Podcasts about hey brian

Today's Sports Career Q&A Question comes in from Felicia in Seattle:  “Hey Brian, I've been listening to your podcast for the past 6 months and it is fantastic, such incredible advice that has served me so well. Your content has helped me gain focus and confidence in my sports career, you have mentioned many times that we should get focused on specific career goals while in college and I've figured it out... drum roll...I really want to work in sports social media.  Now the question for you. Outside of the obvious, what should I focus on to get myself prepared to work in sports social media?”   Listen in to the Work In Sports podcast to learn how to start a career in sports social media!

After a week away from this, time to dip back into the mailbag (digitally speaking) and we've got a great question from Ally in Virginia. “Hey Brian, love your podcast thank you so much for your guidance and expertise. I really appreciate how raw and honest you are. I was blown away by your vulnerability during your tribute to your CEO John last week. I think I cried a little and didn't even know him! I do have a question for you if you have the time to answer. I just had an interview and I was asked a question I was totally unprepared for, I bombed it. I have a feeling it will come up again, can you maybe help advise? They asked “How would your boss or co-workers describe you” and I basically stared at them and said I had no idea. Please help me for next time!”Listen for how you can nail that question for your next interview!

Today's Sports Career focused question comes in from Kenton in California,  “Hey Brian, I just completed an interview cycle for a job I was really interested in. I listened to your podcasts and really nailed the process, thank you so much, I had so much confidence throughout from your guidance and advice. My excitement continued to rise as I went further in the process and really liked the people I'd be working with and the projects I'd be part of. Then they made me an offer. And it was bad. I don't know what to do now. I'm disheartened and worried...do I have to accept? What should I do?” Kenton – amazing question and a frustration many have had before you and many will after. I jumped this to the head of the discussion because I know time is of the essence for you....so let's dig in.  Listen in for tips to help you negotiate a low ball salary offer!

On this episode, Justin is back from his trip, also, Kourtney and Travis, why people don't want to work, we are all vaccinated, someone with good potential gone, Brian"s loss, what's new with the Skinwalker Ranch show, a story about chicken pox and best neighbor ever

Last week I had a friend reach out who was applying for a cool job with a professional sports team. Since I really like and respect this person, and I know people at the professional sports team, I volunteered to reach out on their behalf to my friends at the team and put in a good word.   Now, I didn't bring this up to show off my altruistic nature and overall good dudedness. I bring this up because something very interesting happened, something I haven't been able to stop thinking about ever since.   My conversation with my friend in pro sports, led me to wonder… Is Networking Dead?  Here is the scene.  I reach out to my friend, a former guest on the show by the way, and I tell them the details – got a friend in the final round, they're great, wonderful addition to your team, hard-worker, experienced, can you put in a good word with the hiring manager?  Their response:  “Hey Brian, normally I would do this for you in a heartbeat, your friend seems like a wonderful candidate. But just two weeks ago there was a new company policy instituted whereby no employee can discuss or advocate for candidates to a hiring manager. The goal is to remove bias, and create a truly inclusive staff without favoritism, nepotism or cronyism. By keeping the process devoid of influence, we believe we will be stronger throughout our organization.”  Ok, process that for a second.   My initial thought was…good for you and your organization.   I've long been an advocate of D, E & I – but have always wondered how it will happen, how do we do it?    I talked with Vincent Pierson who at the time was the Director of D, E, I at MiLB, and asked, this is all wonderful in theory but what do we do? Like, how does this become a reality?  I've asked Kali Franklin, John Ferguson, Philicia Douglas, Dr. Bill Sutton and many others – what do we do?   This initiative right here, expressed by a professional sports team is the most concrete example I've heard to date of process change to adapt to a more inclusive workplace.   I'm here for it. But it begs the question – is Networking Dead?  One more thing before we get into what this means. I have always hated the “it's not what you know, it's who you know” concept. It drives me insane and is such 1990's era thinking.   Bear with me as I repat a story some of you have heard. I started at CNN/Sports Illustrated in 1996. There were probably about 30 of us entry level production assistant and associate producers hired at the same time. 4-5 of them, were there because they knew people. One had a dad who was a famous sports media columnist, other had influential parents or uncles.   They were hired because of who they knew.   Guess what, they all bombed out in under a year. They didn't have the skills or the aptitude to do the job.   Organizations got smarter and realized – hiring unqualified people really hurts us more than some intangible idea of playing favorites to some influencer.  You can't just know people and get by. You don't get hired as a favor to your influential Mom or Dad.  Skills matter. Just listen to last week's guest, Michelle Andres SVP of the Baltimore Ravens, she said “I need to see your skill set on your cover letter, not just that you are a fan.”  Now, let's get back to the big topic – Is Networking Dead? 

Question incoming from Brandon in Bellevue, Washington. Brandon, I lived in Bellevue for 10 years, we're practically neighbors despite the fact I now live 2,882 miles away. Yes, I googled it.   “Hey Brian, I've been doing a bunch of mock interviews to prepare and there is a pattern that keep emerging. I've had two of my professors and three different family members conduct mock interviews, and they all asked me the same question “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”  Is this a very common question, and if so how would you answer it because my first instinct is, “I have no idea.”  Help?!”  Let's dig into this!

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast...  For those of you who haven't listened to last week's podcast with Zach Maurides, go listen to it. Seriously, now. Stop listening and start there first.   Zach is the founder and CEO of Teamworks an athlete engagement platform that is currently working with over 100 professional sports teams and 200 full college athletic programs to be their student-athlete hub, managing their schedules, communication, itineraries, academics, nutrition and so much more.   They are growing massively, and Zach, as a former student-athlete, an offensive lineman at duke, is so incredibly informative.   Not convinced – I'll give you one nugget, one concept of many that Zach shares during this awesome podcast interview.  “I want to hire confident people. Confident people put in the work, and know they are going to win because they put in the work. Arrogant people just expect to win. We don't want arrogant people.”  Now picture this coming out of a 6'6” 290 lb. former offensive lineman, trust me when I say this --- you are going to feel fired up and ready to put in the work.   Ok, Wednesday – the godfather of sports business, seriously, I think you must kiss his ring before getting into the sports industry, Dr. Bill Sutton.   For those of you who don't know doc Sutton, he is the smartest most connected guy in the #sportsbiz I know. And more importantly, the most passionately supportive of his people. He has trained the best in the industry from GMs to sales directors, and he's not just an academic, he's worked for David Stern in the NBA and countless other organizations as part of his side hustle consulting business.   One quick story – he and I really hit it off, it's a great interview, and at the end, he said, "that was a lot of fun, I loved your questions and the way our conversation went, who else can I help you get to be a guest on your show?”   Figuring I could aim high since he is offering, I said: “Would you happen to know Scott O'Neil, CEO of the Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, the owners of the Sixers and Devils, I really like his style and would love to interview him?”   Within 30 minutes of the completion of our interview, Scott O'Neil emailed me to book a time.   Now that is legit power.   Sports Career Question from Amy in Boston: Let's get into today's question, which comes from Amy in Boston. Fun Fact, if I was a girl, I was going to be named Amy.   “Hey Brian, big fan of the podcast and your various articles, I feel like I've gone back through your archive so many times to answer my pressing career-focused questions. What I think is great is that your show isn't just about sports, it's about culture, and decision-maker and planning and strategy...I find it so informative.   Amy – you get me. Continue.   “My question is pretty simple: I got pretty good at the career fair circuit in late 2019, I had a good flow, made lots of contacts, felt like I was on the edge of getting hired... and then, you know, stuff. I've seen and heard a lot about virtual career fairs but am yet to attend one. Do you think they are worth it, and do you have any strategies surrounding them?”  Amy, I'll be honest, at first, my initial impression of virtual career fairs was that they felt like a pivot for companies that used to rely on in-person career fairs, and they just to keep themselves busy and active. That they weren't focused on the participant getting value, either as an employer or candidate.   But oh, how wrong I was.   See I can admit it, I have flawed theories sometimes. Neither Ivan Drago or I am machines. Yes, that was a Rocky IV reference which is about 20 years past its relevancy date...but I love it so.  Benefits of Virtual Career Fairs  The data is in, more people attend virtual career fairs than in-person career fairs,

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast… Look this is going to be a stressful week, election week is important in our country and I can't stress to you enough, young, old, and somewhere in the middle like me, get out and vote.  When you vote, you shape not just your world today, and next month and next year -- decisions like these impact your entire future.  Democracy works when everyone votes, so get out there. This is not the time to be sitting on the sidelines. Ok, let's look at the Stat line, get a picture of our sports industry --  OK, three stats to help you better understand the health of the sports industry. On WorkInSports.com the number one job board for the sports industry, we currently feature 17,226 active sports jobs! 1715 new jobs added this week -- down a little bit from last week… But that is still an average of 245 new jobs posted every day... Now trend analysis -- lots of internships posted this past week, which makes sense, this is the time of year you start to see companies post their spring internships. If you are a college student making your plans for spring - check out last week's podcast, some really good info in there on internship prep. OK -- three fresh jobs on the job board the really caught my eye --  Job #1 -- Associate Manager of Social Marketing for Athleta -- now, this is a great example of a category of job that has been growing -- retail/lifestyle - you've heard me talk about this in the past, but brands like Athleta, Puma, Nike, Adidas are doing quite well right now, and are hiring for a lot of roles. If you are into sports marketing or social media, don't limit yourself to teams -- look to the big brands too! Job #2 -- Sr. Editor, NHL at The Athletic -- senior role contributing to comprehensive editorial oversight of our NHL coverage, using data analytics to optimize performance, and partner with stakeholders across the editorial organization and business teams on a range of initiatives. Interesting that it's not a strictly journalism role, using data to optimize performance -- keep that in mind all you journalism types, it takes more than just sports knowledge and writing skills to elevate in today's sports media. And job #3 -- Athletic Director at the College of Saint Benedict -- here's why this job stood out to me -- The College of Saint Benedict is a women's college with 11 intercollegiate (varsity) teams and 8 competitive club sport teams. The program seeks to reinforce the college mission of preparing women to think critically, lead courageously, and advocate passionately through sport. I like that mission a lot -- sounds like a great stepping stone role for someone who wants a lead role in college athletics. Alright -- that is the stat line! Ok, before we get into today's question -- I got called out by a fan last week, and i want to address what they brought up. Just to remind everyone, I like it when you call me out, I have zero problems with it. And I have already spoken with this person directly… BUT if they are thinking it, you may be too, so let's talk about it.  I'm all for transparency,  Got an email last week that said  “Hey Brian, I've heard you rant and rave about how all internships should be paid, and that it is unfair to create a system that requires experience ot get jobs, but the only way to get hired is by gaining experience through internships… but no everyone can work for free. I agree 100% with your sentiment, this fact has bothered me for a long time, I'm glad you've given it a platform… BUT, you also work for a site that charges money for people to apply for jobs. How is this any different? I'm not trying to be confrontational, just would like to hear your rationale since generally speaking, I find you to be on the level.” I'm not mentioning this person's name because I don't think they expected or wanted...

A question from someone on this but let me answer in an honest way for consistent profit: Hey Brian, I’ve been lurking for about a month but I made an account to sub and interact with you after watching your video that was just the terminal window with small consistent gains. Anyways I’ve dabbled in CS for years and years but never dived headfirst. I put too much emphasis on web development and not enough on algorithms etc. Do you recommend learning foundation in C and then obviously transitioning into C++ and python? Or do you think I should just go straight into python and all those libraries etc? Get my Free trading PDF books here https://quantlabs.net/ Get 7 day trial to my Analytics as well an intro to algotrading here https://quantlabs.net/blog/2020/10/programming-systematic-python-trading-vs-discretionary-human/

The Work in Sports podcast is brought to you by EMPOWRD This is the most important election of our time. And let's be honest, voting during a pandemic is a little confusing right now. There is so much misinformation out there aimed toward making you believe your vote doesn't matter - so why bother. Well, your vote does matter.   Voting is the most important responsibility of citizens. Don't give up that power or that right! Get engaged, informed & ready to vote - all with ONE app.  You know who is engaged, informed and ready to vote with EMPOWRD -  Trey Flowers,  Detroit Lions Whitney Mercilus, Houston Texans Justin Reid, Houston Texans Anfernee Simons, Portland Trailblazers  All of these top athletes are out there supporting this great app that will make it easier for you to get all the information you need to vote!  Download the app today at EMPOWRD.com  Alright let's start the countdown… Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged learning at WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast… New feature -- big hit.  Got a lot of positive feedback on our new segment  -- so let's jump right into...The Stat Line Alright quick recap of the week that was in the world of sports employment - through the lens of WorkInSports.com the number one job board for the sports industry… Three main data points and trends to keep you informed … we start with the top line number.  There are currently 15,556 active sports jobs posted on WorkinSports.com -- that is a good healthy number. Now, this is down 1.3% week over week.  But as is always the case data needs context.    In the last week we added 3,302 new active sports jobs - and average of 471 new jobs per day and an increase of 27% week over week. So you may be asking -- how can you add 3,302 jobs this week and have less overall jobs? Well, that's actually another really good indicator for the state of our industry. What this means is, there was a churn -- many jobs were filled, many new jobs added -- positive activity level.  OK, final part of the stat line, three awesome jobs added this week: This part is subjective.  Communication and Digital Media Internship with USA Team Handball -- look I don't know anything about handball, other than I think I would be awesome at it -- but the opportunity to learn this skills for a national governing body is the type of thing that will sand out on your resume. Play-by-Play broadcaster for the San Diego Seals -- who are the San Diego Seals? They are a National Lacrosse League team in San Diego, I like San Diego. The only problem I have is that in San Diego, nothing should be indoors. Seriously, everything from showering to sports should be required to be outdoors in San Diego. And finally -- I have been in the sports industry for 20+ years and I still am introduced to new jobs and companies every damn day.  Our final job comes from BallerTV who I heard of for the first time this morning. Based in Miami they are looking for a Live Sports Event Coordinator --   Baller TV according to my research, is a venture-backed startup that is building the world's largest sports network from the ground up.  And that was the Stat Line! Do you like that segment? Any other stats you want me to add? Message me on LinkedIN, or join our private facebook group by searching for the Work In Sports podcast on Facebook. And, remember, a Work In Sports membership is just $8 for the first month. You can get access to all of these jobs and way, way, way, way, way, way more.  Alright, let's get to today's fan question from Wyatt in Pennsylvania... “Hey Brian, I need a little convincing on the power of networking. I'm not a natural networker, I don't really like it and I'm not fully convinced it matters in the long run. Can you help convince me that it is an effort worth undertaking?”Wyatt in Pennsylvania Good questions Wyatt -- thanks for asking.

Where is the Sports Industry Going?! Calling all up-and-coming broadcast talent – here's your chance to make a name for yourself overnight.   Compete against others in SiriusXM's “MLB Fan Call of the Month” contest starting on Thursday, September 3rd at 10 AM Eastern.  Visit SiriusXM dot com slash MLB Fan Call, and make your voice heard before the contest closes on September 10th.  One winner, as judged by the SiriusXM programming team, will have their play-by-play call air on SiriusXM MLB Radio, and advance to compete in the final “Fan Call of the Year” contest for a grand prize that includes a trip for two (2) to attend the 2021 MLB All-Star Game at Truist Park in Atlanta, Georgia, plus the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to call a half-inning of the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game, LIVE on SiriusXM MLB Radio! Go to SiriusXM dot com slash MLB Fan Call for a full set of contest rules, prizing details, and more.  Alright, let's start the countdown… Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkInsports.com and this is the work in sports podcast… Cool note to add to our new sponsor, SiriusXM, coming up on Wednesday we're going to have on SiriusXM Manager of Sports Partnerships and Marketing Andrew Diamond -- I thought it would be super cool to change our normal format and do a little something different.  Andrew is going to take us through his job and his role at SiriusXM in sports partnerships, through the lens of the “Fan Call of the Year” contest -- from concept brainstorming to organizing the teams necessary to make the concept real, to meeting with stakeholders, promoting and activating -- you'll get an idea of what it's really like to work in marketing, by seeing how an idea turns into reality.  I'm excited about this, because I love the idea of learning about the role through the actual process of creating a sports partnership! Of course I love the idea… it was my idea!  Tune in Wednesday for that -- and seriously, if I was even slightly interested in sports broadcasting, or just wanted to have some fun, I would be all over this “fan call of the year” contest -- you could call a half-inning of the futures game on SiriusXM MLB radio and get a trip to the all-star game in Atlanta? Super cool. Alright on to today's topic.  Actually quick recap -- last weeks episode we talked about cancel vs. consequence culture -- and again we used misogyny in the sports industry as the launching point for the discussion… If you haven't listened to the episode you should, it's raw and it's honest, but I also want to follow up on two things: 1: For those of you that requested I stick to sports and stop having conversations about topics like this -- stop it. You are embarrassing yourself. Don't listen if you don't want to be challenged, and if you truly think subjects like misogyny and social justice don't intersect with sports and our day to day existence -- wake up. Every sports league, team, lifestyle brand, agency and organization connected to sports is taking on these issues because they are important, and they affect all of us.   2: I did get called out for one thing, and I'd like to say thank you for it. Kae Dube, rightfully pointed out that not all women have 2 X chromosomes.   And she is right, she knows I didn't say it in a derogatory way so we are cool, but I should not have been as verbally clever as I was being, I should have been more clear.  Let that be a warning to all of you, sometimes leave the creative writing at home and just b clear with what you are trying to say.  Alright -- now let's get into today's subject… Alisha from Pennsylvania writes in -- “Hey Brian, long time listener of the podcast and I've heard you speak a few times in different panels -- your enthusiasm and energy for this industry is just awesome, thank you. Question for you -- with the world being turned upside down with coronavirus and the sports industry being...

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning for WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast.Big week this week! Coming up on Wednesday is my interview with Raleigh Anne Gray -- Raleigh is incredibly impressive -- having worked at ESPN, Twitter, The Players Tribune and currently at Wasserman.Get this -  at Wasserman, she is the senior director of athlete exchange -- which means, she works directly with the athletes Wasserman represents to help them build their brand and audience. Dream job.And as if that wasn't enough -- she also launched Must Love Sports a sports company dedicated to helping people in the sports industry connect and learn from one another. During the corona quarantine, she said to herself… how can I help? She identified students aren't able to complete their internship requirements to graduate, so she created a virtual internship session, utilizing all of her industry contacts to put together a curriculum and program to help students… for free. 355 students enrolled. Can you tell I'm a big fan of Raliegh… stay tuned for that on Wednesday. Also, later today I'm interviewing Mlissa Silberman, Director of Partnership Activation for the Atlanta Hawks, and leter this week I'm bringing back returning champion Joan Lynch from Working nation to discuss how sportsindustry employment will change in the near future.For those of you who are long time listeners, Joan was on the show last year and was one of our most popular guests. She knows employment, and as one of the main people behind the 30 for 30 series on ESPN, she knows sports. I've also booked some other really cool guests in the coming weeks so make sure to stay tuned, subscribe, all that good stuff. Also, if you are a professor listening, it's time for you to check out our sports career game plan -- we have an online curriculum that will knock your socks off. Perfect for the online world we are migrating towards. 120 pages of carer changing content, over 3 hours of videos, downloadable worksheets and checklists, quizzes, assignments and more. It is a living textbook - growing with your students and preparing them to enter the sports world. If I just piqued your interest… email me, bclapp@workinsports.com and I'll show you the goods.And for the rest of you who aren't professors… tell your professors about it. And for the rest of you that aren't in school -- well, tell someone. Alright let's get into today's question -- Oh one quick note, every once in a while Apple podcasts will send me all the most recent reviews of the show. Thankfully, we have 194 ratings and a 4.9 average --  so you guys and gals like the content -- thank you.But I found one review quite funny -- Headline: A Not Annoying Podcast “Brian has great information, great guests and a great show. He also speaks at a normal speed which is so much better than those slow-talking podcasters speaking in soft tones. I want good info given to me in a normal conversational tone and speed.” Cheers to fast talking!Alright today's question comes from Nick S who it looks like just finished getting his MBA at Jacksonville State University -- Congrats Nick:Nick writes in --Hey Brian!Just finished the newest Gap Year episode. I took my gap year before grad school, and just graduated in May with my MBA. Perfect timing right? I obviously want to work in sports, but I feel the need to get a job as soon as possible. Do you think that it would be viable to accept a position in a business, and be able to switch to the sports industry down the road? I have no idea what to do if I were to receive, say, a marketing offer from a business company rather than a sports team. Great question Nick -- let's get into it. I obviously have feelings on this and I will share them shortly, but no joke immediately after you sent me this, I was on Twitter and I saw friend of the show Dior Ginyard post a response to your question. For those of you that haven't listened,

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning for WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast…Obviously, we are in some crazy times right now, and it feels like a bit of a struggle to come up with new ideas that are related to career development when it feels like carers are stuck in neutral… am I right?I was reading a survey this morning asking millennials and college-age students words to describe how they feel about their careers right now, and the number one response was “frustrated”.I think that sums it up. You've been in school prepping for this moment to enter the world and start your new direction… and the world is like “Hold up, wait a minute...take a break while I ravage your global society”I have three kids, so I am constantly thinking about how this “pause” will affect their growth, and what I can be doing to help mitigate the lost classroom time… because no matter what anyone tells you, virtual learning is not the same. They are missing out on key social development, emotional intelligence, and straight-up learning. Side note -- we have watched a ton of documentaries though - anything from 13th - which is a documentary on the 13th amendment abolishing slavery - exploring the history of race and the criminal justice system in the United States.To Mission to mars -- which is more self-explanatory. It's about the Mission to Mars. For a little context -- 13th was produced in 2016, and it is incredible. Hard to watch. We actually watched it over three days so we could stop it, have a discussion, answer questions..and then take a break. It's some heavy shit, that can be tough but awakening for the kids. It's made an impact. My 8 year old literally said to me on the 4th of July… shouldn't Juneteenth be independence day since that was the day everyone in america become free?I wish I had that knowledge and perspective when I was 8. Ok, back on track… My point is, as I think about my kids and their growth, I also think about how tough it must be for high school, college and entry-level staff ages. People just getting started in their career getting things rolling, are being told … sorry go home, we'll see where this takes us. High school seniors are evaluating what the fall means for them...is it worth it to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a virtual college education? College students are wondering does it make sense to take a year off and come back later? These are all perplexing questions...which brings us to the thrust of today's conversation. Yeah that was just the preamble. Noah writes in …“Hey Brian, I'm a high school senior and what is supposed to be the best summer of my life full of parties and prepping for college… really sucks. I didn't plan on spending my summer at home with my parents. Some of my friends are going to the beach still and doing things as normal, but I am not, and I am really missing out. True story - 4 of my friends got coronavirus after bragging about going out without masks and hanging at parties with strangers, so while I am bummed, I'm also fully understanding of my parents choice to keep me in and safe. Ok, my question, I had a plan to go to college in the fall, but I'm wondering if it may be smarter based on the circumstances to do a gap year, and if I did that, what should I do to enhance myself? Thank you, Brian, I love your podcast I really do.”Noah this is a really great question and I'm excited to dig into it. Two notes first -1: If you have questions you'd like me to handle on this here podcast you can email me at bclapp@workinsports.com -- make the subject line Podcast Question - so I can easily identify it from all the other stuff I get. If I read your question on the air, I'll give you a free month of full access to our WorkInSports job board.  At the lowest point of the corona, we went from 25k jobs down to 8! Now we are back up to 13k… which means we are headed in a better direction.#2 before we get into Noah's question -- I know it...

