-do list?Flo [00:17:52]: Yeah. Every Lindy has its own task history. Huh. Yeah. And so you can see here, this is my main Lindy, my personal assistant, and I've told it, where is this? There is a point where I'm like, if I am giving you a health-related fact, right here, I'm giving you health information, so then you update this log that I have in this Google Doc, and then you send me a message. And you can see, I've actually not configured this send message node. I haven't told it what to send me a message for. Right? And you can see, it's actually lecturing me. It's like, I'm giving it my blood pressure ratings. It's like, hey, it's a bit high. Here are some lifestyle changes you may want to consider.Alessio [00:18:27]: I think maybe this is the most confusing or new thing for people. So even I use Lindy and I didn't even know you could have multiple workflows in one Lindy. I think the mental model is kind of like the Zapier workflows. It starts and it ends. It doesn't choose between. How do you think about what's a Lindy versus what's a sub-function of a Lindy? Like, what's the hierarchy?Flo [00:18:48]: Yeah. Frankly, I think the line is a little arbitrary. It's kind of like when you code, like when do you start to create a new class versus when do you overload your current class. I think of it in terms of like jobs to be done and I think of it in terms of who is the Lindy serving. This Lindy is serving me personally. It's really my day-to-day Lindy. I give it a bunch of stuff, like very easy tasks. And so this is just the Lindy I go to. Sometimes when a task is really more specialized, so for example, I have this like summarizer Lindy or this designer recruiter Lindy. These tasks are really beefy. I wouldn't want to add this to my main Lindy, so I just created a separate Lindy for it. Or when it's a Lindy that serves another constituency, like our customer support Lindy, I don't want to add that to my personal assistant Lindy. These are two very different Lindys.Alessio [00:19:31]: And you can call a Lindy from within another Lindy. That's right. You can kind of chain them together.Flo [00:19:36]: Lindys can work together, absolutely.Swyx [00:19:38]: A couple more things for the video portion. I noticed you have a podcast follower. We have to ask about that. What is that?Flo [00:19:46]: So this one wakes me up every... So wakes herself up every week. And she sends me... So she woke up yesterday, actually. And she searches for Lenny's podcast. And she looks for like the latest episode on YouTube. And once she finds it, she transcribes the video and then she sends me the summary by email. I don't listen to podcasts as much anymore. I just like read these summaries. Yeah.Alessio [00:20:09]: We should make a latent space Lindy. Marketplace.Swyx [00:20:12]: Yeah. And then you have a whole bunch of connectors. I saw the list briefly. Any interesting one? Complicated one that you're proud of? Anything that you want to just share? Connector stories.Flo [00:20:23]: So many of our workflows are about meeting scheduling. So we had to build some very open unity tools around meeting scheduling. So for example, one that is surprisingly hard is this find available times action. You would not believe... This is like a thousand lines of code or something. It's just a very beefy action. And you can pass it a bunch of parameters about how long is the meeting? When does it start? When does it end? What are the meetings? The weekdays in which I meet? How many time slots do you return? What's the buffer between my meetings? It's just a very, very, very complex action. I really like our GitHub action. So we have a Lindy PR reviewer. And it's really handy because anytime any bug happens... So the Lindy reads our guidelines on Google Docs. By now, the guidelines are like 40 pages long or something. And so every time any new kind of bug happens, we just go to the guideline and we add the lines. Like, hey, this has happened before. Please watch out for this category of bugs. And it's saving us so much time every day.Alessio [00:21:19]: There's companies doing PR reviews. Where does a Lindy start? When does a company start? Or maybe how do you think about the complexity of these tasks when it's going to be worth having kind of like a vertical standalone company versus just like, hey, a Lindy is going to do a good job 99% of the time?Flo [00:21:34]: That's a good question. We think about this one all the time. I can't say that we've really come up with a very crisp articulation of when do you want to use a vertical tool versus when do you want to use a horizontal tool. I think of it as very similar to the internet. I find it surprising the extent to which a horizontal search engine has won. But I think that Google, right? But I think the even more surprising fact is that the horizontal search engine has won in almost every vertical, right? You go through Google to search Reddit. You go through Google to search Wikipedia. I think maybe the biggest exception is e-commerce. Like you go to Amazon to search e-commerce, but otherwise you go through Google. And I think that the reason for that is because search in each vertical has more in common with search than it does with each vertical. And search is so expensive to get right. Like Google is a big company that it makes a lot of sense to aggregate all of these different use cases and to spread your R&D budget across all of these different use cases. I have a thesis, which is, it's a really cool thesis for Lindy, is that the same thing is true for agents. I think that by and large, in a lot of verticals, agents in each vertical have more in common with agents than they do with each vertical. I also think there are benefits in having a single agent platform because that way your agents can work together. They're all like under one roof. That way you only learn one platform and so you can create agents for everything that you want. And you don't have to like pay for like a bunch of different platforms and so forth. So I think ultimately, it is actually going to shake out in a way that is similar to search in that search is everywhere on the internet. Every website has a search box, right? So there's going to be a lot of vertical agents for everything. I think AI is going to completely penetrate every category of software. But then I also think there are going to be a few very, very, very big horizontal agents that serve a lot of functions for people.Swyx [00:23:14]: That is actually one of the questions that we had about the agent stuff. So I guess we can transition away from the screen and I'll just ask the follow-up, which is, that is a hot topic. You're basically saying that the current VC obsession of the day, which is vertical AI enabled SaaS, is mostly not going to work out. And then there are going to be some super giant horizontal SaaS.Flo [00:23:34]: Oh, no, I'm not saying it's either or. Like SaaS today, vertical SaaS is huge and there's also a lot of horizontal platforms. If you look at like Airtable or Notion, basically the entire no-code space is very horizontal. I mean, Loom and Zoom and Slack, there's a lot of very horizontal tools out there. Okay.Swyx [00:23:49]: I was just trying to get a reaction out of you for hot takes. Trying to get a hot take.Flo [00:23:54]: No, I also think it is natural for the vertical solutions to emerge first because it's just easier to build. It's just much, much, much harder to build something horizontal. Cool.Swyx [00:24:03]: Some more Lindy-specific questions. So we covered most of the top use cases and you have an academy. That was nice to see. I also see some other people doing it for you for free. So like Ben Spites is doing it and then there's some other guy who's also doing like lessons. Yeah. Which is kind of nice, right? Yeah, absolutely. You don't have to do any of that.Flo [00:24:20]: Oh, we've been seeing it more and more on like LinkedIn and Twitter, like people posting their Lindys and so forth.Swyx [00:24:24]: I think that's the flywheel that you built the platform where creators see value in allying themselves to you. And so then, you know, your incentive is to make them successful so that they can make other people successful and then it just drives more and more engagement. Like it's earned media. Like you don't have to do anything.Flo [00:24:39]: Yeah, yeah. I mean, community is everything.Swyx [00:24:41]: Are you doing anything special there? Any big wins?Flo [00:24:44]: We have a Slack community that's pretty active. I can't say we've invested much more than that so far.Swyx [00:24:49]: I would say from having, so I have some involvement in the no-code community. I would say that Webflow going very hard after no-code as a category got them a lot more allies than just the people using Webflow. So it helps you to grow the community beyond just Lindy. And I don't know what this is called. Maybe it's just no-code again. Maybe you want to call it something different. But there's definitely an appetite for this and you are one of a broad category, right? Like just before you, we had Dust and, you know, they're also kind of going after a similar market. Zapier obviously is not going to try to also compete with you. Yeah. There's no question there. It's just like a reaction about community. Like I think a lot about community. Lanespace is growing the community of AI engineers. And I think you have a slightly different audience of, I don't know what.Flo [00:25:33]: Yeah. I think the no-code tinkerers is the community. Yeah. It is going to be the same sort of community as what Webflow, Zapier, Airtable, Notion to some extent.Swyx [00:25:43]: Yeah. The framing can be different if you were, so I think tinkerers has this connotation of not serious or like small. And if you framed it to like no-code EA, we're exclusively only for CEOs with a certain budget, then you just have, you tap into a different budget.Flo [00:25:58]: That's true. The problem with EA is like, the CEO has no willingness to actually tinker and play with the platform.Swyx [00:26:05]: Maybe Andrew's doing that. Like a lot of your biggest advocates are CEOs, right?Flo [00:26:09]: A solopreneur, you know, small business owners, I think Andrew is an exception. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he is.Swyx [00:26:14]: He's an exception in many ways. Yep.Alessio [00:26:16]: Just before we wrap on the use cases, is Rick rolling your customers? Like a officially supported use case or maybe tell that story?Flo [00:26:24]: It's one of the main jobs to be done, really. Yeah, we woke up recently, so we have a Lindy obviously doing our customer support and we do check after the Lindy. And so we caught this email exchange where someone was asking Lindy for video tutorials. And at the time, actually, we did not have video tutorials. We do now on the Lindy Academy. And Lindy responded to the email. It's like, oh, absolutely, here's a link. And we were like, what? Like, what kind of link did you send? And so we clicked on the link and it was a recall. We actually reacted fast enough that the customer had not yet opened the email. And so we reacted immediately. Like, oh, hey, actually, sorry, this is the right link. And so the customer never reacted to the first link. And so, yeah, I tweeted about that. It went surprisingly viral. And I checked afterwards in the logs. We did like a database query and we found, I think, like three or four other instances of it having happened before.Swyx [00:27:12]: That's surprisingly low.Flo [00:27:13]: It is low. And we fixed it across the board by just adding a line to the system prompt that's like, hey, don't recall people, please don't recall.Swyx [00:27:21]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so, you know, you can explain it retroactively, right? Like, that YouTube slug has been pasted in so many different corpuses that obviously it learned to hallucinate that.Alessio [00:27:31]: And it pretended to be so many things. That's the thing.Swyx [00:27:34]: I wouldn't be surprised if that takes one token. Like, there's this one slug in the tokenizer and it's just one token.Flo [00:27:41]: That's the idea of a YouTube video.Swyx [00:27:43]: Because it's used so much, right? And you have to basically get it exactly correct. It's probably not. That's a long speech.Flo [00:27:52]: It would have been so good.Alessio [00:27:55]: So this is just a jump maybe into evals from here. How could you possibly come up for an eval that says, make sure my AI does not recall my customer? I feel like when people are writing evals, that's not something that they come up with. So how do you think about evals when it's such like an open-ended problem space?Flo [00:28:12]: Yeah, it is tough. We built quite a bit of infrastructure for us to create evals in one click from any conversation history. So we can point to a conversation and we can be like, in one click we can turn it into effectively a unit test. It's like, this is a good conversation. This is how you're supposed to handle things like this. Or if it's a negative example, then we modify a little bit the conversation after generating the eval. So it's very easy for us to spin up this kind of eval.Alessio [00:28:36]: Do you use an off-the-shelf tool which is like Brain Trust on the podcast? Or did you just build your own?Flo [00:28:41]: We unfortunately built our own. We're most likely going to switch to Brain Trust. Well, when we built it, there was nothing. Like there was no eval tool, frankly. I mean, we started this project at the end of 2022. It was like, it was very, very, very early. I wouldn't recommend it to build your own eval tool. There's better solutions out there and our eval tool breaks all the time and it's a nightmare to maintain. And that's not something we want to be spending our time on.Swyx [00:29:04]: I was going to ask that basically because I think my first conversations with you about Lindy was that you had a strong opinion that everyone should build their own tools. And you were very proud of your evals. You're kind of showing off to me like how many evals you were running, right?Flo [00:29:16]: Yeah, I think that was before all of these tools came around. I think the ecosystem has matured a fair bit.Swyx [00:29:21]: What is one thing that Brain Trust has nailed that you always struggled to do?Flo [00:29:25]: We're not using them yet, so I couldn't tell. But from what I've gathered from the conversations I've had, like they're doing what we do with our eval tool, but better.Swyx [00:29:33]: And like they do it, but also like 60 other companies do it, right? So I don't know how to shop apart from brand. Word of mouth.Flo [00:29:41]: Same here.Swyx [00:29:42]: Yeah, like evals or Lindys, there's two kinds of evals, right? Like in some way, you don't have to eval your system as much because you've constrained the language model so much. And you can rely on open AI to guarantee that the structured outputs are going to be good, right? We had Michelle sit where you sit and she explained exactly how they do constraint grammar sampling and all that good stuff. So actually, I think it's more important for your customers to eval their Lindys than you evaling your Lindy platform because you just built the platform. You don't actually need to eval that much.Flo [00:30:14]: Yeah. In an ideal world, our customers don't need to care about this. And I think the bar is not like, look, it needs to be at 100%. I think the bar is it needs to be better than a human. And for most use cases we serve today, it is better than a human, especially if you put it on Rails.Swyx [00:30:30]: Is there a limiting factor of Lindy at the business? Like, is it adding new connectors? Is it adding new node types? Like how do you prioritize what is the most impactful to your company?Flo [00:30:41]: Yeah. The raw capabilities for sure are a big limit. It is actually shocking the extent to which the model is no longer the limit. It was the limit a year ago. It was too expensive. The context window was too small. It's kind of insane that we started building this when the context windows were like 4,000 tokens. Like today, our system prompt is more than 4,000 tokens. So yeah, the model is actually very much not a limit anymore. It almost gives me pause because I'm like, I want the model to be a limit. And so no, the integrations are ones, the core capabilities are ones. So for example, we are investing in a system that's basically, I call it like the, it's a J hack. Give me these names, like the poor man's RLHF. So you can turn on a toggle on any step of your Lindy workflow to be like, ask me for confirmation before you actually execute this step. So it's like, hey, I receive an email, you send a reply, ask me for confirmation before actually sending it. And so today you see the email that's about to get sent and you can either approve, deny, or change it and then approve. And we are making it so that when you make a change, we are then saving this change that you're making or embedding it in the vector database. And then we are retrieving these examples for future tasks and injecting them into the context window. So that's the kind of capability that makes a huge difference for users. That's the bottleneck today. It's really like good old engineering and product work.Swyx [00:31:52]: I assume you're hiring. We'll do a call for hiring at the end.Alessio [00:31:54]: Any other comments on the model side? When did you start feeling like the model was not a bottleneck anymore? Was it 4.0? Was it 3.5? 3.5.Flo [00:32:04]: 3.5 Sonnet, definitely. I think 4.0 is overhyped, frankly. We don't use 4.0. I don't think it's good for agentic behavior. Yeah, 3.5 Sonnet is when I started feeling that. And then with prompt caching with 3.5 Sonnet, like that fills the cost, cut the cost again. Just cut it in half. Yeah.Swyx [00:32:21]: Your prompts are... Some of the problems with agentic uses is that your prompts are kind of dynamic, right? Like from caching to work, you need the front prefix portion to be stable.Flo [00:32:32]: Yes, but we have this append-only ledger paradigm. So every node keeps appending to that ledger and every filled node inherits all the context built up by all the previous nodes. And so we can just decide, like, hey, every X thousand nodes, we trigger prompt caching again.Swyx [00:32:47]: Oh, so you do it like programmatically, not all the time.Flo [00:32:50]: No, sorry. Anthropic manages that for us. But basically, it's like, because we keep appending to the prompt, the prompt caching works pretty well.Alessio [00:32:57]: We have this small podcaster tool that I built for the podcast and I rewrote all of our prompts because I noticed, you know, I was inputting stuff early on. I wonder how much more money OpenAN and Anthropic are making just because people don't rewrite their prompts to be like static at the top and like dynamic at the bottom.Flo [00:33:13]: I think that's the remarkable thing about what we're having right now. It's insane that these companies are routinely cutting their costs by two, four, five. Like, they basically just apply constraints. They want people to take advantage of these innovations. Very good.Swyx [00:33:25]: Do you have any other competitive commentary? Commentary? Dust, WordWare, Gumloop, Zapier? If not, we can move on.Flo [00:33:31]: No comment.Alessio [00:33:32]: I think the market is,Flo [00:33:33]: look, I mean, AGI is coming. All right, that's what I'm talking about.Swyx [00:33:38]: I think you're helping. Like, you're paving the road to AGI.Flo [00:33:41]: I'm playing my small role. I'm adding my small brick to this giant, giant, giant castle. Yeah, look, when it's here, we are going to, this entire category of software is going to create, it's going to sound like an exaggeration, but it is a fact it is going to create trillions of dollars of value in a few years, right? It's going to, for the first time, we're actually having software directly replace human labor. I see it every day in sales calls. It's like, Lindy is today replacing, like, we talk to even small teams. It's like, oh, like, stop, this is a 12-people team here. I guess we'll set up this Lindy for one or two days, and then we'll have to decide what to do with this 12-people team. And so, yeah. To me, there's this immense uncapped market opportunity. It's just such a huge ocean, and there's like three sharks in the ocean. I'm focused on the ocean more than on the sharks.Swyx [00:34:25]: So we're moving on to hot topics, like, kind of broadening out from Lindy, but obviously informed by Lindy. What are the high-order bits of good agent design?Flo [00:34:31]: The model, the model, the model, the model. I think people fail to truly, and me included, they fail to truly internalize the bitter lesson. So for the listeners out there who don't know about it, it's basically like, you just scale the model. Like, GPUs go brr, it's all that matters. I think it also holds for the cognitive architecture. I used to be very cognitive architecture-filled, and I was like, ah, and I was like a critic, and I was like a generator, and all this, and then it's just like, GPUs go brr, like, just like let the model do its job. I think we're seeing it a little bit right now with O1. I'm seeing some tweets that say that the new 3.5 SONNET is as good as O1, but with none of all the crazy...Swyx [00:35:09]: It beats O1 on some measures. On some reasoning tasks. On AIME, it's still a lot lower. Like, it's like 14 on AIME versus O1, it's like 83.Flo [00:35:17]: Got it. Right. But even O1 is still the model. Yeah.Swyx [00:35:22]: Like, there's no cognitive architecture on top of it.Flo [00:35:23]: You can just wait for O1 to get better.Alessio [00:35:25]: And so, as a founder, how do you think about that, right? Because now, knowing this, wouldn't you just wait to start Lindy? You know, you start Lindy, it's like 4K context, the models are not that good. It's like, but you're still kind of like going along and building and just like waiting for the models to get better. How do you today decide, again, what to build next, knowing that, hey, the models are going to get better, so maybe we just shouldn't focus on improving our prompt design and all that stuff and just build the connectors instead or whatever? Yeah.Flo [00:35:51]: I mean, that's exactly what we do. Like, all day, we always ask ourselves, oh, when we have a feature idea or a feature request, we ask ourselves, like, is this the kind of thing that just gets better while we sleep because models get better? I'm reminded, again, when we started this in 2022, we spent a lot of time because we had to around context pruning because 4,000 tokens is really nothing. You really can't do anything with 4,000 tokens. All that work was throwaway work. Like, now it's like it was for nothing, right? Now we just assume that infinite context windows are going to be here in a year or something, a year and a half, and infinitely cheap as well, and dynamic compute is going to be here. Like, we just assume all of these things are going to happen, and so we really focus, our job to be done in the industry is to provide the input and output to the model. I really compare it all the time to the PC and the CPU, right? Apple is busy all day. They're not like a CPU wrapper. They have a lot to build, but they don't, well, now actually they do build the CPU as well, but leaving that aside, they're busy building a laptop. It's just a lot of work to build these things. It's interesting because, like,Swyx [00:36:45]: for example, another person that we're close to, Mihaly from Repl.it, he often says that the biggest jump for him was having a multi-agent approach, like the critique thing that you just said that you don't need, and I wonder when, in what situations you do need that and what situations you don't. Obviously, the simple answer is for coding, it helps, and you're not coding, except for, are you still generating code? In Indy? Yeah.Flo [00:37:09]: No, we do. Oh, right. No, no, no, the cognitive architecture changed. We don't, yeah.Swyx [00:37:13]: Yeah, okay. For you, you're one shot, and you chain tools together, and that's it. And if the user really wantsFlo [00:37:18]: to have this kind of critique thing, you can also edit the prompt, you're welcome to. I have some of my Lindys, I've told them, like, hey, be careful, think step by step about what you're about to do, but that gives you a little bump for some use cases, but, yeah.Alessio [00:37:30]: What about unexpected model releases? So, Anthropic released computer use today. Yeah. I don't know if many people were expecting computer use to come out today. Do these things make you rethink how to design, like, your roadmap and things like that, or are you just like, hey, look, whatever, that's just, like, a small thing in their, like, AGI pursuit, that, like, maybe they're not even going to support, and, like, it's still better for us to build our own integrations into systems and things like that. Because maybe people will say, hey, look, why am I building all these API integrationsFlo [00:38:02]: when I can just do computer use and never go to the product? Yeah. No, I mean, we did take into account computer use. We were talking about this a year ago or something, like, we've been talking about it as part of our roadmap. It's been clear to us that it was coming, My philosophy about it is anything that can be done with an API must be done by an API or should be done by an API for a very long time. I think it is dangerous to be overly cavalier about improvements of model capabilities. I'm reminded of iOS versus Android. Android was built on the JVM. There was a garbage collector, and I can only assume that the conversation that went down in the engineering meeting room was, oh, who cares about the garbage collector? Anyway, Moore's law is here, and so that's all going to go to zero eventually. Sure, but in the meantime, you are operating on a 400 MHz CPU. It was like the first CPU on the iPhone 1, and it's really slow, and the garbage collector is introducing a tremendous overhead on top of that, especially a memory overhead. For the longest time, and it's really only been recently that Android caught up to iOS in terms of how smooth the interactions were, but for the longest time, Android phones were significantly slowerSwyx [00:39:07]: and laggierFlo [00:39:08]: and just not feeling as good as iOS devices. Look, when you're talking about modules and magnitude of differences in terms of performance and reliability, which is what we are talking about when we're talking about API use versus computer use, then you can't ignore that, right? And so I think we're going to be in an API use world for a while.Swyx [00:39:27]: O1 doesn't have API use today. It will have it at some point, and it's on the roadmap. There is a future in which OpenAI goes much harder after your business, your market, than it is today. Like, ChatGPT, it's its own business. All they need to do is add tools to the ChatGPT, and now they're suddenly competing with you. And by the way, they have a GPT store where a bunch of people have already configured their tools to fit with them. Is that a concern?Flo [00:39:56]: I think even the GPT store, in a way, like the way they architect it, for example, their plug-in systems are actually grateful because we can also use the plug-ins. It's very open. Now, again, I think it's going to be such a huge market. I think there's going to be a lot of different jobs to be done. I know they have a huge enterprise offering and stuff, but today, ChatGPT is a consumer app. And so, the sort of flow detail I showed you, this sort of workflow, this sort of use cases that we're going after, which is like, we're doing a lot of lead generation and lead outreach and all of that stuff. That's not something like meeting recording, like Lindy Today right now joins your Zoom meetings and takes notes, all of that stuff.Swyx [00:40:34]: I don't see that so farFlo [00:40:35]: on the OpenAI roadmap.Swyx [00:40:36]: Yeah, but they do have an enterprise team that we talk to You're hiring GMs?Flo [00:40:42]: We did.Swyx [00:40:43]: It's a fascinating way to build a business, right? Like, what should you, as CEO, be in charge of? And what should you basically hireFlo [00:40:52]: a mini CEO to do? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's also something we're figuring out. The GM thing was inspired from my days at Uber, where we hired one GM per city or per major geo area. We had like all GMs, regional GMs and so forth. And yeah, Lindy is so horizontal that we thought it made sense to hire GMs to own each vertical and the go-to market of the vertical and the customization of the Lindy templates for these verticals and so forth. What should I own as a CEO? I mean, the canonical reply here is always going to be, you know, you own the fundraising, you own the culture, you own the... What's the rest of the canonical reply? The culture, the fundraising.Swyx [00:41:29]: I don't know,Flo [00:41:30]: products. Even that, eventually, you do have to hand out. Yes, the vision, the culture, and the foundation. Well, you've done your job as a CEO. In practice, obviously, yeah, I mean, all day, I do a lot of product work still and I want to keep doing product work for as long as possible.Swyx [00:41:48]: Obviously, like you're recording and managing the team. Yeah.Flo [00:41:52]: That one feels like the most automatable part of the job, the recruiting stuff.Swyx [00:41:56]: Well, yeah. You saw myFlo [00:41:59]: design your recruiter here. Relationship between Factorio and building Lindy. We actually very often talk about how the business of the future is like a game of Factorio. Yeah. So, in the instance, it's like Slack and you've got like 5,000 Lindys in the sidebar and your job is to somehow manage your 5,000 Lindys. And it's going to be very similar to company building because you're going to look for like the highest leverage way to understand what's going on in your AI company and understand what levels do you have to make impact in that company. So, I think it's going to be very similar to like a human company except it's going to go infinitely faster. Today, in a human company, you could have a meeting with your team and you're like, oh, I'm going to build a facility and, you know, now it's like, okay,Swyx [00:42:40]: boom, I'm going to spin up 50 designers. Yeah. Like, actually, it's more important that you can clone an existing designer that you know works because the hiring process, you cannot clone someone because every new person you bring in is going to have their own tweaksFlo [00:42:54]: and you don't want that. Yeah.Swyx [00:42:56]: That's true. You want an army of mindless dronesFlo [00:42:59]: that all work the same way.Swyx [00:43:00]: The reason I bring this, bring Factorio up as well is one, Factorio Space just came out. Apparently, a whole bunch of people stopped working. I tried out Factorio. I never really got that much into it. But the other thing was, you had a tweet recently about how the sort of intentional top-down design was not as effective as just build. Yeah. Just ship.Flo [00:43:21]: I think people read a little bit too much into that tweet. It went weirdly viral. I was like, I did not intend it as a giant statement online.Swyx [00:43:28]: I mean, you notice you have a pattern with this, right? Like, you've done this for eight years now.Flo [00:43:33]: You should know. I legit was just hearing an interesting story about the Factorio game I had. And everybody was like, oh my God, so deep. I guess this explains everything about life and companies. There is something to be said, certainly, about focusing on the constraint. And I think it is Patrick Collison who said, people underestimate the extent to which moonshots are just one pragmatic step taken after the other. And I think as long as you have some inductive bias about, like, some loose idea about where you want to go, I think it makes sense to follow a sort of greedy search along that path. I think planning and organizing is important. And having older is important.Swyx [00:44:05]: I'm wrestling with that. There's two ways I encountered it recently. One with Lindy. When I tried out one of your automation templates and one of them was quite big and I just didn't understand it, right? So, like, it was not as useful to me as a small one that I can just plug in and see all of. And then the other one was me using Cursor. I was very excited about O1 and I just up frontFlo [00:44:27]: stuffed everythingSwyx [00:44:28]: I wanted to do into my prompt and expected O1 to do everything. And it got itself into a huge jumbled mess and it was stuck. It was really... There was no amount... I wasted, like, two hours on just, like, trying to get out of that hole. So I threw away the code base, started small, switched to Clouds on it and build up something working and just add it over time and it just worked. And to me, that was the factorial sentiment, right? Maybe I'm one of those fanboys that's just, like, obsessing over the depth of something that you just randomly tweeted out. But I think it's true for company building, for Lindy building, for coding.Flo [00:45:02]: I don't know. I think it's fair and I think, like, you and I talked about there's the Tuft & Metal principle and there's this other... Yes, I love that. There's the... I forgot the name of this other blog post but it's basically about this book Seeing Like a State that talks about the need for legibility and people who optimize the system for its legibility and anytime you make a system... So legible is basically more understandable. Anytime you make a system more understandable from the top down, it performs less well from the bottom up. And it's fine but you should at least make this trade-off with your eyes wide open. You should know, I am sacrificing performance for understandability, for legibility. And in this case, for you, it makes sense. It's like you are actually optimizing for legibility. You do want to understand your code base but in some other cases it may not make sense. Sometimes it's better to leave the system alone and let it be its glorious, chaotic, organic self and just trust that it's going to perform well even though you don't understand it completely.Swyx [00:45:55]: It does remind me of a common managerial issue or dilemma which you experienced in the small scale of Lindy where, you know, do you want to organize your company by functional sections or by products or, you know, whatever the opposite of functional is. And you tried it one way and it was more legible to you as CEO but actually it stopped working at the small level. Yeah.Flo [00:46:17]: I mean, one very small example, again, at a small scale is we used to have everything on Notion. And for me, as founder, it was awesome because everything was there. The roadmap was there. The tasks were there. The postmortems were there. And so, the postmortem was linkedSwyx [00:46:31]: to its task.Flo [00:46:32]: It was optimized for you. Exactly. And so, I had this, like, one pane of glass and everything was on Notion. And then the team, one day,Swyx [00:46:39]: came to me with pitchforksFlo [00:46:40]: and they really wanted to implement Linear. And I had to bite my fist so hard. I was like, fine, do it. Implement Linear. Because I was like, at the end of the day, the team needs to be able to self-organize and pick their own tools.Alessio [00:46:51]: Yeah. But it did make the company slightly less legible for me. Another big change you had was going away from remote work, every other month. The discussion comes up again. What was that discussion like? How did your feelings change? Was there kind of like a threshold of employees and team size where you felt like, okay, maybe that worked. Now it doesn't work anymore. And how are you thinking about the futureFlo [00:47:12]: as you scale the team? Yeah. So, for context, I used to have a business called TeamFlow. The business was about building a virtual office for remote teams. And so, being remote was not merely something we did. It was, I was banging the remote drum super hard and helping companies to go remote. And so, frankly, in a way, it's a bit embarrassing for me to do a 180 like that. But I guess, when the facts changed, I changed my mind. What happened? Well, I think at first, like everyone else, we went remote by necessity. It was like COVID and you've got to go remote. And on paper, the gains of remote are enormous. In particular, from a founder's standpoint, being able to hire from anywhere is huge. Saving on rent is huge. Saving on commute is huge for everyone and so forth. But then, look, we're all here. It's like, it is really making it much harder to work together. And I spent three years of my youth trying to build a solution for this. And my conclusion is, at least we couldn't figure it out and no one else could. Zoom didn't figure it out. We had like a bunch of competitors. Like, Gathertown was one of the bigger ones. We had dozens and dozens of competitors. No one figured it out. I don't know that software can actually solve this problem. The reality of it is, everyone just wants to get off the darn Zoom call. And it's not a good feeling to be in your home office if you're even going to have a home office all day. It's harder to build culture. It's harder to get in sync. I think software is peculiar because it's like an iceberg. It's like the vast majority of it is submerged underwater. And so, the quality of the software that you ship is a function of the alignment of your mental models about what is below that waterline. Can you actually get in sync about what it is exactly fundamentally that we're building? What is the soul of our product? And it is so much harder to get in sync about that when you're remote. And then you waste time in a thousand ways because people are offline and you can't get a hold of them or you can't share your screen. It's just like you feel like you're walking in molasses all day. And eventually, I was like, okay, this is it. We're not going to do this anymore.Swyx [00:49:03]: Yeah. I think that is the current builder San Francisco consensus here. Yeah. But I still have a big... One of my big heroes as a CEO is Sid Subban from GitLab.Flo [00:49:14]: Mm-hmm.Swyx [00:49:15]: Matt MullenwegFlo [00:49:16]: used to be a hero.Swyx [00:49:17]: But these people run thousand-person remote businesses. The main idea is that at some company