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast.I have some pretty big news before we get into today's sports industry question -- We have completely overhauled our site WorkInSports.com!Background -- since 1999 we've been the leader for jobs in the sports industry, but as times change we have to be agile and adjust our approach.  That's one of the benefits of being a small, family-run, company - we can make decisions and act on them quickly, not a lot of red tape. You may not know this - but WorkInSports is 10 people. That's right, we're not some huge media conglomerate, we are 10 scrappy people trying to change sports employment.Another cool stat about our business -- we added Jesus Guzman last year at this time to our staff as a front end developer, Jesus is awesome and has been instrumental in this relaunch, but my point for bringing this up… of the ten people on staff, Jesus is the rookie with 1 year on the WIS team. I am the next newest employee and I've been here for seven years. The rest of the staff has been with Work In Sports for 14 years plus. That is unheard of! But again, good people, good environment, good products… people stick around.Ok, so what is the big news -- I'll get off my tangent and get back to the news --  we set out with a mission to be less of a list of jobs and more of an interaction hub between sports employers and sports job seekers - more connectivity, more interaction. And we are there. For a while, free members will still see the old site. All paid members and employers will see the new product. Couple of highlights to feature:Our matching technology is way ramped up - upload resume. When we post new jobs, active search through the databaseWhen you see a job you like, give it a thumbs up Sports selectFor employers, we have a ton of new tools -- all geared toward helping you find the right candidates efficiently. No more pushing through 1,000 resumes of unqualified people. We have THE sports resumes, and when you post a job with us, we will actively match your needed skills against our database of candidates.There are many other tools for employers we have developed I won't get into them all here. But if you are an employer and want a new way to find the most talented people for your roles -- reach out to me, and we'll schedule a demo of the new products -- bclappworkinsports.com.We're excited -- and we are in active beta right now, so if you play around and have feedback - share it with us so s we can continually improve. And remember a premium membership with WorkInSports.com is more valuable than ever… and it keeps me employed! So check it out!Ok, on to today's sports career-focused question…  “Hey Brian, this is William from Chicago, I know yours is not a political podcast but I respect your opinion and wanted to talk about what is currently happening in the world today. The company I work for in the sports industry, who I love to work for, has been completely silent about the George Floyd murder, the protests and the support of the black community -- this really, really bothers me. But I don't know what to do about it. Any ideas how I can speak up respectfully, and not lose my job?”William - this is an intense question and I want to give it the respect it deserves. First I'd like to start with a story about voice. Last year in January  interviewed Vincent Pierson who at the time was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for Minor League Baseball. It is one of my favorite podcasts to date, and Vincent and I have remained in touch afterward. He's incredible. The FIELD program was an initiative that Vincent was highly involved in, and showed great progress toward diversity and inclusion for Minor League Baseball. I'll read directly from their site to explain what the FIELD program is: Minor League Baseball's 'Fostering Inclusion through Education and Leadership Development' (FIELD) Program was created under...

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast…Three straight days of sunny weather and I'm feeling good. We've been mid-70s and bright sun the last three days, which is perfect. And weather definitely affects my mood, so expect some positivity today!If you haven't listened to last week's podcast with Ari Kaplan, you need to. Seriously, it's a long episode, but it didn't feel it.  Ari is one of the OG's of baseball analytics and has some great, great stories. Plus, he shares how to break into the world of sports analytics, and much more. As I said, long episode but worth it -- there are some episodes, just being honest, that feel like they drag or take a long time to get to grandma's house. Ari, man, loved this interview.Coming up on Wednesday is Averee Dovsek -- Averee is on the women's golf team at Hofstra, so we talk a good deal about being a student-athlete at this time. AND we discuss interning and gaining experience as a student-athlete- it's unique being an athlete, your time is allocated to training traveling competing… so many struggle to gain career experience. Averee is the exception - she's done internships at the Golf Channel and PGA Tour Radio - and we talk about what she's learned, how she's focusing on her career, and managing her time. Really great stuff coming up later this week.  As for today…The sports career-focused question comes in from Josh in Indiana - “Hey Brian, I've heard a lot of people on your podcast say they look to hire people who are leaders or have leadership potential. Two-part question -- how do I develop leadership skills, and how do I show them off in the applicant process?”Josh -- good stuff. It's true, for a long time I've been saying the main attributes people need to be successful in any industry is to be coachable, curious and competitive. They are all pretty self-explanatory, but being coachable means you listen well, take to teaching, can be molded, being competitive means you will work hard work extra, want to be the best, learn new skills, look for an edge and being curious means you are a constant learrner, always curious and always strviing for more.But we really need to add to that list. In these times, and in the development of the new normal, we need to stress adaptability and leadership. Let's talk a minute about adaptability before we get into leadership. I have spoken to hundreds of people over this quarantine, and I'd say they can be broken into two groups. 1: Those who freak out. The sky is falling, I will lose my job, I'm going to get the virus, the economy will crash, we'll be in a depression, I'm in a depression. Everything is panic and overwhelming. 2: Those who are seeing the problem, analyzing it, and figuring out how to adjust and adapt. They are looking for opportunities, taking some of this in stride, adjusting to virtual meetings, learning, and saying to themselves, I may get this thing… but I'll beat it if I do. Now, I'm not being naive here -- there are people at massive risk for this virus and I am not advocating taking it on face first -- I'm just pointing out that there are some who adapt, and there are others who get overwhelmed. I know someone who is an at-risk case, she has every reason to fear coronavirus, but she's not letting it overwhelm her. She's quarantining, she's adjusting to zoom life, she's working remote and she's hell-bent on proving her continued value to her company. She's not wallowing, she's adapting. That adaptability is important now, and forever moving forward. It always has been but will be even more so now.  Now let's get to leadership. Why do we want leaders in the workforce? Well, there are executors and there are leaders -- we need both. There are those that are really strong at a specific skill, and that has great value. A top of the line Avid editor, or graphic designer, or salesforce expert -- these are incredible skills that will always be in...

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged learning for WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast…I apologize for not having a Friday podcast last week. I have to say, Friday was the first day of this quarantine that my kids were really struggling. They've been incredible this whole time, but they are young, this is really weird, and it felt like Friday it all caught up to them at once. It was rainy and cold, the sky was grey all day...and all three just looked miserable. So I skipped the podcast, bailed on a few meetings I was supposed to have, including a podcast interview with Averee Dovsek from PGA Tour Radio which we are going to do this Friday instead. Averee is a cool story -- she's in college, a D1 golfer on the women's team at Hofstra, and has also done some very high profile internships with golf channel and PGA tour radio...and during the pandemic, rather than sit around blaming the world for her season coming to an end, and her internship with PGA Tour radio...she started a podcast.  She reminds me of some of my previous guests like Carlton Robie, Dasmine Evans and Jake Kernan -- driven, focused, and willing. Those are great attributes when you are trying to get into this business.Anyway, Averee's interview will be live in two weeks, this week on Wednesday is Ari Kaplan, one of the pioneers of baseball analytics. I don't say that lightly, he is a pioneer in baseball analytics and data science. He's worked or consulted for every major league team - and he shares a bunch of really fun stories, great career advice, and insight into what is happening now in the world of data science and analytics. I know many of you in our audience will get pretty geeked up about this one, I know I did. Just one more note, Ari speaks on these intricate subjects in such a deliberate manner, he makes it easy to understand complex information. As he puts it, you can't talk to a manager or GM in spreadsheets, you have to translate and explain… which he does so so well in this interview. This whole tangent started with me explaining why I missed the podcast on Friday. And it's to make this point. We all make choices every day, don't forget to make choices for yourself or those who rely on you most. Sometimes, you need to be you the person, more than you the worker. OK, let's move along…The question today comes in from Jonny in Los Angeles… Jonny writes“Hey Brian, I feel like you are my trusted advisor even though you don't know me personally. I listen intently to what you share, and since your advice has so often been proven true in my life, I trust you implicitly. My question - the advice you hear all around the internet is that during this time you should be doing more informational interviews with people in the industry. While this advice seems legit, I ask you, how? Like, how do you set them up, what do you ask, what are the goals, and how should I set this up for success? I'm just not quite sure I understand why they are valuable.”Jonny, your question basically wrote my outline for me… how do you do it, why do you do it, what questions do you ask and what does success look like. Like seriously, that's how I outline just about every talk. How, why, what and what does it look like when it works. Thanks for doing my work for me :)Ok, so let's talk about informational interviews. Right now for most of you, the sports world seems like an incredibly large space. Tons of people, different jobs, lots of teams leagues and organizations that support the industry and it's athletes. But here's the deal, those of us that have been in the industry for a long time feel like it's a small world, everyone is interconnected, and the overlap in roles and responsibilities is ever-present.We've shrunken this daunting world by getting to know the people. I tell this all the time, I worked with 250 other people at CNN/Sports Illustrated when I got started -- and then when these people ventured out into other roles I had...

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged Learning at Workinsports.com and this is another special edition of the Work In Sports podcast…For the last month and a half, we've gone to 3 episodes a week so that we could keep supplying you with the most up-to-date industry-relevant information and guidance. We've added a ton of new listeners so thanks to all of you for either tuning in for the first time, or continually listening.If you are a new listener, I want you to know that all of our content is evergreen. Meaning, it is still just as relevant as the day we posted it. So if you go back through our archives, and see that I interviewed super agents like Nicole Lynn, Leigh Steinberg or Jack Mills…  or James Kimball from the UFC, or Kara Walker from the Boston Celtics...or any of our other incredible guests… know this...we don't talk about last night's game or specific plays or events tied to that moment in time. We talk about their career, how they got where they are and what guidance they have for you, in our audience. So go back, listen to any of our episodes, and you'll get incredible sports career advice.Alright, last note before I get into today's episode… On Wednesday I interviewed Leah Clayton, who is the Director of Marketing for the athletic department at Lenoir Rhyne. Many, many, many of you have asked me to interview people in smaller athletic departments, or to get people earlier in their career -- well, Leah is both, she's just a few ears into her sports career, and she's really making a mark at Lenoir-Rhyne.She is also wildly charismatic, and I had a really really good time interviewing her. Smart and funny….plus she called me out for mispronouncing her alma mater, which I loved. I absolutely love it when someone is confident enough to call me out.OK, so what do we want to talk about today?This question from Ben in Washington stood out to me…“Hey Brian, love the podcast, I'm a pretty new listener but I've gone back and listened to 5 of your previous episodes and really enjoyed the content.  My favorite so far was Celia Bouza from ESPN Next - you and her had a really strong rapport, and I loved that chemistry.I'm a college senior, so my world has been turned a bit upside down. For the last decade we've had pretty low unemployment numbers, people were getting jobs. Now, unemployment is going to go through the roof. You've lived through this more than most of us… what is it really like when unemployment is high?”Ben -- welcome to the community, and thanks for listening. Celia is one of my favorites too -- glad you enjoyed that one and YES, I am old enough to remember when unemployment was high. I'm old enough to remember how scary it was with the financial crash of 2007-2008. And I'm old enough to remember 9/11 and the fears that came after that. I was working at CNN during 9/11 and that was a scary, scary time. But rather than focus on what it was like to live through those moments, let's focus on the job market during high unemployment. 1: Employers get really, really frustrated. They have roles to fill, but because unemployment is high, they get more and more unqualified people applying for their jobs, hoping that they'll get lucky.2: Finding the right match gets harderEmployers deal with lots of noise… and they look for ways to cut through it. Which means they rely on two things...sites like ours, and applicant tracking systems.At WorkinSports.com we have tools for employers to filter through our database of resumes, find matches for their openings, invite them to apply, and more. This allows the employer to actively find the right matches for their jobs, rather than relying on blind submissions.It is a huge benefit to you to post your resume on our site. Also, they rely on applicant tracking systems to manage their hiring process. They always use these anyway, but in these times they really rely on them to cut through the noise.3: Which means you HAVE TO make your resume fantastic.

It's the most frequent question we receive -- "I love sports, what should I do for my career?" listen to this episode of the Work In Sports podcast for some ideasHey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkinSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast…A couple of quick notes before we jump into today's fan question:Note #1: Quarantine kind of stinks. It is essential, I'm glad we are all taking it seriously, but this stinks. Note #2: So many of you that I know from our audience are posting that they've been laid off, or your job has been furloughed -- and this hurts me to my core. This feels like something I'm seeing every time I log in to LinkedIn - another person posting they've lost their job. I feel for all of you. We are all feeling a tightening of our belt. Reach out to me via LinkedIn, or our Private Facebook group and I'll see what I can do to help. Our private Facebook group is a great spot to network, and fund support from your peers. Others like you, facing these times and looking for support and guidance. Search for the Work In Sports podcast on Facebook, answer a few questions and you are in!Note #3: In the same spirit, we have created an abridged version of our Work In Sports Academy courses -- we call it Academy Essentials. It is now FREE for all users to access, so if you are looking to increase your knowledge, learn some strategies and tactics that will help when it comes to getting hired in the sports industry, Academy Essentials is a great start and again, completely free.Alright, today's fan question comes from Wyatt in Colorado -- “Hey Brian, I'm a junior in college, pretty early in my sports career and I'm trying to figure out my fit for the industry. I notice on your site WorkInSports.com that your tagline says “make your passion your career” I like that saying… I know my passion in sports...but what part of sports should I make my career in, that's where I struggle. Any ideas that can help me.Also, I have to say your site actually has a lot of jobs right now, and I didn't expect that, thanks for your continued hard work during these times.”Wyatt -- thanks for the kind words and good questions. I think the final side note is kind of funny -- “your site actually has a lot of jobs right now” that word actually always cracks me up, it's like the ultimate backhanded compliment.You actually look nice today. Wow, that paper you wrote is actually pretty good! Your site is actually pretty good at this! I appreciate the positive response Wyatt, we are working really hard as a team right now, and always, to find all the potential opportunities out there. We know many of you are hurting, and finding your next opportunity can be a way to bring light to the end of this tunnel.As I mentioned last week on our special Friday edition, in normal times we add about 75 new sports jobs a day, which is a LOT of opportunities, and that number HAS slowed down, but it hasn't stopped. We added 183 fresh sports jobs last week...and trust me, there is going to be a huge boom once quarantine lets up. There are opportunities now, and there will be more soon. Our site, WorkInSports.com is absolutely your best place to get the latest on opportunities. So let's get into your question about passion, and then refine things further. This comes with the caveat of, I can't answer this question for you, you have to discover it. Has anyone seen the movie Inside Out? It's a Pixar movie, really really really well done. I have young kids, so I see all of these types of movies. Trust me, I have a point in here, just stick with me. The movie is, on a macro level, about your emotions and how your experiences to help frame them.   One of the concepts they use to explain this concept to younger minds is that all of your experiences are marbles,  and then you have a small group of “core memories” that are the most instrumental building blocks of your personality. So apply this to your own life… there are definitely...

 Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged Learning with WorkinSports.com and this is the WorkInSports podcast…A couple of quick updates before we get into today's podcast -- I want to welcome sports management students from Farmingdale State, you're incredible leadership team led by Sab Singh, just signed one to be a part of our Sports Career Game Plan curriculum and in the next month we'll be rolling out your program. Farmingdale joins the University of Dubuque, University of Florida, University of Findlay, Wilmington College, Middle Georgia State, Ball State, East Carolina and a handful of other colleges and universities around the country.If you are listening and you are a college professor, or know a college professor, or are a student who would like your college program to implement our program -- which is awesome, and teaches you how to become a Master at Getting Hired in Sports, and includes a screaming deal for WorkInSports.com premium memberships -- reach out to me. bclapp at workinsports.com -- that's two p's.If you are an individual who wants to learn how to become a master at getting hired in sports - check out workinsports.com/academyAlright, welcome Farmingdale State -- let's get into today's show.The question comes in today and it kind of calls me out. Which I love. I seriously love it when people call me on my sh!t. Well, when they do it productively. For example -- emailing me and saying “you are the biggest moron I've ever listened to” I don't love that. But if someone says ...hey, you talk a lot about this, but not enough about that”I love it because you are telling me what you want to know. I want that, I want to hear from you all. I don't want to make up what I think is relevant, I want you all to ask!So hit me up on LinkedIN, ask questions, email me, bclapp@workinsports.com -- that's my legit email. I want to hear from you all.OK, let's get to the question from Ben in Alabama “Hey Brian, I love the podcast but I am a little bored with the Monday podcasts lately. I feel like you are spending so much time preparing people to work in sports, but not helping those of us in the industry advance.I started in the business a year ago, and I'm anxious to grow. I don't want to hear as much about internships or resume building, I want to hear about other topics that will push me forward.”Ben thank you. I'll be honest, I read this at first and felt defensive… like wait, are you for real? My immediate gut reaction was to send you a list of podcast episodes you should listen to, and to explain to you the expert interviews that are all about advancement… but really,. When I took a deep breath, waited a second and thought about it… there is some good learning in here for me too.I guess that is your first tip for today. Take a breath before responding. I used to be the most emotional person in the newsroom. Someone challenged my work, I'd be ready to rumble. Someone asked a question about why I made a certain decision, I'd be on the cusp of war. I look back at how I performed in my earlier years and wonder how I survived. I had talent, I worked hard...but I was so confrontational and defensive. I was probably impossible to work with. Take a deep breath before responding, don't immediately feel like your honor is on the line. Don't assume people are out to get you. Be willing to constructively improve. Alright, that's a freebie -- didn't even expect to talk about that.Ok, let's get into some year one things you can be doing to improve your chances of being promoted and growing.1: Improve your Communication skills - this is not the old man saying “twitter has ruined grammar!”Quite the opposite. In some ways young people today communicate with more confidence that in my time. I would attribute that to social media. YOu arent afraid to say and share what you feel -- and that is good. BUT - there has to be an emphasis on quality. I receive emails almost daily from students and young professionals asking...

Is it OK to respectfully decline a handshake prior to a job interview? That and more on the Work In Sports podcast!Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports podcast…I feel like we have a lot to talk about today. Big picture stuff. So we're just going to jump into things. Great question today coming up from Giovanna P, Giovanna is a member of our private facebook group and posted a really great question yesterday that we're going to dig into soon.But first -- a question from a friend of mine, someone who wishes to remain anonymous, but presented a very, very timely and important question.This friend asked:“Hey Brian, I have an interview coming up this week I am very excited about, I've heard you talk about first impressions a lot on your show, and I value it's importance as well.   Handshakes, eye contact, smiles -- all important stuff.But I have to admit - normally, I hate handshakes, I'm a bit of a germaphobe by nature, but I struggle through it in these instances. But now, with coronavirus and the instances of community transmission...is it fair for me to avoid a handshake completely?” Friend who slipped into my DMs… yes. 100%.I won't deny there is a part of me that thinks, ugh, I hate this catch 22, because that awkward first moment could be damaging and we should all just suck it upBut that is crappy advice.  Let's be real people -- if someone is offended right now, by someone not wanting skin to skin contact - that person is an a-hole. I think there is a way to do it respectfully, and proactively that helps avoid any awkwardness. You have to think ahead and start your motion before someone else moves to shake. At this time you raise your hand higher, shoulder height, and start to wave courteously.Hey John nice to meet you, waving at them. If anyone says – “oh we're not doing handshakes” because some people can't help themselves, they have to be a meathead, its lodged in their DNA. Just be respectful and say something while smiling like, “it feels like an appropriate choice”If they push any further – this is a red flag, and likely not someone you'd want to be around in a work role anyway. Put this in your data file and remember you are choosing them as much as they are choosing you.  Alas, I don't think this will happen – a polite wave, with eye contact, sends the signal quote clearly – we're not doing that…and in this time in our history, quite understandable.Again, you have to make your move early -- and take charge with a wave. So, there is no awkward hand out-stretched and you start retching, like they are handing you tetanus.You who listen to this show know I am not a big quotes guy -- not a big fan of the posters with quotes. BUT, I have a few movie type moments that bounce around in my head a lot. One, is from the movie “the girl with the dragon tattoo” great book series, decent movie, which is very applicable here.I won't get into the full scene, but the bad guy says to the good guy:  “Sometimes the fear of offending can be stronger than the fear of pain” Let's break that down into everyday life. Would you shake someone's hand, knowing it *could* harm you, because you are afraid to offend them?Really think about that.Would you shake someone's hand knowing it could hurt you, just because you are afraid to offend them?Think about this in your daily life – have you ever made a choice that you really really questioned, just because you were afraid to offend the other person?I've known women, who went out on dates with guys they hated because they were afraid to offend them.I've known guys, who went base jumping, or some other risky move because they didn't want to offend the friend who booked the surprise trip.Are these smart choices? Don't make decisions, important decisions, based on your fear of offending. Make them based on what you truly believe is right, or safe.My wife and I deal with this all the time with our kids -- we'll get an...