Welcome back to the ProfitSchool podcast Business Unfiltered with Mercer and Jeff Sauer today's topic is AI Update - Where are we now? AI's Rapid Evolution: From chatbots to integrated business tools, AI has transformed from a novelty into an essential part of modern business operations, mirroring the early days of the app store revolution.  Seamless Integration: AI is now embedded in everyday tools like Microsoft Copilot and Google Suite, making it more accessible and practical for businesses of all sizes.  Supercharging Creativity: AI excels in brainstorming and content creation, allowing for multiple iterations and increased efficiency in marketing and product development. The Profit School Framework: AI fits perfectly into the tactical layer of business operations, automating grunt work while leaving strategic decisions to human expertise. Collapsing Time: AI's ability to rapidly create and test marketing assets has dramatically reduced campaign timelines, offering real-time insights and faster results. Future Outlook: While AI will continue to handle more tasks, human oversight remains crucial. The key to success lies in strategic planning and effective AI integration.  

Unlock the secrets to navigating layoffs and mastering financial planning with Stacey Hyde. Learn how to stay calm and informed in the face of job loss while gaining practical insights into severance packages, extended health coverage, and pension options. We'll delve into the intricacies of 401k withdrawals, exploring the tax implications and penalties that could impact your financial future. Discover alternative health coverage plans, ensuring you and your loved ones remain safeguarded during transitional phases. Dive into leveraging outplacement services and cutting-edge AI tools like ChatGPT to supercharge your job search and transform your resume into a job-winning document.Equip yourself with essential skills to stay competitive in today's job market. Stacey highlights the importance of mastering tools like Microsoft Outlook and the Google Suite, essential skills often assessed by modern employers. Explore a wealth of free online resources for self-improvement and learn how to effectively organize your resume, expand your professional network, and secure critical health insurance. Establish a robust financial safety net while gaining the confidence to tackle any career challenge. Tune in for actionable advice and strategies designed to empower you on your career journey, ensuring resilience and readiness for future opportunities. Envision Financial Planning. 5100 Poplar Avenue, Suite 2428, Memphis TN 38137. (901) 422-7526, This communication is strictly intended for individuals residing in the United States. Advisory Services offered through Envision Financial Planning, a Registered Investment Adviser.

Brian from Santiment breaks down the Crypto metrics around Fed Rate Cuts impact on Bitcoin and Altcoins. He also provides Ethereum and SUI analysis.Asset Activity Matrix model shown in the video can be downloaded with either of the links before. If you have a paid Google Suite account, go with the "FULL". If not, go with the "MINI". For either one, open the link and go to: File Make a Copy:Asset Activity Matrix FULL v2.0: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XSYTrBAY6b5oLO5btRRh40I7CftN76gJ1bKU_owHHeA/view Asset Activity Matrix MINI v2.0: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o3WJQCVn5wz66c33B8NZHQPf7epOSwHVAaf9iN3SrFk/view To get it to begin loading data, Sanbase PRO account or trial can be obtained here: https://santiment.net/?fpr=thinkingcrypto Get 25% discount with code THINKINGCRYPTOThen: 1) Ensure that your Google account email is logged in with the same email as your Santiment email 2) Download Sansheets: https://academy.santiment.net/sansheets/setting-up/ 3) Plug in your API: https://academy.santiment.net/sansheets/adding-an-api-key/ 4) If you're having trouble getting the data to load on a model, head to the 'Data' tab on the far right of the spreadsheet, and go to the yellow cell. Then delete the cell formula, then hit Undo. This should manually refresh the data. 5) If data still won't load, copy the URL of your model, close the tab, and then paste the URL in a new tab and hit enter

In this inspiring episode of The Confident Mompreneur, host Kyrie welcomes Christine Diamond, the powerhouse behind Harvest Consulting, to discuss the art of slowing down to speed up. Christine's entrepreneurial journey began in high school and led her through various management roles before she found her passion in real estate and consulting. Her story is a testament to the power of following one's interests and leveraging experience to build a successful business. Christine and Kyrie delve into the nuances of entrepreneurship, particularly for women, and the importance of adopting a CEO mindset. They explore strategies for effective business management, including setting priorities, conducting business health assessments, and creating a balanced life. A key highlight of their conversation is the concept of the "zone of genius"—identifying and focusing on activities that align with one's strengths to enhance job satisfaction and efficiency. Christine shares practical advice on setting goals, celebrating achievements, and the art of delegation. Listeners will also discover Christine's 'Inbox 0' system, a game-changing method for managing emails that promises to reduce stress and increase productivity. Kyrie and Christine discuss the benefits of tech tools like Google Suite and emphasize the necessity of intentional rest for achieving a balanced and fulfilling life. Christine introduces Harvest Consulting and offers a free business checklist for those interested in optimizing their business operations. She also talks about her involvement with Mountain Mamas, an organization that provides affordable adventures for mothers, and encourages listeners to embrace opportunities for rest and exploration. Join Kyrie and Christine as they provide valuable insights and practical tips for mompreneurs looking to thrive in both business and life. Tune in to learn how to find your zone of genius, create systems for success, and balance work with adventure. Don't miss this episode of The Confident Mompreneur—where slowing down can actually help you speed up your journey to success! Find Christine: @christinediamondconsultant https://www.consultingwithharvest.com/ Find Kyrie: @theconfidentmompreneur www.theconfidentmompreneur.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-confident-mom/support

Show Notes: Christian Hyatt, Founder of Risk3Sixty, discusses the top three or four things that chief information security officers at sub-enterprise firms are most worried about right now.  He explains that these concerns include the business environment, threat actors, cybersecurity regulation, nation-state actors like Russia and China, and phishing campaigns. He also highlights the unique bridge between cybersecurity and information technology coming to a head with the recent CrowdStrike incident. Advice to Clients on Cybersecurity  Christian suggests that independent consultants should ask clients questions or warning signs to raise their concerns and consider consulting a cybersecurity expert. He suggests that clients are looking for someone who is a good listener and not operating off fear, uncertainty, and doubt. By listening to clients' needs and concerns, consultants can offer advice on implementing best practices on their existing toolset and spreading security awareness. Christian emphasizes that many big enterprise tools, such as Office 365 and Google Suite, have built-in security, covering many bases. Independent consultants should listen for how well implemented their tools are, listen for business problems they have, and offer security assurance. Offering advice on implementing best practices and spreading security awareness can help firms understand how security is impacting their business and make informed decisions about investing in security measures. Cybersecurity Due Diligence In the context of due diligence, Christian states that it is important to consider the company's internal infrastructure, including its cloud-based and on-premises systems. This can help identify potential red flags and ensure the company's sustainability and scalability. For example, if a product company is being acquired, it is crucial to ask about its application security, product security, and scalability. Additionally, understanding the company's mastery of its own product and its ability to scale without the team is essential. Another key factor to consider is the company's internal infrastructure, whether it is cloud-based or on-premises. Integrating with the acquiring firm can impact the cost of the process. Cybersecurity for Independent Consultants and Boutique Firms  Independent consultants and boutique firms with a few employees should also take cybersecurity precautions. Some good tools for small businesses include G Suite or Office 365, which have built-in tools for file share sharing, email security, and internal messaging. These tools help protect against cybersecurity attacks that originate from email. Installing antivirus tools like CrowdStrike and Sentinel can help prevent attacks at the endpoint level. Blocking and tackling security processes, such as using file sharing platforms like OneDrive or Dropbox. It's also important to identify areas where money changes hands and take protective measures. Creating an offline backup of key files once a month can help protect against ransomware attacks. Office 365 or G Suite can also be used to store files in the cloud, with tools like spanning for Office 365 creating backup copies of cloud storage. Exploring the full suite of options available to small business owners can help them get coverage for their biggest risks. Employee Training on Cybersecurity The conversation turns to the importance of raising employees' awareness of phishing dangers. He recommends using tools that periodically send white hat phishing messages to test employees' skills. Christian suggests that small businesses should focus on creating a culture of awareness and vigilance, letting candidates know about potential scams and asking questions if they feel uncomfortable. There are several tools available for security awareness training, including Curricula. Additionally, he suggests using YouTube videos as part of training, as they can be more effective than expected. By implementing these tools, businesses can create a culture of vigilance and prevent employees from clicking on suspicious links. The Origins and Growth of Risk 3 Sixty Christian started his firm as an independent consultant eight years ago, with a trajectory of impressive growth. He initially had one client, a $30,000 one-off engagement, but from there eventually grew the business to 60 clients. Christian shares a few of the tactics behind the growth, including his shift towards cybersecurity.  He focused on a few cybersecurity services that had great demand and packaged them as multi-year deals, and recurring revenue. He also learned that organizations have huge compliance requirements. They built a SaaS platform to help them manage the information. They invested in the SaaS platform and started selling it as a subscription. Today, their services are tech-enabled services, where companies often outsource their entire programs to them due to the need for human labor. Christian made strategic decisions early on, scaling the business around recurring revenue streams, over-delivering, and building a good culture. He centered around those activities that felt risky at the time, saying no to big contracts that didn't fit within his revenue stream. He also explains how a book by Gino Wickman, Traction, and The Entrepreneur Operating System, helped him shift the responsibility for business development off of his shoulders to other members of the firm.  Recruiting Talent for Risk3Sixty Christian hired a West Point graduate to become an ops manager. He believed that hiring great people was a risky move but ultimately helped build a sales function and complement the founder's role. The company also hired a strategic partner with Georgia Tech to hire top students. Despite the early hires, the success of the company can be attributed to the smart people who pushed the founder to think more like a leader and helped him see the future. The company's success can be attributed to the excellent people who helped him make decisions that he wouldn't have made on his own.  The Structure of a Successful Company Christian's company has 60 employees, and a top-down structure consisting of an Executive Leadership Team (ELT) consisting of six members: the CEO, President, Head of People, the Chief Operating Officer, the Chief Revenue Officer, and the CTO. The CEO focuses on mission and metrics, breaking down the vision into KPIs and measurables, and making sure everyone understands it. He also works on brand equity through social media, podcasts, and speaking events. He also talks about how he approached pay bands and benefits to attract talent and maintain retention. The CEO manages the ELT, ensuring they are motivated and have the same vision. An initiative Review Board was created to address pent up projects or initiatives that were not previously budgeted. This allowed people to request new projects or initiatives outside of budget season, providing a pressure relief valve for strategic initiatives. A Successful Marketing Philosophy Christian's marketing philosophy focuses on teaching good concepts and adding value to people, rather than being an influencer. He uses content such as videos and white papers to add value and engage people, leading to more leads and engagement. He initially used LinkedIn outbound to find open job opportunities and reach out to hiring managers, but found that more people would ignore him than respond. Christian shares his teaching methods on LinkedIn, YouTube, and a newsletter. For cybersecurity-focused content, he hosts a weekly cybersecurity executive brief on YouTube. He also has a marketing team that helps with content creation, and practice leaders who produce content regularly, called media properties, on LinkedIn. Each member of the team has a dedicated content pillar, and it's up to them to create content that resonates with the audience. A marketing team supports them with video editing and accountability. Christian initially did it all himself, using a video editor tool and recording videos and writing white papers.  Timestamps: 03:14: Cybersecurity precautions for independent consultants and small firms 08:10: Cybersecurity awareness training for small businesses 13:51: Growing a consulting firm through strategic decision-making and recurring revenue streams 18:19: Scaling a consulting business by hiring a leadership team 22:24: Leadership decisions and team structure 26:55: Using LinkedIn for business growth and content creation Links: Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianhyatt/ Check out his book: https://risk3sixty.com/stos   Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at www.umbrex.com.  

Episode 219 Sign up for Workflow Queen's FREE The POWER to Breakthrough Bootcamp: https://learn.workflowqueen.com/power-bootcamp *Bootcamp dates: August 19th - August 23rd, 2024 FACULTY: Questian Telka, EA CLASS: #TheGuide Join us as Questian Telka, an experienced accountant with a passion for nonprofit work, discusses her journey, challenges, and successes in the field. Learn about her unique approach to nonprofit accounting, particularly within disability advocacy, and her dedication to helping these organizations thrive. Discover her tips on scaling a business, finding a niche, and trusting one's instincts. Tune in to see how she balances her professional aspirations with her personal mission.

Welcome back to Business Unfiltered with Mercer and Jeff Sauer today's topic is Favorite Tools We Are Using Now 0:00: Favorite business tools, including AI and non-digital options. Mercer and Jeff discuss their favorite tools for efficiency and productivity in their business. They highlight physical tools such as calculators and notepads, to digital tools like AI and SAS software. 3:39: Digital tools for entrepreneurs, including Zapier and Circle. Tools are more just in time than just in case, saving money and improving efficiency. Zapier is a useful digital tool for automating tasks, and Circle is a new platform for the Profit School community. 9:19: Choosing tools for work, focusing on flexibility and collaboration. Mercer prioritizes tools that integrate well with each other and are easy to use. He believes software must be collaborative & allow remote teams to work effectively. 12:58: Using Google tools for collaboration and productivity, including Slides, Big Query, and Workspace. Mercer highlights Google's product improvements, infrastructure tools, and shift towards Google Docs and Slides. Jeff agrees and shares his experience with Google Slides, mentioning its improved functionality and versatility. 16:18: AI and non-AI tools for work, including Google Meet, Microsoft Clarity, and Gemini. The hosts discuss Google Suite, Microsoft Clarity, and AI tools for productivity and insights. Mercer discusses using AI for tasks like rewriting code and explains why it's more efficient than asking a developer. 19:01: Using AI tools for note-taking and summarization in meetings. Jeff discusses using AI tools like 11 Labs and Otter.ai for text-to-voice and voice-to-text capabilities. Mercer is excited about AI's potential to automate meetings, but concerned about token limit issues. 24:27: Using tools effectively for productivity and organization. The duo discuss digital hoarding, over-reliance on tools, and the need for a human touch in business.