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast.Before we get into today's episode - one quick announcement for all of you sports connected folks out there. This weekend, starting Sunday and running through Tuesday, I will be at the Nationa Sports Forum in Atlanta, which is a pretty huge sportsbiz event.This is my first time. My boss the CEO of WorkInSports.com will be with me, and he fully expects me to be yucking it up with everyone. Now, let me be really honest… I love talking to people. I do. But I don't like to initiate conversation.Someone comes up and talks to me, I'll chat them up as long as they want. But I am terrible, literally terrible at going up and starting a conversation with anyone.I bring this up for two reasons. 1: If you or your company are going to be at National Sports Forum, please come talk to me. Come hang out.  2: I bring up my own flaws all the time to be as transparent as possible and let you know, when I host this show, nothing comes from a high perch. I may be the one talking the most, and I may have a lot of perspectives to share, but i am not without massive weaknesses and things I need to work on too. Please don't ever think, when I give advice, that it comes from a place of superiority. It comes from a place of love. Ok, that felt a little weird to say, but there is truth in it, I wouldn't be putting so much effort into this podcast if I didn't care about all of you listening. I have made friends through this show I wouldn't have known otherwise, and that has great meaning. So please know we are in this together.Last thing on National Sports Forum -- I'm going to be conducting mini-interviews with people at the event… I'm going to grab people, ask them 2-3 questions about their career and how they got started... and sprinkle these into episodes throughout the year. So again, if you are there, or if you know someone going, tell them to stop by out booth and say Hi. Make me look good in front of the CEO.Ok, on to the content you are here for!Today's question comes from Ben in Chicago.“Hey Brian, are the Kansas City Chiefs in Missouri or Kansas? I heard there is some confusion amongst high-ranking US Officials”I can confirm Ben, the Kansas City Chiefs are most definitely in Missouri. I have personally alerted the proper authorities.Question #2 comes from Jennifer“Hey Brian, you spoke in my college class last week and I really appreciate the energy and enthusiasm you brought to the classroom. I was too shy to ask any questions but I wanted to see if you could elaborate on a point you made about how someone can stand out during an internship?”Of course Jennifer -- thank you for asking and thanks to your professor for inviting me into your classroom -- I spoke in 5 different college classes last week and it was a blast. I have to tell you I have massive respect for college professors after doing a lot of these sessions. I got for about an hour, 45 minutes of me, then 15 minutes of question time from the audience… and it is exhausting. I don't know how the professors do it day after day. Much respect!Ok, onto your internship strategy. It's early spring semester so many of you are gearing up for spring internships and possibly summer ones so this is the chance to get your head on straight. The three things to remember for your internship:Be curiousBe competitiveBe coachableToday's Sponsor:Temple University's School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management. 

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp V of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkInSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast…Just a quick personal vent -- not a big fan of changing the clocks. I think it is purely mental, but I get the worst night's sleep for about a week after the clocks change. My 12-year-old daughter was up at like 5:30 this morning, so clearly I passed this trait down to her as well. Not a fan. What makes it even worse is staying up to watch your team stink on Sunday night Football… but I digress, as fully recognize that no one feels sympathy for Patriots fans like me. I would just like to again state for the record, I am from Boston and therefore my fandom is legit and earned through decades of sucking… Alright now that we've cleared up the massive problems with daylight savings and sucking on Sunday night football.. Let's get to a question, shall we?I get all types of questions -- but this one from Teague in Oregon stuck out to me this week:“Hey Brian, I suck at networking, can you help?”You know I respect the brevity of this request. There is no flattery, no sugar coating, just straight to it. And while I love it when people say “hey brian, you are awesome!” sometimes a good old “I suck can you help, really cuts through the BS.OK, so this is a big subject, this networking things here, and I don't want to go on for hours and hours, so I'm going to focus this a bit. If you want more I have an entire course on networking as part of the Work In sports Academy… but for now, I'm going to go at this like I approach most things, I flip the conversation on its head. Let's reverse engineer the heck out of this thing...and ask the question -- what makes someone become your friend?Does that seem to be a weird question to ask in regards to networking? Well, let's think about this -- as I analyze my network of contacts, the only ones I would rely upon, disclose things about myself too, give deep time and effort to helping when asked… are those people I would consider more than just a connection, I'd call them a friend. So how do you build more industry friends? That is the key to networking - it is the depth of the relationship, not the number. So I've moved around a bit in my life, and I've figured out that it can be pretty hard to make friends when you get older. You have shared experiences. Shared schedules. We're all on the same career status entry-level. Less responsibility. You can go out all night and not have to worry about things. It makes it pretty easy to connect with people.   But as you get older, it gets harder to break in with people. I left my cushy world in Atlanta to move to Seattle knowing no one. I'm 28, the new boss, and everyone you meet already has a circle of friends they've been hanging with for years. We don't have shared experiences. We all have different job levels, more responsibilities, life is changing...and this tends to make people lean into the group they already have. Networking is the same damn thing as making new friends. Just connecting with someone. Or just engaging them in small talk at a conference. Or just liking their posts. Isn't going to cut it. The person you do that with, isn't going to stick their neck out for you next time you need a job, or need advice, or need a hand. Building a network is the creation of multiple mini friendships. Maybe not your tell them everything and complain about your spouse best friend, but it follows the same rhythm. In life, we aren't trying to make 5,000 friends, we're trying to make the right 20 friends.Networking is the same thing.  I have 6,536 connections on LinkedIn, I know very few of them. These people are opportunities to network, but they are not a network. They are lumps of relationship clay that I have done little to nothing with yet. Many people compare their network to the expectations they have in their heads. I don't know the VP of the Red Sox so my network stinks! I need more high profile people in my network!

Hey It's Brian -- Typical sports guy, I grew up in the 80s and 90s loving Georgetown Basketball -- watching Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, and even Patrick Ewing play games against Syracuse was like a dream Saturday afternoon for me in the winters of my youth.Funny thing is as a sports fan you don't think of schools as institutions of higher learning, you value them by the stregnth of their teams. You know what I never realized back in that time - Georgetown is one of the best schools in the nation. I know that now, that's for sure. And the good news is, you can get a Master's from Georgetown and open up doors in your sports career. Georgetown offers a part-time Master's in Sports Industry Management that prepares you to excel in the global sports industry. Ideal for working professionals, the program offers flexible options to take classes online, on campus, or through a combination of both—so you don't have to interrupt your career to earn your degree. You'll leave the program with the communication, business, and leadership strategies that position you for success.To learn more about the program, you're invited to attend an upcoming webinar on Tuesday, October 29, at noon Eastern Time. Visit scs.georgetown.edu/sportswebinar to RSVP.And the Work in Sports podcast is brought to you by the Work in Sports Academy -- 4 online courses built by yours truly to give you the insight and knowledge into getting hired in the sports industry. It is competitive! It is hard to get in! But trust me, when you do, you are going to love it...and getting into a career you love is worth the effort. Check out our online courses that will give you a leg up - visit WorkinSports.com/academy today!Alright, let's start the countdown….Hey everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of content and Engaged Learning for WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast…Sorry for being a day late everyone -- my apologies -- trust me my intent is to always do a Monday and Wednesday episode… but you know, life and work and stuff. A lot of questions have come in recently about the validity of using a competency based resume rather than a traditional style. I have some thoughts on this technique, but before i get into the subject I reached out to 5-6 of my friends in the industry directly connected to talent acquisition -- these are the people on the front lines of hiring, who look at resumes and evaluate candidates all day long. I want their thoughts and feedback before I start telling you my thoughts -- because in all honesty, the thoughts of Mailynh Vu with the Cleveland Indians and Colleen Scoles with the Philadelphia Eagles and Mark Cosacarello with the USGA are far far more valuable than my thoughts. So hold on for that...expect it soon. I've also been working really hard on guest booking the last few weeks -- long time listeniners of the podcast have noticed I've rerun a couple of our all-time best the last two weeks, Leigh Steinberg and Mike Judge -- this is happening as I ramp up a new wave of guests on the show. We've got some really cool guests coming down the line which have me really really excited.But -- that leaves us to today and a great question that came in from Justin in Ohio -- Justin writes in:“Hey Brian huge fan of the show, I've listened to every episode, in fact when I have long drives I often go back and pick a few episodes to listen to again. I like your style and it's easy to engage with your content and learn important techniques that help my career.One question I wonder if you could expand upon is the importance of soft skills and how you can sell them on a resume, cover letter and in the interview process. I find it hard to show how great of a team player I am, but I know it is incredible important."Great question Justin!There are two major parts to the hiring process -- competency and cultural fit. Or you could call them hard skills and soft skills… but i kind of like competency and cultural fit...sounds better to me.

James:  Hi listeners and audience, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Through Value-add Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today, we have Brian Hamrick. Brian owns 370 units which 2/3 of it is syndicated, the remaining is owned by him. He's from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He does multifamily, self-storage and also non-performing notes and Brian is also the past president of Rental Properties Owner Association.  Hey, Brian, welcome to the show.  Brian: Hey, James, great to be here. Thanks for having me.  James: I'm really happy to have you here. I mean, you have been podcasting for the past three years. You have a really good audience because I remember after showing up on your podcast, a lot of people did contact me. So I'm sure a lot of people love your podcast as well.  Brian: That's fantastic. I'm glad to hear that.  James: Yes. So can we go a bit more detailed into what is this Rental Properties Owners Association, how do they add value to syndicators or landlords or tenants? Can you describe a bit more on that? Brian: Sure, the Rental Property Owners Association, which I'm a past president of, I'm currently on the executive committee and I sit on a number of different committees, they are a landlord representation organization.  So we also work a lot with Real Estate Investors and provide all kinds of training for both landlords and Real Estate Investors. Every year, we have an annual conference where we have National Speakers come in and talk about all different types of investing asset classes and whatnot. And really I got involved with it because when I moved here to Grand Rapids, 15 years ago, I was looking for a professional organization that I could become part of that would help me network with other professionals in the industry. People who own rental properties and knew how to profit from it and also just an organization that would help teach best practices so I could learn the ropes how to do it and certainly through the Rental Property Owners Association and the people I've met there, I've learned a lot.  We provide a lot of training but probably what I consider most important of all is we have a legislative committee that works with lawmakers, both local and at the state level, to help push through bills that help rental property owners and also help prevent bills from becoming a reality that would hurt us; anything that has to do with like rent control or some of those hot button issues that as landlords and rental property owners would like to avoid.  James: Yeah, very interesting. So like New York and I think, Oregon now is rent control states, if I'm not mistaken, so they probably have similar Association like yours in that city, I guess. Brian: I would hope so. It sounds like they're fighting a losing battle as you and I both know as rental property owners, you know, I believe you invest out of state, out of your area, is that correct?  James: No. No, I'm from Austin. I invest everything in Austin and San Antonio. Brian: Okay. So would you even consider investing in a city or a state that has rent control?  James: No. Of course not.  Brian: Yeah. It's really detrimental to the market and I think it's going to cause a lot of problems. I used to live in Santa Monica, California where they had rent control and you can see the negative results of that. James: Oh, Santa Monica in California, did they have rent control in the past?  Brian: Yeah, a lot of the Los Angeles counties, you know, it's kind of county by county, city by city, area by area, but there is rent control in Los Angeles in certain areas and you can just see how rental property owners, who own buildings in rent control areas, have no incentive to put money back into them. They're not putting the capital expenditures back into their property to keep them in good shape because there's no incentive to do so. They can't raise rents beyond a certain amount each year and you know, so why would you invest $100,000 back into your building if you're not going to get that out in value? James: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make sense for a business. So you may not run it as a business, you may be just run it as cash flow, I don't know, it's like a cash flow investment. I guess you don't have to spend any capital on it.  Brian: I can see how if you've owned the property for a long time and you bought it at the right price at the right time, you could probably be doing well with cash flow. But in these markets where you see a lot of rent control, they're expensive markets. So I'm not really sure once rent control is instituted in these markets what's going to incentivize new investors to come in and bring fresh money into the market. James: Interesting interesting. So coming back to your portfolio, can you tell me in terms of your holdings, how much is multifamily, how much is self-storage? How many percents of each one of these and how much is non-performing notes?  Brian: Sure. Sure. So multi-family is my bread and butter. I've been doing that since 2008. I moved to Grand Rapids in 2005 and 2008 the bubble burst, you know, we entered the Great Recession, it was a buyers' market. I bought my first 12 unit, I was using my own money in the beginning, started using other people's money and then started syndicating.  We currently have about 370 units here in the Grand Rapids area, Grand Rapids, Michigan and that's multi-family residential. In 2018 we purchased a self-storage facility, it's about 28,000 square foot, we're currently adding another 15,000 square foot to it and that's been a fantastic investment, I really love self-storage. And then, as you mentioned, I host a podcast - The Rental Property Owner and Real Estate Investor Podcast - and one of my guests over two years ago was a gentleman by the name of Gene Chandler and he was investing in non-performing notes and I really liked his strategy so much that I ended up investing well over 300,000 dollars with them and the results have just been fantastic.  James: So, you now do multifamily and now you're doing two other asset class. So can you tell me what does multifamily did not offer that these two other asset class offers? Brian: Well, I like you, I'm investing in my own backyard for when it comes to multifamily. Even though I've bought and sold over 450 units, in 2015, I stopped buying multifamily altogether because the values had gone to a point where I could no longer justify syndication. I couldn't get the returns that I needed for my investors to be able to to pay the prices that people were asking. The last two deals I found - one was off-market, one was kind of in between market - and I can go into details on that but anything that I saw after that point just, I was so spoiled by the prices I was getting between 2008-2014, that I started looking for other asset classes.  And there were probably about 3 years where I just sat on the fence, waiting to see if the market would change or something else would come along. And at some point, one of the people who I met through the podcast, brought me a self-storage deal that he had found off-market. I looked at it, I like the numbers. His underwriting was very conservative, but the numbers were very compelling and we ended up buying that in 2018. And just in one year of basically bringing the rents up to market value and switching to a virtual online web-based management system, we were able to add over $700,000 in value to that property. So I like the simplicity of managing and owning self-storage more so than multifamily because in multifamily, you have tenants and plumbing issues... James: So it's very Property Management intensive, right? Brian:  It definitely is and the self-storage, it's not. When you have turn-over, you're basically sweeping out a metal shed, you know, so it's a lot easier to manage and own and operate self-storage, especially when you're in a good market and I think we bought in an excellent market. It's just north of Lansing, Michigan. And then with the non-performing notes, I found a strategic partner who handled a lot of the nuts and bolts of that and I was able to invest with him somewhat passively so I enjoyed that aspect of investing there and the returns we were getting were very good.  James: Interesting. Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned in my book, commercial asset classes go in cycles. I mean, I know I'm a multi-family guy and your bread and butter is multifamily but if you find the right operators in other asset classes, you can make a lot more money or equal amount of money as what you're making with multi-family. So, would you think so? Brian: Absolutely. Finding the right strategic partners in other asset classes that's one of the things I set my mind to when I realize I'm just not seeing the returns I want to see in multifamily and apartments in my area where I'm comfortable investing. Now, have you looked at other asset classes? James: I did look at a few asset class. I mean the asset class that I looked at is also like, you know, self-storage or mobile home parks but it's also in demand. I'm surprised to see here that you found something in 2018 because I thought self-storage is a hot asset class as well, I will risk going after that. Brian: Yeah, it was a lucky strike and we've been looking for similar opportunities. But yeah, we're not finding them. What we're doing instead is building ground-up construction in self-storage, finding locations where the demographics are right and the need for more square footage of self-storage space is there and then we go in and fill that need. James: Yeah, but I'm happy that you are looking at multifamily is not like the only asset class throughout the whole real estate cycle. I mean you felt like in 2015, things picked up and you really can't find the prices that you want and you have changed strategy which is how an investor should be. You always want to look at what's available out there, the deal flow because the economy is still doing very well. There's a lot of capital out there and it's just harder to find a great really-making-sense deal. I wouldn't say deals, making sense deals in multi-family, something that makes sense. It's just so hard to find out nowadays. Brian: Absolutely. As an investor, you have to stay nimble and flexible and be open to other opportunities. Now, I know a lot of people in our field, our asset class of multifamily and apartments will find strategic partners outside of their area like in Texas or Georgia or wherever and partner with strategic partners who are able to find better value and better yields in their Investments. But I've had some bad experiences early on with some single-families that I owned out of state so I've always been very hesitant since then to own rental property, residential rental property, out of state. James: So you like to have any property within your own backyard, but you like to diversify within asset classes. Some people have one asset class, but they go across the nation. Like some people like to buy multi-family across the nation, wherever make sense but you are doing it the other way around. Brian: Yeah. Since I've branched out into self-storage and non-performing notes, I'm comfortable switching up asset classes. James: Awesome. So on self-storage, are you the operator, are you the primary guy?  Brian: No, my strategic partner is. He's the one who found the deal off-market, he negotiated it. I basically came in and raised the money; we syndicated that and raise the funds to be able to acquire it. James: Got it. Very interesting. And on the performing notes, you have a strategic partner, I would say, right? Brian: Yeah, I have a strategic partner on that. He's the one who knows that world. He's been doing it for well over six years now and really knows how to negotiate with the lender who we're purchasing a non-performing note from. He works with the homeowners to try to keep them in the home and figure out if that's even possible and then knows who the title company is that he should work with to get the right due diligence done and he's got the different scenarios in his head of how we can profit off of these notes. If we keep the homeowner in the home, what are the strategies there for us to maximize our profit or if we have to go through the foreclosure process. How do we go about that and maximize our returns in those cases as well. James: Interesting. Interesting. So if you get a multi-family deal today, would you still do it? Brian: If I found a deal that made sense and my underwriting shows that I could get the returns to my investors that they're accustomed to, I'd do it in a second, absolutely.  James: Okay. Okay. So let's talk about the market and submarket selection. So why did you move from California to Grand Rapids, Michigan?  Everybody's heading to Texas and Florida from California.  Brian: I'm from Michigan, originally. James: Oh, you're from Michigan? Okay, that makes a lot of sense.  Brian: Yeah, my wife is from here as well. So we met in California but decided okay, if we get married, start a family we didn't want to do it in Los Angeles, it's just too busy there.  James: Makes sense. Yeah, I mean just based on data that 50% of the population move to Texas And I think there's a lot more but Texas and Florida is the favorite destination for people from California. That's why I was asking the question. And how do you select the submarket in Grand Rapids, Michigan? Like how do you select which submarket to really do the deal? Brian:  Well eyes because I live here, I am looking within a half hour to an hour of where I live. Grand Rapids is very strong, has very strong demographics. It's one of the few Midwest cities that really bounce back strong from the Great Recession. A lot of diversified manufacturing industry. Furniture, Amway is here, we've got a lot of different industries and employment based here. So when I look at submarkets, I'm looking more at the neighborhoods, what's the crime rate in that neighborhood? What's the income level in that? What kind of rents can we command and by the way, I'll buy B properties and C properties or you know, C minus properties that we can push into that C plus B minus range. But I will avoid the The D areas and I've seen a lot of opportunities in the D areas. And by D, I mean where you have a lot higher crime rate, where you have a lot more evictions and tenant turnover and problems.  So I'm just very careful about and I work with the property management company that has a good grasp of these areas. So when we look at a property, we can really get a sense of if we buy this, is there an upside value, can we improve it and get higher rents, get better residents in here or is it going to be bound by the neighborhood it's in, that where it is now is what just where it's going to be? James:  Got it. Got it. Interesting. What about underwriting? I mean, when you look at a deal like I mean when you are buying multifamily, right? So how would you select the deal? Let's say a hundred deals been sent to you, do you know how many percents of it you would reject? Brian: Right now 100%. I'm not even looking right now, but what I'll do is I'll do a quick rule of thumb. Okay, what's the net operating income? What's the cap rate that they're asking? Is there upside potential? And of course, if it's listed by a broker, they'll always tell you the market the rents are way under market. you can raise the rent. No problem. That's sometimes true, sometimes not true.  But this area is so strong that any seller right now knows that they can get top dollar and while there's a lot of Institutions and out-of-state investors and even International investors who are willing to pay top dollar, the yields that they are willing to accept are much lower than what I'm willing to pay, which is why I'm not even looking at the moment.  James: Very interesting. Now I see it's happening across the country. I thought it was only happening in Texas and Florida but looks like across the country, that's what's happening. It's just so hard to find deals that used to make sense to us long time ago, right? So it's crazy out there.  Brian: Yeah, and it could just be that I'm spoiled because I was buying during a period when I could buy it at eight nine ten caps. And now, when I see things at five six, six and a half caps, I don't even want to consider them. But had I bought it at those cap rates between 2015 and 2017, I would have made a lot of money. So maybe I'm just a little too stringent in my criteria right now.  James: Yeah. That could be it as well.  Brian: Are you buying right now? James: Well, I mean, well, I'm still buying if I find the right deal. It's just so hard to find the deal that makes sense for my criteria, and I'm sure that's the same thing as your criteria. I'm still buying if I find the right deal but I'm not underwriting a hundred deals, you know, in one month. You know, whatever deal comes to me, I usually know that within the quick look, I know whether it makes sense for me to underwrite or not. And sometimes brokers will call me if they know that a certain deal is something that I would do. That's the only deal that I look at.  Brian: What's your quick back of the napkin way of determining whether or not you want to invest in something? James: If it's an email blast, I probably wouldn't look at it.  Brian: Yeah. Yeah, you kind of eliminate the ones that go out to everybody.  James: Yeah, it's already got everybody on his shop date and coming on an email blast. You know, you have to go on a best and final and best and best and final and then this ultimate best and final offer, which is you're shooting in the dark, right? You're basically bidding against yourself. [20:45 inaudible] I'm not really in a desperate mode to buy deals that go through that kind of process. So when I look for value-add if there's a true value-add deal, I mean, minus the crime rate area, I definitely know the area that has high crime rate, I can check it out quickly Class B and C, but need to have true value-add that we can go and add value. I don't really look at the entry cap rate, but I look for the spread of the cap rate from the time I buy to in the next two years kind of thing without any rent increases.  Brian: I think part of part of my problem, one of the reasons that I've just been on the fence is because we bought a value-add property back in 2015. It was an older building, built in 1920 and it was such an exhaustive process to go in and add value to that property. I was over there like every day. James: It is very tiring to do those value-add deals. To do deep value-adds, I would say.   Brian: Deep, deep value-add. And so my bandwidth for more opportunities was just completely limited because I was so exhausted by working on this one particular project. Now, luckily, we got it to a point where we added tremendous value to it and we're very proud of the work we did but you have to weigh the opportunity cost when you do those value-adds because sometimes they're so intensive that some of the lower hanging fruits, you bypassed that. James: Correct. Yeah. I see some syndicators doing deals every month and they're not doing a deep value-add or they're just doing the lighter value-add. Maybe they're just doing a yield play. [22:30inaudible] they can buy every month. They can claim 5,000 units or 3,000 years versus deep value-add to be like 100 and 200 and 300. It's a really really deep value-add. You probably make a lot more money than the guy who owns 3,000 to 4,000 units, but it's a lot of work.  Brian: It's more than just asset managing. You kind of become a de facto developer. James: Developer, a huge project manager. Yes, so many things but the deep value-add gives you a sense of accomplishment. Brian: It does.  I'm very proud of the work we did on this particular property and more so than any of my other properties because I didn't have to put nearly as much work into them.  James: Yeah, and the deep value-add it becomes a case study, right? Because it truly shows your skills to turn around property.  And people who have done deep value-add it's going to be easier for them to do the lighter [23:30inaudible]   Brian: Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent point.  James: So that's very interesting. So can you name like 2 or 3 secret sauces to your success? Brian: The two or three secret sauces to my success. I'm sorry if you hear that printer going in the background there.  James: It's okay. No worries.  Brian: Hopefully that ends soon. Secret sauces to my success; I think doing the underwriting, running my numbers. I always like to say, I like to see my numbers in bullet time. To see all the Matrix, you know, everything slows down and you can see it coming at you. I want to know what are the real expense is going to be after we've acquired the property. One particular mistake that I see a lot of investors making is they assume that the property tax is going to be the same as what the previous owner was paying and that's just not the case. So right there that's one of the main factors that I look at right away, is what is the property tax going to become once I buy this property and that eliminates 50% of the deals that I would even consider. So number one secret sauce is just really understanding the numbers. Not just where they are today, but where they will be once we acquire the property. Number two is having the right team. I am all about partnering with strategic partners who add value because they understand inside and out the asset class that you're investing in. The reason I was able to expand my multifamily portfolio was that I partnered with someone who owned his own property management company and managed the type of properties that I wanted to acquire. That without his assistance and without his team that really knew how to go in and do the due diligence and help me assess upfront, what are the capital expense costs going to be? What are the true costs going to be when we acquire this property? Without that, I would have made a lot of mistakes. The same with self-storage. I partnered with someone who even though he's young and new, somewhat new to the business, he had really studied it, talked to a lot of professionals, been mentored by people and really understood inside and out how we could add value to that self-storage facility. And everything that he put in his pro forma ended up becoming a reality. With my non-performing note partner, I mean he knows that world inside and out. So when we acquire a note, the first 12 that I bought with him, we only had one that we lost money on and that was about $1,700.  James: Out of how many notes?  Brian: We bought 12 notes to start with because I like to test before I bring other investors in so I bought 12 notes with my partner, I JV with him. Five of the notes our average return was over 80%.  James: Wow. What timeline? Brian: A year and a half.  Well, actually, each note is kind of on its own timeline. So I'll tell you that of the twelve notes that he and I purchased together, five of them are closed and paid off like we've made our profit. Our average return on investment, before we split 50/50, our average return was 81% and that included the one note that we lost $1,700 on. Some of the returns that we're getting are phenomenal. Five of the notes are re-performing, which means that we were able to keep the homeowners in their homes, which is fantastic. That's our number one goal. Our average return on those notes as we collect the monthly income is 30%. And then two of them are in some form of foreclosure. In fact, we're about to sell one. We just listed it today actually, so we should make a decent return on that. We always try to work with the homeowner and keep them in the home. Half the time we're able to do that, half the time it just doesn't work out. But you asked me the timeline so, of those five notes that we closed, our average return was 81%, the average number of days that we were in each of those notes was 163 days so that took less than half a year.   James: I mean, those are good great numbers. I mean, I mentioned in my book, find the right operator in that asset class and partner with them or invest with them for passive investors. So as I said in every asset class, there's always good operators. So the numbers you're telling me in non-performing notes in self-storage are huge, right? I mean, I know multifamily you can make money if the market went up and you have a really good operator that can handle that. On average, not everybody is making what you just told me right now on self-storage. So why is multifamily more popular than other asset classes?   Brian: There are more people teaching it.  James: That's absolutely my point. Brian: Yeah, I mean like there are some excellent instructors out there in multifamily and you and I are both the part of a group with one of them. I mean great top-notch training material. Okay. Yeah, there's just fewer people out there. Whereas you have between 10 to 20 people out there teaching multifamily, you could count on one hand the number of people teaching self-storage and it's even less teaching the non-performing note.  James: I understand. Yeah, it is it is true. There's a lot more people teaching multifamily, a lot more boot camps, a lot more 2 days weekend seminars on multifamily compared to self-storage or non-performing notes. And I think multi-family is also very simple to understand, it's a house. Not many people understand what is non-performing notes.  Brian: Yeah, there's all that educational like just understanding and wrapping your head around the concept. I got into multifamily because I understood the economy of scale and I understood people have to have a place to live. So if you can get them to pay their rent and that rent pays all your expenses plus the mortgage, well, you can make a lot of money that way. And then once I understood the next level of value, which is the income valuation method, how commercial multifamily is valued based on the income method and you can increase your returns exponentially if you understand that. The relationship between cap rate and your net operating income and value that was very compelling to me. And I think that still is very compelling when it comes to investing in commercial real estate whether it be multifamily or self-storage. I think non-performing notes, there's a lot more perceived risk in that because it's not valued based on any  - it's hard to understand how that's valued because there are so many different scenarios in which you can profit from non-performing notes. That you can't just say well we value it this way and if you buy this note, this is what you're going to make, it's kind of a crapshoot. But if you do it right and you partner with someone who knows how to avoid the dogs, you can actually make a lot of money doing it.  James: So what is the most valuable value-add in non-performing notes? Brian: You mean an example of one of our...? James: No, not an example. I'm talking about what is the one thing that if you do the most of the time or the frequency of things that you do in non-performing notes that you get the most value out of? Brian: Well, yeah, it differs note by note. I'll give you two examples. One is a property that was pretty much a teardown property that we bought the note on in Middlebury, Indiana. We paid $5,000 for this note and I asked my partner, I mean it's $5,000, this property is a teardown. How are we going to make money on this? And he said, well, we're not buying this for this property for the house that's on it. We're buying it for the land because it's right next door to a farm and this farm is owned by this Amish family. So he sent a realtor over to the Amish family and they ended up paying $35,000 for that note. So after closing costs and paying the realtor and getting our initial $5,000 investment back, our profit was over $24,000 that represented a 245% return and we did that in less than two months. James: Yeah, but you need to identify that opportunity. I mean, it's not like you can go and buy any deals right now. Okay, very interesting. Brian: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Another quick example of how you can profit on notes and I don't want it to lead you to believe that your best profit is always going to be a few foreclose or take possession of the property because you can still make a lot of money if you can work with the homeowners. We bought a note on a property in northern Michigan, probably about 9 or 10 months ago now. And I believe the numbers were in the line of we paid $20,000 for this note, got the homeowners re-performing, the unpaid balance on this note is $41,000. Once we have them season for 12 months, meaning that they're paying on time for 12 months - we've been working with them with a mortgage loan originator, where they can go and get new financing, permanent financing of FHA or Fannie Mae type loan in place with much better interest rate much better payments. Well, when they go do that, they're going to pay off that unpaid balance. So our $19,000 investment, now that I'm thinking about it was $19,000, our $19,000 investment, we're going to get paid that $41,000 of the unpaid balance on their note, plus the money that they've been paying each year. So our return on that is going to be 100%, it's actually over a hundred percent.   James: Across how many years?  Brian: We'll be out of that in under 15 months. James: Okay, interesting. Brian: Because they're going to refinance and when they refinance, we get paid that unpaid balance. James: Got it. Got it. What about on the multifamily properties that you own before 2015? What do you think is the most valuable value-add that you really like?  Brian: Well, they're all great because just anything I bought between 2008 and 2012, I've achieved an infinite return on those.  James: Okay. So refied it by and you kept it? Brian: Yeah. Yeah, we've refinanced, pulled our initial investment out. We have no money in the properties and we're collecting cash flow every month. So you can't calculate a return on that. Probably one of the best examples is a 37 unit that we purchased. We bought it at a short sale in 2009, was about 600,000 is what we paid for it. We put a $200,000 into it right away to replace roofs, windows. It was a hodgepodge of heating systems. There's electric baseboard heat and hot water boiler heat and then gas forced-air furnace heat. It just depended on which unit you were looking at. So we replaced a lot of the mechanicals, made it as much of a new property as we could, as far as just the mechanicals and the roof and the windows. And we refinanced it once it had over 1.1 million dollar value, pulled all of our initial investment out plus some extra cash flow and then we just refinanced it again, put a tenure fixed loan on it through the Freddie Mac. small apartment loan. So we got great terms on it, 30-year amortization. At that point, it valued over two million dollars. So we've added a lot of value to it and the compression of cap rates didn't hurt either.  James: Yeah. Yeah. Those are the awesome deals, the deep value-adds. That's where you can go and refi and make it infinite written because you pulled out all your cost basis. Brian: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the goal to achieve infinite return. Whenever we can do that, that's what we do.  James: Absolutely. Aren't you worried about the state of the market right now in real estate in general?  Brian: You know, gosh, I was more worried about it two years ago than I am now probably. James: What has changed? Brian: Probably because two years ago, I was thinking, oh, it's going to turn any minute now and then it only got better and better. You and I both know Neil Bala and we talked to him at the last event we were at together and he made a very good case for the continuation of this market. And it basically rests on the fact that the United States, it's one of the few, if not the only places in the world where you can go to get real yield on your investment. We're seeing a lot of international money coming into the United States because in their countries, they're seeing negative yield or 0 yield. Here even if you can still get three or four percent yield on your investment, that's a lot of money. It's bringing a lot of money into this country and that's going to prop up our values for quite a long time. On top of that, I've always fought or believe that interest rates were going to rise and I've been believing that since 2000 and they keep going down. And even now, as we're speaking, they're talking about lowering the rate again by the end of the year. So that interest rate risk, I know we're playing with fire here and eventually, we're going to have to pay the piper but our government seems to keep coming up with ways to prolong this growth and the increase in prices. So am I worried? Not in the short term. No. No. The Economists I listen to are saying, oh, it's going to be a roaring 20s for us. Things are really going to hit the fan and. 2027, 2028, 29. James: Interesting. Yeah, because I think I don't know, maybe my thoughts are similar to yours somehow the Fed has figured out how to do quantitative easing and quantitative tightening. Somehow they're able to contract the economy and bring it down. So they could have found some new mechanism to keep the economy going even though our thought process always has been real estate goes in cycles. But at some point, you will hit an affordability issue, it can't [40:13unintelligible]  go up all the time, right?  Brian: Yes.  James: The prices can go up because the interest rate is coming down because now you can get more cash flow. But at the same time, you can't keep on increasing rent because our wages are not going up so much. I mean, I'm not an economist but at some point, you will hit some roadblock, but I'm not sure where is it and how is going to come.  Brian: Yeah, well, we're seeing a plateauing I think right now in just the rents that we're able to charge, the prices that people are willing to pay but it's still a very strong market. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going out there and just buying stuff like crazy because I am very conservative and like I said if I can't get the returns that I need to bring investors into my deals, I'm just not even looking at it. I don't anticipate that the market is going to have a huge correction, there might be a bump, I think if you're in a good market, like Grand Rapids, that bump won't be nearly as severe as some other places.  I'm keeping my eye on the market but at the same time, investing conservatively in asset classes that I think will be able to withstand the next correction.  James: Awesome. So let's go back to a personal side of things, right? So is there a proud moment throughout your career in real estate that you will remember for your whole life, one proud moment? Brian: One for a moment to put on my tombstone. James: Yeah, absolutely. That you really think that hard, I'm really proud I did that.  Brian: Yeah. So a couple of answers. I mean any time we're able to go in and improve a property and improving neighborhoods, that always makes me proud, you know, that we're adding value to a neighborhood and community. The older building that I told you about here in Grand Rapids, it was built in 1920. When we bought that it was very tired, kind of poorly managed, it was losing money. We were able to turn that around so I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of the fact that we also fought very hard and work very closely with the city to be able to put a restaurant in that building. So the fact that when we bought it it was 96 apartment units and about 6,000 square foot of vacant commercial space. Now we had to work with the city to get it rezoned because it had been vacant for so long, it had to be reverted to being zoned residential. So we spent over a year trying to get it rezoned so we could add commercial in there, but we filled up all 6,000 square foot including a restaurant and that took about two or three years to do.  So when I think about what I'm proud of I think I'm definitely proud of that.  James: Awesome. That there is hard work  because you're turning the zoning from residential to mixed use.  Brian: Yeah, mixed-use residential commercial, just dealing with parking, number of parking spots and green space and tree canopies. I mean, it was a massive undertaking.  James: Yeah. It's very interesting that kind of work. I did one that was borderline and we merged it with an apartment and we did so many things. It was a very unique value-add that we recently refinance.  Brian: What was it, a lot of work for you? James: It was a lot of work because you have to go through, you know, buying the deal - you had to buy two deals at the same time. One is the apartment and one is the land and then we have to go to the city to merge these two plots. Then you had to rezone it, then you had to - I mean replot it, rezone it And then after you do a tree survey, you have to do so many different surveys have to do to get that. It's not normal in a residential, you know, where you buy today and increase rent, reduce expense kind of deal. But it's very interesting and people got 80% of our money within 15 months, which is huge, just by doing this creatively.  Brian: That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, you talk about its zoning and tree, you know.  James: Yeah, zoning and tree and all those. Brian: So it's a whole new world and it definitely is costly and time-consuming because you have to have experts on your team. You got to bring experts like architects.  James: Yeah, we brought in architects, engineers.  Brian: Yeah, engineers who even understand what it is that the city is asking for because if you were trying to do that yourself, you just would be a mess. James: Yeah. I mean the good thing about what you said about what I'm proud of this kind of process and 99% of the syndicators don't have that kind of experience. Brian: Yeah. I didn't have that kind of experience but now I do.  James: Most of the time, you just buy buildings and, you know, look at increasing income and reducing expenses and after that, at some point you sell but you don't do different contracts buying land and doing kind of things. So another question for you, Brian, why do you do what you do?  Brian: I love it. I love what I do. I feel very entrepreneurial about it because I've been an employee up until about five or six years ago. Whatever it was I was doing, whatever job, I always embraced it and did the best I could. But what I love about being an entrepreneur, being a full-time real estate investor, now syndicator/asset manager is that it's all very self-motivated. I'm the one who decides what needs to happen, what I need to pay attention to on a day-by-day basis. I don't have a boss or anyone else telling me, 'Hey, Brian, go do this' when I'm like, 'no, I want to go do this instead.' I get to call the shots. So that's what I love about it. I get to call the shots, I get to take time off if I need to take time off and I get to kind of fill my day with activities that I want to be doing. James: Awesome. Hey Brian, you want to tell our listeners and audience how to get hold of you?  Brian: Sure, James. First of all, you can go to my website, which is higinvestor.com. That's HIG is Hamrick Investment Group. You can also listen to my podcast and James you've been a guest on there so you can definitely listen to me interview James. It's the Rental Property Owner and Real Estate Investor Podcast and it's sponsored by the RPOA, which we begin this conversation talking about. And if you want to get in touch with me, you can also email me Brian@higinvestor.com.   James: Awesome, Brian. Thanks for coming in and adding value to my listeners and audience and to myself as well in the kind of things from our discussion here. I think that's it. Thank you very much.  Brian: All right. Thanks, James. It's been a pleasure. It's a lot of fun. James: Lot of fun, thank you.  