Hoy abordamos un problema común en muchos grupos de investigación: la organización de la información. Uno de los problemas más frecuentes es la pérdida de tiempo buscando información. Muchas veces, la información está desorganizada, con documentos y datos dispersos en diferentes lugares. Esto no solo dificulta el acceso a la información, sino que también genera problemas de colaboración entre los miembros del grupo. Además, es común encontrar que los protocolos y documentos clave no se actualizan regularmente, lo que puede llevar a la utilización de información desactualizada o incorrecta. Otro problema es la duplicidad de información, donde diferentes versiones de un mismo documento pueden coexistir, generando confusión. Finalmente, cuando los miembros del grupo se van, se corre el riesgo de perder información valiosa que solo ellos conocían. Estos problemas tienen un impacto significativo en la eficiencia del grupo de investigación. Los nuevos miembros pueden tener dificultades para ponerse al día, y la realización de tareas y experimentos se vuelve ineficiente. Además, el riesgo de utilizar información desactualizada o incorrecta puede comprometer la calidad de la investigación. Una solución efectiva para estos problemas es la implementación de una wiki. Una wiki es una herramienta colaborativa online que permite la creación y edición de documentos de manera sencilla y organizada. Entre las ventajas de una wiki se encuentran la centralización de la información, la facilidad para buscar y acceder a datos, la colaboración en tiempo real, el historial de versiones para rastrear cambios y la posibilidad de comunicación y discusión en torno a los documentos. Para crear una wiki, existen varias herramientas recomendadas. Notion es una opción fácil de usar, aunque de pago. Google Suite es gratuita y conocida, aunque puede requerir más trabajo para enlazar documentos. Microsoft Office Online es similar a Google Suite, pero requiere una licencia. MediaWiki es una herramienta potente y open source, pero requiere conocimientos técnicos para su instalación. Finalmente, Obsidian es una opción avanzada, pero más compleja de implementar. Esperamos que este episodio te haya sido útil y te invitamos a seguir explorando maneras de mejorar la organización de la información en tu grupo de investigación. Finalmente, te invito a reflexionar sobre cómo aplicarías estas estrategias y a unirte libremente a nuestra comunidad de investigadores para discutir más sobre este tema a través del siguiente enlace: ⁠⁠https://chat.whatsapp.com/BIfSH9QFEiK9hiS83fw2am O también me puedes contactar directamente aquí: ⁠http://horacio-ps.com/contacto/⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/horacio-ps/message

Hi there and welcome back to another edition of ScaleUp Radio, the podcast inspired by the Entrepreneurial ScaleUp System and designed to make navigating our ScaleUp journeys that little bit easier by learning from others' experiences. I'm Kevin Brent and Today, we're joined by Antonio Wedral, co-founder of NOVOS, a specialised e-commerce SEO agency that recently became employee-owned. In this episode, Antonio shares how NOVOS focuses on proving SEO's value, the transformative journey to employee ownership in 2022, and the benefits of increased motivation and accountability among staff. We'll explore NOVOS' commitment to transparency, rigorous training, and a strong company culture that attracts top talent. Antonio also discusses their selective 3-stage hiring process and how becoming a B Corp validated their sustainable practices. Make sure you don't miss any future episodes by subscribing to ScaleUp Radio wherever you like to listen to your podcasts. For now, Tune in for an inspiring conversation about innovation and growth in the SEO industry!   Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for. If you would like to be a guest on ScaleUp Radio, please click here: https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/kevin You can get in touch with Kevin here: kevin@biz-smart.co.uk   Kevin's Latest Book Is Available! Drawing on BizSmart's own research and experiences of working with hundreds of owner-managers, Kevin Brent explores the key reasons why most organisations do not scale and how the challenges change as they reach different milestones on the ScaleUp Journey. He then details a practical step by step guide to successfully navigate between the milestones in the form of ESUS - a proven system for entrepreneurs to scale up. More on the Book HERE - https://www.esusgroup.co.uk/   Antonio can be found here: linkedin.com/in/antoniowedral https://thisisnovos.com/   Resources: Found To Leader podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/3qOQuzCqSogdKoFUbySPpt?si=98eacd3566e4464d Notion app - https://www.notion.so/ Slack - https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/downloads/windows GMail - https://mail.google.com/ Google Suite - https://workspace.google.com/

Unlock the hidden gems within Google's suite of free tools as technology coach Adrienne Farrow joins us to reveal the secrets to optimizing your Teachers Pay Teachers business. If you've ever found yourself overwhelmed by subscriptions or wrestling with organization, this episode is a goldmine of strategies to save both time and money. Adrienne sheds light on the most underappreciated features of Google Drive and shares invaluable insights on the shift towards digital products in education. Plus, we tackle the importance of diversifying product formats to captivate a wider audience and underscore the crucial role of efficiency for the savvy teacher entrepreneur.Wade into the waters of productivity with our deep-dive into Google Calendar's task integration and the organizational marvels of Google Sheets. Imagine managing your to-do list in harmony with your schedule, all within Google Calendar, and streamlining your workflow with Google Sheets' straightforward features like 'chips,' dropdowns, and color coding—no complex formulas necessary. I'll share how these tools revolutionized my business, from monitoring performance metrics to orchestrating events like the teacher seller summit. This episode is your invitation to embrace the simplicity and power of Google's tools, stripping away any hesitation tied to their sophistication and arming you with the prowess to elevate your business backend systems.Get Your Tickets to Teacher Seller's Summit!https://rebrandedteacher.kartra.com/page/hM1199Adrienne's Websitehttps://www.adriennefarrow.com/Adrienne's YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@adriennefarrowAdrienne's Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/theadriennefarrow/Adrienne's Membershipshttps://goto.adriennefarrow.com/Support the Show.

On the podcast today we have Alexander Gilmanov, and he's sharing his story of transitioning from freelancer to agency manager, now overseeing a team of 43. With a focus on WordPress ecosystem, Alexander discusses his leadership approach, avoiding negative motivation and instead fostering a culture of trust and positive reinforcement. He elaborates on the nuances of team management and the benefits of smaller, independent teams coordinated across departments like development, marketing, and support. Key tools like Google Suite, Slack, Jira, and Notion are integral to his operations. His story highlights the importance of community engagement, learning from industry leaders, and the necessity of continuously seeking suitable team members for sustainable management.

On the podcast today we have Alexander Gilmanov, and he's sharing his story of transitioning from freelancer to agency manager, now overseeing a team of 43. With a focus on WordPress ecosystem, Alexander discusses his leadership approach, avoiding negative motivation and instead fostering a culture of trust and positive reinforcement. He elaborates on the nuances of team management and the benefits of smaller, independent teams coordinated across departments like development, marketing, and support. Key tools like Google Suite, Slack, Jira, and Notion are integral to his operations. His story highlights the importance of community engagement, learning from industry leaders, and the necessity of continuously seeking suitable team members for sustainable management.

Join us in this episode of Making Sales Social as we delve into the intricacies of crafting the perfect sales tool stack. From communication and collaboration essentials like Zoom and Google Suite to CRM powerhouses like Sales Navigator, we explore the arsenal of tools that streamline our sales process at Social Sales Link. Discover how we optimize our workflow, avoid tool overload, and even uncover hidden gems like Sybel for AI-driven sales call analytics. Tune in to glean insights that could revolutionize your sales strategy and supercharge your productivity!

Michael Babcock has our Tech Talk, which includes a shout out to his newly purchased audio interface, and a how to guide on using Google Suite tools and features. Toxins in drinking water are associated with severe health issues affecting many communities across the country. Is Canada doing enough to keep drinking water safe? Grant Hardy discusses this and more on our headlines segment. The newest episode of Our Community, NL Deaf Choir, sheds a spotlight on the first choir in the Atlantic provinces whose membership is deaf. We learn more with choir Member Paula Coggins. Ottawa Community Reporter Kim Kilpatrick highlights Rose in the Machine, the story of a mother seeking to understand her daughter living with Autism. And, she gives us updates on new ways to contact Ottawa's para transportation services. Orientation and Mobility Specialist Mark Rankin goes through the O&M scope of practice, discusses how it is changing, and considers how technology will continue to impact the discipline. On Know Your Rights, Danielle McLaughlin and her guest Senator Kim Pate reflect on the funding announced Tuesday for the Canada Disability Benefit.

Michael Babcock has our Tech Talk, which includes a shout out to his newly purchased audio interface, and a how to guide on using Google Suite tools and features.

It's an all new extra extra big That Real Blind Tech show as it's our 2024 CSUN recap episode. It is so big that we have the ladies Jeanine and Allison recording with friend of the podcast David Goldstein and because someone who edits the show got sick we then have Brian and Ed recapping CSUN as well. It all comes together in one giant Kumbaya podcast episode for your listening pleasure.   Jeanine starts out discussing the announcements made by Aira at this year's CSUN. We'll give you a clue it has something to do with A.I.   And because Brian and Ed were not here yet, Allison, David , and Jeanine then discuss the braille with a lower case b keyboards announced at this year's CSUN.   We then cut to our main men on the ground at CSUN for their insights in to everything they experienced first hand at this year's CSUN.   Brian and Ed start off discussing a recent article by a man who is losing his vision that appeared in the Atlantic, and they could not disagree with the article more. They then discuss the upcoming release of David Kingsbury third edition of the Windows Screen Reader Primer. And then discuss the upsetting news about VoiceDream Reader moving to a monthly subscription model even if you have bought a lifetime license.   Mike Buckley then pops by to discuss the latest announcements coming out of Be My A.I.   Brian and Ed discuss the multiple cocktail hours they hit at CSUN, OKO, the new Guidance Guidance System, Celeste Glasses, Enivision AI, Vispero, Deque, WeWalk Cane, Fa Fable,  Stevie Wonder, Irish Car Bombs, Google Suite, and much more that they experienced in person at CSUN.     It's then back to the ladies and David for some more banter and more of Watcha Streaming, Watcha Reading. 

Google Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, offers a myriad of benefits for individuals, businesses, and organizations. One key advantage lies in its seamless collaboration features, enabling real-time editing and sharing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations among team members, fostering efficient teamwork regardless of geographical locations. The cloud-based nature of Google Workspace ensures accessibility from any device with an internet connection, promoting flexibility and remote work capabilities.

In this episode of eLABorate Topics, host Tywauna Wilson delivers a comprehensive guide to tools that will help you reach your peak performance in 2024. She recaps the 5-step method outlined in the previous episode and dives into practical strategies for being more productive in the new year. Coach Tee shares her favorite productivity tools, including Trello for project management, Evernote or OneNote for note-taking and organization, Google Suite for collaboration, and the use of a calendar app on your phone for reminders and accountability. She also introduces listeners to a unique tool called Snipd for capturing key moments in podcasts. Listeners can expect a wealth of valuable advice and insights to enhance their productivity and organization—inside and outside the lab—as they embark on a successful journey into 2024. Stay tuned for an episode filled with actionable tips and tools to elevate your professional and personal life.One tool that you might not think about is the calendar app on your phone." Tools:Trello: https://trello.com/Evernote: https://evernote.com/One Note: Snipd: https://www.snipd.com/Google Suite: Drive, docs, spreadsheets------------------------------------Episode ResourcesEPISODE 43: REACHING YOUR PEAK PERFORMANCE IN 2024https://elaboratetopics.directimpactbroadcasting.com/s3/43EPISODE 19: GROWING BEYOND THE LAB: 7 PERSONAL GROWTH STEPS FOR MEDICAL LAB PROFESSIONALShttps://elaboratetopics.directimpactbroadcasting.com/s3/19----------------------------------------------------Join Team #eLABorate and connect with us! Podcast Call to ActionWe would love to feature YOU!!!Share your favorite takeaway from today's episode: Video ReviewBe an eLABorate Supporter!1.     Listen on directimpactbroadcasting.com, Spotify, Apple Podcast, or your favorite podcast platform2.     Don't forget to subscribe to the show on your phone, tablet, or notebook so you never miss an episode!3.     Be sure to leave a comment, and share it with fellow medical laboratory professionals!4.     Join our eLABorate Topics Group on LinkedIn5.     Leave us a Video Review and we will feature you on our Social Media: Video ReviewBe a Guest on our show!If you have a leadership or laboratory message to share and would like to be a guest on the show, please contact us by completing the guest interest form or e-mailing us at elaboratetopics@directimpactbroadcasting.com. 

In our recent research study, 100% of sales leaders agreed that you need both an effective tool and strategy to succeed in enablement. So, how can you maximize the impact of enablement at your organization with an effective platform and strategy? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I'm your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Dustin Day, senior manager of global sales enablement at Coursera. Thanks for joining, Dustin! I'd love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Dustin Day: Thank you, Shawnna. My name is Dustin and I am on the Coursera Global Sales Enablement team. I’ve been with Coursera for a little bit over a year now focusing on everything from manager enablement, product enablement, go-to-market motions, and supporting the Highspot initiative and how we position it, and how we grow it with the team. My background, I grew up in a company called CEB, which is now called Gartner, focusing on L&D research, which is really where I started to get my sales support background. I went into education publishing, now branded EdTech today, and focused on the finance and strategy aspect of sales. Then I went to an organization named Challenger, which is where I worked with global companies supporting their sales leadership, and sales enablement team around the challenge of sales methodology. That’s where I got interested in more of the perspective of sales enablement and becoming more of the practitioner as opposed to the thought leadership kind of execution side of sales methodology. I am happy to be here, Shawnna, and looking forward to our conversation. SS: I’m excited to have you here as well, Dustin, and it sounds like you have a phenomenal background to answer our first question, which I’d love to start with. What does good enablement look like in your opinion? In other words, what are some of the key components of an effective enablement strategy? DD: I think this is the big question in the industry today and I think it’s one that individuals like myself, do not struggle with, but are constantly trying to reimagine. Historically, if you looked at sales enablement, it grew out of a pure sales L&D motion, pure training, getting in front of the field, and training them on the skills that are necessary for them to succeed. That’s still a huge component of sales enablement, but being at the center of how you support the team and the growing nature of sales, we have started to see sales enablement grow into looking at the sales cycle and trying to find efficiencies within our sales cycle, the buying process and trying to identify the buying process and build those play cards to support the field and how they engage with and the customer journey. As sales enablement evolves, I think there still needs to be that mix of formal sales training or skill-building exercises if you want a position like that, but also how do we get the field to be equipped for the future? This virtual environment has changed the nature of sales, changed the nature of the buyer, and organizations like ours and our sales force are constantly learning how to navigate that as the buyer has gotten smarter and started to evolve faster than we’ve been able to evolve from a commercial engine perspective. SS: I love that. We talked a little bit about when you joined Coursera, but I know it was right at the start of the team’s partnership with Highspot. Tell us a little bit about the enablement journey that Coursera has been on since you implemented Highspot, and how has your enablement strategy evolved from then until now? DD: In the original use case for Highspot, we were hosting all of our materials on a central intranet site, and that naturally created a ton of pain points in terms of finding content, engaging with content, and proactively providing feedback for us to keep things fresh. There were a lot of inefficiencies built in just the pure commercial support engine. As we looked at Highspot, the original use case was let’s get our content onto Highspot, get it organized in a way that at least helps the team build and have those resources and the collateral available to them today. That was stage one. I think stage two has essentially defined our sales enablement strategy more broadly, which is that we created additional pain points by just uploading resources. We started to say, how do we organize, create that feedback loop and essentially help our marketing team skip a lot of steps in their process as it relates to building content and getting content onto the platform? As we developed that strategy and started to do the change management with marketing and the sales team, getting more content collateral in front of them, they created an additional pain point, which was governance. Our strategy and our problems have grown in a good way. We’ve created pain points that we needed to solve, but that is good because we are not doing what we originally did today. What we did in Q2, our team essentially built a content governance strategy that we now maintain on a quarterly basis where we archive pieces of content based on the criteria that are really important to us as it relates to content freshness. We start to track those KPIs and report on those KPIs as part of showing the value in sales enablement. We’ve started to build this governance structure to make sure that that content support engine is running on all cylinders. Our marketing team understands utilization and we’re continuing to grow that as we start to build out our Q4 and our next year strategy, which is sales play specifics. Organizing everything in one central spot so nobody has to go find things and search for things in random areas, but also as we build those sales plays focusing on getting stronger at, it’s probably the best way to say it, our customer personas. Also, the outreach Salesforce reports that we can put into one place custom-built for the AE. The What to Know section has everything that you need to know about content. We are a content company. Anytime we work with a customer, there’s a lot of moving pieces in our product. Then also what to show, so clearly breaking down that sales process aspect and making sure that the team can see before the meeting, during the meeting, and after the meeting, or if not leadership, here are the things I should be bringing to our customer. That’s how our strategy has evolved. Our KPIs have moved with it, and our pain points have evolved in a good way as well and we’ve kind of continued to evolve the strategy. SS: I love that. It does sound like you guys are moving up that maturity curve. Fantastic work there. I definitely want to come back and revisit the work that you guys are doing on Plays in just a little bit, but to help context that too for the audience, what were some of the key business challenges that Highspot helped solve at Coursera? DD: First it’s just content. We have a very large marketing team at Coursera and if you’re familiar with the Coursera go-to-market, or who we are, we have a very large consumer B2C revenue stream. It’s where most of our revenue comes from. We have a lot of B2C marketers that create a lot of B2C kind of content and collateral. As we started to clean things up, some of the original pain points were how do we get ourselves organized, get some of that more B2B content front and center, remove the noise from a content perspective from the peripherals, and get the team focused. That was the original pain point. It was a pure play of we are unorganized from a content organization perspective. We need to put some rigor behind it as we mature as a business. We did that. I think we’re a year and a half in at this point. As we continue to build that muscle, we feel like we’re growing in our maturity and the problems and the KPIs have started to grow with that. SS: How has Highspot helped you solve some of those challenges? DD: Well, first of all, we love to organize our content. We haven’t been able to organize it effectively to date, and so we are able to do two things. One was tagging our content to make it easier for the rep to navigate Highspot quickly. While it is a great platform for us in sales enablement and our colleagues in marketing, we really don’t want our field spending 20 to 30 minutes anytime they’re in the system to find what they need. The tagging and getting the content front and center have been super helpful for us to measure the utilization of our content as well. We have so much like what are people using, why they use it, and how we can be smarter in creating or building off of content that has been wildly successful as opposed to just putting it there and letting it sit underutilized. So that’s one use case. The other use case, which we’ll talk about a little bit is from a sales play organization. We’re also about to pilot our first newsletter launch here this week. From an enterprise perspective, we’re going to be consolidating all of the communication channels using the Highspot functionality to kind of pitch it out to the team. We’re going to start to look at utilization, start to look at click-through rates, and start to use the tool almost like a selling tool internally to engage with the field and start to measure how we can better support the field. SS: I love that. Actually, recently your team also expanded to use Highspot to include Training and Coaching capabilities. What was the impetus for making the change to invest in a unified enablement platform? DD: Originally we were using Lessonly. That originally started with onboarding as part of our onboarding learning paths. We were having new hires go into Lessonly and then be pushed to content and support materials on Highspot. It just felt kind of like a weird user experience. As we started to assess that, the Highspot account management team started to talk to us about the learning platform component, we made a decision to have that consolidated platform where at the end of the day, simply said, it is one place versus many places. I think particularly in sales enablement, there are a ton of new platforms and products and support tools out there. I’ve even seen Slack starting to get into certain things. Microsoft Teams has a content organization aspect to it. For us, it really simplified the one-stop shop for our team to go to as it relates to their learning paths, as it relates to new go-to-market builds, as when we went to upskill, reskill the team we’ve been able to use some of the recording functionality, have managers listen and sign off, build best practice pages around what a good pitch looks like and start to flex that muscle a little bit better than we had in the past. It also aligns with our content. We can easily say, this is content number one. There’s a great best practice pitch from a recent training and we can link to that as well. It’s really helped solve a lot of those really minor but tedious steps that our field would have to take prior to getting anything done or just to navigate any type of system we have. SS: I love that you guys are taking that unified approach, though, because it makes it a lot more seamless for your reps, and obviously we want to be where your reps are to make them more productive. Another way that you’re thinking about it from a unified platform perspective and you’ve touched on this a little bit, so I’d love to drill in, is that big initiative around the sales plays aligned to training. Can you tell us about this initiative and why it’s a focus for your team? DD: Historically we have built Highspot pages essentially in a silo, which is here’s the one-stop shop for just all pieces of collateral as it relates to an academy for example. We got feedback that, oh, how do I navigate it? Where do I go? What we did is we’ve taken the structure that Highspot provides, which is what to know, say, and show, and we’ve taken that and really run with it. We organize every one of our sales plays now around a very specific product suite. We start with what to know, which is typically something around the customer persona, or we may separate it out, depending on who the customer persona is. The customer persona is a deeper dive from a Coursera perspective into the content, and the demo environments that we have related to that. Then we go into what to say, which is much more of that, that go-to-market narrative, objections, key talking points, use cases, for example, that we can speak to. Then what to say, and that’s actually helped our team really at the end of the day, organize their thoughts and know how to quickly navigate. Another output of that is now we organize our field training around that exact same structure. It’s given us a new structure to engage with the field from a live virtual training perspective when we’re talking about more of our go-to-market motions as opposed to skill-based motions. From a product go-to-market motion, we bring up the sales play and we work through the sales play as the structure of our field training. That’s also been helpful. Sales play will continue to evolve and we’ll continue to build on it, but it’s laser-focused on, it’s got us, from a go-to-market perspective, much more deliberate than I think we had been doing in the past. I think that’s been an incredible output, and one that we’re starting to see the field feedback be, this is great, and the questions are more focused on very specific product nuances and or talk tracks as opposed to where is this hosted. How do we navigate this? It’s much less technical highspot questions and more of what we hope they’re asking questions about. SS: I love that. You guys are already seeing some amazing results. I mean, you guys have driven a 77 percent increase in play adoption. How did you effectively launch this initiative to your sales teams? And maybe what are some of the results that you’ve seen so far? DD: We piloted it with a launch probably back in July or August 2023. As part of that, it was a new motion and it required change management. We used to just, for our Tier 2 and Tier 3 launches, we used to just go through Slack and or email channels to get the communication out, link to the Highspot main page for our vertical, and then say, here are the links that you need to be effective. What we did is we launched training that was designed, yes, to equip the field but also an introduction to the Highspot page itself. Now it’s just pure behavior change motions. Now we bring it up constantly for any new sales play launch. We break it down in our communications. Here’s your know, say, show. In any training, we’ve been following up with training more than we have in the past to help kind of reinforce that know, say, show. It’s just kind of hammering the nail over and over and over again in a productive way for the field. From our perspective, we’re also driving that behavior change by making it front and center as this is the way we’re going to operate. A Little carrot and stick approach, but from our perspective, it was a behavior change play and part of that behavior change is getting people bought in that this is how we’re going to operate first and foremost, and then hopefully they see the value and they see the benefits that they get out of it. SS: Now you guys have also just seen some incredible traction with Highspot overall. I think you guys have 85 percent recurring usage. What are some of your best practices for driving adoption and how has having a unified platform helped? DD: This may pain some sales enablement practitioners but early on, we used Google Suite for Gmail and Docs and Sheets, and every time an announcement would go out, that colleague would share a Google Doc. This is the link to the Google Doc, and in the title, it would say, make a copy. You have this plethora of random copies out there to the team. One of the things that we do constantly day in and day out to anybody that we ever see send communications is if they don’t share the Highspot link to the resource, we always literally will follow up and say, hey, recommend that you share the Highspot link instead. Here’s the reason why. We can track if people are using it, seeing it, clicking on it, et cetera. We just have to get the links for Highspot out there as the single source of truth. The other bit is from a recurring use perspective, we have started to leverage Highspot for more of our knowledge management side of the aisle. This is definitely a work in progress and we’re continuing to think about and trying to understand the use cases, but we’re building playbooks for our roles. As part of building playbooks for our roles, we’re going to host that playbook on Highspot in a knowledge management center. Again, with links out into the different resources that are on Highspot to help these roles execute. It’s identified areas that we don’t have very tangible support in now. It helps us prioritize what we need to build and when we build those, we build them in Highspot. Reoccurring uses actually are more of a muscle that we need to have from a sales enablement perspective as opposed to the field. If everything is in there organized and it’s the single source of truth, as you mentioned, the unified platform, if that’s the case, they have really no choice but to go in to get the information, to get the details, to get the content that they need. SS: I love that philosophy and I love that you guys are driving that to change the behavior of your field teams. Now, you have a lot of big plans for evolving Highspot going forward. Can you tell us more about your vision for continuing to evolve your enablement and how you plan to leverage Highspot to help? DD: There are four key initiatives that we’re continuing to think about for some and explore for others in 2024. The first one at the forefront is the constant governance muscle. We do quarterly governance, like sprints we’re calling them, where we identify the content that hasn’t met the criteria for freshness. We get that content in front of our product marketing and customer marketing teams for them to vet if it needs to be there. Then an archiving sprint in the latter half of the quarter and measure in the following quarter. Constantly building in that muscle. That’s a priority at the end of the day that we cannot forget about, but we can’t deprioritize as we do everything else. The other three things I mentioned briefly, which is getting smarter about our sales plays. How do we continue to build those and make them more effective on a yearly basis? As we’re looking at our yearly strategy, what are those sales plays, those go-to-market priorities that we have to hit on, and how can we build out a sales place for that? It’s giving us more face time to be candid with senior sales leaders, and sales executives to include us in those conversations because they know to execute on that, they’re going to need our team’s support around the sales plays. Candidly there’s like a quid pro quo in that approach and that’s good. The third piece is the knowledge management aspect of it. Building that knowledge management base, that’s going to be a big priority. We’re still learning and adapting to that. The fourth piece, which we haven’t explored yet, but I know Highspot has a lot of great research around, is salerooms. That single source of truth, where you can see how the customer interacts with the content, what they’re clicking on, it’s more customer-facing. There’s a huge opportunity for us to have that more customer-facing digital rooms approach. How can we build that into our motions today? I think we have to get the sales play right, and we have to get the governance right, so people can trust the content, they can trust the source of the content. The digital rooms are kind of the next step in our maturity to ensure that we can get analytics and real-time feedback from customer engagement. SS: Absolutely. I have to say I love the evolution of digital sales rooms and the visibility it gives you into what is really resonating with your buyer at the end of the day. I really appreciate all of the time, Dustin. Thank you so much for joining us today. DD: Thank you. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

Dr. Stacee and Dr. Caitlin dive into the intricacies of veterinary workflow, shedding light on their own mishaps and solutions. From forgetting to hit the record button and a nod to their love for laminating, the duo discusses the importance of workflows in veterinary practice. Driven by their tech-savvy approach, they introduce five favorite tools, including Tango, Loom, Google Suite, screenshots, and their new boyfriend ChatGPT, which, despite its quirks, proves to be a valuable companion. 

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Lemon.io. Get access to Lemon Hire, a platform with more than 80,000 pre-vetted engineers that you can interview within 48 hours. Get $2000 off your first hire at http://lemon.io/hire today! Codecademy. Build the future you want to see with Codecademy. Codecademy Pro helps you learn everything you'll need to shape what comes next in the tech space. Try it free for 14 days. Visit Codecademy.com/TWiST NetSuite. Once your business gets to a certain size the cracks start to emerge.  Things you used to do in a day take a week. You deserve a customized solution - and that's NetSuite. Learn more when you download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist - absolutely free, at NetSuite.com/twist * Today's show: Sunny Madra joins Jason to demo an AI-powered legal docs tool (6:46), detection tool (15:38), Google's workspace AI (35:15), and much more! * Time stamps: (0:00) Sunny Madra joins Jason (6:46) Sunny demos Legal Now - AI-powered legal docs tool (10:01) Lemon.io - Get $2000 off your first hire at http://lemon.io/hire (11:10) Sunny demos Rows - Web-based Excel (15:38) Sunny demos Originality AI - AI detection tool (22:36) Codecademy - Try Codecademy Pro FREE for 14 days at http://codecademy.com/TWiST (24:02) Apple testing M3 MacBook Pros with 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores (31:32) Sunny demos Summarize.tech - Summarizes YouTube videos (33:57) NetSuite - Download your free KPI Checklist at http://netsuite.com/twist (35:15) Sunny demos Google Docs AI write (43:49) Sunny demos Google Sheets AI * Check out Legal Now: https://ai.legalnow.xyz/ Check out Rows: Rows.com Check out Originality AI: https://app.originality.ai/content-scan/6910415 Check out Summarize.tech: https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_MeKSnyAo * Follow Sunny: https://twitter.com/sundeep Check out Definitive Intelligence: https://www.definitive.io/ Read LAUNCH Fund 4 Deal Memo: https://www.launch.co/four Apply for Funding: https://www.launch.co/apply Buy ANGEL: https://www.angelthebook.com Great recent interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland, PrayingForExits, Jenny Lefcourt Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow Jason: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

Step into the extraordinary world of digital nomadism with my wanderlust-filled guest, Megan Hargroder. Megan, a seasoned digital nomad, has been living out of her suitcase and working from the picturesque locales of Europe for the past eight months. Join us for a riveting conversation that explores the exhilarating freedoms and intricate challenges that come hand-in-hand with her unique lifestyle. Navigating time zones, hiring international talent, managing remote work, and maintaining cyber security are just a few of the topics we delve into. We also touch upon the fascinating subject of managing a virtual team of assistants, specifically from the Philippines, and how to evolve a contractual role into a full-time position. You'll be riveted as Megan shares the secret to maintaining a secure online presence while globe-trotting and highlights the hidden benefits of a WeWork All-Access membership.  Ready to embrace the digital nomad lifestyle? Get an insight into Megan's tech arsenal as she reveals how she stays connected with the help of Airalo, a virtual SIM card app. Plus, learn about the magic of automation and outsourcing, and how these can free up your time for, well, more freedom! And as a cherry on top, we even touch upon the importance of a systematic onboarding process and learning from mistakes. So, buckle up for an episode that's brimming with insightful takeaways, hilarious anecdotes, and trailblazing ideas! In this episode, you will hear: Challenges of Working Remotely While Traveling Using Airalo for Unlimited Data Abroad  Exploring Options for Accessing Data Abroad Importance of Slack in Communication Supercharged CEO Using Slack for Client Communication Resources from this Episode General Resources Click for a list of the Best Tech Tools for Lawyers Subscribe to: The 80/20 Principle Check out my Law Firm Systems Intensive Join: '80/20 Inner Circle' (valuable business insights for small firm owners) Read: The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More with Less, by Richard Koch Get my new email course: ChatGPT for Lawyers (it's free) Megan's company website (a digital marketing agency helping solo/small firm lawyers) ExpresssVPN (Virtual Private Network service, link to 30-day free trial) Airalo (app & services for using virtual SIM cards, aka eSIM) - use this code to get $3 off your first purchase: ERNEST3504 World Clock app (for time zone management) FIO (browser tool for time zone management) Slack (communication tool for remote teams) Microsoft Teams (alternative communication tool for remote teams) Joey Vitale program that teaches outsourcing skills Loom (video communication tool) VideoAsk (video communication tool) Google Suite (mentioned as a potential alternative to Slack or Microsoft Teams) WeWork (shared workspace provider)   Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast. Thanks to Our Sponsor Smith.ai is an amazing virtual receptionist service that specializes in working with solo and small law firms. When you hire Smith.ai, you're hiring well-trained, friendly receptionists who can respond to callers in English or Spanish. If there's one great outsourcing opportunity for your practice, this is it. Let Smith.ai have your back while you stay focused on your work, knowing that your clients and prospects are being taken care of. Plans start at $210/month for 30 calls, and pricing starts at $140 for 20 chats, with overage at $7 per chat. They offer a risk-free start with a 14-day money-back guarantee on all receptionist and live chat plans, including add-ons (up to $1000). And they have a special offer for podcast listeners where you can get an extra $100 discount with promo code ERNIE100. Sign up for a risk-free start with a 14-day money-back guarantee now (and learn more) at smith.ai. Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.  

We're taking a break from our regular schedule this summer, but Pilar couldn't help it and she's popping in to let you know about some of her plans - including some adapted Shakespeare, which you can follow below.  Please share your thoughts through our contact form. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/contact-us Why should I love these tools so? 'Tis odds They never will affect me. I am simple, Each tool beckoning with promises untold, And I love all. To master all of them is futile; To delete them is senseless. Out upon't!   What trials are we workers driven to When remote work has claimed us! First, I saw Slack, I, seeing, deemed it a worthy app; It has as much to charm a worker in it (If it please to bestow it so) as ever These eyes yet look'd on. Next, I yearned over Trello, And so would any mind o' my conscience That ever dream'd, or pledge'd time management To a fresh and appealing task. Then, I lov'd the whiteboard, Extremely lov'd it, infinitely lov'd it; And yet it had its flaws, as all do too;   But in my heart was Google Suite, and there, Lord, what a coil it keeps! To see a multitude of apps All accessed with one click, what a heaven it is! And yet its name's a fleeting ones, and scarce lasts One generation of remote.   Then, there is Dropbox, a cloud aloft, A refuge for files, a sanctuary for documents. Its sync, its share, its version history, Did cause my heart to leap, my mind to marvel. Yet, it too had its flaws, its limits, its expenses, Its conflicts, its deletions, a horror to behold.   And now, there's Notion, a novelty it used to be, With its pages, its databases, its all-in-one workspace. It promises the universe, it promises the moon, But oh, what a learning curve, what a mountain to ascend! Yet, I cannot resist, I cannot deny, The allure of these apps, the promise of productivity.   Oh, what a world, what a world of apps! A blessing and a curse, a delight and a burden. To navigate this sea, to master these tools, Is a task Herculean, a labor of love. Yet, I am but a worker, a humble knowledge worker, Lost in the sea of apps, adrift in the ocean of remote work. And yet, on the horizon, a glimmer of hope, The promise of AI, the dream of automation, To lighten our load, to ease our burden, A new dawn for the remote, a new era for work.

On today 201st episode of my Monday Morning Pep Talk, I'll take you through the steps of creating a Top 100 "nurture" campaign that will help you maintain momentum with your top clients throughout the year. There is many different ways that an nurture campaign can be created including through your CRM like Cloze, Follow Up Boss or Salesforce. If that is the case, you can use today's call as a guide to set up the internal programming and tasking needed to execute what I feel is an example of a thoughtful approach. You can also schedule your follow up tasks and reminders through your Microsoft Outlook or Google Suite or if you are more analog, a spreadsheet can be used as well. The key is that you maintain a constant drumbeat of activity with your clients throughout the year. We'll explore different ideas and strategies on today's episode.

I have a really special, unique interview for you today where I'm bringing back two of my most popular past guests, Richard Harris and John Barrows, to talk about something we've never talked about on the podcast before - AI and sales.  If you're a client or a longtime listener, you know that my personal passions are really around helping you master your inner mental game for business and sales success, so that's what we really talk about a lot here on the show.  With that said, if you listened to episode 300 you heard me talk about how committed I am to just being of service wherever I'm being led right now and following the nudges, and I have been bombarded lately with questions and opportunities around AI in sales, so I followed the nudge and wanted to bring you two real experts on the topic today. I know both John and Richard through the Salesforce Sales Influencers program, and I reached out to both of them directly to ask that they come on and speak about this topic because they are both really on the forefront of helping their clients keep up with the rapidly evolving business and sales climate we're in today, and learning how to implement AI in a powerful way to grow their value in the marketplace, as well as revenue.    Show Notes: [3:35] - John and Richard share a bit about themselves and their background. [5:56] - This episode was recorded in May of 2023 but it is a rapidly evolving technology. [7:30] - AI will help you write things to appeal to every type of client and can be used in every part of the funnel. [8:42] - The biggest areas of supporting the sales process right now are research, writing, and follow-up. [10:13] - To John, it matters to him that he has the final input into his writing. AI doesn't know your voice or brand. But he lets AI do a lot of the heavy lifting. [12:27] - AI takes information from the entire internet which is important to remember that some things may not be accurate. [13:58] - Unfortunately, AI is making leadership lazy. [15:04] - We are always going to crave human interaction, but the upcoming generation is growing up with it and feeling a real connection. [18:12] - John references a recent study in generational differences in people wanting to work with sales reps and the regret they had without one. [20:40] - The experience of Covid unintentionally shifted perspective on what is necessary to be in-person. [21:40] - What can you do that a computer can't? [22:53] - Richard uses LinkedIn tools to exemplify some of the benefits to leverage his time. [24:22] - Elyse admits that she has had some hesitation using automation tools to create content. [26:31] - We don't like spam because it's irrelevant, but John thinks that in the near future, our emails will be exactly tailored to each of us. [29:10] - What are some good points about AI? John and Richard are using some AI tools in their businesses now as entrepreneurs. [31:23] - The impact on efficiency is the key. [33:54] - The quality of the prompt and input given to AI tools like ChatGPT, determines the quality of the results. [35:41] - Richard describes some of the things he has had ChatGPT help him with in business including writing and reviewing contracts. [38:30] - Richard has an idea on the show to help with his email campaigns. [41:21] - There are a lot of platforms that will soon have AI integrated tools, like Microsoft programs and Google Suite programs. [42:57] - Richard lists some tools and companies to keep an eye on as they develop even more. [43:52] - Is it really AI or is it aggregating a bunch of false information? [45:43] - We have overengineered the sales process. Learn the fundamentals to keep your business acumen human. [48:12] - So much of what Richard and John teach are life skills, not just sales skills.   Connect with Richard and John: JBarrows.com TheHarrisConsultingGroup.com   Links and Resources: Instagram  |  LinkedIn  |  YouTube She Sells with Elyse Archer Home Page Abundance Mini Course Join the $10K Club Apply for the $50K Club Mastermind

Apple zakázal svým zaměstnancům používat AI. Jak je to možné? Neřeže si pod sebou větev? Webová verze služby iCloud prošla modernizací. Jak si vede ve srovnání s oblíbeným balíkem Google Suite? Témata tentokrát přináší dvojice Petr Škuta a Tomáš Svoboda

Pip redet über seine Highlights bei der Goolge IO Konferenz. Profitiert Fiverr von generativer AI oder ist sie eine Bedrohung für den Marktplatz für Arbeitskräfte? Glöckler erklärt den Unterschied zwischen Pickleball und Padel-Tennis. Bevor Pip auf große Fahrradtour geht, hat er Earnings dabei: Fiverr, HomeToGo, Paypal, Nubank, Monday, ZipRecruiter und The Trade Desk. Philipp Glöckler (https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippgloeckler/) und Philipp Klöckner (https://twitter.com/pip_net) sprechen heute über: (00:00:00) Pips Fahrradtour (00:03:00) Sono Motors (00:12:30) Google IO (00:19:30) Google Suite x AI (00:35:00) Pips OMR Talk (00:37:00) Fiver als big looser von AI? (00:38:45) Google blockt Calendly  (00:40:00) Pickleball vs. Padel  (00:45:30) Fiverr Earnings  (00:47:30) HomeToGo Earnings (00:53:00) Paypal Earnings (00:52:20) Nubank Earnings (00:58:00) Monday Earnings (00:59:20) ZipRecruiter Earnings (01:01:00) The Trade Desk Earnings Shownotes: Werbung: Falls du den intelligenten Schreibassistenten von LanguageTool schon als Basisversion nutzt, schau mal auf die LanguageTool.com/dg. Dort gibt es 20% auf das Premium Produkt. Pips AI OMR Slides: https://www.doppelgaenger.io/info/besten-tools/ai-cheat-sheet/ Pips AI OMR Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcPuu6WPlnM Pickleball vs. Padel: https://piqqle.com/info/warum-pickleball-und-nicht-padel-tennis  Sono Video: https://twitter.com/SonoMotors/status/1658163431428567056?s=20 Doppelgänger Tech Talk Podcast Sheet https://doppelgaenger.io/sheet/ Disclaimer https://www.doppelgaenger.io/disclaimer/ Passionfroot Storefront www.passionfroot.xyz/doppelgaenger Post Production by Jan Wagener https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-wagener-49270018b/ Aktuelle Doppelgänger Werbepartner https://lollipod.de/sn/doppelgaenger-werbung

This week on AZAAZ we answered: ❓The Questions❓

How do you manage a Virtual Assistant?Welcome to the 68th episode of The Growth Booth Podcast, a show focused on supporting budding entrepreneurs and established business owners alike, towards achieving lifestyle freedom through building successful online businesses.In a follow-up to the VA hiring process (covered in Episode 67), join Aidan on the second episode of our two-part series where he shares his best practices in managing VAs. Learn about simple ways to build an effective work relationship with your VA, what online tools to best use, and how to keep them happy and motivated so they do better work for your business.Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:35 How To Manage Day-to-Day Tasks06:15 How They Can Manage Your Socials09:00 Episode Sponsor09:50 How To Pay Your VA11:09 Fair Pay and Work Benefits16:29 Other Incentives18:58 Communication and Appreciation22:23 Not Ready For A VA?24:05 OutroLinks and Resources Mentioned:Cartzy - https://thegrowthbooth.com/cartzy Loom - https://www.loom.com/Google Suite - https://www.google.com/drive/ Zoom - https://zoom.us/ Trello - https://trello.com/ Skype - https://www.skype.com/en/ Basecamp - https://basecamp.com/Notion - https://www.notion.so/Dropbox - https://www.dropbox.com/ PayPal - https://www.paypal.com/Wise - https://wise.com/Payoneer - https://www.payoneer.com/Toggl - https://toggl.com/Hootsuite - https://www.hootsuite.com/Buffer - https://buffer.com/About Our Host:Aidan Booth is passionate about lifestyle freedom and has focused on building online businesses to achieve this since 2005. From affiliate marketing to eCommerce, small business marketing to SAAS (software as a service), online education to speaking at seminars, the journey has been a rollercoaster ride with plenty of thrills along the way. Aidan is proud to have helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn their first dollar online, and coached many people to build million-dollar businesses. Aidan and his business partner (Steven Clayton) are the #1 ranked vendors on Clickbank.com, and sell their products in over 100 countries globally, as well as in 20,000+ stores across the USA, to generate 8-figures annually.Away from the online world, Aidan is a proud Dad of two young kids, an avid investor, a swimming enthusiast, and a nomadic traveler. Let's Connect!●  Visit the website: https://thegrowthbooth.com/ ●  Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aidanboothonline ●  Let's connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aidanboothonline/ ●  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGrowthBooth Thanks for tuning in! Please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe!

Do you sometimes wish you could delegate more tasks in your online business?Welcome to the 67th episode of The Growth Booth Podcast, a show focused on supporting budding entrepreneurs and established business owners alike, towards achieving lifestyle freedom through building successful online businesses.Join Aidan for the first of a two-part series where he dives into hiring your very first virtual assistant. This week, you'll find out about everything you need to consider before hiring, where to look for top-notch talent, and what to do once you've found a good candidate. VAs play a big part in our business, so imagine what they can do for yours! Whether you're looking for step-by-step strategies to start building an online business, simple game plans to grow your business, or proven lifestyle freedom frameworks, you're in the right place.Stay tuned and be sure to join the thousands of listeners already in growth mode!Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:23 Pre-Hiring08:08 Where To Find VAs08:58 Episode Sponsor09:38 Hiring Process12:00 Filtering Applicants18:47 Post-Hiring22:47 Final Thoughts23:44 OutroLinks and Resources Mentioned:The Mind Game - https://thegrowthbooth.com/mindgame Loom - https://www.loom.com/Asana - https://asana.com/ Google Suite - https://www.google.com/drive/ Zoom - https://zoom.us/ Onlinejobs.ph - https://www.onlinejobs.ph/ Upwork - https://www.upwork.com/ Trello - https://trello.com/ Skype - https://www.skype.com/en/ Virtual Assistant Gameplan - https://www.aidanbooth.com/virtual-assistant-gameplan/Virtual Assistant Tips - https://www.aidanbooth.com/virtual-assistant-tips/ About Our Host:Aidan Booth is passionate about lifestyle freedom and has focused on building online businesses to achieve this since 2005. From affiliate marketing to eCommerce, small business marketing to SAAS (software as a service), online education to speaking at seminars, the journey has been a rollercoaster ride with plenty of thrills along the way. Aidan is proud to have helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn their first dollar online, and coached many people to build million-dollar businesses. Aidan and his business partner (Steven Clayton) are the #1 ranked vendors on Clickbank.com, and sell their products in over 100 countries globally, as well as in 20,000+ stores across the USA, to generate 8-figures annually.Away from the online world, Aidan is a proud Dad of two young kids, an avid investor, a swimming enthusiast, and a nomadic traveler. Let's Connect!●  Visit the website: https://thegrowthbooth.com/ ●  Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aidanboothonline ●  Let's connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aidanboothonline/ ●  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGrowthBooth Thanks for tuning in! Please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe!