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we are here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Laura Welch join us. Laura comes with a wealth of sales enablement experience from several notable organizations like Poly, and most recently HP. Laura, let’s dive in. SS: I want to talk to you first a little bit about sales training and gamification. How do you engage sales reps in sales training activities? What are some of the strategies you have for reinforcing what they learn in training sessions? Laura Welch: Well, I think one of the most important things about enabling sales reps is to provide training in a way that supports their sales activities. What I mean is, it doesn’t occur as an interruption or a problem. They don’t roll their eyes when they get invited to an enablement activity, and I’ve found the best way to do that, to have it really support them in making more money for the company. That’s what it’s all about. So, the best way I found is to make sure that they know what’s happening and what’s coming quite a bit of time in advance. We set a cadence of activities and we do the same thing every quarter, so they know and can expect that in the first week of the quarter, products are going to be launched, promotions, campaigns, new sales tools, etc. Then, in the first month of the quarter, we do a one-day training over video with each sales team. There are 15 of them worldwide, so it’s a four to five-hour event and we try to get all of their enablement that we can, that we need to do in person with them, done during that time. They love it. They get face-to-face interaction with subject matter experts, they get to ask questions, we play games with them during that event, and it is their critical time for learning, for understanding what they need to know to be successful that quarter. During that, some of the strategies that we have to reinforce what they’ve learned – I’m really big on checking in on learning – so at the very beginning of their one-day training (this is that four-and-a-half-hour session that we do with each team), I pop up a survey and the survey says, “how comfortable are you with the following topics?” And we list everything that we are going to be covering in one-day training. It could be a new product announcement, it could be a sales skill that we are going to reinforce, it could be an update of some of our alliance partners, so a variety of topics. So, I say, “how comfortable are you with new x-y-z product? How comfortable are you with our latest competitive update, etc.?” And then at the end of the day, I ask them the same questions, and I tell them, “Listen, these questions are not designed to trick you.” If you said, “I’m not at all comfortable with every single thing” at the beginning of the day and then answer at the end of the day, “yes, now I’m comfortable”, that is perfect. That means you have had a 100% increase in learning in every section. I said answer honestly because I’m not at all comfortable is a great response at the beginning of training where we are about to teach you about everything. I found that this is really beneficial in a couple of ways. One, it reinforces to them that the things we are going to be covering during that one-day training are important and we want them to learn and here are the subjects. And at the end, it has them really look to say, “am I comfortable with that, do I need more information, and there is a place they can write in a request for more information?” It also lets us go back to the speakers and say, “Hey Brian, there was a 70% increase in learning in your session that you did overall across the 15 sessions. It was an average of 70% learning, so congratulations, I think that’s really successful.” And he can use that to tailor his training next time when he is training on another new product. That is the one-day training and then throughout the quarter, we have non-mandatory things they can attend where they meet subject matter experts. We call them AMAs. You can meet a subject matter expert and ask them questions, and we hold those, and those are super popular. And then we do podcasts and we do just-in-time videos, little two to three-minute short videos. I find that if I put most of the training in that first month, most of the things we really want them to do and then give them optional things they can attend and listen to and participate in throughout the quarter as they need to, they really like that. I would say our sellers think of sales enablement as something that really adds value. It is not something they have to do, and they are burdened with. SS: I love that. I’m curious, how do you deliver some of the training throughout the quarter that is a little bit more real-time for your reps to digest and when have you found them most likely to actually engage in that material? LW: We do a few different things. So, if it’s a competitive update, let’s say a competitor of our launches a new product and it’s really going to be a competitive threat. We put out what we call a 10-11 and if you see the words 10-11 in your inbox as a salesperson, you know that’s a competitive alert. It is one short page: what was the announcement, why should you care about it, what are the things they are going to be saying about us, how should we respond to it, etc. So, it’s just a one-page, short quick hit and then it has links if you want to go more in-depth on the new product or whatever. That’s how we do competitive stuff. How we do the AMAs is all over video. It’s a live video call. The subject matter expert joins. Any salesperson or systems engineer that wants to come in and ask that person questions joins. We have about 900 sales reps and that includes the systems engineers, and we probably have 60 people on each AMA, and we do them in the different regions, so we cover all the different time zones. So, I think they’re very well attended, especially as a mandatory thing. But it’s all over video, live, so someone raises their hand to ask a question, people can talk over each other, it’s very casual. The podcasts and the just-in-time videos are delivered through our intranet but also through an app that we have that is really specifically designed to deliver podcasts and videos. If you’re a salesperson, you’re getting on a train, you can listen to the latest podcast. We do really fun topics on podcasts like what’s your morning routine, how do you manage your time as a really busy systems engineer, sales skills, as well as just life lessons. And then we also do more product or solution-focused things. So, they are always really well received, so we put that on the app that they use and also on our intranet. And the one-day training are all delivered over video. We don’t really get people together in person. We are very dispersed with a huge work-from-home environment, especially on the sales team side. So, getting over video together as a team is beneficial, it allows them to interact with each other and see each other. Then of course, once a year we have our worldwide sales meeting where they all get to interact in person. SS: Very cool. And obviously, a component of providing a lot of this training remotely is to make sure that it’s engaging. We’re also going to talk about gamification a little bit. How do those programs really help to drive better engagement with your reps? LW: Well, let’s take a couple of examples. We do a lot of gamification with new hires. A big reason we use it there is I find that when you play games with them, they remember it better and they have fun and they don’t get so exhausted. New hire sales training is like a firehose of information and data that is just coming at them and they are hypersensitive anyway; they want to make a good impression, it is a new company, so it’s just exhausting if you just throw information at them. So, we play Family Feud. We break them up into teams, they stand up, they cheer each other on, they have to guess answers to questions about the company, and they have a lot of fun. Family Feud is always rated as one of the fun things. Last time, we gave them Nerf guns and there was a tower of plastic cups built up, and every time they answered a question right, they got to shoot at the cups and try to knock them over. If they knocked them over, they got a point, and the people with the most points at the end of the day won. So, that was really fun. We play Jeopardy with them. We split them into teams, and they earn points throughout the whole new hire sales training. They get to know each other as a group, and at the end of the three to five-day event, whoever has the most points gets gear, like hats or something like that. So, we have them have fun together. One thing I did – not in new hire sales training, but in one of those one-day training – we had a new product out. I told everybody I wanted them to write a haiku. I explained to them briefly what a haiku was, and I told everybody to email me their haiku and over the lunch hour, I would gather them together and then we would vote as a team on some of the great haikus. And they did a great job. They had to do a haiku on the benefits or the features of this new product. And let me tell you, doing something like that has it burn in your brain what a benefit or feature is because you’ve just written a poem about it, which is fun. Doing things like that cements the information into their brain a lot better than just going through PowerPoint slides and telling them what the benefits are or having a speaker up there talking, even if the speaker is really engaging. Having them actually do something and stand up is good. One time, we had them be a product, so we gave them all placards with a little string and they wore it around their neck, and every time we talked about something where that product would be a good fit, they had to stand up. “Yes, I’m this product and this is a great place to be in this particular customer scenario.” That was really helpful for them to really understand how to place and put our solutions around a customer environment. SS: You mentioned cementing the knowledge with your reps. I’m curious what you’ve done to be able to measure how well your reps are actually retaining some of this knowledge when you are using more interactive and engaging ways of training them via gamification. LW: Measuring and understanding how sales enablement impacts the overall success of the company is really important to me and my team. We have one measurement that we keep our eye on that’s kind of our north star. That measurement is if you’re a sales rep and I’ve given you these four activities to complete this quarter – attending the quick start, attending your one-day training, watching this product video, taking this online class – at the end of the quarter, if you have checked off that you have done that, you are marked as having completed 100% of your sales training. We call it your learning plan. You have completed your learning plan for the quarter, and everybody has a learning plan, and everybody has to check off all of their activities in their learning plan. Here’s what we do: people that completed 100% of their quota, so they’re at 100% or better, how many of them also completed 100% of their training? And it gives us a number. It gives us a metric that we use, and we say if more people that made 100% of their quota, if more of them completed their training than not, then that is a positive correlation. Then we say that sales enablement has made a difference. We are now going a little bit deeper where we are taking off the top 10% of the sellers and the bottom 10% of the sellers and looking at that middle 80% and seeing how that is improving quarter after quarter. Because anecdotally I think, your top sellers, you’re not going to hurt them or help them really with your sales enablement activities. They are going to win. The bottom people are having issues that probably can’t be helped with general sales enablement activities, and it’s that middle group that you really want to have an impact on. So that’s our one measurement. Now, we also measure attendance at our AMAs, how many people watch our podcasts, those surveys that I mentioned in the one-day training. Sometimes we will throw out a survey about their knowledge on a particular subject and we measure that. We measure downloads of playbooks. So, we measure a lot, but I don’t think the sales leadership cares about that as much. That is more of a fine-tuning effort on our end. If they’re not downloading a particular playbook, maybe we need to go update it. But what the sales leadership cares about is, is sales enablement having a positive impact on my salesforce? That’s really what they care about. They don’t care how many times a playbook is downloaded. So, that’s the key measurement that we really have in front of us. If that measurement starts going down, then we have to just stop everything, rethink what we’re doing. Maybe we’re making things too busy, maybe there’s too much going on, maybe we’re not enabling them on the skills or the competencies or the products or the processes that they need to win. So let’s rethink everything. That’s really important to us and that’s how we measure our success. SS: And you mentioned something really important there, which is that your focus as enablement should really be on improving the middle pack of the reps. I would love to understand kind of what are some of the initiatives that you have done to actually better improve the performance of those mid-performance reps, if you will? LW: I find that the mid-performing reps are usually struggling in a specific area, so either they’re not comfortable with the products and so they’re not really sure and they don’t have the competence in front of their customers or their partners, or they are struggling with the processes. They haven’t really figured out how to work that well and it’s burdening them and weighing them down, or maybe our expense report process is really driving them crazy and burdening them. How do we figure that out? Or there is a skills gap. So, they are great, and then they are horrible closers. Or they’re great at selling one product but they’re really not great at cross-selling. What we do is before we do those one-days is I poll the sales leaders, and I say, “tell me some of the things that you think your reps are struggling with, especially your reps that are in the middle of the pack.” I don’t define it, like 80%, but they know what I mean, and each of the sales leaders might have a different answer. What the India sales reps are struggling with may not be what the west coast in the US sales reps are struggling with. So, we try to reinforce the learning and try to adjust the learning for that one-day training so that it really fits the needs of the majority of the salesforce of that team. SS: And how much are you leveraging those sales leaders to also reinforce a lot of your training? LW: A lot. I hold a sales enablement council in every region, and I count on and I invite the sales leaders to the council as well as leaders from other functional areas, so they understand what is happening in sales enablement. And I rely on them for feedback. I give them all of our metrics. I ask them their opinions. It is critical that if we are training them to interact with customers in a particular way around closing, it is critical that when they are coaching their reps, they are reiterating what we are training them on. And if they have a problem with the training, they don’t think it’s effective, or they’re finding in the field that really this is better, then they come and tell us. They want to be in alignment with us, they want to make sure that their reps are getting the most out of their sales enablement activities. The last thing you want is your rep to attend a training, and then they go out in the field and it doesn’t work, and you have to teach them something else. That’s just wasted time and effort. That’s crazy. One of the things we did to kind of drive this home to our sales managers is we looked at, what is our revenue as a company and divide that by the number of salespeople. Divide that by the number of hours that they sell and look to see how much our salespeople are worth per hour. It’s in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Is what you are doing with them by taking them out of the field, is that worth x hundreds of dollars per person that you are spending? Because that’s what you are spending. It’s kind of a simplistic way to look at it, but it really has people step back and go, “oh I need to interact with this team, I am spending x number of dollars by spending an hour with them training them on something. I better be prepared. I better make sure that it’s clear what the sellers are supposed to do with it and what their call to action, why I want them to take this action.” It has really kind of sharpened the skills of the people I have asked to train our sellers, whether it’s a product manager or a product marketing manager or a Salesforce.com expert. I really make sure that they know this is a super valuable resource, our sellers, and you better deliver super valuable training. SS: That’s excellent. Beyond just your sales leadership, how have you gone about getting executive buy-in, not only to just your sales training efforts but enablement as a whole? LW: As the leader of the sales enablement group, it’s important that I understand what all of our executives care about, what they need and want from the sales enablement organization. So for example, finance, the head of our finance team. What do they really need and want? Well, one thing is they need to make sure all of the reps are in compliance for finance rules, so I include finance mandatory training. It’s not very often, maybe once a year or once every six months, in the sales enablement effort. So instead of having that be something separate finance has to deal with on their own and try to beg the sellers to figure out and complete, I include that as part of the e-learning program. The HR tool – we work hand-in-glove with them to bring on and to retain our employees. It is important that as we are hiring our new sellers that we are hiring the skills that we think are going to make them most successful. We’re hiring the kind of people that we think are really going to fit in and work well, and that the best way to do that is to get them really involved in the onboarding program that we have put together. And they love it. Marketing. Wow. I talk to marketing reps all the time and it is important that I understand what our CMO is doing from campaigns and promotions and what she is looking at from her roadmap so that I can plan to make sure that our sellers are up to speed with everything. So I make sure that I understand their strategies, what they care about, what their pain points are, what their goals are. If I can impact that in my sales enablement activities, that means we’re all on the same team and I would say that’s really important. So, if you have an organization where the sales team is just being bombarded by messages from all these different groups randomly at no particular interval, it is disruptive to them. It disrupts the sales cycle, it takes them out of the field, it takes them out of the game, and if you can align that all in a single program where you have a newsletter and that’s where this kind of information is. We have AMAs and that’s where we do this kind of information. We have our one-day training and the marketing team can come in and talk for 30 minutes about what is happening on the marketing front. Like I just said, we include finance training into their learning plan. When you have a plan where it’s all-inclusive for a seller, they can just be like, “okay, when I look at my learning plan and I can plan out four to five hours of my time over the quarter to complete that, I know for sure it’s going to be four to five hours of my time.” It’s not going to be four to five hours plus. Does that make sense? SS: Absolutely. It’s amazing how much you’ve focused on kind of cutting out the clutter for your reps. LW: Yeah, my job is 100% making sure I help drive more revenue for the company. If my reps are being distracted and pulled out and confused and having to do three hours of work to put together a presentation for a customer, if they are spending time in ways that we don’t want them to spend time, that’s on me. Because that’s my job: enabling them. So before I do anything with them, I think is this really going to add value or is this going to distract? Do we really need to do this right now? So, I think it’s important. We just had this big communication that one of the teams wanted to give out to our reps, and we’re in the last ten days of the quarter and we’re driving business, and I said to them, “I don’t think this is going to help us close the quarter. I think we need to wait until the first week of July or the second week of July to pull this together and ask them to watch this video that they wanted them to watch.” If I didn’t have the relationship with the other functional teams, that would have gone out and I would never have known until somebody complained to me about it. And then I just have to try to fix it, which is not what you want to do when you could get in front of it, obviously. So, having those relationships with the other executives and the cross-functional leads is really important so that we’re all playing the same game. We’re all playing the game of having our company be successful and we’re double-checking with everybody to make sure that what we are doing is driving the behavior that we want. SS: Thanks for listening! For more insights, tips and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you would like to share or a topic you want to know more about, let us know. We would love to hear from you.

Another snippet from a previous show.

In this episode we dig into the deeper purpose of college. How to really leverage the college experience into a sports job.Hi everybody I'm Brian Clapp Director of Content for WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast…The purpose of this show, our mission statement you could say, is pretty simple – we're trying to help people like you start or grow their career in the multi-billion dollar global sports industry.For all the similarities that the sports industry have to any other business, there are also many subtle and not so subtle specifics that can help you become the person sports employers want.Why sports? Why should you pursue a career in something like sports? I'll break it down to you like this:From an economic standpoint – the sports industry is consistent, in good times and bad economically, sports still thrives. In fact during the last major US recession… The Economist said “the sports industry by and large is holding up to the recession better than most industries.”Why, because people still pay to see their heroes perform, to entertain, to escape the troubles of life or to add to them. Sports do well in various market conditions.But on a more emotional standpoint – why work in sports? Because it's something you feel passionate about. It's something you choose to do. When you pick up your phone in the morning, you check ESPN.com, when you flip through channels you go to FS1 – sports doesn't feel like work, because it's something you are genuinely interested in.But it is, it is work. It is a huge global industry – it does take specific skills and methods to achieve greatness – which is why we are here.If you aren't familiar with our site – WorkinSports.com – let me learn you a little something. We work with over 8,000 sports employers to promote their job openings. We put all the active jobs in one spot, so you can easily find and apply for your next dream position. We're a service, saving you time and money, by helping you find sports jobs you wouldn't otherwise know about. We've been doing this for almost 20 years… we can really help you.As for this podcast – Mondays are question and answer day – you ask the questions, I answer them. Who am I? Well, I'm Brian, I've been in the sports industry for 20 years primarily in the sports media, at CNN/Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports. I've been in charge of staffing, budgets, producing content, managing workflows, interviewing and a whole lot more. Plus I've interviewed 200+ sports executives on what they look for in employees… so I'm a source of information for you.On Wednesdays I interview industry experts – for example this Wednesday – Leigh Steinberg, super agent. If you haven't heard of him…you don't know sports. (Jerry Maguire was based on him).So that's the rundown – I don't do this everytime, but we are getting tons and tons of new listeners each week and sometimes I like to set the table for everyone.Now let's get into today's question –“Hey Brian, this is Aaliyah from Alabama – I'm going into my freshman year of college and I really want to make my college career productive and efficient. You've talked a great deal about how someone should prepare for their job search while in college…but I'm curious, are there other things we should be doing while in college to make ourselves really attractive to employers and marketable?”This is a fun question Aaliyah and as always…I have a few ideas that can help:1: Frame your mind around this – your GPA doesn't mean squat2: Avoid as much debt as you can3: Play a sport…on the real team, club team, intramural team – whatever4: Use your Career Center5: Become really good friends with LinkedIn6: Work on your listening and conversational skills7: Define your ideal companies early… study themListen to the whole episode for all the details on these points!

Why do some entry level jobs want 2 years experience? What do they mean by experience and should I bother applying? Good Question! Let's get into it:Hi everybody, I'm Brian Clapp Director of Content for WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast…Let's talk about the Sports Career Accelerator event September 13-14th in Atlanta --  we are super excited about this event, and I have to admit so much of our excitement is based on your enthusiasm. It's infectious! As so many of you have asked for more information, or told us you are really excited, that has helped push us forward, and motivated us to make this the best event you have ever been a part of.For fans of this podcast we are opening registration tomorrow! Tuesday August 7th. I will be sharing a registration link on our Private Facebook Group page – and I will be emailing personally all the people who have entered their name on our early interest list.You will get the first crack at registration for this one of a kind event.Then we will open registration to the public on Wednesday…my hope is all of you fill it up first, so we don't even have to bother with the non-listeners. How cool would it be for this event to be filled up with all for you ambitious fans?!I will be at the event personally, so this will be a meetup of sorts too. And I'm telling you, the guests speakers and networking opportunities wil blow your socks off.Now, many of you are probably wondering… Hey Brian, didn't you say last week that registration would open for us on Monday?Yes I did. But we had some tech glitches this weekend, so we are spending today testing everything to make sure it works correctly before we open to up registration to you. We want registration to be smooth and seamless, and I'd rather wait a day, than have tech mistakes we can avoid.That's life…sometimes you need to adjust!Anyway look for the registration info tomorrow and let's get this done!On to today's QA session question, this one comes from Ethan in Minnesota –Ethan writes in –“Hi Brian, love the podcast thank you so much for the content you share. I'm graduating from college in the spring and as you suggest I'm reading job descriptions now so that I can figure out the gaps I should fill in during my senior year. (SO SMART!).One thing I am noticing is that many jobs that claim to be entry level are asking for two years experience – which seems to contradict the words entry level! Are these jobs I should ignore? Or apply to anyway…what's the deal here?!” Ethan what a great question – frustrating isn't it? Entry level jobs want so much experience… how does that work?Let's separate the fact from fiction and dig into the reality of the job market.1: What do job requirements really mean?2: What does experience really mean?3: Customize your resume and cover letter  4:  Shot gun vs. targeted5: Gap AnalysisListen to the episode to find out more details on this entry level jobs discussion!

Fan of the show Jordan asks "If you could go back and give your 22 year old self some advice, or things you would do differently in your career, what would they be?" I like this question, so I'm diving in. Come along and listen. Hi everybody I'm Brian Clapp, Director of Content for Work in Sports.com and this is the WorkinSports podcast.Before I get into today's question I want to answer a sub-question I get a lot – why does WorkinSports charge a subscription to access your sports jobs? This is a great question and here's the straight truth – you know me, I'm painfully honest and I'm going to do that here.As a business we have two basic options:Charge employers to post their jobsHave a subscription membershipOn a surface level you probably think – yeah charge the employers! But think a little deeper. Many small to medium employers will say – no thanks, we don't want to pay, or we can't pay to post our jobs. Many big employers will say nah, we don't have an interest in that.So what does that mean for you?A job board that only posts jobs from employers willing to pay them, is only presenting you a fraction of the total market. There are thousands of opportunities you'll never see on their job board because they haven't struck a deal with that particular employer.We've gone about it differently.Yes we charge our members, but it allows us to get all of the available jobs and bring them to you. Small medium and large size companies are all represented with us. You don't miss a thing.Plus, sports employers love our members, because you aren't just blindly applying to a free sports job that sounds cool….but you aren't qualified. Our members are willing to pay for access which is a method of pre-screening and makes our employment friends very happy.So that's it in a nutshell – we charge, but for good reason, and it benefits you in the long run and the short run.   Alright enough of that – here's this weeks question from Jordan in North Carolina, just a friendly reminder to our new listeners – email your question in to podcast@workinsports.com and ifyou have your question answered on the show – BOOM – you get a free month of access.Here's Jordan's question:Hey Brian, I'm a 22 year old grad student - over the last few months I've been following your advice on the podcast and it's made a huge difference for me. I've been more confident in interviews, both on video and in person, my cover letters are better, my goals are clearer, I know where my weak spots are an I'm working to fix them…I can't thank you enough, I've learned more from your podcast that I have in 6 years of college and grad school. I heard you mention on a show once that you have been in the industry for 20 years, so I guess you are around 40 year old. Which makes me wonder… if you could go back and talk to your 22 year old version, what would you tell them or what would you do differently?I love how forward Jordan is, YES Jordan I am 43 years old, which means I've been in the sports industry for 22 years. Yikes.I like this question.As a parent I think this way a great deal – what do I want them to know that I didn't? or what can I teach them to do better than I did? or how can I inspire them to achieve more than I have?Same thing here – what can I look back and share with all of you that could change your career trajectory. Wow, that's a big challenge…but here goes, here are 5 things I would have done differently.1:  I would have asked more questions.2: I would have been more aggressive in college3: I would have worked for a team4: I would have taken more continuing ed courses5: I would have looked to the future moreListen in for more detail and explanation

Dory Weiss, VP of Engineering at nCino, joins the AppChat to talk about embracing the Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) methodology in developing cloud banking products on the Salesforce platform. Other subjects include her unusual start as a writer of code, maintaining company values amid growth, “pollinating” ideas across teams, and a way to show off sprint work while having fun in the process. Here are the key topics, with timestamps, as well as the full interview transcript: Key Topics 0:00-2:25: Introducing the AppChat and our guest, nCino VP of Engineering Dory Weiss 2:26-9:23: Weiss’ early career as a graduate student in English, her transition to coding, and the similarities between the two languages and ways of thinking 9:24-15:00: Scaling personally and professionally by sticking with nCino’s culture and core values 15:01-19:02: Giving out football helmet stickers in recognition of core values, and the tight alignment between nCino and CodeScience that stems from culture 19:03-24:29: How to hire, onboard and train a good culture fit -- making it “emotionally safe” for development and growth, and weighing technical and culture qualifications 24:30-30:20: Moving from agile to large scale scrum (LeSS methodologies) and dividing teams while prioritizing the right work to get done for clients 31:21-38:56: Managing scrum relationships and integrating work responsibilities to balance speed needs while reducing silos and “pollinating” across teams 38:57-42:01: The “review bazaar” process for presenting and evaluating sprints like a science fair 42:02-42:50: Closing out and how to get in touch  Full Transcript: Brian Walsh: 00:13 Okay, everybody, welcome back to the AppChat podcast, and this week, as our promise is, we're gonna have colorful people in amazing SaaS companies. We have with us Dory Weiss from nCino, who's VP of engineering. Dory, introduce yourself and nCino. Dory Weiss: 00:28 Hey Brian, yeah, hey. Great to join you. I am Dory Weiss, as you said. I'm the VP of engineering at nCino. I joined nCino in 2013, which is one whole year after nCino started in 2012. I started in 2013 as a developer. I was the fifth developer when I joined and I think I was employee number 38. Now a mere five years later we are just over 450 folks. We've gotten really big. We are spanning a couple of buildings now at this point, which is exciting, and we've gone international, so it has been a crazy ride over the last couple of years. Dory Weiss: 01:11 nCIno, for folks, who are not familiar with us, we are the worldwide leader in cloud banking. What we do is we make it possible for banks to originate financial products more easily and with more transparency into what they're doing. Brian Walsh: 01:27 You're built entirely on the Salesforce platform? Dory Weiss: 01:31 We like to say we're built 99 percent on the Salesforce platform. Brian Walsh: 01:35 There's always some little piece that you have to do outside? Dory Weiss: 01:37 There is a little bit of magic that we can't make work on platform and that makes us a little bit sad, but those things that we need to do off platform, we do. Brian Walsh: 01:47 That's pretty amazing, though, that these large banks ... Because your customers are the who's who of the banking industry, right? Dory Weiss: 01:54 Yeah, I think at this point we have 10 of the top 30 banks in America as our customers in terms of asset size, so yeah, but also not just the largest enterprise banks are customers. We have 180 customers spanning institutions of all sizes. Brian Walsh: 02:16 That's amazing. Alright, so, you're the fifth developer at nCino. How did you get there? You had a very different course to get into becoming the fifth developer and working your way to VPE. Dory Weiss: 02:26 Yeah, frankly I never quite know how I ended up where I ended up. I learned a couple of years ago to stop trying to guess what was gonna come next, because every time I thought I knew where my life was going, something would happen to prove me really desperately wrong, but I started out actually ... I was working on being an English professor. That had always been my dream. My undergrad was in English literature. I went to grad school at the University of Iowa in a PhD program for English Literature. Brian Walsh: 03:02 Wow. Dory Weiss: 03:03 Yeah, I was so excited about teaching. That was my dream, and I loved teaching. I always really loved being in the college classroom, but as I got towards the end of my comprehensive exams and towards the beginning of my dissertation, that whole process ... I started to feel really disillusioned and the things that I was most interested in, teaching, were not the things that seemed to be what was most important to my professors and to some of my peers. Academia didn't seem grounded in thinking about, "Hey, there's a group of people who I want to introduce to really incredible ideas and have the sort of meeting of the mind sort of exchange about how do we make the world better and how do we come to understand the world more deeply?" That wasn't the focus of being in academia. Brian Walsh: 03:55 Right, almost like the values that you held for why it was pushing you there were different than those values that were already existing within the educational environment. Dory Weiss: 04:02 Exactly, exactly, and not that academic research isn't incredibly important, but it's not where my heart was leading me, and so there was the sort of moment of, "Oh, wait, this isn't what I thought it was and I don't think I want to do this other thing, so, crap." Brian Walsh: 04:24 How many years in were you at this point? Like 10 years in? Dory Weiss: 04:26 I was five years in. I was five years in. It had been a big investment and I had just always ... My self-concept had been built around this idea that I was gonna be an English professor someday, so that was a really destabilizing moment. I ended up leaving grad school and just had no idea what I was gonna do next. I ended up in Austin, Texas and found out through a friend of a friend that the University of Texas had a software developer training program. What they did was they looked for folks who had strong aptitude, technical aptitude and really strong people skills. Ideally folks who had graduate degrees in something, anything. Brian Walsh: 05:12 You mean like non-technical background people. Dory Weiss: 05:14 Yeah, like no requirement for a technical background at all. The folks that I went through the training program with, they were folks who had PhDs in mathematics and biology and chemistry and music and painting. It was just like ... I used to call us the island of misfit grad students, because it was a whole bunch of us that, I think, had similar experiences, that had found something lacking in academia and just didn't know what they wanted to do next. Anyway, the training program was really incredible. It was a six month long training program. You got paid to do it which was just incredible, and if you made it through the training program, then you were guaranteed a job on campus at the University of Texas. The university is a state institution, so once you've been there for six months, you're tenured as a state employee, so if you could get into the program and make it through those six months, it would- Brian Walsh: 06:16 Then you've got a job. Dory Weiss: 06:17 It was an incredibly sweet gig. Brian Walsh: 06:19 Wow. Dory Weiss: 06:19 I had no idea what being a developer meant when I applied. I remember ... Brian Walsh: 06:19 Had you ever written any code at all? Dory Weiss: 06:28 I knew HTML and CSS. Brian Walsh: 06:30 Okay. Dory Weiss: 06:32 I knew that that wasn't like really what coding was, but I didn't know what coding really was. I had the sense that I was missing something, but I didn't know what. Yeah, I remember the hiring manager for the training program called me one evening. It was actually on a Friday evening. It was probably like 6:30 or 7 and I had already had a whiskey on that Friday night. The hiring manager called and he said, "You know, we all really liked getting to know you, and the one question that we had that we're just not sure about is if you're gonna like the work." I said, "You know, I don't know if I'm gonna like the work either. I don't know what this is gonna be, but I want to give it a try." Luckily they hired me and gave me a chance, because it turned out that I just absolutely loved it. Brian Walsh: 07:25 That is such a cool story. I was at the women in enterprise tech conference and it was amazing how many of those speakers, and it was a fantastic conference, how many of the speakers had no technical background and yet ran global companies in technology. Leyla Seka from Salesforce, and Hilarie Koplow-McAdams from New Relic. She's a VC now, and Meredith Finn who's a VC, Jessica Lynn, all of them, same exact background, like, "Hey, I'm just gonna somehow get into this," and then they excel and become amazing leaders of these organizations. Dory Weiss: 07:56 Yeah. Well, I think for myself at least, on one hand a language is a language is a language. The things that made me a good writer of the English language are the same things that made me a good writer of code. It's a matter of trying to communicate an idea as simply as possible, as directly as possible as you can to an audience, and I think that that sort of focus on how to organize and present ideas really helped me understand the beauty of writing simple code, which I think is a real strength. Dory Weiss: 08:34 I think that's part of it and I think the other part is, for me at least, was this idea that a lot of the skills that attracted me to the classroom are the same things that I think make you a good teammate, make you a good member of a scrum team, let you be thoughtful in terms of thinking empathetically about your customers and what their needs are and how to best serve them. The combination of analytical thinking and empathetic thinking. For me, I got a lot of that from the same axis as reading books and doing the imaginative work of looking at a character and trying to understand what motivated them and why they made the choices that they did. Brian Walsh: 09:23 You know, when I look back at your background, less than a year, for every year that you've been in nCino, you've gotten a promotion. Is that driven by moving that language and being able to move from being a hands on individual contributor to now running those teams and the communication and now having a team of managers under you? What has driven that unbelievable rise for a company that's growing so fast? Dory Weiss: 09:51 That's a really good question. I think that it's about ... I think obviously that I bring some degree of technical understanding and technical ability, but I do really think that part of what allowed me to move out of management and part of what I've really enjoyed about moving into management, part of what I've really enjoyed about that, is thinking about the group of people that are around me and thinking deeply about how to make sure that they all understand what we need of them, to make sure that I understand what they need of us. In some ways it's sort of classroom management, in terms of looking around at a group of people and thinking, "Okay, how do we make sure that everybody is starting from the same place in terms of understanding what it is that we're trying to accomplish," and we can all see that goal really clearly and then work together to articulate what we need to do in order to achieve that end. Brian Walsh: 11:00 Got it. I think that pivots beautifully into the topics you're touching on and one of the things that has always attracted me to nCino, which is you live and die by your culture and values. Everything about the way you communicate, the way you engage when you walk in your office, it's tangible. How did you transform the organization to have that? Was it always there? At what point did that become this cornerstone for you? Dory Weiss: 11:24 Yeah, it was always there. It was certainly there when I joined in 2013, and it's something that I've always found just really exceptional that Pierre, our CEO, and the other members of the executive team had such foresight in terms of really making that the cornerstone of the company. Pierre loves to talk about the Peter Drucker quote, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." He loves that. It shows up in all of his culture decks, but I think that that has really been a cornerstone, and for us it's all about the fact that if we make sure that every person at nCino is empowered to do their best work, and that's both having the resources and the tools that they need, having the support and the encouragement that they need, that they understand clearly what our goals are and how we want to treat our customers. Dory Weiss: 12:28 If everyone has that sort of foundation, then you've got ... If we've got 450 employees, then you have 450 agents of change who can go out and make the right decisions for our customers who can have great ideas that move the product forward and in ways that we couldn't anticipate. If we tried, as a leadership team, to just hold on to ... Brian Walsh: 12:55 Hierarchy, straight downs ... Dory Weiss: 12:57 Exactly, exactly, and so from the very beginning, Pierre used to talk about things ... Like for instance our answer to any question is supposed to be "yes, if ..." Brian Walsh: 13:10 Oh, that's an awesome one. Dory Weiss: 13:12 I mean, and it's just such a small, simple thing, but if you take that thought exercise seriously, it opens up all sorts of thinking, so rather than, "No, because," it's "yes, if." Brian Walsh: 13:27 That's fantastic, so you're looking for almost the noble intent of, "Of course we can meet that, if we hit this criteria, if these things fall in line." Dory Weiss: 13:35 Exactly. Exactly, and so, for me, that's a lot of what I understand our culture to be. There's obviously the kegs and the paddleboard lessons on Friday mornings and those sorts of very superficially obvious elements of culture,  and I'm glad that we have them, but when I think about our culture, it is exemplified by things like "yes, if." Brian Walsh: 14:01 Do you separate, then, culture and values? Dory Weiss: 14:05 No. Brian Walsh: 14:06 Is there a separation that's one thing altogether? Dory Weiss: 14:09 Yeah, I mean, for me, they are the same thing, and if they are not in concert with each other, then everything's gonna fall apart. Brian Walsh: 14:20 Right. How do you define it? How do you communicate it? Like you're bringing on, you're growing so rapidly. Your development team's doubling, right? Dory Weiss: 14:27 Yep. Brian Walsh: 14:28 How do you bring people on and explain that culture without just having to experience it? Dory Weiss: 14:32 Yeah, so, the company at large has six core values that we talk about in all sorts of contexts. They're on the website, they're a big part of our recruiting materials, they're part of the onboarding experience for all new employees, so you get those as soon as you walk in the door, and when I walked in the door in 2013, there was artwork on the walls that had ... Brian Walsh: 14:32 Had that. Dory Weiss: 15:01 Had the six values on them, and then in PDE, we have layered on top of that our own manifesto. We call it the PDE manifesto. Product development and engineering is what we call our department, so, PDE, the shorthand. That manifesto circles around four additional values that sort of compliment the six core nCino values. That manifesto, we show it to people when they're interviewing with us. It's also part of the onboarding experience. It is posted all over the office. We give out stickers during all of our sprint retros, so for the core ... The four values of the PDE manifesto are courage, craftsmanship, community and fun, and for each of those values, we have a little image that goes along with them, and then we made stickers of each of those images. I had been thinking about the helmet stickers that football, college ... Brian Walsh: 15:01 For football? Dory Weiss: 16:09 Give out ... Exactly. Brian Walsh: 16:10 Ohio State whatever? Yeah. Dory Weiss: 16:11 That's exactly it, so we decided that we were gonna do helmet stickers, and so at the end of every sprint, each team has the opportunity to give a helmet sticker for each of the values to somebody in the department, or wouldn't even have to be in the department. Somebody at nCino or CodeScience. Some of you guys have won those. Brian Walsh: 16:33 It's been a fantastic thing, actually. They talk about that. Our team brings back like how much our organizations are so aligned and how we recognize each other as one team, and it's just so natural. Dory Weiss: 16:45 Yeah, I mean that's one of the reasons why we love working with you guys so much is that it does just feel like we're one team, but I try to make sure that we're really intentional about going back to those core values all the time in the way that we talk about things, because they need to seem truly like the center of something and not just this incidental, like, "Oh yeah, values are cool. We've got some." It really has to be a drumbeat. Brian Walsh: 17:14 Driving that culture and that value, does that become almost monotone? Does it hold back diversity at all? How do you ensure you're getting diverse viewpoints or diverse attitudes? Gender, races, like how do you ensure you don't become just the way you always were? Dory Weiss: 17:29 Yeah, I think that that is an incredibly important conversation to make sure that we're having. That first value is courage and for us, what courage means ... One of the things that courage means is honest introspection, so I'm just gonna read what this sort of description of courage is, if you don't mind. Brian Walsh: 17:58 Yeah. Dory Weiss: 17:58 We say what we think even when it is unpopular. We share all that we know. We ask for help as soon as we need it. We own our weaknesses and our strengths. We question the status quo and our product, our process and our software development practices. We take smart risks and implement new ideas. We are always open to change and are quick to adapt. We own our mistakes and we don't hold others' mistakes against them. We accept failure, learn from it, and we do not give up. If we are doing courage right, we should be ... Brian Walsh: 18:32 Questioning why not. Dory Weiss: 18:34 We should be continually being like, "Alright, are we becoming too insular? Are we not questioning if the right voices are in the room and if we're being critical enough of what we're doing?" Brian Walsh: 18:49 Well, I have to say, the organization has a huge advantage to have someone with such great English skills help write that out. Dory Weiss: 18:58 Thank you, thank you. It was actually one of the other dev managers who wrote that draft, so ... Brian Walsh: 19:03 Now, taking from your background, do you hire for people who don't perhaps have deep technical experience? Do you hire based off of sort of culture and curiosity and train them up? How have you applied your background to that? Dory Weiss: 19:15 Yeah, so, we definitely don't require a CS background, and one of the things that we know that we want to do as we get bigger, as we get more mature, as we have more resources ... As a young company, you spend so much time in the early years being so focused on just getting product out the door that it's difficult sometimes to do much more than that, and it's been over the past two or three years that we've been able to slow down a little bit and be able to say, "Hey, we will intentionally not go as fast as we possibly could because we need to slow down and invest in dev ops. We need to invest in whatever, making our scrum practice more thorough," whatever that is. Dory Weiss: 20:09 One of the ways that we want to continue doing that is we want to be able to take on people that we are hiring just for aptitude, just for mindset, and really provide more training for them. We're not as far along there as we would like to be, so right now we need ... We are looking to hire folks that have at least a basic understanding of object oriented programming, for instance, or at least some experience with thinking about code in the sort of structural ways ... Brian Walsh: 20:56 They just understand the logic of code and how to put together an application.   Dory Weiss: 21:01 Exactly, that understands sort of fundamentally why reuse is important and how you design for that, so that is a mindset, I think, and you don't have to have ... I don't need everybody to be able to produce a perfect class diagram to prove their ... Brian Walsh: 21:20 Here, come co-program with me and I will watch you. Dory Weiss: 21:23 Exactly, exactly, but there needs to be that sort of facility for that way of thinking. Brian Walsh: 21:30 How do you make a safe environment for those new people to come on, then, right? Like, you have high performers. You're a high performing organization. There's tons of stress on, the board's pushing, closed an amazing D round, and I'm not talking like physical safety, but you make it emotionally safe for them to learn and to become efficient and proficient. Dory Weiss: 21:50 Yeah, I think we try to do a couple of things there. The first is, is that during the interview process, one of the things that we're really up front about is that we're hiring folks who have incredible technical ability, but that's only half of what we're hiring for. The other half is that we're hiring good human beings who want to be part of a team and want to work collaboratively and understand that that work is gonna be challenging and wonderful and hard and all of that stuff sort of all at once, so we try from the very beginning to say, "Okay, what you're signing up for is this wonderful ride that is going to be uncomfortable sometimes, and that's a good thing, because uncomfortable is not the same thing as unsafe." Dory Weiss: 22:42 So, we try to set that expectation, that that's part of the job, is you're gonna be stretched. You're gonna be on the edge of what it is that you already know how to do, and we know that. We understand that. You're not alone in that. We're all gonna be here doing that together, so we try to just say that. I think sometimes people forget to just say clearly what it is that they mean or what it is that they anticipate happening, so we try to say that up front. Dory Weiss: 23:18 Then I think we try internally to really make sure that we all remember that we feel those ways too, and that we need to create space and empathize with other people who are also going to feel those ways. I think we have realistic expectations of what to expect from someone for the first six months that they're with us and they're getting up to speed. Brian Walsh: 23:45 Right. What do you think is the harder one to hire for, the technical or the emotional quotient, the EQ, that curiosity, their natural values? Dory Weiss: 23:58 I think it's the person stuff that's harder to find, and it's more important. Honestly, looking back to my own experience in the training program, that's why somebody hired me. I didn't know anything, technically, but somebody saw in me a good person that was capable of learning, and I think that was the right decision. It was certainly the right decision for me, and so that's the decision that as much as possible I want to pay forward. Brian Walsh: 24:30 Well, whoever that was had genius insight, because they saw sort of into the future. I want to actually pivot a little bit to talk about a change that happened, I think it was almost 18 months ago, 24 months ago, where you've always been an agile shop, but you moved into actually taking on large scale scrum or LeSS], as I think some people call it. What is that? How do you define that? What prompted your change there? Dory Weiss: 24:53 Yeah, so LeSS is a framework, a large scale scrum framework. What prompted it, really, was that as we were growing, we got to a place where we ... I'm trying to think of ... I think we maybe had 10 scrum teams when we decided to first try LeSS, and of those teams, they were divided into what we called portfolios. A portfolio for us is just a collection of teams that are all working on a major feature set of our product. Really, those feature sets for us tend to align with types of organizations in a bank, so commercial banking versus retail banking, for instance. Brian Walsh: 25:42 So everybody's separated off into those different groups, working on sort of their problem set. Dory Weiss: 25:48 Exactly, exactly, so we had already divided ourselves up by portfolios, but then within each of those portfolios, every team would have their own backlog, and often times what would happen is we'd be doing release planning and we'd be looking at the types of new features that we wanted to develop. We'd sort of just divide them out across teams and then each team would have their own backlog, which worked fine in isolation, but what would happen pretty much every release is that at some point a team would get in trouble. Something was more complex than they expected or someone got ill unexpectedly or ... Brian Walsh: 26:31 They're slipping farther and farther behind. Dory Weiss: 26:33 They're slipping farther, farther behind.  Exactly. So, awesome -- agile accounts for that. Everything is in active re-prioritization, but what we found is when we needed to do that re-prioritization, we would have to then take 10 separate backlogs and try to then get a unified picture of what is most important across those backlogs. That act of trying to get the holistic view of our priorities when the work is divided across 10 teams, that took a lot of time. What I realized sort of as an aftereffect of that was when you have 10 teams and each team has their own backlog, what you're implicitly saying is that each of those teams is working on something of equal value. Brian Walsh: 27:29 Right. Dory Weiss: 27:31 That's probably not explicitly true. If you were going to actually rank things, you probably wouldn't say these 10 things are all equally valuable. There probably is relative merit to those things. Brian Walsh: 27:43 Yet, that's rarely something you would say to those 10 scrum teams because now that devalues them and their work. Dory Weiss: 27:49 Exactly, or it can feel like it does ... Brian Walsh: 27:56 There you go. Dory Weiss: 27:59 ... If you don't then try to frame the conversation in terms of what is most important for all of us is providing the highest value to our customers. That's why we're here, that's why we do agile, that's what we believe in as a product organization, so no one should feel threatened by that because there is enough work for all of us. Brian Walsh: 28:25 Right. Dory Weiss: 28:27 Let's make sure that the work we're doing is the highest value for our customers right now. Brian Walsh: 28:30 Yeah, I mean, at the end, agile is not just stand up and sprints, right?   Those ceremonies ... Dory Weiss: 28:36 Those are organizational ... That's like a tactic that we layer on top, right? Brian Walsh: 28:41 Yeah, that's the organization that first comes in and says, "We're agile because we do sprints and we do stand ups every morning." Dory Weiss: 28:46 Yes. Brian Walsh: 28:47 No, that's not agile. How do you take, then ... You're in these separate pods. Your whole team doesn't have holistic knowledge across the product, right? You don't have the engineers working on one module. Very different, don't have the domain expertise of another one. How do you switch? You're in flight. You guys are venture funded. You're flying through. You're moving up market. How all of a sudden do you pull that one out? Dory Weiss: 29:13 Yeah, so then you have this concept in LeSS of these LeSS teams, and that corresponds really well to the portfolios that we already had in place. What you're not doing, actually ... You're not actually sharing the backlog for the entirety of the nCino product across, now, 13 teams with a single backlog. What we're actually doing is we're saying, "Okay, we're going to have a single backlog for the retail product or the retail feature. We're going to have a single backlog for our commercial features. We're going to have a single backlog for our customer engagement platform." Dory Weiss: 29:59 There are still large domain units that hang together and sort of function as a single entity, but within that, all of the scrum teams are all then gonna focus on whatever is highest priority in that little mini-realm. It's sort of this in between scale. Brian Walsh: 30:21 Got it. Does that shift a lot of the work that you had to do, then, really, to the product owners and the management there -- of how they're prioritizing and using the different resources that are available? Dory Weiss: 30:33 Yeah, and I think that that's the hardest part of the transition to less, is particularly for product owners and product managers, because you're asking them to no longer ... I think there's a tendency, at least there has been for us, a tendency, for product owners to think of their scrum team as their scrum team. Brian Walsh: 30:56 Theirs. Right, these are mine. I'm protective. Dory Weiss: 31:00 Exactly, exactly. It becomes a shift from thinking about a group of developers and QA folks as their own to thinking about features and epics in the backlog as their own. They become the expert. I mean, they already were the expert, but we sort of refocus how we conceptualize what they do as being the expert on some number of features that they own, and they drive that deep expertise. They build out the requirements and the functionality for what that's gonna be, and then they sort of carry that knowledge with them as they work across multiple scrum teams, and so I think that that definitely required a shift in terms of the way that they conceived of their work, and it also ... It took everyone by surprise how quickly, when you put three scrum teams all working on the same epic, for instance, that work's gonna get done real quick. So in the past- Brian Walsh: 32:02 Right, so all of a sudden you don't have enough runway ahead of you. Dory Weiss: 32:05 Yep. Exactly. There was some panic early on in terms of, "Oh my gosh, we cannot keep these teams fed with stories." Brian Walsh: 32:15 Wow. Dory Weiss: 32:17 We definitely, the product organization definitely had to relearn how to best feed their teams in the LeSS world. The flip side of that is that devs, there was to a certain extent, a bit of that with devs as well. Making sure that they were comfortable with domain shifting a little more often than they may have before, or maybe not domain shifting but being asked to work on different things than their teams had traditionally in the past. Brian Walsh: 32:17 Right. Dory Weiss: 32:56 So one of the things that defines LeSS, for instance, is that you have this idea of two sprint planning meetings, so in sprint planning one, you've got all of your scrum teams in that LeSS group all together. So, so you've got three scrum teams and they're all in that meeting together. The product owners come in and say, "Okay, this is the top of the backlog. Does everybody ..." Brian Walsh: 33:21 Send us the criteria, here's the stories, boom. Dory Weiss: 33:22 Exactly, and at that point we've already done backlog grooming, so everybody is at least somewhat familiar with the stories, but it's a, "Hey, make sure everybody understand what's going on here, this is the goal, this is what we're trying to build," and then the three scrum teams among themselves have the conversation about of the tickets in the backlog, what team is going to work what. What is nice there is that then you could have conversations with teams about the fact that sometimes there is value in intentionally taking on work that is new to you so that you can break down silos, so that you can have sort of an educational sprint where you're learning new patterns and new parts of the business domain and all that good sort of stuff. Sometimes that's the right choice to make and sometimes it's sprint nine and the release is almost over and ... Brian Walsh: 33:22 "Gotta go." Dory Weiss: 34:21 Exactly. We're gonna take the stories that we are most familiar with because we're the ones who can just churn on these, so we're gonna organize ourselves for efficiency. I think it's nice to actively engage teams in thinking in those ways so that they're starting to sort of take responsibility or start to think in the same way that leadership does in terms of what are the trade offs between going as fast we can or ... Brian Walsh: 34:51 There's organizational theories around ... You know, you want a team size where a single extra large pizza can feed everybody. Dory Weiss: 34:59 Yep. Brian Walsh: 34:59 As I hear it and have slightly experienced it with you, we're asking our teams, even though they're separate, you have three separate scrum teams, to really be integrated. How do you manage all of those relationships without that becoming the overhead for you? Dory Weiss: 35:16 You know, I think it takes strong scrum masters. There are concepts in LeSS that we've taken some advantage of, but I hope we take more advantage of as we go forward. There's the idea of a scout and a traveler. A traveler is a member of a LeSS team that might attend stand ups or sprint plannings or whatever meetings of another team just to get insight into what that group is talking about and learning about, and sending that information back. Brian Walsh: 35:54 Is that just technical pollination or also sort of process pollination? Dory Weiss: 36:00 Either both. Brian Walsh: 36:04 Yeah, everything. Hopefully pollinating at everything. Dory Weiss: 36:04 Exactly, just suck it all in. Just take it all in and share it. Be a pollinator. Exactly, and then there's the idea of the scout, which is when essentially a team can say, "Oh, I see that the team B over there is working on something that I'm gonna need. Either they're establishing a pattern that we're gonna need to implement or they're building some framework piece that we're gonna need to consume, or ..." Brian Walsh: 36:34 Here's your design system that everybody's gonna have to implement. Dory Weiss: 36:37 Exactly, so what team A can do is say, "Alright, it will make us faster later if we really understand this thing that team B is gonna produce for us, so we're gonna give a member of our team to team B. We're gonna, for this sprint or for however many sprints, we're gonna send somebody there to be a scout and to work as a member of that team and get that embedded knowledge, and so then in a couple of sprints when we're ready to use that, scout comes back and has all of that sort of experience with her and then can help sort of ..." Brian Walsh: 37:20 Spread that along as they get the ... Dory Weiss: 37:20 Body of experience. Brian Walsh: 37:24 Alright, so, increase of velocity. You saw that almost immediately, right? Dory Weiss: 37:24 Yep. Brian Walsh: 37:28 You're starting to crush it. Any other major wins for you? Dory Weiss: 37:33 I do think that the quality of what we've been producing, I think quality has improved. That one's a little bit difficult because our QA team has also grown in size. Our QA automation team has been building out incredible tools, so that's one of those things that's never a single ... Brian Walsh: 37:57 Single thing actually affected it. Dory Weiss: 38:01 I do think that you've got a lot of eyes on something in LeSS, and ideally there's sort of an active reconciliation across multiple teams where you don't end up with isolated teams that might be developing their own sort of sub patterns. Brian Walsh: 38:27 Getting into a hole, or doing their own process that nobody else is gonna follow? Dory Weiss: 38:30 Exactly. Ideally everybody keeps pulling them back, pulling each other back into a really sort of shared way of doing things, so I think that that has been really helpful. One of the other things, and this is sort of not a side effect ... One of the smaller elements of LeSS that has been incredibly popular here, and that's what they call the review bazaar. Brian Walsh: 38:57 Alright, I love the name. Let's get in. Dory Weiss: 38:59 Yep, yep, so instead of doing sprint reviews, or in addition ... Let me put it that way. In addition to doing sprint reviews in the traditional scrum sense, what the review bazaar ads is essentially like a science fair. Every couple of sprints, what we do now is each of the LeSS areas essentially creates a display. It's a hands on station where somebody will demo what they've built over the last sprint or two but also anyone can come and start playing around with what they've built. We invite the entire company. We do it on Friday afternoon. We open the kegs, and everyone will come and we'll just mill around and go from station to station and just see what teams have been building and interact with it and ask questions. The atmosphere is so much fun. It's highly interactive. People ... Brian Walsh: 40:04 It sounds almost like the Google 20 percent time, like here's the extra things we've been working on, and everybody can share and look at that. Dory Weiss: 40:12 Except that it's not extra, it is the sprint work, but it's the sprint work sort of shown off in this very public science fair sort of environment. Brian Walsh: 40:26 Do you get the foam core backing and make it stand up there? Dory Weiss: 40:29 Teams make huge signs and try to outdo each other with who will have the best sign and who can get the most people to come to their displays. People get really excited about it. Brian Walsh: 40:43 It seems like that actually pulls on one of your core values of fun as well. Dory Weiss: 40:47 Yeah. Brian Walsh: 40:48 Of making sure that not only are we solving and having empathy for our customers, we're doing it in a fun way and showing off even. Dory Weiss: 40:55 Yeah, you know, I think sometimes we get so focused on the work that we're doing that we forget to give ourselves time to just be joyful and feel proud of what we've done. I think it's easy sometimes to forget how incredible our product is and how successful we are, because we're just focused on building, and I think for engineers, I think engineers in general tend to spend so much time in the space of, " Well, this could be better and this could be better and this could be better and this could be better," and that sort of constructively critical sort of mindset  really good to wrench someone out of that from time to time and just say, "No, you go show off for an hour. I'm gonna make you show off and people are gonna be really impressed by what you did, so you're just gonna have to sit there and listen to people say nice things about you." Brian Walsh: 41:55 Take the applause, take the applause. Dory Weiss: 42:00 I think that's powerful. I think it's powerful. Brian Walsh: 42:02 That's fantastic. Well, Dory, I want to thank you very much for being on with us today. If people wanted to get in touch with you or look at careers at nCino, what's the best way to get ahold of you? Dory Weiss: 42:12 Well, I would say always check out our website, nCino.com. That's N-C-I-N-O. NCino is also on Twitter and on LinkedIn and we might even be on Facebook. Then you can find me on Twitter as well at Dory Weiss. Brian Walsh: 42:33 Fabulous, and that's D-O-R-Y W-E-I-S-S. Alright, well, Dory, thank you very much. I truly appreciate this and our partnership has been spectacular. Dory Weiss: 42:42 Likewise, likewise. We love working with you guys and it has been a real pleasure. Brian Walsh: 42:48 Thank you very much, Dory. Dory Weiss: 42:48 Thank you, Brian. Outro: 42:50 Thanks for listening to this episode of the AppChat. Don't miss an episode. Visit AppChatPodcast.com or subscribe on iTunes. Until next time, don't make success an accident.  