As you know, this podcast is entitled “Unstoppable Mindset” with the tag line “where Inclusion, Diversity and the unexpected meet”. This episodes represents for me one of the most unexpected sessions I have done. I first heard from Tanja Milojevic through LinkedIn. I did not know at the time she was a person who happened to be blind due to the same circumstances that befell me. I discovered this and so much more about Tanja when we finally met to discuss her coming on Unstoppable Mindset.   Tanja was born in Serbia as a premature birth. She was given too much Oxygen that effected her eyes and lead to her being blind. She permanently relocated with her family to the U.S. at the age of five. You get to hear her whole story including how she learned to function successfully in high school, college and beyond.   Our discussions in this episode include much about her life and successes. We also get to talk about one of my favorite subjects, audio drama.   Tanja's insights will help you learn not only much about blindness, but about life in general. I hope you enjoy Tanja's stories, observations, and thoughts.     About the Guest:   Tanja Milojevic Biography   I was born in Serbia as a premature baby. I had retinal detachment as a result of the incubators and was diagnosed with retinopathy of prematurity at the age of one. I then had several surgeries on both eyes to restore some vision which were partially successful. These surgeries took place in the United States.   I permanently came to live in the U.S. at the age of five when I was diagnosed with open and close angle glaucoma in both eyes. My medical visa helped me make a permanent home with my family near Boston where I began my mainstream public education.   Advocacy is important to me. I attended public school all my life and that required learning my rights and advocating on my own behalf along with my family. I wanted to learn braille at a young age even though I was able to limp along by struggling with print on my video magnifier. I was aware at that time that my vision would deteriorate over time and I'd lose all of it later in life; thus learning braille and mobility were early self-imposed goals in preparing myself for the gradual transition. I pushed the school system to take a dual learning approach and provide me print/braille materials. My supportive family helped me advocate from a young age and I got involved in my IEP meetings as a teen, which proved invaluable.   I advocated in high school and college to improve the experiences for other students who were blind or visually impaired coming into those institutions. My former TVI tells me these students' lives were much easier after I left because of I urged the school to buy braille translation software, the JAWS screen reader, scanning software, and an embosser. My use of JAWS from eighth grade onward gave me the technology skills I needed later in life and I believe future students should have that early opportunity as well.   I received my guide dog Wendell just before entering college. He was from the Seeing Eye and was a golden lab. Wendell and I were best friends and everyone I met fell in love with him, he was so human-like. My puppy was always a magnet for people and I had no trouble making friends and getting places safely, night or day, rain or shine.   Wendell accompanied me while I attended Simmons College, where I thrived and enjoyed the supportive community, clubs and events. My communications professor pushed me to pursue working at the college radio station where I improved my audio production and on-air skills. He saw audio potential in me--the perfectionist who always strived for improvement. The creativity was flowing and I began to make my own radio dramas. My podcast Lightning Bolt Theater of the Mind was born at that time and thrives today. My love of radio drama stemmed from an accidental discovery of the radio drama Pet Cemetery on tape back in high school.   Making the lives of people who are blind and visually impaired easier and better are objectives that continue to be part of my life. My internship at the Constituent Services Office under Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was challenging and taught me a lot about issues families were facing across the state. I provided feedback on audio description quality during my WGBH Media Access Group internship and learned about ACB's Audio Description Project at that time. My Easter Seals internship provided me the opportunity to take part in the Thrive program, where I mentored a teenager with visual impairment and provided her with transition resources, confidence, and guidance.   I shadowed advocates at the Disabled Persons Protection Commission when I interned there and compassionately assisted vulnerable clients. Individuals with disabilities oftentimes face financial control and abuse in many cases and DPPC helps them take the steps they need to stay safe and resume their lives in a better situation. These experiences stuck with me as I advocated to take radio communications in college and learned the skills to become a professional voiceover talent. I graduated from Simmons College in 2012 with a double minor in Radio Communications/Special Education Moderate Disabilities and a BA in English Writing.   I moved on to UMASS Boston where I had the opportunity to work with the Carroll Center for the Blind and Perkins School for the Blind, to teach adults with visual impairments how to be more independent. I taught these students how to cook, clean, access technology, organize, launder clothes, read braille, learn about needed resources, and take part in leisure activities. The best part was seeing their confidence grow and the self-doubt lessen. I made their lives easier and better by increasing their self-image, confidence, advocacy skills, and independence. However, while attending graduate school, I had some accessibility challenges, but I pursued my Master's degree anyway. I struggled through the process by working with professors to complete my courses with high grades and finally graduated with a Master's in Vision Rehabilitation Therapy from UMASS Boston's Vision Studies Program.   My work at the Perkins Library has been outlined by Ted Reinstein on The Chronicle documentary TV program. It follows my braille production work at Perkins and my voiceover endeavors. I had seven years of experience providing braille and large print to a wide variety of organizations and individuals. Perkins offered many opportunities which I utilize to network: I try new devices when demonstrated, input ideas to MIT students for new technologies, and tested websites/software for various Perkins Solutions clients. My voice over freelance work allowed me to meet many friends and producers which organically lead me to the path of audio description narration work. I now work with X Tracks, International Digital Center and audio Eyes to name a few. Giving back to the blindness community by bringing more quality audio description to the ear is personally rewarding and I'm honored to be able to help advocate further in this field of access.   Further enriching my life experience, my current guide dog, a yellow lab named Nabu, and I were partnered in February, 2017. It didn't take long for our bond to form, and now she and I travel together everywhere. She's a beautiful and loving dog and it's no trouble meeting people with her participating in my adventures. We work closely every day and she rarely leaves my side.   That brings me to the present. In June of 2022, my partner and I founded GetBraille.com, a braille production company where we produce literary braille, large print, and audio materials to all who need them. This on-demand service will make it easier for schools, organizations, restaurants, and individuals to request quality braille at affordable prices. We always provide quotes and project consults at no cost. Our future goals include developing multi-sensory educational materials and assistive technologies for those with print disabilities that we wish had been available to us. Offering work to others who are blind and visually impaired is important to us as we grow; we look forward to the bright future a   How to connect with Tanja: Email me at tanja@getbraille.com Visit our Get Braille website at: https://getbraille.com/ Visit my voiceover website at https://www.tanjamvoice.com/ Find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tanja.milojevic.37 Check out my linked in profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanja-milojevic-94104726/     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.     Michael Hingson  01:20 Welcome once again, we're glad you're with us. And you have in case you're wondering, reached unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meat. I'm Mike Hinkson, your host and today we're interviewing Tanja Milojevic. And Tanja has a varied background. She is involved with a company called Get Braille. She's a voice actress. And she's going to tell us about the rest. I looked at her bio, and it's a nice long bio. So there's a lot of data there. So rather than putting all of that here in the podcast, Tanja gets to talk about it. How about that? Anyway, Tanja, welcome to unstoppable mindset. How are you?   Tanja Milojevic  02:01 I'm doing well, Michael, thank you so much. And it's Tanja. But Tanja a lot of people think that I think it's   Michael Hingson  02:09 well once again, like I should have asked because like with with  Milojevic. I, I just listened to what Josh said. And it said, Tanja, so Tanja.   Tanja Milojevic  02:20 Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm really excited. And of course, with your story being so inspiring, too. I, you know, I look forward to helping the community itself and in many different ways, including providing Braille access, and easier Braille access, more affordable, quality, all that fun stuff, and of course, contributing to the world of voiceover and AI voice cloning.   Michael Hingson  02:46 Well, let's start with kind of your history. Tell us about growing up and where you were born and all of that stuff.   Tanja Milojevic  02:54 So I was born in Serbia, I came here to the US at the age of five and a half, because I needed some various surgeries. Honestly, when I was born, I was a preemie premature baby and I had run off the prematurity. So we needed to perform surgery right away, to see if we could reattach the retinas. They had been detached due to the oxygen, the incubator. So my mother was able to gather enough money, fundraise and bring me here to the US at the age of one, we had the surgery that was very successful. And then we came back to the US periodically to get eyedrops medication and check in. By the age of five, these checkups were so frequent that we decided to settle in the US, it made a lot more sense to do that a lot more cost effective. So that's what we did. And I went to public school here, I have the fortune of getting all of my schooling here in the US, and then many other opportunities as life went along its journey. So I was a dual learner in school, I did large print Braille. And then of course, when screen reading technology was more easily obtainable. A lot of audio, JAWS, voiceover all that fun stuff. And I'd say my vision,   Michael Hingson  04:14 able to do much but give your age away. But when were you born what year   Tanja Milojevic  04:18 1989.   Michael Hingson  04:19 So by that time, by that time, ROP was pretty well known. So there was no choice but to put you in an incubator with pure oxygen or what?   Tanja Milojevic  04:34 Well, I mean, you're looking at not a third world country, but but definitely a country that was economically struggling with the war going on and such. And the care really wasn't equal access to everyone and it's sort of like, what you could get into, you know, what opportunities were available to you. And at the time, they had all these premature babies in incubators, that was just the way it was done. They didn't have enough They have to really monitor and I sort of question whether or not much of the staff really cared all that much about it. It's not like you could go to court and sue them and really get anywhere because they would lock you out of the courtroom. So with limited opportunities, you kind of took what you could get.   Michael Hingson  05:18 Yeah. Well, having been born in 1950, when ROP or at that time, rLf was not nearly as well known or certainly not accepted. Although it had been offered as a reasonable issue dealing with premature babies. It still wasn't totally accepted by the medical profession. And I've heard that there were people born around that time who like 30 and 40 years later sued and won. And I always felt, why would I want to do that? If the doctor didn't really know, or wasn't that well known? What are we gonna do by filing lawsuits other than destroying lives, which doesn't make any sense because my life was not destroyed, it just went a different way.   Tanja Milojevic  06:03 Right? I mean, that's a great way to look at it. And I see it as a blessing in disguise, because it was a great opportunity to bring my family over one at a time close family and get them jobs here. Well, not that I got them jobs, but they were able to have the opportunity to better themselves, their situations, and so on and have family here, which is a much more attractive alternative than being in a country that's economically struggling, war torn, etc. At the time, we got out of that conflict, just just in time, because it gotten worse from there, obviously. So having the opportunities to have public education here. All of the various services that were offered here, at the time was just unheard of. The School for the Blind that existed in Serbia was very 1800s, maybe 1950s style, institutional, like dark rooms dirty, just not a place you want to be. So yeah, it's a great, great opportunity for us. So I That's how I see it, instead of worrying about lawsuits and trying to get revenge or whatever.   Michael Hingson  07:14 Which makes perfect sense. Which makes perfect sense. Do you Do you have siblings?   Tanja Milojevic  07:19 I do I have an older sister. We're 17 years apart. So kind of the running joke is she's my mom. Sometimes, you know, state, we go to the certain know your mother can help you with this. Like, this is my older sister. But don't say that to her. She'll be offended.   Michael Hingson  07:36 Your big sister.   Tanja Milojevic  07:38 My big sister.   Michael Hingson  07:39 Yeah. Yeah, that works better. Yeah. So you say you did get some eyesight back from the operations? And yeah, how did that work for you in school?   Tanja Milojevic  07:52 I it was, in a way, it sort of got me into trouble. Not that I wasn't grateful for having the vision, it was just that my teachers were like, well, she can read large print, you know, and if we magnify them enough, and give her the video magnifier, or they call it a CCTV of CCTV, as it's called the video magnifier, but they gave me access to one of those like, well, she doesn't need Braille. Because first of all, we have to pay a whole ton more, we got to pay another person to come in here and work on Braille. And whenever she can give, just get by with large print. And it was a struggle, because after 45 minutes of trying to see the larger text, it hurt my you know, I get a headache, my eyes would start tearing, I might neck, shoulders all that you'd get uncomfortable sitting in in such a weird position for that long. So we had to fight with the school to get them the public school to get them to agree to get me Braille services, so that I learned braille and print and had both in my toolbox, if you will. But also, I would argue that the language barrier was just as much of a hindrance as maybe the lack of understanding of, hey, this is a dual learner. Because when I first started first grade, they put me in a school that was like more special ed versus some teaching someone who's blind, it was more like they had kids with various disabilities. And so the teaching style wasn't a good fit for me. I did learn English and like grade one Braille, which is for anyone that's listening that may not know, is uncontracted Braille. It's long form, you write everything out a letter at a time versus using contractions and the lead condensed bro, which saves a lot more space. So I knew that but it wasn't a great fit because I wasn't being challenged enough. And one of my teachers found that out first grade, and they pushed for me to get moved to a different public school, where it was more of a general ed system. So So I had a year where I was kind of like, stuck in first grade for two years. In a way that was good because I had a chance to learn more of the language and Braille at the same time. And then I was more prepared to move on with the curriculum. But in a way, it also sort of held me back and was a little bit awkward for me, because I was like, Wow, I'm older than these kids here in my class. So a couple of different challenges. But the way that I like to look at it is that the more skills you can gain from tough spots, you're put in, the better problem solving skills you might have or advocacy for yourself later in life, especially if you see that. It's just simply a matter of miscommunication. And as long as you explain things to to folks around you correctly, in a way that resonates with them, it's got to resonate with them, it can't just make sense. They've got to sort of personally understand what it is that you mean, and see the struggle, I guess, if you will, then you're better off doing it that way, then   Michael Hingson  11:01 what do you what do you mean? What do you mean by that? Can you kind of explain I I'm not sure I follow totally.   Tanja Milojevic  11:07 So a general education teacher is busy, they don't have the time to stay after school every day with you and work on extra things. If you can prove to them that giving you an assignment ahead of time, or giving you the notes on the board, or maybe even expressing to them what's confusing about you and setting a time that works for them, you're going out of your way to show that you're dedicated to their class, they personally need to show that their students are succeeding, or they're going to have to explain why it is that that they've got so many struggling students. They're responsible for many kids all at once, and you're just adding more stress. So the more solutions you can provide to them, the easier their life is, and their job is. And the faster they can get out the door because we all have lives and families and yeah. So proving to the school through anecdotal evidence that this is hiring someone else is just going to present their teachers with less obstacles is the way to go. At least for me, from my experience, well, showing effort showing evidence, and it worked. Yeah, yeah, eventually.   Michael Hingson  12:23 Well, how did the teachers react as you started to explain, I would assume that that helped.   Tanja Milojevic  12:29 It did help. I did run into some other snags where the teacher of the visually impaired I was working with at the time, had a lot of her own issues in her own life, day to day. So you for math and science, and so on, I was writing my showing my work writing a lot of the answers in Braille, leaving some space, so double spacing everything so that she could interline it with print, which means writing the print above the Braille line. So then the teacher could go ahead and read it, it was an extremely antiquated way to do it at the time, that was the option. Now, of course, we've got all kinds of technology and Google shirt, you know, Google Sheets, and whatever, all this other more efficient ways to do it. But the point is that it took her a couple of weeks to get these assignments back to my general education, math teacher, for example. And that slowed me down. Because I'd fall behind, I'd be maybe a chapter behind everybody else, I'd still have to pay attention in class, but they were well ahead of where I was. So you know, I was I was having a hard time keeping up. This was like for fifth grade. But it was just another exercise in workarounds and figuring out how else we can do this, I'd show my work and print on the CCTV instead of the Braille, I would find ways to print out material that I wrote off of my something called a Braille note or a Braille light at the time, which is just like a small computer, essentially, that has a Braille display, you can feel one line of brela at once. It's electronic, it stores files, you can change the file format, and I print out my stuff. So I came up with a couple of faster ways to do it.   Michael Hingson  14:19 And what it's what it's actually called as a refreshable Braille display because as new lines display, or new lines are called for the dots pop up representing those lines. So the display constantly refreshes for those who don't understand that. So it's a way of now producing Braille in a much more portable way. That one disadvantages is Tanya's describing it. You only get one line at a time because it's a very expensive process. The displays are not inexpensive to do so. Over time, hopefully we will find that someone will develop a really good full page braille display but that's a waste is off.   Tanja Milojevic  15:01 Yeah, it's still pricey technology. I really there get away from sins?   Michael Hingson  15:08 Yeah, we need to do something different than we do.   Tanja Milojevic  15:12 Definitely the pins get dirty Rogen, etc stuck, and it's very expensive to replace them. Yeah, that's part of the hindrance there.   Michael Hingson  15:21 But it is still a lot more portable than carrying a number of volumes of Braille books. I remember when I was in school, when I was in school I we ordered a catalog case from Sears the catalog case literally was a case where you would put catalogs and carry them around, if you were selling things, you could take catalogs to people, you could put a bunch of catalogs in this case, in my situation, we used to, to so that when I went school, I can carry some Braille books. And I got three or four volumes of Braille. So that carry Braille for a few subjects. But, of course, very bulky, very complicated, not easy to do, and certainly not refreshable.   Tanja Milojevic  16:06 Not at all, I did that for math, science history, especially a lot of the charts. The way that they did it was they'd have thermoform charts, and all the rest of the text was done in Braille. And so you had like not only the volume of the chapter, rail text, if you will, but you also have a separate volume you're carrying, that has all the reference figures associated with that chapter. So you're carrying two volumes, as opposed to where you could just have 213234 Sometimes,   Michael Hingson  16:38 and for those objects. And for those who don't know what thermoform is thermoform is a process where you create an original of something, whether it be drawings, or even documents on paper, and then you buy a machine called a thermoform machine, you put a blank piece of plastic in the machine, lying on top of the Braille sheet, the original Braille sheet, you activate it, and a vacuum pulls down the two sheets together the Braille with plastic on top of it, while it heats them. And the plastic then takes on the shape of the Braille document below it. So it's a way of relatively quickly producing a number of copies of a braille book or, as Tonya said, that, in her case, the diagrams and so on, of course, it's still not inexpensive. And thermoform isn't like using your fingers to read Braille pages, the plastic feels different in it, it's a little more awkward to use. But still, it was a fast way to get Braille comparatively speaking.   Tanja Milojevic  17:43 That's definitely true. The main issue with thermal warm is your fingers eventually go numb, because it's a glossy type paper. And if your hands are sweating, it can inhibit your ability to run your fingers across the page. So that makes your hands go numb faster. So sometimes putting some sort of powder on your hands can help. But well, the drawback to that is it dries your skin out. So there's always positives, and not so much to that process. But it is a more inexpensive way to produce tactile graphics.   Michael Hingson  18:21 See you sighted people think that you have problems in dark rooms trying to read stuff. You're not the only ones who have reading problems. We all have our challenges, don't we?   Tanja Milojevic  18:32 Oh, for sure. All sorts of creative challenges that we constantly iterate on to improve.   Michael Hingson  18:39 And we do iterate and we do improve, which is of course the real point of the whole process. So you went off and you went through school, when Where were you living in Boston or where?   Tanja Milojevic  18:53 So we were living in initially when came to the US. We lived in South Boston for a bit. Then we moved to Chelsea, we were there for about 10 years than ever. And then now I live in Peabody, but relatively same area   Michael Hingson  19:05 of the country spent. I spent three years in Winthrop. Oh, East Boston. So nice. Yeah, that's a nice area. Yeah. It's fun to be there. Well, then you you went on from school to college?   Tanja Milojevic  19:21 Yeah. I went to Sundance for my undergrad. And I studied communication, special ed and writing literature specifically. So that was a great experience. Their disabilities office was extremely helpful. I initially before applying to various colleges. I did a couple of interviews with their disability center. Couple of phone calls, I wanted to get an idea for myself of what their process was, and how willing they were to talk to me about it. So the fact that Simmons was not only transparent about their process, but also willing to answer any questions And when I'm not even a prospective student, yeah, told me a lot. So yeah, I did have a good experience.   Michael Hingson  20:06 So what did they do or say that caused you to like their office in their process, compared to other places that you observed?   Tanja Milojevic  20:16 Well, I mean, for one, it wasn't some email that was automated, or, like, a, I don't know, now, now, I guess you could joke and say, they're gonna send you to a half an hour recording that you have to watch. It wasn't anything like that, where they were just trying to automate everything. I spoke with the, one of the directors of the Disability Center there at the time. And I asked all kinds of questions like how far in advance, would you need these books, if, if that process falls through, if the professor changes the books or a new professor comes into the class, because these things happen all the time, you know, depending on what happens in life. They told me, Well, that's, that's okay. If the book changes, we can work with you, the publisher, or you can try to purchase the book, Online used. And then we can just scan a chapter at a time, if the crunch time is on. And you've already started the semester, get it to you within a week, as long as we have a syllabus, and we know what the timeline looks like for these chapters. And then we bring in the professor and make sure they understand there's a Letter of Accommodation, the professor has to sign that and understand what they're reading. And then if they cause trouble later, you can point to the letter and say, I'm not making this stuff up. There's evidence to support that I need this accommodation for this reason you signed off on it, can we work together on this, and it cuts that cumbersome, miscommunication down quite a bit when you do it that way. So the fact that there are several processes in place made me feel a lot better. I'm a kind of person that likes to have plan A through like E or F, just in case, as, as we know, with tech issues nowadays, we gotta have multiple options. One of the things, the confidence, there was really what drew me to, you know, they knew what they were doing, they were confidently able to answer my questions. They understood why I was asking them, they weren't getting annoyed that I had 50 questions. And that's really what sold me on it, if   Michael Hingson  22:25 you will. One of the things that I experienced when I was at UC Irvine, was our office basically said, we're here to help you and be the muscle and power if you get a lack of cooperation from professors and so on. But if you need material transcribed, or whatever this is, of course, long before offices became more organized, but you'll probably need to be the person to find the appropriate transcribers. Well, I worked with the California Department of Rehabilitation, we found transcribers and we found people to do that work, because the office didn't do it. But what the office basically said was, you need to learn to do this stuff anyway. Because we're not here and other offices and facilities aren't here, when you go out on the job,   Tanja Milojevic  23:21 right? That's a huge consideration is whether or not you're able to easily find people that can transcribe, especially if it's like a math class. So I'll tell you, in college, I avoided languages math, hardcore, because after high school, I had lost, you know, like, you don't just have that library available to just order from the Ames library, which is a common library that school systems use to borrow various textbooks for students. Once you hit college, you're kind of on your own in terms of finding out how you're going to accommodate these tougher classes. I math wasn't my favorite subject. So I tried to avoid that in high school, I took Spanish in German for languages. And because I had done that, there was a possibility for me to take multicultural electives in that place in place of that. And I took a test to opt out of like, the generally because my, my major didn't require math. So I opted out of that by taking a math test. And then I took an intro to computer science class. And I worked a lot with partners on certain tasks that were non visual network, or excuse me that were, it was usually visual, yes. Because there was just no other like you get into the class, you don't have a lot of time to figure out how you're going to make it happen. Transcription takes a while, as you know, so unless you have this well in advance, it's going to be a scramble, and you'll likely get the book later. into the semester. And then it's also a question of who's going to pay for it. It's quite a bit of money. Does the maths commission pay for it in this case? Does the school pay for it? And I didn't want the headache to cheat off to be frank about it. So I avoided it.   Michael Hingson  25:15 Well understand how did you find partners to help with different projects like that?   