Never Miss an Episode!Subscribe on  iTunes / YouTubeShare0+10Tweet0Limit Slayer Podcast #153Reclaim Your Back HealthJoin Nick & Brian Carroll for the final part of the series. We delve into actionable takeaways you can use to improve your training, day-to-day living, and avoid the mistakes that cause and aggravate back pain.Tune in to learn:Why babies (and some adults) can't resist getting burned...How semantics, instead of creating clarity, often create confusionSome strange insights into human natureAdvice Brian would give to his younger self (relevant to most listeners)And the top 3 takeaways from this series.Enjoy!"Gift of Injury" is now available on Amazon.com. Click HERE to get it.>#153 - DownloadsMP3TranscriptWallpaper QuotesGift of Injury PreviewCheat SheetBuy TheoryExamplesFunAdditional ResourcesArticlesDon't be an AskholeIntuitive CoachingBenefits of Hiring a Coach When You Need OneWebsitesBack Fit ProDanny VegaTucker LokenPower Rack StrengthProductsGift of Injury10/20/LifeCutting WeightTranscript - Limit Slayer Podcast #153Click to ShowBrian Carroll: “What unexpected benefits or realizations did I have?”I've become a lot more thankful and grateful for my health…And a bit less of a dick.You know…For the longest time, I thought that I was owed things. Or that I deserved things. Well, who the hell do you think you are to think you deserve anything?What I didn't deserve was my health.Because I abused my body. I ate shitty. I didn't take care of myself.I overlooked a lot of things that Stu brought to my attention.So you know the benefits that I spoke about before… being an athlete 24/7 and moving well… that was in the physical. But I kind of expected that after a while of putting those deposits in…What I didn't expect was to be a lot more humble, grateful, and thankful for my health. Day-to-day.And just be appreciative of things outside of powerlifting, instead of ALWAYS having the tunnel vision for the next powerlifting meet.Having it all taken away from me granted me a lot more thankfulness… in the process.Nick Ritchey: We’re joined today by special guest, Brian Carroll, for episode 153 of the Limit Slayer Podcast.Brian is a world champion powerlifter who went from daily, debilitating back pain with 2 crushed vertebrae…To pain-free living and squatting over 1100lbs in competition.Last Time…In the last episode:You heard how a 90 year old woman got her life backHow over-reliance on MRIs can do more harm than goodHow to make the most of mindset, ego and luckThe one thing you can’t do aloneAnd how to get your back strong and pain-free for life.In response to the last episode, the Rogue Trainer called it, “The best podcast regarding no BS real world training, diet and science! Check out my great friend’s latest podcast!!!”Thank you for taking the time to comment, share and encourage us with your kind words.In this episode, we look at special considerations for injured and aging lifters…So you don’t fix, or break, what ain’t broken.We talk about how misinformation, semantics and one-upsmanship can get you in a heap of trouble.And end with some solid advice you can put to use right away, whatever state your back is in, to become pain free and stronger than ever.Enjoy the final episode of our series, and don’t miss out on any of the special bonuses we’ve prepared for you at the end of this episode!The Limit Slayer Podcast Episode 153 with Brian Carroll Begins… NOW!Hey Brian, how ya doin?Mental Preparation for a…Brian: I'm great man. How's it going?Nick:  Pretty good. Last time we had to end a little bit short because...Were you getting a pedicure?Or was the Mrs. getting a pedicure?Brian:  C. All the above.Nick:  [laughing] C. All the above. OK.So I've never had a pedicure. How is that?Brian:  It's good. You know something weird? And I haven't asked Stu about this yet. But since I rehabed my back, my feet are much more sensitive.

Never Miss an Episode!Subscribe on  iTunes / YouTube Share0+10Tweet0 Limit Slayer Podcast #152 Join Nick & Brian as they discuss: How a 90 year old woman not only eliminated debilitating back pain in 10 minutes, but also got to stay with her friends and family, while avoiding being put in a nursing home. Why back surgery may do more harm than good How to wield the double edged swords of mindset, ego and luck. How to make and keep your back pain free, for the rest of your life. And the one thing you can't do alone... "Gift of Injury" is now available on Amazon.com. Click HERE to get it. > #152 - Downloads MP3TranscriptWallpaper Quotes Gift of Injury PreviewCheat SheetBuy Videos Websites Johari Window PowerRackStrength.com BackFitPro.com Products Gift of Injury 10/20/Life Cutting Weight Transcript - Limit Slayer Podcast #152   Click to Show Brian Carroll: The reason why McGill is so good at what he does... he has these provocative tests that the MRI doesn't always reveal. The test reveals certain evidence that the MRIs don't. Because you can have someone with a terrible MRI that is completely symptom and pain free. And someone with a great MRI that has tons of symptoms and pain. So that's why surgery just isn't a fix. You might go in and make the MRI look a little bit better possibly, but not take away the pain. Especially if you have multiple pain generators. Surgery is not a good start for sure. Nick Ritchey: We're joined today by special guest, Brian Carroll, for episode 152 of the Limit Slayer Podcast. Brian is a world champion powerlifter who went from daily, debilitating back pain with 2 crushed vertebrae, to becoming pain-free and squatting over 1100lbs in competition. Picking Up Where We Left Off In the last episode we looked at what non-athletes can learn from athletes, how Brian avoided surgery, got pain free, and stronger than ever. We did a quick overview of his latest book, Gift of Injury, co-authored with spine specialist, Dr. Stuart McGill. Special thanks to Mustbbilling who left us a 5-star review on iTunes saying, "Amazing interview with Brian Carroll. Inspirational case study of what the human spirit is capable of and provides the motivation and stimulation to help anyone begin their own journey. Looking forward to the next interview." Thank you so much for sharing what you enjoyed and helping others discover our podcast. I couldn't agree more with your feedback and know you’re going to LOVE part 2. In this episode we're going to pick-up where we left off and cover: How, in just 10 minutes, a 90 year old woman learned a new movement pattern that got her pain free and allowed her to stay near her loved ones, so she didn't have to be put into a nursing home. We'll discuss what an MRI doesn't revel, and why maybe surgery shouldn't be your first stop for chronic back pain. We'll look at how to correctly wield the double edged swords of mindset, ego, and luck. We'll talk about the one thing you can't do alone... And finish with some excellent advice on how to get your back pain-free, and keep it that way, for the rest of your life. Let's get this party started! Hey Brian, how are you? Prevention First… Brian: Hey, thanks for having me back, man. How’s everything going? Nick: Going great! I want to talk about athletes today. Could you tell us what athletes are going to get out of this book? Brian: Athletes, in the best-case scenario, will adhere to a lot of my hard-won wisdom. And Stu's science and knowledge. They'll avoid my path and not end up hurting their back too bad. The injured strength athlete or athlete would gain a lot of knowledge. Especially considering what I didn't know at the time about back injury and how to properly progress. How to diagnose and assess.

Never Miss an Episode!Subscribe on  iTunes / YouTube Limit Slayer Podcast #151 Join Nick & world champion powerlifter Brian Carroll as they discuss: How EVERYONE can benefit from thinking more like an athlete How Brian went from a broken back, to squatting over 1,000lbs An overview of "Gift of Injury," Brian's latest book co-authored with Dr. Stuart McGill "Gift of Injury" is now available on Amazon.com. Click HERE to get it. Gift of Injury Websites Johari Window Mighty Cast 107 PowerRackStrength.com BackFitPro.com Transcript - Limit Slayer Podcast #151   Click to Show Brian Carroll: Think of this analogy.You're walking down the street and you constantly stub your big toe. I can inject it with all kinds of Lidocaine and painkillers and everything, bandage it up, but until we address the gait problem that toe is never going to heal up because you keep picking the scab and stubbing it.I say it's no different with your back.If you're constantly causing the injury over and over, it doesn't matter what I shoot into it, it doesn't matter what we do to brace it, doesn't matter what we do until we address the issue and the injury mechanism and take that away -- and then we allow to rebuild athleticism. Who is Brian Carroll? Nick Ritchey:  Brian embodies the saying, "it's not over until you quit."Three time World's Strongest Man, Bill Kazmaier, wrote the forward to his new book and says, My own mentor and former co-host, Chris Young, before he was taken away early by leukemia, called Brian a "true gentleman," and a lot of other good things back in Mighty Cast episode 107.Three things about Brian that stand out to me the most are that he has squatted over 1000 pounds in competition over 50 times. He has multiple world records in three different weight classes totaling over 10 times his body weight in power-lifting competitions. And Brian is chock full of wisdom. This Episode… In this interview we're going to cover Brian's transformation from the lowest of lows, to the highest of highs. From sitting in his car, considering eating a bullet, to getting pain free and stronger than ever.We're going to look at his book, the big ideas that you can take away from it, and the details that make a difference. Relevant at 19 or 91… We'll talk about a 90 year old woman that got to stay in her house because she was able to fix her back pain with some basic power lifting 101.And we're going to look at how this information has impacted both of our lives and leave you with some takeaways that can change your life for the better, forever, if you implement them. And now let's get to our guest.Hey Brian, how are you doing? 3 Years Later… Brian: I've been doing well Nick. Thanks for having me. It's been really right at three and a half years…Kind of hard to believe how fast time has flown.Hope everything's been well with you. Nick:  Yeah. I don't know if you know, but last time you were my surprise birthday present. My birthday is on the 19th and you were on the show on the 17th. Brian: Oh really? So he surprised you with that. That's pretty cool. Nick:  Yeah, definitely. I was tickled pink then, and when I saw your new book come out I was I was tickled pink again. So I'm looking forward to getting into that with you a bit today. Brian: Sounds good man, ready to do it. 2 Busted Vertebrae… Nick: Well, I think we should start off with what happened because I know you were starting the recovery process the last time we talked. You had some videos on YouTube with Dr. McGill. I was watching those and following your progress.We were all crossing our fingers rooting for you.But man, you had a hell of an injury, which the book goes into quite a bit.The book is "The Gift of Injury" by Brian Carroll and Dr. Stu McGill. You had, a crushed L5 and a split sacrum.For our readers that don't know what that means, we all know what a donut is. A crushed vertebrae is kind of like a crushed donut.

On this week’s episode, we chat with two awesome gentlemen: Sebastien Derbomez, U.S. Monkey Shoulder Ambassador and Sam Ross of the newly opened Diamond Reef in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. It is Bartender Journey Podcast # 205! Listen with the audio player on this page, or subscribe on iTunes, Android or Stitcher Radio. Sam Ross who was one of original bartenders at Milk and Honey who worked under Sasha Petraske, (Sasha’s name has been coming up so often on the show lately, and as you probably know, he left us way too early, but his inspiration lives on through the industry. )Monkey Shoulder invited us to a press event at Diamond Reef while it was in pre-opening phase. (Official opening: March 1, 2017)  Diamond Reef is a project from the Attaboy team, owners Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy and bartender Dan Greembaum and the first of three new spots scheduled to open this year. If you don’ t know aobut Attaboy..Sasha Petraske opened its predecessor, the original Milk & Honey bar on Eldrich Street in the Lower East side neighborhood of Manhattan on December 31, 1999.  It was an iconic bar, inspiriting an entire industry. Cocktail of the Week:Monkey Jam Sour2 oz Monkey Shoulder Scotch Whiskey1 oz Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juiceo½ oz Simple Syrup2 Bar Spoons JamDash Orange Bitters Shake well with ice.  Double strain into a Collins Glass filled with fresh ice.  Top with a little club soda.  Stir.  Express oils from orange twist into glass.  Add twist to glass. Book of the Week:This week's book and review comes to us from Hazel Alvarado (who helps me out so much on the show.) Malt Whisky Yearbook 2017: The Facts, the People, the News, the Stories by Ingvar RondeThe Malt Whisky Yearbook is published annually and contains current information on 400+ whisky distilleries around the world, whisky shops, whisky websites and new bottlings. Part reference guide, part Industry commentary, this 12th edition includes chapter such as “Watch Out! The Millenials Are Coming”, “Global Giant – Diageo, the First20 Years” and “Whisky Pricing – the Elephant in the Room”. Its paperback format featuring concise distillery summaries, tasting notes on choice expressions and current industry statistics makes it a  perfect addition to your spirited reading library! Toast of the Week:May you live all the days of your life. CheersGet Involved!Share a suggested book or Cocktail of the WeekWrite a guest blog post.  It could be about your local cocktail scene, or your bar, or a trip you’ve been on.Reach us on our Contact Us page!Tell a FriendTell a Stranger Leave  us a review on iTunes and give stars!  (5 Stars is the most!)You can leave ratings and reviews right from your iPhone...just go into the podcast app and use the search function on the bottom to find Bartender Journey.  Click on the purple Bartender Journey icon, then/ "Reviews"/ "Write a Review"Shout out:  Thank you Barback Jedi for the 5 star review: "Excellent focus on cocktail and spirit education Hey Brian. Big fan of the show! Loved seeing it evolve over the last couple of years. It was a huge help to me when I got started. Thanks for doing it. "

Hey listeners- Jon here. On this episode, Brian and I discussed some hot topics (including is one slur worse than another slur), and whether or not the actor who plays Brian Krakow is gay in real life (he isn’t…or is … Continue reading →

1999-04-01 April Fools Day and State Your Name & Purpose4:44:56Do You Feel Like We Do?, State your name and purpose, Jim is here for some good clean fun, Tom has wanted to come for a while and visit his friend Brian, Roman is here and just hanging out, that's it. Very Very Not Good situation. Duck and Cover its the only way you will survive, the sky is falling. CJ calls in from Kosovo using that dime a minute rate. My friends are mute. Hey Brian do you know what time it is? Dude!, THE ED JEREMIAH ANDY SLOAN ROMAN TOM JIM VAS OCTET sings a special song!. Mind reading. What button is select? If you can guess what song we're playing next you'll win a trip to Hawaii. Fun times in the sun. France declares its national dish to be Onion rings. Tom got a Rodeo Burger. The heart of pants and your underpants. Psycho alert. More unlucky Pizza ordering. What is it? One last call? We're getting closer. We're pulling in the driveway. We're walking to the door. Who are the peeps? They're opening the door. It's the Last Call people. Message to today's youth. Alright everybody. Does the wind every cry mary over there where you are from? A song for Vas who has his Wu-Tang shirt. Questions for Roman, WRHO 98.7 land, Special Message to Dan, White Rhino Radio, Weather Update, The Rubber Dinosaur is loose, A couple Starvin Marvins, I don't think the ranger's gonna like this yogi. Sam drops in. Sounds. Talkboy Tape - Don't Ask - Search for the suspect. I can do anything I want. Strange Agent. Sweet Tarts. A special PSA. Roman tells us about Realism. Matt's Trial in the alleged Kansas Corn Beating. Guests - Tom, Roman, Jim, Andy, Jeremiah, Ed, Sloan, VasPhone Guests - CJ, Snotty1999-04-01 | 4:44:56 | 2BS Radio Archive | The Wonder Thunder | Wednesday (actually Thursday) | Midnight to 3AM | WRHO 89.7 FM Hartwick College Oneonta NY | The B-Smith Radio Archive | Archived Recordings from my College Radio Show | 2bsradioarchive.blogspot.comwww.twobs.com | 2bsradioarchive.blogspot.com