Tanja Milojevic  25:21 A lot of the time, that professor would just assign somebody in the class. But a couple of the classes I got on with a few of the students sitting near me, maybe all of us were pretty well introverted. So we didn't have a whole lot of people we talked to, and also Simmons is a school that has adult students, it's got, you've got, you know, people in the master's program taking maybe some other electives that are also available to undergrads. So that nice mix of culture really gives you more of a mature group to work with. So partnering with students wasn't too hard at all.   Michael Hingson  26:04 The operative part of that, though, is that you did the work to find a partner. And I know there are some times Yeah, well, what I'm getting at is like, there are colleges, where offices for disabled students says, oh, we'll find you those people. But then you have to work by whatever their rules are. And you learn how to do that yourself.   Tanja Milojevic  26:22 They did have that available. For example, if you needed a note taker, which in my case, I didn't. But if a student wanted a note taker, they could request that some some student say that sign up for work, study job, fill that position, that student would go to your class with you take the notes, send them to you, whatever it is that that they got to do. Sometimes there would be a reader that you could get access to same kind of deal, work study position, the student would work with you for maybe two to three hours a week, and then get paid for it. But the problem with that was you sort of had to coordinate your schedule with their schedule, if your class wasn't in a spot that in a space in their schedule that was open, they could work with you that day. So it was more of a hassle than it was worth. And I didn't need a reader at the time I scanned a lot of my stuff in and would work with a professor or ask if I wasn't clear on something. So yeah, that to   Michael Hingson  27:27 you, you did a lot of it. That is you did the work to to make it happen. In other words, you learned the skills that would help you later on once you got out of college.   Tanja Milojevic  27:36 I am grateful for that. Because when you get into the world of work, it's nothing but figuring out how you're going to make something happen and make your boss happy. So it's a good skill set to have.   Michael Hingson  27:47 So what did you do for Siemens?   Tanja Milojevic  27:50 So I went to UMass Boston, which was a program was mostly remote. We went in a couple of times for intro classes and law labs and things like that. So I initially started in the TDI program, which is future of the visually impaired. Then I switched to VR T vision rehab therapy, which is the differences that TBI works with students up to age 22. And sometimes they can work with adult learners to if they're working for permission or a blindness center. If you're a VRT, you're working mostly with adult students, teaching them daily, basically, daily living skills, where else skills a little bit, recreational, etc. So I switched to that program midway through. And so I was at UMass Boston for five years, and then got my Master's there. And that was, like I said, mostly remote. There are a couple of things that I liked about that. And a couple of drawbacks, for example, you didn't really get that same class feel when it was all remote as I'm sure everyone can attest with COVID than being on Zoom and does zoom PowerPoint by zoom right? PowerPoint deck, but by the boys. Yeah, I had a lot of experience in person asking the professor questions right there. And then with remote, you really couldn't do that as much. And I ran into some more accessibility standards, like test taking, getting the software not to timeout on me or jump my focus around the page. So I worked around those and we made everything work. But the main the main thing was now with labs coming in, getting a partner to work with was a little bit tougher at that point. Because that relationship that you build when you're in person in school wasn't a thing. You're posting online, you're replying to people's comments, and posts, but it's not really the same thing. It's, you're just kind of doing a lot of work on your own. So you feel isolated. And then when you're there in person in a lab, you're like well now I have to work with these people. Get enough information from them. And there will be no you. So it's a lot more communication that has to happen. And the only thing that I'll say that I wish was a little bit longer is some of these labs, we had a little bit more time to do them. Other than that, you know, did run into some accessibility issues, their disability center was a lot more slower and had a lot more red tape around it, their processes were a little unclear and ever changing. So I did have a struggle with that in a few cases. But hey, long story short, I graduated, so I'm happy   Michael Hingson  30:36 when you were growing up before you got into college, and so on, did you have a career goal in mind? What did you want to do when you grew up?   Tanja Milojevic  30:46 Ha, that's a that's a great question. I think a lot of the time, I wasn't really sure I was kind of bouncing from various things. I've always enjoyed acting ever since I was a kid, you know, I really admired good actors or who I considered good actors, performances. And like the genuine attea that they brought, maybe not all films are meant to be genuine. Like, you can think of anime or cartoon they're over the top. But when something is very believable that you get in touch with a character, you feel like they're real. That's the kind of thing I wanted to emulate, and also just living vicariously through them. So when I discovered that voice, acting was a thing. In high school, I was like, Oh, this is exactly what I want to do. I'd always been interested in it since I was kid like, enjoyed making home movies recording, I used to have a tape recorder when I was a kid, bring it around everywhere and annoy the crap out of everybody in my family. Ask them questions, record little stories, it was just creative, fun. But I always thought if I could have this creative vision or creativity be part of my job, I'd be very happy, never enjoyed the idea or prospect of being a drone. Not that everyone working in an office is a drone. But I just found the idea of sitting behind a desk doing the same thing over and over and over again. Absolutely. You know, no freedom to make any decision about anything was was completely suffocating to me the idea of that, I always wanted something where I could move around, work with different people enjoy it, really challenge myself and work in a team to make something awesome. Like art. That's not really a career, per se, it's a hobby that turned into a side gig, that now with working with resemble AI, it's a embedded more so into my day to day job, where I'm recording different voices for them, and so on. It started as like one of those, this would be cool if I could do this. And then this is fun. I'm going to do this as much as I can and kind of more and more experienced networking. And then otherwise. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just gonna say otherwise, I really wanted to give back to the community because I had always been a consumer of audio description and Braille services and these, like the mask mission and my various Braille teachers and mobility instructors, who made lessons a lot of fun in high school, they didn't just make it boring. Gold went across the same street every single week, there was like, No, we're gonna go to the store. And we're gonna learn how to solicit persistence and whatever we're going to forget about these cardinal directions for which I got sick of. But the point is, I enjoyed so much, I couldn't be the person I am today without the services that I've taken advantage of my whole life. So just the idea of giving back, and helping other people making their day a little bit brighter, and helping them understand that we're all gonna have bad days, that's never gonna go away. The grief, if you've lost your sight is never gonna go away. Grief never does. But you know that it's going to be better. If you're feeling bad one day, you know, it can't be like that forever. Something will surprise you. And if you put it out there enough, things are gonna are gonna improve universe always seems to put out with what you expect eventually. Not in the way you expect. But it will happen some somewhere somehow. And those two things I feel like now I'm finally at the point where I've gotten both of them to be a reality.   Michael Hingson  34:33 So the big question of the podcast is, you made all those recordings when you were growing up? Did you keep them?   Tanja Milojevic  34:42 Some of them? I have some of the tapes. It's some of them are so terrible and overdramatic, but it's amusing. It's like just you can tell I was just having fun. And then the recordings through the years as I got better with voice acting kind of took part in different shows. I did save all of those just because you you would be surprised. Maybe not. Maybe you wouldn't be surprised. But a lot of producers will lose things. They'll put something on the backburner, like a project. And then three years later, oh my god, I'm trying to work on this project. I have a lot more time now life got a little less busy. I don't have the recordings anymore. My computer harddrive died. Do you have have not? You know, that happens a lot. And then data, it's easy to just keep a bunch of it. A bunch of data.   Michael Hingson  35:30 As I recall, if I remember the story, right? The movie Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole Academy Award winner, but somewhere along the line, the master was lost. And somehow it was recovered. But even an Academy Award film, things things happen.   Tanja Milojevic  35:53 Exactly. They do. So that's why I'm backup hard drives. I've like two or three of them. back everything up. I usually drama, so I collect those.   Michael Hingson  36:03 Yeah. What's your favorite?   Tanja Milojevic  36:07 Oh, that's top like, I don't know, I don't even know.   Michael Hingson  36:10 Tell me some of the audio dramas you like?   Tanja Milojevic  36:14 So is there a genre you're thinking? Do you are you thinking modern or not? So that's a really hard question to answer. I decided to go based on categories. But there is a version of lock and key that was done on location and main locking key. Of course, anyone listening will? Well, if you're a Netflix person, you'll know that it's an original series on Netflix. But there are books that were written by I believe it's Stephen King's son, and Stephen King. And I'm a huge Stephen King fan. So they wrote this, I think it's a series might be three partners, quote, honestly don't quote me on that. But there are books, it was written as a radio drama and adapted by someone called Fred Fred Greenhalgh from Maine and they recorded on location that a couple of days they did this, it's a six part audio drama, it's available on Audible. It is so good.   Michael Hingson  37:09 The audible copy. And it is, I didn't even know what it was going to be like, when I got it. But it is it is so well done.   Tanja Milojevic  37:21 It's way better than the Netflix series.   Michael Hingson  37:25 I collect old radio shows, I collect old radio shows as a hobby, and I've been doing that for a long time. And you you see all sorts anything from good to bad. But that is a lot of that has spoiled me for some of the acting that I've seen in more modern dramas, because the same level of emotion, isn't there people, a lot of people today don't know really, how to act and produce an audio drama that conveys I think what the author originally intended in the book or the way it was done with a radio. We just sometimes we don't see the same quality, but I remember locking key and it does.   Tanja Milojevic  38:09 That is true, that it's not always the same quality. I think that we're trying, we're really have a couple of different avenues where we're trying to fix that, like there is something called the audio verse awards. They happen every year. There are different, obviously, iterations of this out there. But the audio verse awards really strives not to make it a popularity contest. Yeah, the crowd voting system, people go in, they listened to various things, you got awards for sound design, and acting and writing and music production. Everybody gets recognized, which is important. You can't just recognize the writer or the actor, because that's, that's just a tiny piece of the pie. So it's a good place, I'll say if you don't know where to start, when it comes to listening to good audio drama, or at least vetted audio drama. It gives you a lot of choices. And you can find these things and then you've got people ranking, the quality of things on blog posts and all kinds of places they're   Michael Hingson  39:15 well Gunsmoke, the Gunsmoke, the Western, they call it sometimes the first adult Western in radio that was on from well, all of the 1950s constantly won awards for sound patterns, sound effects, and if you listen to it and compare it even to other old radio programs, there is so much more sound put into it. It's they did an incredible job of really setting the scene and creating the atmosphere with with the sound patterns with the sound effects. So it wasn't just the acting, which was so good.   Tanja Milojevic  39:55 I know. I mean, they got some talented foley artists there. Yeah, and yeah, and I mean, another one with sound obviously that if we're thinking of classic, maybe not as classic as Gunsmoke. But the Star Wars, NPR. I was   Michael Hingson  40:13 thinking of of that. Yeah. The Star Wars program is pretty well done in the acting is good. Hamill did a did a great job.   Tanja Milojevic  40:23 That isn't absolute. I mean, there are other Star Wars, radio dramas in that world that I can think of, but none of them compare to that. NPR version. There's   Michael Hingson  40:36 there's another program that NPR did. That was on for three years called Alien Worlds, which was well done.   Tanja Milojevic  40:42 Oh, you think I heard that one? Yeah. Well, if you I mean, the BBC does some great stuff to do. Oh, they   40:49 do a lot of good stuff.   Tanja Milojevic  40:49 Yeah. Yes. I think my biggest frustration is that there isn't one central directory where you can find all of this stuff and keep up to date with it. You have to go on this website, and this website and Miss directory. And there's no central data, like your collection system, where it's like, oh, I want to learn about the history of audio drama, and I want to know what's available now. And in the past, like archive.org, Doc, excuse me, archive.org is extremely helpful, because you can just search keywords and find a bunch of stuff that was curated, downloaded, cleaned, like nightfall. Amazing, amazing series from 1979 to like, 1981 or 1982. I think they only had 104 episodes, but they're really Canadian horror series. Now, really, really good stuff anthology. So a lot of it was ahead of its time.   Michael Hingson  41:53 Yeah, as we've seen so many times, well, Gene Roddenberry was way ahead of his time as well. Needless to say, yeah, so you've done a fair amount of voice acting, I gather. A bit have we have we heard   Tanja Milojevic  42:10 you might have. I mean, like, for example, some of the longer run stuff going on, it's edict zero. Some, some may be familiar with that. It's a science fiction cyberpunk series. So I'm just like Fraser meets X Files, it's really good. mind bending stuff. You know, our world is a simulation, kind of a lot of fun. That's been running, I don't know now nine years, what maybe more, it's crazy. There's what's the frequency, which is kind of a cool, fantasy, horror, contemporary show. That is one season, I think we're gonna be working on season two. So far, there is I do want to mention the 11th hour project is a great place. If you're new to audio drama, you want to dip your feet in, maybe you want to try your hand at producing or writing or something, you've never done it before. It's an extremely inclusive space. It's 11th hour audio.com. And if you visit that, you'll notice there are obviously shows that have been created. But what it is, is it's a challenge in the month of October to create audio dramas from start to finish and collaborate with people you've never collaborated with before. In this project, this team effort, and it's a race to the deadline. It comes out on world audio drama day, which is the 31st of October, in recognition of world the world's originally 1938. And it's a lot of fun. I've been involved a couple of years there. It's a wonderful community. They're extremely welcoming. The moderators are great. And they're always available to answer any questions, so I totally recommend checking it out. And then other stuff that's horizon, the white vault, there's a group out there called fool and scholar productions. And while we're on the topic of sound design, Travis van Graf, who is the one of the integral members or founders of that group, won several awards through the audio verse awards. Specifically I can think of for sound design on vast horizon and the white vault and some of his other shows, like Tales from the tower. So these are all vast horizon is a horror slash sci fi show that's about this agronomist who wakes up on a spaceship, the rest of the crew is just gone. They're not dead. There's no bodies, no signs of struggle or anything like that. They're gone. But the ship is breaking apart. So she's got to figure out a way to get to some sort of station and the only entity she can interact with is the artificial intelligence on the ship. So I play the artificial intelligence which for me was a huge like dream come true, I guess, if you will, because I've always been fascinated with it. Artificial assistants and all that. And using the screen reader. I mean, I know a lot of my friends who are visually impaired love to imitate screen readers just because it's funny. So and so I finally got to do it and get like, a dig out of it. That was awesome. And then again, vast horizon vast horizons, okay? Yes, it's it's singular, vast horizon horizon, singular, cracked, you got it. And then the white vault is a survival horror show. First Person accounts basically compiled, but not what you would imagine from seeing a lot of these similar kind of tropes, if you will, this is a truly international task. And it takes place all over the world. And they get actually authentic actors from various countries. It's not like, oh, and I want you to do a British RP accent and whatever, it's, it's actually people from there. And there are languages also being represented other languages like Mandarin, and you know, Icelandic and so on. And they, they do it in such a tasteful way where the language starts, then it fades down, and you have the voice actor speaking in English. They got translators, I mean, they really put a lot of thought into this. I highly recommend it. And you can binge all five seasons now. Vast horizon, you can also binge all the seasons. So if you need some listening materially fun road trip stuff. Those are a couple of the project. I mean, there's others, but you know, there's Take, take me, take me a while to go through those.   Michael Hingson  46:37 And with all the languages, I assume nobody though, has done clean Chinese yet?   Tanja Milojevic  46:42 Not yet. But they just Serbian.   Michael Hingson  46:45 Oh, yeah, that's that's not yet but that's okay.   Tanja Milojevic  46:49 Well, willing, that was actually fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. It's just really some insight on that. Yeah. If you're interested in, in learning about how the clang on food scene is, is done. In the next generation, I think there was a recent episode where they had this whole banquet such was like this Yeah. entity to look like an octopus, basically, creepy, alien looking. There's an episode of gastropod, where they go into, it's called gastropod, the podcast, and they talk about food in the context of science fiction and fantasy, and how writers work is, has been brought to life, either in books or in movies. And they talk about Star Trek, they actually have the lady who designed the set and the food, like that is literally her job. She designed this food to look perfect on camera. And also so that the actors aren't like, chewing too much, or whatever. They're, it's fascinating. And that's just a talk on cast. It's not audio drama.   Michael Hingson  47:53 So what's been the biggest challenge for you in your career so far on the job and all that?   Tanja Milojevic  48:00 The biggest challenge, I'd say is the ever changing technology, software, tech stacks, soft phones, CRMs, you name it, like, you know, you learn one thing, or maybe a company starts using a new tool just because it works for them. And it's a good presents good workflow. But not all the tools are usable with screen reading technology, like Jaws like NVDA voiceover. And there's this constant need to adapt and learn how to come up with workarounds. And explain to your boss, I understand why you want to use this. But I'm unable to access it because of these inaccessible barriers that I'm running across. How can we work together to make it work. And sometimes it's, well, let's collaborate on Google Sheets. And then I'll post the results up here on this tool that we're using, for instance, resemble uses something called notion. It's a fairly early tool and its development. It's mainly designed for writing and it's think of Trello. It's like cards that you move around. And those denote tasks completed or in process, you're able to put in notes, it is not accessible at all. So a lot of these workarounds is just, you gotta have a lot of communication, make sure that people are on the same page. And so we also use Slack. And then my solution is Google Suite. Because it bridges that gap a little bit. We can always post a Google link in one of those notion cards, and people can access the same info. How do you like say that? It's the best solution that I've run across so far in terms of keeping track of threads and channels, but there's definitely some things that are a little cumbersome with it. For example, sharing files when you're on the desktop version, if you're trying to download files files that folks have sent you. Getting into that, to see the file, sometimes when you tab, basically or so. So imagine that you're on the name of your colleague, and they've shared two files with you, you're going to hit tab to get into the list of files. Sometimes all it does is say bold italics. So then you have to shift tab into the field, pressure up arrow, once, it'll start reading a bunch of stuff, you ignore that you tab once you get to the files, each time you open the modal dialog to download each file. And then you hit the Close button. Once it's downloaded, you're brought right back into the message field, and your focus is no longer on the file list. So then you have to go back up repeat, tab, pass the first file you've downloaded, rinse and repeat the entire process, and it just slows you down. So I find them some way slack is very clunky. But it is the fastest solution when compared to others.   Michael Hingson  50:56 It's really good at being able to have a lot of channels and so on my biggest challenge with Slack is that if you have to monitor a variety of channels, it's not at all trivial. To go from channel to channel quickly. You just spent a lot of time looking through channels to find nuggets or information. And that's an awkward thing. It's it is not it is it is more linear from a voice standpoint, then is is really helpful.   Tanja Milojevic  51:28 Yeah, I mean, even reacting like and find it much easier to react to posts on the phone than on the desktop app. Yeah. And switch between workspaces on the phone. My other thing to bring up is notifications. I feel like Slack doesn't always notify you, right? Even if you're mentioned, sometimes it's easy to miss. So like you said, you have to sit there and hunt through all the channels, make sure that someone isn't trying to get your attention. Sometimes they just want to be like, right? I just want to be like, Can you email or text me or call me? I will get all of those things. Yes, don't bury somewhere, but it's so frustrating sometimes. But it's better than discord in terms of monitoring channels, I've noticed discords accessible, but it's not very usable in a lot of ways.   Michael Hingson  52:17 So you use a guide dog, I understand I do what caused you to decide to use a guide dog as opposed to just using a cane.   Tanja Milojevic  52:26 I've always loved animals. So as a kid, we lived on a farm and we had chickens, turkeys, we had a pig, and so on. So a lot of my job was to collect the eggs and you know, take care of them, whatever, feed them. So I grew up with animals. And then you know, birds as pets and so on. I really wanted to have my own, like dog. And my mom was just like, well, I don't know, I mean, it's a lot of work a lot of responsibility. I don't want the dog in the house. She wasn't a fan of the hair, the shedding and the responsibilities and the costs. So when I found out in high school that I could get a guide dog, you know, I could apply get one. And then I talked to some other folks who already had dogs, like my friend, teachers had dogs, I got to see them every day. And I got to see them working. And they were just so good and very caring. And there's nothing like a special bond between a guide dog and their handler, where the dog trusts you implicitly. And they love you unconditionally. So it's just such a such a it was such an attractive like, Oh, I'm gonna have my own best friend with me in college. And also the fact that you could travel around a lot easier the dog, follow people in front of you get you through a store a lot quicker find doors, elevators, stairs, street crossings. As long as you knew the route, you were good to go. So I loved that whole thing. And I decided to apply because I wanted to have a furry friend I could bring with me to college. College is intimidating when you're in high school because you're like, Well how am I gonna make friends? I'd always had trouble sort of connecting with peers my age. I always found it easier to make friends with folks were older than me. Then people my age were kids, you know kids are are fine too. But it was just that whole awkward of like, if you're the only person with a visual impairment in your school people are just like, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go do my own thing. So when I got a dog, you know, started college. It was a game changer in terms of helping me not be so so sad and like down just like being far away from my family. And being in this they gave me in freshman year they gave me this room that was like for one person and it was like a cell I kid you not. It was tiny. It was a corner of the building. I'd had a tiny closet and just enough room for you to spin around with your arms out That's about it. So I was very sad. I was just like, Wow, I feel like I'm in a prison cell. And I can't, like, see family or anybody, I feel so isolated here. So having the dog was huge for my mental health and not getting depressed, too bad, you know? So I got the dog for a number of reasons. I mean, socialization, huge. People would talk to me want to pet the dog, like they cared about the dog, not me. But it didn't matter. It's still, I still did wanted to do and I could get them to help me. In certain situations, like in the cafeteria, if I needed help, or whatever, finding a certain classroom, I could get peers to help because, like, if you help me find this classroom, you can pat him. Okay. So it worked out really well. Yeah, I just loved having the companionship,   Michael Hingson  55:53 I got my first guide dog going into high school, and that was even learned to use a cane but I was very knowledgeable about travel of dog has made a lot of a difference in what I do. And a dog's Well, a dog dogs in general have taught me a lot about teamwork, I love to say that I've learned more about trust and teamwork, from working with a guide dogs that I've learned from all the business and management experts in the world, because dogs do love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. And what you said was true, they trust implicitly, but only if you earn their trust. And they likewise have to earn your trust. And you have to learn to trust them, it's a two way street. But when both members of the team trust each other, it's a sight to behold. And it makes all the difference. And, and there's something to be said for the fact that it's good to have somebody to keep company with, you know,   Tanja Milojevic  56:55 Oh, definitely. I mean, both of my dogs, I feel so fortunate I've had wonderful was my first dog. The hardest thing though, for me is like I get so attached to them. And I, if they're if they're like sick, or they're getting older, I just worry about it and worry about it. And if there's something that I wish, it's that their lives were longer, yeah, and also, I've just had dogs with health issues. My first dog had inflammatory bowel disease, cancer and kidney disease at the end. And it was traumatizing, like we had to unfortunately, you know, put them to sleep and stuff. And after that, it just affected, it still affects me, like I mentioned earlier, grief doesn't go away at all, it's just how you deal with it. And you have to understand they you need to accept it, it's part of your life. And you're always going to remember them. And you got to you got to give them the respect of remembering them fondly and appreciating them for what they gave you. Right there. They gave their soul their spirit for you, you know,   Michael Hingson  57:58 you could dwell on the disease, or you can draw up dwell on the bad things, or you can dwell on the positive things and all the things that we learned together, and one of the things that I've learned through now, eight guide dogs is Wow, when when I got my first one in 1964, so it's been a while. But you know, when when they grow old, or they become ill, and you have to get our dog, it doesn't mean that you think any less of the dog who can't be your partner anymore, but you form a new teaming relationship. And your relationship may change if you keep the old the other dog which we generally have done. But still, the relationship is there. And what you really get to do is to get two dogs used to each other so that they interact and that's a lot of fun. Yeah, and I've had I've had two dogs ganging up on me. So which dog do you think I am? I want to go to work today. Oh, they're so easy. They're sneaky. Oh, that is so sweet. LaTonya this has been a lot of fun. Absolutely. I really appreciate all your time and insights. If people want to learn more about you and voice acting and so on, how would they do that?   Tanja Milojevic  59:18 You can check out my website that has samples of my work at WWW dot Tanja T A N J A. M as in Mary voice.com. That's TanjaMvoice.com. You can email me at Tanja t a

Impact School Founder and CEO Lauren Tickner interviews Kat founder of Miss Excel who provides companies and their employees with custom live virtual Excel training events and online courses in Microsoft Office & Google Suite to elevate their organization and efficiency, and focus on the real tasks at hand. For more information check out her courses below: The Excelerator Complete Microsoft Office Suite Ultimate Excel Bundle Sheet Smarts for Google Sheets --------------------------------------- Already making more than 125k per year head over to https://impactschoolpodcast.com/free to be invited to our free FB weekly training. Interested in learning how Impact School can double your sales and turn your vision into reality head over to https://impactschoolpodcast.com/apply Subscribe to this podcast. Follow Lauren Tickner on social media @laurentickner Follow Impact School's social media below https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmaUbqRyNP83CdSNEBMOFpg https://www.instagram.com/impact_school https://www.facebook.com/impactschoolpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlineimpact https://www.linkedin.com/company/impact-school/ https://www.tiktok.com/@impact_school

Jamie Graham has been a private label seller in Amazon since 2015. He and his wife Kayleigh owns and runs a fast growing beauty brand, with a team of twelve, selling in the UK, Europe and USA that's grown up to 6 million pounds in revenue, with a profit margin of 10%. Today, we will be talking about Jamie's ecommerce journey and learn how start and grow an ecommerse business in a beauty space.   This Episode is brought to you by 5x.   As a business owner, I'm sure you know how important data layer is. It allows you to make data driven decisions and also get insights on all aspects of your business.  In practice it requires signing up with different vendors, paying for custom integrations, checking multiple dashboards. 5x solves all of that. Think of it as Apple Store for Data Vendors meeting SquareSpace for in-depth analytics. They Save you time, money and workforce. If you want to get 20% off your first year with them, go to https://www.5x.co, schedule a demo and mention 10 million journey podcast.   Recommendations from Jamie:  Traction: Get a Grip on you Business by Gino Wickman: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837   Tools used by Jamie: Scale Insights: https://scaleinsights.com/ Helium 10: http://bit.ly/CORNERSIIH10 Data Dive: https://datadive.tools/ PickFu: https://www.pickfu.com/10mj Seller Metrics: https://sellermetrics.app/ Dynamite Jobs: https://dynamitejobs.com/ SoStocked: https://www.sostocked.com/ Clickup: https://clickup.com/ Slack: https://slack.com/ Google Suite: https://workspace.google.com/   Connect with Joshua: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamiemogul Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamie.graham.9003   Want to sit down with Anatoly 1 on 1? Even though I keep saying I AM NOT A GURU, many of you ask to sit down and pick my brain. I have decided to do a 1h HELP calls. There are 2 purposes: 1st to support you in your journey and second also to be able to break even on the production of this podcast (each episode editing, marketing, guest research etc takes about $60 - $150 to produce). Now you can schedule 1h with me, and we can talk about launching products, hiring, product research, keywords, mindset, how I did an Ironman or anything at all. Link is here: https://calendly.com/anatolyspektor/anatoly-connsulting-1h?month=2022-08   ANATOLY's TOOLS:   Product Development: Helim10 - I use it for Product Research, Keyword tracking and Listing Optimization . SPECIAL DEAL: Get 50% your first month or 10% every month: http://bit.ly/CORNERSIIH10 Pickfu - I use it for split testing all of my products and for validation ideas . SPECIAL DEAL: First split test 50% 0ff  https://www.pickfu.com/10mj   Trademarking: Trademark Angels - For all my trademarking needs. SPECIAL: Mention Anatoly and 10MJ podcast and get 10% Off your trademark.   Fiverr - I hire my 3dMockup person and images label designer here on Fiverr - http://bit.ly/10mjFIVERR Upwork - I hire people long term on Upwork - upwork.com Loom.com - for creating SOP's, I record everything on Loom and give to my VA's Keepa.com - to track historical data such as prices   ANATOLY's 3 Favorite Business Books: DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson - I think this is a must read for every online entrepreneurs - http://bit.ly/10MJDotCom 4 hours work week by Tim Ferriss - This book changed my life and made me become an entrepreneur - http://bit.ly/10MJ4WW The Greatest Salesman In The World by Og Mandino - Old book but it goes to the core of selling -  http://bit.ly/10MJGREATSM   DISCLAIMER: Some Links are affiliate, it costs you nothing, but helps to keep this podcast on the float   Have questions? Go to https://www.10millionjourney.com   Follow us on: Instagram: @10millionjourney Twitter: @10miljourney

Joshua Johnston is an expert in building and scaling agencies.  He is the founder of Hydra.   Hydra is a consulting firm that is focused on helping agency owners implement systems they need to increase profits and improve efficiency across their organizations. Josh was the COO for Welling Media. During that time he was able to help build systems and infrastructure to continue the agency's rapid growth. Through that time he learned most agencies were neglecting systems that allow them to grow quickly. This podcast will tackle setting foundational structures to identify internal inefficiencies within an organization.  We will learn five phases that they go through to come up with tailor fitted growth strategies.   This Episode is brought to you by 5x.   As a business owner, I'm sure you know how important data layer is. It allows you to make data driven decisions and also get insights on all aspects of your business.  In practice it requires signing up with different vendors, paying for custom integrations, checking multiple dashboards. 5x solves all of that. Think of it as Apple Store for Data Vendors meeting SquareSpace for in-depth analytics. They Save you time, money and workforce. If you want to get 20% off your first year with them, go to https://www.5x.co, schedule a demo and mention 10 million journey podcast.   This Episode is brought to you by Seller Candy.   Any amazon Seller will tell you that Seller Central sucks, it is difficult to use and once stuff breaks getting hold of amazon reps will take all of your free time. Seller Candy solves all of that. They act as an extension of your team, handling every type of case that occurs in Seller Central. They also offer services like reimbursements and customer service. So you can focus on growing your business, and they will take care of the rest. To get $100 off your first month just go to  https://sellercandy.com/, select their service and use the code ANATOLY at checkout.   Recommendations from Joshua: Profit First by Mike Michalowicz https://www.amazon.com/Profit-First-Transform-Cash-Eating-Money-Making-ebook/dp/B01HCGYTH4 $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi https://www.amazon.com/100M-Offers-People-Stupid-Saying-ebook/dp/B099QVG1H8 Greg Gunther: SYSTEMology https://www.systemology.com/wpt-testimonial/greg-gunther/   Tools used by Joshua: Clickup: https://clickup.com/ Slack: https://slack.com/ Google Suite: https://workspace.google.com/   Connect with Joshua: Company Website: https://www.workwithhydra.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-johnston-a68ab35a/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshykobyashi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshykobyashi/ Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8cjFNT8youuk5PY_3UoGg   Want to sit down with Anatoly 1 on 1? Even though I keep saying I AM NOT A GURU, many of you ask to sit down and pick my brain. I have decided to do a 1h HELP calls. There are 2 purposes: 1st to support you in your journey and second also to be able to break even on the production of this podcast (each episode editing, marketing, guest research etc takes about $60 - $150 to produce). Now you can schedule 1h with me, and we can talk about launching products, hiring, product research, keywords, mindset, how I did an Ironman or anything at all. Link is here: https://calendly.com/anatolyspektor/anatoly-connsulting-1h?month=2022-08   ANATOLY's TOOLS:   Product Development: Helim10 - I use it for Product Research, Keyword tracking and Listing Optimization . SPECIAL DEAL: Get 50% your first month or 10% every month: http://bit.ly/CORNERSIIH10 Pickfu - I use it for split testing all of my products and for validation ideas . SPECIAL DEAL: First split test 50% 0ff  https://www.pickfu.com/10mj   Trademarking: Trademark Angels - For all my trademarking needs. SPECIAL: Mention Anatoly and 10MJ podcast and get 10% Off your trademark.   Fiverr - I hire my 3dMockup person and images label designer here on Fiverr - http://bit.ly/10mjFIVERR Upwork - I hire people long term on Upwork - upwork.com Loom.com - for creating SOP's, I record everything on Loom and give to my VA's Keepa.com - to track historical data such as prices   ANATOLY's 3 Favorite Business Books: DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson - I think this is a must read for every online entrepreneurs - http://bit.ly/10MJDotCom 4 hours work week by Tim Ferriss - This book changed my life and made me become an entrepreneur - http://bit.ly/10MJ4WW The Greatest Salesman In The World by Og Mandino - Old book but it goes to the core of selling -  http://bit.ly/10MJGREATSM   DISCLAIMER: Some Links are affiliate, it costs you nothing, but helps to keep this podcast on the float   Have questions? Go to https://www.10millionjourney.com   Follow us on: Instagram: @10millionjourney Twitter: @10miljourney

Have you ever gotten stuck in overthinking mode? Analysis-paralysis, maybe? How do you get through that? Google workspace, productivity expert, and F.R.I.E.N.D.S fan, Dara Sklar, shares stories from her business when she was stuck — and it just might help you find your unlock.   Get Your Tiny Team Toolkit Bundle Today: Tiny Team Toolkit Bundle Get Productive with G Suite: G Suite Course Follow Dara on Instagram: @Darasklar Connect with Dara on Facebook: Dara Sklar Have a story to tell? Signup here: www.serialentrepreneurshow.com

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Welcome to All Killer No Filler. Today we begin our 2022 Q4 Preparation Series with Pilothouse's Paid Social team, including Nate, Jacob, and Cam. This is the first of a multipart series we're planning to help our listeners make q4 2022 the best ever. Listen to this one and you'll learn: Why you should never use lead objectives when list building How to leverage product launches all year long to power product specific, high converting lists Why you need to plan a giveaway and how to maximize it and Lots more Stay tuned for more paid social tips for Q4, plus Email, Amazon, and Google Suite advice in the coming weeks. Work with Pilothouse for Q4 2022 ➝ https://pilothouse.co Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Dr. Fred Moss is a holistic Physician, Restorative Coach, Podcaster, Psychiatrist Expert, Witness at Welcome to Humanity with Dr. Fred Moss. Dr. Moss arrived on Earth on March 01, 1958 and from that very second has been earmarked to be a healer. The family he was born into, was in chaos, and in many ways was counting on his arrival to bring health and wellness back into balance. Little Freddy had his hands full and over the next 6 decades, he has made it his business to bring healing to the world around him, not only to his family and friends, but to the community and world at large, what a journey it has been.   Questions Could tell us in your own words a little bit about your journey? Could you share with us as an organization, maybe one or two things that you can do as leadership in an organization or putting in place some form of programme to support team members where mental health is concerned in order to strengthen the customer experience? If there was one thing to do immediately to assist ourselves when we're feeling out of balance. What would you suggest that one thing would be? Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you also share with us and I'm sure you've read many, many books across your lifespan, especially in the field that you are in, but maybe one or two that have had a great impact on you, it could be a one that you read a very long time ago, or even one you've read recently, that you'd like to share with our listeners? Could you also share our listeners what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote? It kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed or get off track. Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Dr. Moss' Journey   Me: I know we read a little bit about your journey. And I didn't read your entire bio. But if you could tell us in your own words a little bit about your journey, I know your bio, the part that I did read did indicate that you have been doing quite a bit of work since you landed on Earth. And so, could you just share with our listeners a little bit about how you got to where you are today?   Dr. Moss shared that it has been a long strange trip. It's been a little over 64 years now and young at heart for sure. And there's lots of work to do. He arrived on that March 01, 1958 with the whole idea of being counted on to bring joy and pleasure and love and reconnection to that family. And for the first couple years, he probably did pretty good until his brothers got annoyed and irritated with him, he had two brothers, still do who 10 and 14 years older than him. And they taught him how to be precocious. They taught him how to read and write and do math, even before he arrived in kindergarten. Because when he arrived there, he was ahead of the class, he was doing things that most of the kindergarteners didn't want to do, he was like interested in flashcards and books and stuff like that.   He was also bored, so he became a class clown, there's nobody in elementary school, no teacher he ever had who certainly ever forgot him as a student. Because what he was really interested in more than anything, he thought school was going to show him how to communicate, he loved the way that his parents and his brothers communicated with each other, he could just watch him from the playpen. And he knew that there was something special in the world of sharing ideas with each other and he really wanted to learn how to do that become a master of communication. But low and behold, elementary school was not a place to learn that and he thought, “Oh, maybe the bigger kids, Junior High.” And when he got there, it was even worse. He thought, “Okay, High School.” and then that would be even worse, all you had to do is sit down and regurgitate what the teacher said, and that they would call you a good student and move you ahead. And he just thought that was so absurd.   Eventually, he went to college and with the whole idea again, he went to the best college he could possibly think because he loved their football helmets and that was a University of Michigan. And he went there and again, was kind of disillusioned with the idea that what he really had to do was just follow what the professor said and say whatever they wanted him to say and then pass, that wasn't open discourse and that's what I really wanted. So, he dropped out of college and he did what any self-respecting American dropout would do in the late 70s. He had boarded a Greyhound bus and went all the way to Berkeley, California so that he could learn, just figuring out who he was. He had a great summer in Berkeley, but realized he didn't have a job and not much of a future.   So, his mom convinced him to come back and try school one more time. He came back, there was a new field that was just growing, you might have heard of it, it's called Computer Science and the only computer that was there in Michigan was happened to be at the University of Michigan. So, it was a two-acre facility, he spent his day and night there, pulling up batch cards like punch cards and then hoping that the batch would run and he did that for a little while until he realized that wasn't going to work, so he dropped out again. This is when the story starts getting interesting because in 1980 when he dropped out, his mom, again convinced him that she should probably get a job. And I thought, yeah, making some money so he could buy a car so he could go around the country and figure out what his life is about made some sense.   So, he started working at a state hospital for adolescent psychiatry, State House Psychiatric Hospital for adolescent boys. And that's where really his journey in some ways with this whole idea of mental health began.   On January 05, 1980, he began that job and he was a communicator, he knew that he could communicate with these kids and then when they communicated and connected as human beings, well, healing took place in all directions, not just for them but for him as well and maybe even for the people around them. Like treating these people like they were just people and not sick kids who are defective or afflicted but just people just like him who don't really know what to do next, and aren't really sure what their next step was, and really just acknowledging them for being human.   He really, really strongly learned that communication and connection was at the heart of all healing of all conditions. The thing he really disrespected though, was the way psychiatry was dealing with these kids. He hated psychiatry, he hated that they would call the psychiatrist and they would come by and interview the child for three seconds. So, they'd say like, “Johnny's up too late.” or “Timmy and Tony got in a fight.” They'd interview the kid for 3 seconds, and then interview them for like 5 seconds and then take out their pen and write an order. And then they have to go haul the kid into the quiet room and hold them down against his will and then fill his hip up with adult grade anti-psychotic injectable medication. And if this puts him out of his misery for the next 12 or 24 hours, they'd somehow call that a success. He found that to be so barbaric and it's still going on in our world today, if you need to know. It's going on every single day in many different hospitals around the world.   But he just decided that communication and connection really were what he wanted to be a stand for. And he went back to school solely to become a psychiatrist so that he could bring communication back to that field because he saw the opportunity that psychiatry had to really make a difference in the world that they did that.   Over the next 13 years, he completed his degree and completed his residency and completed his fellowship. And low and behold, he graduated as a psychiatrist from a great medical school and a great residency. And there he was, the truth is that psychiatry had gone through a significant change at that time and began medicating people. This whole idea of diagnosing and medicating and Biological Psychiatry falls on the heels of a drug called Prozac. And Prozac had been introduced in 1987 while he was in training, and now he too was becoming a psycho pharmacologist. Now, you can guess that there was some soul sacrifice there, there was a massive heart ache because he didn't want to prescribe medicine, he didn't want to diagnose people, he went into the field so he wouldn't have to do that.   But there he was actually living a life that was inconsistent to who he was. And over the next 15 years, he did his best to bring communication there but more and more, he was being contracted and constricted away from the psychiatric field. In 2006, he decided that he would finally start taking people off of medicine, he took some of his low risk people off of medicine, and they just got way better, reliably better. As soon as he took the medicine away, their diagnosis often disappeared. And he thought he was onto something like maybe the medicines actually perpetuate to conditions. Maybe in fact the medicines actually worsen or cause the conditions at times. Now, this made him really angry, and he didn't know exactly how to manage it, but over time, and it's been, what, 15, 16 years since 2006, he's really learned how to really get respect for not medicating, not diagnosing and then they call him the un-doctor, un-medicated, un-diagnosing, and then un-doctornating people. Really getting that if you're having a miserable time as a human, if you're uncomfortable, anxious, fearful, depressed, sad, confused, scattered, any of those things, it's entirely okay.   And it's part of being a human, to be highly uncomfortable at times, to be miserable at times is okay. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. We don't blame a log for burning in the fire, if you put a log into fire, it's going to burn, if you put a human on this world, we're going to be uncomfortable. And we start really looking at that and he's back to getting the connection is at the heart of all healing.   So, he created a company called Welcome to Humanity in 2015. And that was self-explanatory, all things human are okay. The possibility of seeing all people for who they are and who they're not is okay. The possibility of accepting and even having some compassion and forgiveness for the misery that we all feel is all okay. And they started really communicating and connecting as a healer, instead of as a doctor that he had been prior to that.   After Welcome to Humanity, several other different things have sprouted, there was global madness where he was going to go around the world like Anthony Bourdain, and really see that psychiatry is different and the whole idea of mental health is different in Jamaica. And it's different everywhere. It's like what's sick in Jamaica isn't the same as what's sick in California. And so, it can't really be if you have a broken arm in Jamaica, you're going to have that same broken arm if you fly to California, but that's not true of mental health and mental illness.   And so, the idea that it's variable, meaning that it's transformable, meaning that we can alter this whole idea of what mental health and mental illnesses through conversation. Meaning that we can actually make a difference with people without having to put them on a couch 4 times a week or send them to Tibet or India. Or even give them a bunch of ganja, those aren't the only ways to find peace and we can find peace by recognizing that each of us are in this together.   The true voice technology is his most recent finding, after doing the creative eight, the creative eight really took advantage of the art, music, dancing, singing, drama, cooking, writing, gardening, all the creative acts in life can really lead to a reduction of the symptomology. And the Find Your True Voice technology, his most recent book, which he can offer to listeners, actually, is a technology that takes a deep dive into finding our authenticity in the face of any world experience and then speaking our exact truth, like what's really important to us, because you've probably noticed, a lot of people are no longer speaking their truth and they're just saying things that they don't even mean, or not saying things at all, because they're afraid they're going to be dismissed or discounted or censored or cancelled or hurt.   And he thinks in these difficult times in the world, more than anything, we really have to count on people to speak their true voice, because we're not going to be taking care of any of the very major problems in the world like COVID or like climate change, or racism or sex trafficking, or war, or all the many things that have really come forth in the last few years as super problems. Unless we have a conversation going, we're not going to be able to deal with those but the future looks pretty grim if we're not going to be able to deal with those things, it looks like pretty calamitous. And the only way we're going to get there is by really finding a way to communicate together. And that's what he's a stand for now, as he's been since the moment he arrived on Earth March 01, 1958.   As an Organization, Programmes that Can Be Put in Place to Support Team Members Where Mental Health is Concerned to Strengthen Customer Experience   Me: Thank you so much for sharing Dr. Moss. Now, mental health is a real thing, I don't think a lot of companies or even countries for that matter, really gives it the attention that it needs and dedication that it requires. Could you share with us as an organization, maybe one or two things that you can do as leadership in an organization or putting in place some form of programme to support team members where mental health is concerned in order to strengthen the customer experience?   Dr. Moss thinks if you're really up to having a healthy workforce, a healthy payroll, people who are really able to stand up for what's important in a customer experience, he thinks the number one thing to really get is that all people really want more than anything is to be heard, to be heard, and to be listened to, to actually be cared for, to be appreciated, to be acknowledged.   So, if you're going to do anything, he thinks to create an atmosphere in your company, or in your corporation or in your small groups, or even in your experience with the customers were the primary goal is to listen intently to what's being said. And not only what's being said with words, but what's being called for, how can you move the needle forward in a progressive way? What is the environment or the circumstances calling on you to present or you to be with including the possibility of saying nothing?   Can you listen for what's being called for to move that conversation forward and provide that creatively? We're all super creative, every one of us, including those of us who think we're not, that's just an old injury when you think you're not. The truth is we're all very creative and we are all listening at our own pace and our own level, and more than delivering what we think is right. And what he's saying is that more than anything, it's not a matter of speaking, it's a matter of listening to those people who are struggling to say that which is really important to them, whatever way they're doing it. So, he believes that more than anything, the secret ingredient here is definitely listening.   Me: So, we need to listen more because everybody wants to be seen, they want to be felt, they want to be heard. I think it's a process for sure.   Dr. Moss shared that when people disagree with us, we think it's okay to disregard them and dismiss them and unfriend them and never talk to them even if they are our siblings or best friends beforehand. So, these days we're cancelling people out of our worlds because they disagree with us on some certain issues and that's happened to him and it's happened to most people. He's lost friends in the last couple years and it's really quite painful. What's really here or there then is, listening is an act of occupation, it's not just what you do in between the time you talked and the time you're going to talk next, it's actually having those ears open and being super curious about what that person is saying, or what they're trying to get across in a way that really acknowledges and respects and accepts and maybe even forgives that person for being as confused as they are when they're confused. Because after all, if you haven't noticed, each and every one of us is thoroughly confused, some of us pretend like we're not and going to get it done. But each and every human on this planet is totally confused. Of course, how could you not be, there's some crap going on out there. Let's be fair about it, those of us who pretend that we're not confused, are almost more confused, they're more confused, they actually think that it's possible not to be confused.   Me: The ones who think they're not confused, they're deluding themselves.   Dr. Moss agreed, exactly. Come on. Let's be real about it.   Suggestion to Assist Ourselves When We're Feeling Out of Balance   Me: Now, Dr. Moss, if there was one thing to do immediately to assist ourselves when we're feeling out of balance. What would you suggest that one thing would be?   Dr. Moss thinks it's pause. Hold on a second, re configure yourself. Allow yourself to make a mistake, allow yourself to learn, allow yourself to regroup and get curious again, give yourself compassion, forgiveness, acceptance. He guesses you only asked for one thing, and he sees this as one thing. It's like, pause and reset. You can do that multiple times per day, if you want. Pause, reset, pause, reset, it doesn't take very much work.   Me: And I guess the average person is just going and going and going and going and it's like they don't actually take time. I think generally people feel like if they stop, and they're not doing something that their productivity will decrease. But in order for you to be more productive, you really do we need those pauses, don't you?   Dr. Moss agreed yes, you do. He knows how to run like the devil, he's a doctor. So, they trained him in medical school to be up 24 hours in emergency rooms, and in psychiatry to deal with suicide, and with homicide, and with alcoholism and drug addiction and overdoses and all those things. He knows how to run hard. But the truth is, in those moments where he can get maybe even 5 minutes, let alone 20 minutes. So, just stop and sit or stop and appreciate. No one ever told him he'd be alive forever. And no one definitely ever told him that this life was not without any misery. So, the truth is, there's massive misery, massive overwhelming misery all over the world. There are great reasons for it, it's not in your head, it's very real.   There's nothing wrong with you for being miserable in a miserable world when it's going on, for some reason, we have the capacity to recuperate or to reset ourselves because, have you noticed that some days when you're just so totally spent, like you don't have another ounce of energy left, that later in that same day you might have blissful moments, you might just realize the absolute beauty of life on the same day. That is a gift that came from us on creation and it's extraordinary that this too shall pass still works. Even in this world where calamities are just happenstance, they're just every day, there's shit going on that is just thoroughly and totally unacceptable.   App, Website or Tool that Dr. Moss Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about online resource that cannot live without in his business, Dr. Moss shared that he saw that question coming down the pike and he was thinking like, “Where am I right now with that particular question?” And he thinks the cheapest way would be to say something like email or messaging, but we'll go past that. He thinks that Slack is really interesting, although it has flaws. And he thinks that all of the apps, they have significant flaws. He thinks that Google Docs and Dropbox are super interesting, he has no idea what he would do without those two in particular. How would he handle life without Google and Dropbox? There's a lot of his stuff locked up in there, he doesn't even know how to find it.   But he thinks some of the more interesting, newer apps, as he learns about them, he's 64, so he's sort of on the back edge, he's not as quite as savvy as some of the 30 somethings like his son whose birthday is today (July 20th). But he thinks that some of those new apps are so extraordinary as they come off the press and the things they do. Some of these apps, they just do amazing things. But he thinks ultimately, the one he can't live without is he'd have to say, unfortunately, is through Google Suite.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Dr. Moss   When asked about books that have an impact, Dr. Moss shared that he likes spiritual books. He can't go very far without saying sort of like The Torah, The Talmud, The Mission, or the basic Old Testament Jewish texts, he loves those. He's not reading them this very moment, but the truth is, when he does, his whole life gets re-centered. So, it's hard to not pay attention to those books.   The books recently that he's really been enjoying, he's so excited about are by Alan Watts. He thinks Alan Watts is so brilliant, and just re centers all of this nonsense so easily in 10 and 15 minutes snippets. So, you can read little chapters, it's generally readable. And he just takes on this whole idea that time is just an illusion, or space is just an illusion, or that all we really have is now and he does it in a way that he finds to be so entertaining and refreshing.   Now, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, he's sure other people have answered that question, has answered it with that book. He thinks it's a fine book and everything, he doesn't know that it's life changing book in his life. For some people, it really is. But once he gets past the Torah, then he has to get to what he's reading now. He's got so many books open in his living room. He has like 40 books that are open in his living room right now that he's like almost done with or partially through and he just keeps reading. He just pulled off “To Kill a Mockingbird,” he's like, “Oh, yeah, someday I'm going to read To Kill a Mockingbird, because I understand that that's going to really change my life.” But he's got like 23 books to read before he gets to that one. And then life goes on.   What Dr. Moss is Really Excited About Now!   When asked about something that he's excited about, Dr. Moss stated that that's a great question. He's working on both with himself and with his people and the new course that he's developed is called The True Voice Course. And it's about your voice mattering. Basically, it's an online course but it's mixed in with a mastermind, you get his two books, you get access to him, and you get access to a community of like-minded individuals who are really out to bring their true voice forward.   He's graduated over 50 people in his courses to move them from zero to podcasters. So, that's one group of people you get, but you also get people who are really interested in bringing their voice forward. The technology he's developed is comprehensive and he's super excited about rolling out that course, you can find it at www.truevoicepodcasting.com and the first 10 people who come into that course are actually going to get it at half price. And that's a significant savings. And they really just want those people to come in, take the course, let them know what works and if there's parts of it that are vague, or maybe they overlook so that they can make this course spectacular for everyone. This course is running out, starting this week and next week, so by the time that this airs, it should have a number of people that are in it. He's super excited about it because it really incorporates his books and his experience right there into a course where he can source people to find that true voice and bring it over to a world that's waiting.   When he says that there's a personal aspect to this, he's doing the same thing with his wife. He has a wife, a gorgeous, unbelievable, amazing human being who he calls his wife. And they have 3 cats, and they live in a pretty cool house and they're just kind of trying to figure out how to create a relationship every single day. And that's the same thing, using the same technology, because if you're not speaking your true voice, and no one is ever going to know you. And that's the way he is with Alexandra (his wife) as well on the way she is with him, and they bring forth art and communication and creativity like the Creative 8 asked for as well as The True Voice, as well as her own special style, which is through dance and art to really create a relationship that's never been done before. So, those are the two things and they're kind of related and these are special times to be able to have come through this life and still be banging away on things that truly do matter, like human connection.   Me: Now, for those of our listeners that would want to tap into this programme, is it that it is geared towards a particular type of person? Or is it open to anyone regardless of where they are in their life?   Dr. Moss shared that it really is open to anyone. But he thinks what they're really looking for, what they're finding are the people who have felt muted, who feel muffled, who feel fearful, who feel that their voices are not being heard, or that they're not speaking their true voice, and they're eager to do so. Maybe there's a new level of urgency given up all the world issues that we're now experiencing. And these often turn out to be mothers, this often turned out to be mothers on the other side of an empty nest perhaps, or a divorce, or maybe even just mothers who want their children to have the voices. They start realizing that up until now, they've been caring for so many people, but, “What about me? Like, what about the things that really matter to me?” It's the what about me people who are really taking this course by storm, who are like, “Yeah, I forgot how to speak my truth. I want to find my truth. I want to refine my truth. And then I want to deliver that truth.” And podcasting is one spectacular way to do that, it's not the only way, they help people find their voice and then naturally they find when to deliver it and how they're going to deliver it, even if it's just in their family, or if it's on a stage in front of 1000s of people. Either way, it's the same general criteria, they help you take a deep dive to finding that authentic self of yours, rediscovering it, refining it, and then delivering it to the world that really is ready and willing to listen to you.   Where Can We Find Dr. Moss Online   Instagram - @drfredmoss Facebook - @drfredmoss LinkedIn – Fred R. Moss, MD Email – drfred@welcometohumanity.net   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Dr. Moss Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Dr. Moss stated that there's a couple that come to mind. He used to answer this question with a Rolling Stones, “You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need.” He thinks that's a sweet quote. He thinks there's something else, there's, “This too shall pass.” That is a beautiful quote. And that we are spiritual beings living a human experience, there's something very beautiful about that too. He thinks that we are spiritual beings living a human experience can be very helpful as well, getting us centered into the here and now and getting that calamities and disasters and all those things that we hate, no one ever said that wasn't going to be part of this live. So, this idea of really listening in order to learn seems like it comes very easily from this notion that we are spiritual beings living a human experience.   Me: So, we'll have those two, the Rolling Stones, and this too shall pass. Really appreciate that. Now, thank you, again, Dr. Moss, for taking time out of your very busy day to hop on this podcast with us and share all of this awesome content on what you are doing, how you are trying to help people to have more real conversations to really get their message out there and just to be their most authentic and true self, it really was a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much.   Dr. Moss shared that it's his pleasure. And thanks for working through all the all the technological challenges, it really was a beautiful conversation, and he appreciates Yanique and really to Yanique and her listeners. This isn't a pitch for his product, he has a product, it's true. But it's not about that, these are difficult, urgent, real times. And what he really wants people to get is, if you don't speak, no one will ever hear you and if you don't speak your true voice, no one will ever know you. He has a capacity to source people to actually find that true voice and whether you use him or someone else, he's just really, really, really is interested in people who are ready to put their foot down and get that yeah, in what's left of this short life, even if it's 10, 20, 40, 60 years from now, you want to get heard, you want to be loved, you want to be appreciated. Okay, then let's start really getting with who you really are and making that happen. And whatever it takes to do that he implores the listeners and yourself to really step up because that's all that's left to do as far as he sees.   Me: Dr. Moss, so you have a gift for our listeners, please go ahead and share.   Dr. Moss shared that he has a gift, he wrote a book this year that he's really proud of and it takes a deeper dive into this whole notion of how this technology works. He knows the title of the book will surprise the audience, it's called Find Your True Voice and he's going to send the actual book to the listeners if they just sign up for the book, and you can find that at www.findyourtruevoicebook.com. And he'll send you a copy. And after that, he just want to hear what did you think of that book? Is there something there that can move you forward? Or where is it that this book or his talk is valuable? Because he's super interested in delivering talks, and having people really get that if we don't speak well….the future looks pretty grim.   And if we do speak, we can end all wars. And that's what that book is about really finding a true voice and it's simple to read, fun to read, fun to write, and he invites listeners to sign up for a free copy.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners   Links   Find Your True Voice by Dr. Fred Moss Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Both sellers and marketers can and should use reward-driven behavior to establish rapport and build relationships with potential buyers. In today's episode of Aligned, Sean is joined by the founder and Chief Evangelist of The Sales Evangelist, Donald Kelly, to discuss his take on reward-driven behavior and how marketing and sales departments can implement it into existing methodologies. Failure of the trade show fishbowl: Using rewards to gain something upfront (like an email) is not an effective reward tactic. You don't want people to engage with you purely because of free stuff.  You're giving stuff away without understanding why you're giving stuff away. The same idea holds true for the dinners, the golf games, and the drinks. Don't eliminate rewards. Instead, understand them. The most common mistake in sales and marketing is spending too much money too early in the sales cycle. Close the deals in the existing pipeline before allocating money to people who aren't in the funnel at all. Understanding positive and negative rewards: Rewards can take two forms - positive and negative. A punishment could be removing a certain meeting or adding a certain call to an itinerary. Salespeople are bumblebees - misunderstood creatures. They're crucial to the environment, but other people are scared of them. A punishment could be not having the time to meet with a prospect Positioning gives you power. When a company positions itself in a way where they aren't dependent on specific clients to reach revenue goals, it can afford to make clients walk in line. Rewards can be positive. Rewards from the self - A prospect who, upon achieving a certain milestone, should be coached and guided to get a reward. Rewards from the others - Where sales and marketing can have a more direct input Business plan - late-stage only. If you give stuff away too early, it won't convert the prospects and business leads you to want. Managing Give a verbal or written kudos Encourage someone to consider changing and being self-aware of the weaknesses and the self-reflection that results in accepting change  One of Donald's past clients was moving to Google Suite, and he worked for a document management company. Remind them that going to Google Suite, while challenging while it's happening, is the best case for a long-term growth strategy. It's okay to give a reward for self-evaluation. And, if you're confident with the position, you have the safety to make additional suggestions and comments to help guide those prospects. Contracting Right before a deal is closed, and there is no exchange of relationship, there are informal contracts that can move the decision-making team before a formal agreement takes place. It can be meeting at a restaurant, bringing a cup of coffee, scale the reward up and down depending on the situation If you see someone's house, they have to give you a level of trust. A common practice is an NDA, but use it to get an idea of what the NDA includes. When you give the NDA to a buyer, it's akin to a promise ring. You aren't married yet, but there's a level of commitment. The act of signing is almost the same level that would come if it were an actual agreement. The act of signing a piece of paper connotes the finality that an agreement is in place. Shaping There are lots of micro-wins that we can accomplish, and shaping is making small, incremental changes rather than a large sudden change. Instead of requiring one large bulk purchase, just buy a smaller quantity and work your way up to a larger amount. Shaping will reflect integrity and lower the potential risks that might take place. What's In It For Me? (WIIFM) addresses the emotional and political capital a person might lose or gain from making a particular decision. This episode is sponsored in part by FitzMartin's Sales and Marketing Alignment: Why does proper sales and marketing alignment result in a 32% average lift in revenue? Because a unified company centered around its prospects can't help but thrive. FitzMartin's Sales and Marketing Alignment program will analyze your current sales and marketing structure to deliver a plan based on the needs of your prospects, bringing you increased revenue, expansion opportunities, and (above all) a unified front when communicating with prospects.  To set your company up for success, visit fitzmartin.com/solutions to discover how to unify your sales and marketing for the best results.  This episode is sponsored in part by Fitzmartin's Organization and Culture Alignment: Company culture and retention are directly connected. After all, if you fail to build good company culture, you fail to retain top talent. At FitzMartin, we help leaders like you raise their NPS scores from the low 60s to the high 80s (and, more importantly, present a plan to help you do the same.) Create your company culture based on a shared mission to attract and retain top talent. Visit fitzmartin.com/solutions to learn more.

If you're like most business owners, you're always looking for ways to be more organized and efficient. After all, who has time to waste when there's money to be made? One tool that can help you streamline your business operation is Google Drive. In today's episode, I'll be giving you a rundown of how I use it to keep my business running like a well-oiled machine. From tracking expenses to managing client projects, Google Drive has become an indispensable part of how I streamline my digital and product-based business. I'll also be sharing some tips on how you can get the most out of this powerful tool that's simple, yet so effective.So if you're ready to take your business organization to the next level, tune in now and learn how to use Google Drive like a pro!In this episode, we cover:The importance of organization in your businessHow to get started with organizing your business using Google DriveThe benefits of taking the time to organize your business How organization can help improve your mental health as a business ownerWhat types of things you can keep track of using Google Suite and its featuresMy own method for organizing my company and staying ahead of the curveTwo courses I teach that can help you get your business organized and set up for successSponsorThis episode is sponsored by Zencastr. Interested in sponsoring this show or podcast ads for your business? Go to zen.ai/thedetaileddiarypod1 and fill out the contact information so Zencastr can help you, bring your business story to life.ResourcesBookkeeping CourseThe Details and Swirls Pricing MethodDETAILED DIARY SHOW NOTESDETAILED DIARY FB COMMUNITYDETAILED DIARY INSTAGRAMFor more inspiring content that will help you take action toward the life and biz you truly desire, follow me on Instagram @detaileddiarypodcast

Galen Wolfe-Pauly CEO of Tlon   Why do I need a personal server? Why is it that we all have access to centralized servers?   Why does all our data need to be in the same place? What is the issue of large scale? How do we consume information? How can I control my software? How do you use a computer as a vehicle for everyday creativity? How should I build my jungle gym? Pitch my new massage table idea. How do you manage writing for your role as CEO? Does Hoon help you in the way it's written? When will Tlon build a new Google Suite? How will writing lead into computer development? How do you deal with unproductive stress? What is landscape? How do you boot an urbit node? 2020: 2021: Work on the infrastructure so that other people can ship apps 2022: Take landscape and split them into other applications Digital Basics OS Simple suite of tools, solo for your own note taking. What will be the business-to-business landscape for Urbit? Real estate investment trust. Landscape as an OS in more high-level stuff. What is an OS? All the stuff, UI Chrome, developer frameworks for building an application. How do you make a toolkit really good? Urbit becomes. What is the problem with Google Docs? How do you visualize your personal data? What are the incentives to hoard other's data? Sell it to advertisers. How do you build the social media layer on top of the internet? What does the internet look like after Urbit? Do we now have teleportation of the mind? What do you think about ancient Athens and the thing that happened to them as a connected place? How do you think advertising will work within Urbit? What is the technological problem that Urbit solved? How do you know when things turn mildly creepy? Older than blockchain. Who were the early creators of distributed systems? Tell me more about cypherpunk. What are distributed systems? 500 CS graduates in the late 60s. Electrical engineering programs (25 minutes) Area of CS research: A program that runs on a bunch of nodes, which needs them to share data and compute together. How did you find your investors? What does Urbit mean in regards to the future of distributed systems? Where does Gitlab fit into Urbit? Its an F-U to the networked computing industry. What is the industrial software complex? What are the things that are served by a personal virtual machine? What have you learned about the Self and self-identity from creating things on Urbit? What are the upfront costs of learning Hoon? In the early PCs the chip-set matters a lot. Chips run the code through the system.  Portability in software. Why does ETH create a virtual machine? Why does it need one? A system as of a bunch of nodes. What do you think of Chia? How do physics flow into computing and new technologies? What is the one definition of computing? Whatever comes next. What is the relationship between Lightning and Urbit? What is an arbitrary contract? What is LUNA (45 minutes)? How do you tell when something isn't hyped? In what ways was OHM like LUNA? What has woodworking taught you? What is materially useful here? How can you get a categorical win? How should I scope the project? What is the most important thing about building what you are going to build? What are the material constraints of the product you want to build? How will that work with the new technologies coming out of the pipeline? How do you work with people? Look at interviews with the people who wrote cyberpunk. What game? What is Zaibatsu? What is monolithic about the personal computer? What is dynamic land? Ubiquitous computing paper from the late 80s? What is outdoor computing?

Feedback & Shout Outs (2:26) Emily Pool & Cheri Dotterer EdTech Thought (7:29) Take Risks! Take it from me that risk-taking in education is WORTH it! Starting the House of #EdTech has transformed my life and I am in debited to the podcast for all it's provided me, EdTech Recommendation (13:06) My go edtech tools for teaching and learning Teaching Anything Google - Slides, Docs, Keep EdPuzzle Flipgrid PD Twitter Podcasts Podcasting - Create & Consume Featured Content (19:36) Helps connect your students to the real world: Take your students on a virtual tour of Grand Canyon National Park. Walk your students through the corridors and history of the White House. Technology allows you to remove the physical barriers of the classroom, offering your students a way to connect the curriculum with the real world. Prepare students for the workforce: To thrive in the 21st-century workplace, people need to have more than just a working knowledge of certain technological tools (electronic calendars, web pages, teleconferencing, electronic whiteboards, etc.). By integrating these technologies into the regular curriculum, institutions are ensuring that their students are prepared for the modern workplace. Encourages collaboration: Many educational tools offer a variety of functionalities that promote collaboration. For example, virtual meeting tools provide a way for students to hold meetings with classmates and anyone from anywhere in the world. The Google Suite has been promoting sharing and collaboration since its inception and students can easily share and edit projects with each other. Supports different types of learners: No two students learn the exact same way, but with technology, we can address diversity in learning styles. An effective blending of tools and differentiation can create a great learning environment where our students can and will learn. Access information more easily: Technology makes it easier for students to find information quickly and accurately. Search engines and e-books are replacing traditional textbooks. Instead of personal tutors, students can get one-on-one help through educational videos – anytime and anywhere – learning is available. Teaches students how to be responsible online: With social media sites o-plenty, most students are already digital citizens to some degree - especially after the last couple of years. Going forward, by incorporating technology into the classroom, students will continue to learn how to be responsible in the digital world. Your class and our schools have become a microcosm of the broader digital landscape where students can practice how to communicate, search, and engage with other digital citizens. Adds a fun factor to learning: Outside the classroom, students use technology in all aspects of their lives. Within the classroom, technology can make learning more fun and exciting. Tech-infused game-based learning allows you to deliver lessons via interactive games. Who doesn't enjoy playing games? Offers A Wider Choice Of Materials That Can Be Accessed Easily: There is an endless amount of educational technology that is available to offer your students to meet their learning needs. EdTech helps them develop the right kind of skills and knowledge so that they can become good professionals in their chosen field. Learners who are able to communicate better through technological means will also perform better academically as well as in work settings because communication skills are very important when you want to get your point across effectively. The internet has become such an integral part of our lives that we hardly find people who do not use it on a daily basis. In today's world, it is essential for students to be able to access the internet from anywhere at any time so that they can do their assignments and research without having to travel all over a place or wait for a particular time when they can do so. Using educational technology helps learners in this regard because it allows them to connect with the internet even when they are in a classroom, school, or at home. Students Become Active Participants in the Learning Process by Using Technology in the Classroom. Teachers Who Become Experts at Using Technology in the Classroom Can Advance Their Careers. Just Give It A Try (26:58) Connect with me! House of #EdTech VIP (28:27) You, the listener. My guests! Me.

Krystal Williams joins the show to talk about all of the diverse tools, instructional, and organization strategies she uses to teach a variety of content areas ranging from band to music theory. Krystal teaches at North Western High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, and is the Technology Chair for the Maryland Music Educators Association. Subscribe to the Blog… RSS | Email Newsletter Subscribe to the Podcast in… Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS Support Music Ed Tech Talk Become a Patron! Buy me a coffee Show Notes: At about the 30-minute mark, Krystal shared her screen and showed off some examples of how she is using the Google Suite to engage her students and organize her classroom materials. See a video excerpt of that part of the conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/IjgP0qHL0eI Links to things mentioned in the show: MMEA Tech Page YouTube Embed Craft Craft episode of Music Ed Tech Talk Krystal's Tech Three: Google Classroom/Site/Slides Smart Music MusicFirst OBS Hyper-Charging Online Classes with Open Broadcaster Software Classroom Maestro AirServer Lightspeed Getting Young Performers to Compose, Putting the E in Ensemble (And Much More) with Alex Shapiro Markdown Cory Henry Snarky Puppy DuPont Brass Band App of the Week: Robby - Deckset Krystal - Perfect Ear Album of the Week: Robby - Aoife O'Donovan - Age of Apathy Krystal - Thundercat - This is Thundercat Tech Tip of the Week: Robby - Noir - Dark Mode for Safari Krystal - Repurpose old phones! Where to Find Us: Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book Krystal - Band Director Toolbox Facebook Group | Diary of a Lady Band Director | Diary of a Lady Band Director YouTube Page Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!