Who is behind the voice of our podcast introduction? Who edits The VBAC Link podcast episodes? Meet Brian Albers, The VBAC Link's secret weapon! Listen to this episode to find out why Brian has earned this title time and time again. We also learn some fun secrets and ask him some of your burning questions. But in all seriousness, we are SO grateful for all Brian does for us. He is a quality, genuine guy that they just don't make these days anymore!   Additional linksThe VBAC Link on Apple PodcastsHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Community on FacebookThe VBAC Link ShopFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: All right, you guys. Guess what? This is an episode that I know you guys have all been waiting for since we posted a picture of our secret weapon wearing, “Don't be all up in my perineum.” If you haven't seen the post, go scroll back in our Instagram. We have Brian, who is our secret weapon. Julie started calling him that, I don't know, forever ago.Julie: Because he is.Meagan: He really is. He has proven it. So we today are going to be recording an episode about Brian. Brian is the voice of our intro on our podcast. Review of the WeekMeagan: We have a review, and Julie is the best review reader. We all know this. I can't read.Julie: Oh my gosh.Meagan: She can. So Julie, go ahead and read your review. I hope you picked a big one. I think strategically, you probably pick the big ones knowing that I can't read them.Julie: Yeah. That's exactly what I do, actually. I pick the bigger ones and leave the smaller ones for you.Meagan: I always hope. I always hope.Julie: We have so many. I don't even think we are going to get through them all, so I am trying to pick more recent ones because I know that you pick older ones and so I feel like maybe we have a little bit of both worlds in our review reading. All right. This review is from Apple Podcasts and it's from carrie.vic so we can totally Facebook stalk her if necessary.Her title is, “OMG, the best VBAC resource out there” and then she says, “Thank you so much to Julie and Meagan for this podcast! I began listening to it right after my C-section in August 2018. Then, when I found out I was pregnant in June 2020, I re-listened to every episode. So. Much. Information. So much positivity and hope. I had my VBAC on 02/11”That was just this year.“and I don't think I could have done it without The VBAC Link. This podcast helped me ensure I had the most supportive birth team and provider, provided so much useful information, and all of these mamas made me truly believe in my capability to do this!“Thank you, thank you, thank you a million! Sending so much love to all you mamas out there! ❤️”I love the heart emojis. I love the reviews. I love carrie.vic from Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much and congratulations on your VBAC.Meagan: Yay. Congrats, congrats. I love when we hear the reviews and we don't have to go stalk them. So if you leave a review or if you have left us a review and then gone on to have your baby, let us know how things are going because we kind of stalk you on Facebook, not on Facebook Facebook but on our Facebook community to see because we love following up and hearing about the stories. So leave us a review and if you have already had your baby, drop us an email or tag us on Facebook and let us know.Julie: Yeah, because we really need closure on these things. Like the ones from last year that you read, I'm like, “Oh my gosh, they had their baby eight months ago. I don't know what happened.” Closure is always good.Meagan: Okay, without further ado, we are going to have Brian give us the intro.Brian: All right, here comes the music. You are tuned into The VBAC Link podcast with Julie Francom and Meagan Heaton, VBAC moms, doulas, and educators here to help you get inspired for birth after having had a C-section. Together they have created a robust VBAC preparation course, along with this uplifting podcast, for women who are preparing for their VBAC. Although these episodes are VBAC specific, they encourage expectant moms to listen and educate themselves on how to avoid a Cesarean from the get-go. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. It is not meant to replace advice from any other qualified medical professional. Here are your hosts, Julie and Meagan after we hear from today's sponsor.Julie: “Here are your hosts, Julie and Meagan”Meagan: Yay. I love it.Julie: I love it. Brian is amazing. I call him “our secret weapon” because he is our very first person that we ever paid to do anything from The VBAC Link. He literally saved my life because when we first started, I was editing our podcast episodes using a free program that I downloaded, and every Tuesday night I would be in a rush trying to get-- I'd spend two hours editing, and trying to crop out “um's” everywhere, and putting the intro and the exit there, and get it in the right spot, and get it uploaded, and get everything posted in time for our Wednesday podcast runs, and then Meagan connected us with Brian.Meagan, you're going to have to tell the story because I don't even remember how you guys met. But then he literally saved two hours of my week and that's why he is our secret weapon. But not only that, he is our video guy. He records the videos for our courses and we also give him a whole bunch of random audio/video stuff to do here and there for us. So he is called “our secret weapon” because he saved our lives and we want to keep him nice, quietly tucked away in our own little package so nobody else can use him because he is ours.Meagan: Brian, you belong to us.Brian: Yep.Julie: We will lock you in a dungeon with a computer and some audio equipment just in case you ever decide you want to stop editing.Brian: And honestly Julie, what you described Julie, just cutting out the um's-- that's pretty much what I do. That's the bulk of it because there are so many, really.Julie: Yeah, because me and Meagan don't know how to not say “um.”Brian: Well, I mean, everybody says “um”.Julie: I know.Brian: It's just a natural, normal part of speaking, but when you're trying to present it as a podcast, you want to sound as pro as you can. And cutting out those “um's” is working towards that goal.Meagan: Yes.Julie: Yeah, and then not saying “um” is another step.Brian: Yeah.Meagan: Yeah.Julie: Maybe when we are grown up we will stop saying “um”.Meagan: It's seriously one of the most, it's one of the hardest things for me. What's funny though is I don't recognize myself saying “um” or “uhh” but I totally recognize anybody else saying “um”. I'm like, “Oh my gosh that person says--” like I recognize “um's” more, but in myself, I don't. I don't know why that's a problem.Julie: Until Brian sends us a message that says, “You guys are saying ‘um' a lot more than usual. Just pay attention.”Meagan: “Can you guys drop the ‘um's?”Julie: And then we are texting each other during podcast episodes and saying, “Oh my gosh I am saying ‘um' so much.” No, but I have learned that I replace that with “so”.Brian: Uh-huh, or “and”.Julie: Yeah. And “and”. Yeah, and “so”. That's awesome.Brian: And that's okay. That's okay too.Julie: Yeah. So let's get going. Um, we-- see? There I did. Oh my gosh, I just said it.Brian: Yep.Julie: You'll probably have to edit that out.Brian: I'll leave that one in.Julie: Yeah, you can leave that one in because, um-- oh my gosh. Now I am going to be so hyperaware. Oh, this is not going to go well.Meagan: Oh my gosh. Okay, so I was just reflecting back on how I got a hold of Brian and I feel like-- okay. So I had a client who, crazy enough, yeah. Anyway. So I had a client and he does video and then his wife does sound. I asked her, I sent her a text or something. I was like, “Hey, do you know about anybody or do you know anybody?” And she was like, “Yeah.” I can't remember if she sent Brian to me directly or if she sent me to someone else, but I'm pretty sure she sent--Brian: You're talking about Michaela, right?Meagan: Michaela, yeah.Brian: Yeah.Meagan: Michaela knew you, right? I thought she sent me directly to you. She was like, “Yeah. I know someone.”Brian: Yeah, because I work at the NPR station here in Salt Lake City and Michaela does as well. She is a weekender and that's how I know her. She still does work there and I still do work there so we still do know each other.Meagan: Yes, yes.Brian: And so she approached me and she asked me if I was interested in helping out some friends of hers start a podcast or do a podcast or something. I don't know if she just didn't have the details or just didn't give me the details, but I had no idea what anything was about. I just knew it was something about audio editing and a podcast and I said, “Yeah, sure.” I love doing audio and I love helping people if I can pursue what they want to pursue. If I can help out, I will help out. Especially when it comes out to audio stuff because I've been doing audio forever. And so I said, “Yeah. Throw them at me. Give them my email. Whatever happens, happens.” And that just got the ball rolling.Julie: And then you became our secret weapon.Meagan: Yeah. She sent me your email. That's right. I was like, “I was pretty sure it was direct.” And then I sent it to you. I remember emailing you and it was such a big step for Julie and I because Julie was our editor before and she did a wonderful job, but she was tired of it. And we are not professional. We are not professional. It's not easy.Julie: It was so much work. Oh, well and Brian can edit a podcast episode in 30 minutes that takes me two hours to do.Meagan: Unless we say “um” all the time and then it's two hours. But yeah. But no, it was just such, I don't know. The stars aligned so perfectly. I will forever be grateful for her and we are forever grateful for you, Brian, and we are so excited that you are with us.Brian: And that was when? That was the fall of 2018?Meagan: Two years, mhmm.Julie: Yeah. Right about that.Brian: And you hadn't done too many episodes before I came on board, right?Julie: I think we were 30 episodes in.Meagan: I was going to say, I think it was 30 or 40.Brian: Wow.Julie: Yeah.Meagan: We really hadn't done that many and they were a mess.Julie: Brian was like, “You guys really need to find a studio and I actually know one that might be available.”Meagan: Yeah. He's like, “You need to have better audio.” So it's just been so awesome and then we were like, “Oh, we are going to do this online course. Hey Brian, do you know how-to video?” “Yeah.”Brian: “Yeah.”Meagan: And you guys, he spent an entire Sunday--Julie: It was like, 10 hours.Meagan: Yeah. With us in an empty duplex sitting there as we were just talking about-- like seriously, yeah. It was amazing and yeah. I am so grateful for you.Brian: And actually, videoing is the easy part. It's all the editing and post-production that takes forever.Julie: And so you know so much about birth, and Cesareans, and VBAC--Brian: And do you want to know? The funny thing is when I started editing the podcast, I, first of all, didn't know it was a birth thing.(Meagan and Julie laughing)It was just a podcast. Seriously, I had no idea--Meagan: He didn't know.Brian: --what it was about until I heard the first audio. I had no idea what a VBAC was. I had no idea what a VBAC was. I had no idea what a doula was. I had to look that stuff up.Julie: And now you know way more than you ever thought you would know about birth.Brian: Oh, I know way more than I thought I would ever know.Julie: Probably way more than you would ever care to know.Meagan: You could be a doula, Brian.Julie: I want to read your bio really fast.Brian: Oh, go for it.Julie: You wrote out a really well-thought-out bio and I want to read it because I think it is transitioning to what we are talking about right now, but I want you guys to know a little bit more about Brian and then we can talk some more, and share some really embarrassing stories, and all that fun stuff.But Brian is a SoCal native which-- I did not know that about you. Meagan probably did. Meagan is a bigger people person than I am. But you moved to Salt Lake City in the summer of 2015. You are a lifelong musician and we have seen some of your stuff on YouTube. It's pretty amazing. You have been an audio engineer since the early 90s. You worked in radio, big-time nationally syndicated stuff as well as small-time local stuff as an engineer and on-air host since the mid-90s. He is currently an on-air host at 90.1 KUER NPR Utah, headquartered in Salt Lake City, heard throughout Utah, and video editor in marketing at Salt Lake community college. I did not know that either.You run Humorless Productions. That's his business name. Remote audio, video recording, and post-production, primarily concert recordings, primarily noisy undergroundy, aggressive, electronic music. Obviously, not recording too many concerts these days. You are an avid skier. I did know that. Avid road bicyclist-- also knew that, and hard-core introvert. Also knew that.And let me tell you, people, Brian‘s never married and has no kids. Brian is such-- this is why I call him “our secret weapon”, right? He literally edits a birth podcast. He has never had kids. He has never seen somebody or helped somebody have a baby, but he is sitting over here being the biggest trooper for us. He came to our first birthday party and took pictures with us in our little made-up photo booth. He is just always so willing to help out and is just so-- I don't know. I just think you are a good-quality, genuine guy. They just don't make people like you anymore. I don't know if that makes sense.Brian: Well, if you think about it though, if you put yourself in my position, I mean, I don't really have to know anything about birth specifically. I'm just doing the audio.Julie: That's true.Brian: You know? I just pull it up on my computer and put it in my editing program and start editing. At that point it's not about birth, it's about audio and it's about making the people sound good.Julie: Which you do a great job of.Brian: So the podcast could be about anything and I'm still going to do the same process.Meagan: Right.Julie: Yes.Meagan: But at the same time, you are so willing to go the extra mile to do so many other things. In fact, even wearing your “Don't get all up in my perineum” shirt.Julie: “Don't be all up in my perineum.”Brian: The perineum shirt.Julie: Actually, can we talk about that shirt? I'm going to have that available in our VBAC Link shop. So if you go to thevbaclink.com/shop, you can see exactly what we are talking about and buy your own. “Don't be all up in my perineum” shirt straight from our VBAC shop. So by the time this episode airs, I will have it up there and live for you. I am pretty sure we can include a picture of Brian rocking it. In fact, that might just be our main product image.Meagan: Yes. Yes. I love it. Okay so, Brian. What got you into-- I mean, you've been doing this for such a long time. What sparked your interest in this? Like as a kid, what did you do as a kid? Did you want to do stuff like this as a kid? Like in editing and audio and video and all that?Brian: No, I mean, as a kid, like as a teenager, I would ride my bike around the neighborhood or ride my bike just as much as I could, so that's always been a lifelong thing. I started playing guitar at 12 or 13 years old and that pretty much instantly became my main focus forever. I wasn't good at it instantly. I wasn't a prodigy, but I got fairly good at it in some short amount of time. I was sort of a natural musician. It was just a language that I understood.Meagan: Yeah, it just came to you.Brian: It just kept going and going from there. I was in bands back in the 80s which-- we didn't go anywhere. We didn't record anything. But I was always playing and I was always getting better. Eventually, the first thing I did out of high school was, I went to a guitar school in Hollywood. It's the premier West Coast guitar school via Musicians Institute and the Guitar Institute of Technology. I graduated in 1990 and from there, that's what got me interested in audio. In playing guitar, and playing with bands, and playing with other people and recording as well, I was interested to know how exactly. You know, you mic up a guitar and why does it sound different if you put the mic here or if you put the mic here? Or if you use this microphone or that microphone? I was interested in that sort of stuff. I just dove into it headfirst while all along being a musician, but also being interested in audio.Once I eventually went to proper college, I was a music major at first, but then I switched to audio engineering and graduated as an audio engineering major. That was in the mid-90s. That's when I started in radio. I eventually did my own music shows in LA and I was an engineer for some big radio shows in LA. It all just came together and that's how it's been since then.Meagan: That's awesome. I didn't know that about you.Julie: Yeah. You're pretty good at it. You've got a natural talent.Meagan: Yeah. Oh my gosh.Julie: Alright.Brian: Isn't that what they say about kids? Because I'm a middle kid. I have an older brother and a younger brother.Julie: Aw, that makes sense too.Brian: Isn't the middle kid supposed to be the artsy one?Meagan: You know, my middle kid is. She is very artsy. I mean she seriously, she was 18 months old and I remember we were in this group of people and there were some coloring books. She sat down and started coloring and this lady was like, “Oh my gosh” because she was color blending and coloring in the lines so perfectly. She was like, “What in the deal?” And then now, she can just look at something and she just draws it. And she's like, “Look, this is--”. The other day, she brought home-- it was Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss's birthday, or whatever, and she brings me this Cat in the Hat picture. I am like, “Oh my gosh.” She is so good that way, and then she is really good in the arts like dance, and music, and things like that. She is really good at the piano and she is six. So, yeah. I would say my middle kid is good at it.Brian: Cool.Julie: I have two middle kids and I would say my third is definitely the more artsy one. But again, they are three, four, six, and seven. My seven-year-old has really mild cerebral palsy so he has always hated handwriting. He's always hated coloring because it's hard for him because of his right hand. It's his right side that is affected. He's not severely disabled or anything. It's really, really mild cerebral palsy, but it affects his right extremities and so he is forced to be left-handed when his brain operates in a right-handed way. He's never been good at that type of thing. I wonder if that's true. I don't know. We will see. We will see as my kids get older I suppose.Meagan: So tell us something else unique that no one would know about you that we don't even know.Julie: Yeah. Behind the scenes.Brian: About me?Meagan: Yeah, because you are. Like we said, you are just like this secret weapon. You just have all of these hidden talents. What is something that you-- I don't know. What is something secret?Brian: Well, I have a good one. I don't know if I have told you before, but I lived-- so I am from Southern California. That's what I say. That is the short answer. But the long answer is I was born in San Diego and I grew up in San Diego. But I lived all of my adult life in LA and so LA feels more like my home, which sounds sort of weird than San Diego, but if you press me, if you asked me where my home city is, I will say LA. But then, I also moved to Austria twice.Julie: What?Brian: Yeah. I lived there for most of 2005 and then I moved back to LA, and then I moved back to Austria from late 2009 to late 2010, so another year there for no reason. It wasn't a work thing. It wasn't for anything, I just wanted to live there. So twice, I sold all my stuff and quit all my jobs, and moved.Meagan: Oh my gosh.Julie: Oh, to be free.Meagan: That's amazing. That's amazing.Brian: Yeah. I didn't really know the language too much. I mean, I took some classes beforehand just so I was a little bit familiar, but I went over there and that's actually where Humorless Productions started my mobile audio/video recording system. That's where I really cut my teeth because there were so many more shows over there at that time that I could record as opposed to LA, at least for the music that I was interested in recording. And so I went over there, and I brought some equipment, and I would record all sorts of shows every month. It wasn't easy, but I worked out a system. It's evolved over the years and now I have a really good system.Actually, the first time I lived in Austria was in Vienna. The second time I lived there was Linz, which is a smaller town about an hour and a half west of Vienna. But if you really asked me if there's anywhere in the world that feels more like home than anything else, I would say it's Austria.Meagan: Really?Brian: Yeah. I have five more friends even today in Austria than I do in the States.Meagan: Wow.Julie: That is super cool.Brian: Yeah.Julie: Gosh, I used to travel so much when I was single. I guess maybe it was because I was in the military. I lived in a couple of different places and then once or twice a year before I got married, I would just travel somewhere on a plane. I was just talking to Nick the other night about this and I just miss that so much. You know, you get married, and you have kids, and you're just stuck forever until your kids get old enough to travel with you. I love that.Brian: And actually when I was over there, I wasn't really intent on traveling or going around, but that just ended up where the shows were that I would record. Vienna is fairly centrally located, so I would hop on a train and go up to Prague, or Budapest, or to Venice, or to Zurich, or to Munich, or to Berlin, or wherever. So it was all sorts of fun.Meagan: That's awesome. So cool. Yep. I did not know that.Julie: Yeah. I did not know that either.Q&AMeagan: So I posted on our Instagram what questions people have for you and a couple have come in. Can I ask them to you?Julie: Yeah.Brian: Yeah.Meagan: One, what is the most interesting thing you have learned from this podcast?Brian: I've learned all sorts of stuff. What's the most interesting thing? I don't know the most interesting thing.Meagan: What's something that stands out to you that you've learned? Obviously, you learned what a VBAC is in general.Brian: Yes, in general.Julie: Maybe if somebody asked you, what is The VBAC Link? What would you say?Brian: Well, here's the thing. For anybody listening, Julie and Meagan don't necessarily want you to have a VBAC. They want you to have the birth that you want. If you want a Cesarean, that's super great. More power to you. The thing is, you're going to learn stuff. Even if you do a Cesarean, you will learn stuff for your pregnancy that will benefit you if you listen to this podcast. If you are a first-time mother, you will benefit. You will learn stuff from this podcast. It doesn't matter if you have never had a Cesarean, doesn't matter if you have never had a vaginal birth. There is just so much good information that you will learn in this podcast.Meagan: I would agree. So another question is, do you share what you have learned with any expectant parents in your life?Julie: Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute. Thanks for that Brian. That was really nice of you to say. I really like that.Brian: Yeah.Meagan: That really was.Julie: Thank you.Meagan: So to me, Brian, you just answered it a little bit, right? Because that's one of the most interesting things you have maybe learned, right? We're pro VBAC, obviously. That's why we are here and that's why we created the course, and the podcast, and the blogs, and all of that jazz, but you nailed it. It's not that we want you to have your VBAC. It's that we want you to have the birth experience that you want, whether that be a VBAC or not. So I totally love that so much and that seems like the answer to me too. Maybe it's not the most interesting, but it is something that you have definitely taken away and realized that through editing our podcast, that's what we are here for. That is exactly what we are here for is to help these people get the birth that they desire no matter what that may look like to them.Brian: And one other thing, it might sound like not the best way to say this, but a lot of these women who come on the podcast have learned lessons the hard way. They want to share their experiences of learning things the hard way so that other women don't have to learn the hard way themselves. You know? You never ever want to say, “Well, I told you so I told you so,” but I think that's one of the best things about this show is that women don't have to go through all the trauma and all the pain that these other women have gone through, not unnecessarily. You know how birth goes. You never can plan it out 100%.Julie: You know how birth goes now.Brian: Yeah, more than I used to.Meagan: Yeah, and I love that. Yeah. I don't think it was saying it like that or anything. It's true. We have all learned things in hard ways a lot of the time and that for sure was me with my second provider. I didn't switch and I learned the hard way to follow my gut. I didn't follow it the first time. I had to follow it the second time. I am glad that I did so I had the outcome and the experience that I had. So, yeah. I love that.Do you share what you have learned through this podcast with expectant parents in your life? Do you have many expectant parents in your life?Brian: Yeah, I would in a heartbeat. I have only had one friend who had a kid last year sometime in 2020 and I definitely recommended it to her when she was pregnant. I said, “Hey if you want to learn some stuff, listen to this podcast.” I don't know what her plans were as far as her birth plans, but yeah. I said, “There is all sorts of stuff that you will learn listening to this podcast.”Meagan: That's awesome.Brian: And she was a first-time mom.Meagan: Yeah. I know, I think that's something that is so interesting. A lot of the times it's like, “Oh, I have had a VBAC so I don't need to listen to that,” but really like you said, the first-time parents can almost learn just as much, if not more, than the people who have had Cesareans. Right?Brian: I mean, how many episodes do you have on the pelvic floor? That is something that every first-time mother can use.Julie: Yeah. At least four I think.Meagan: Exactly. Mhmm. Yeah. And chiropractic care and working through your fear.Brian: Yep.Julie: And big babies.Meagan: Oh yeah and big babies. Things like that and learning what is evidence-based. You know, we really focus on a lot of evidence-based. So yeah. I love that. I love that you referred us. Thank you for referring us. Do you know how her birth turned out?Brian: I don't know.Meagan: Did she talk to you about that? Most people, probably not.Brian: She hasn't talked to me about it. I've seen pictures of the baby on Facebook and everything looks like it's rolling just perfectly.Meagan: Going really well. That's awesome.Brian: Yep.Meagan: So you said you have two siblings. You are the middle child. Did you say, two brothers?Brian: Yes.Meagan: Are they married?Brian: Both of them are. Older brother has no kids. Younger brother has two kids.Meagan: Oh awesome. Do you know how his wife's experiences went?Brian: I don't know. I haven't asked her.Meagan: Right. It's not really something you probably would. I was just so curious if now--Brian: I mean, I don't think she'd hesitate to tell me if I asked because she's an adult. I'm an adult. Yeah. But I just haven't asked.Meagan: Yeah. Okay, what other questions do you have, Julie? Or what else do you want to tell us, Brian?Julie: I mean, I guess unless you want to embarrass us or roast us, I am so disappointed that there is not going to be any roasting. Throw us under the bus. What kind of dirt do you got on us? Tell the whole world.Brian: I don't have anything embarrassing about you. I have something embarrassing about me.Julie: Okay sure.Meagan: That's the thing is, I want to know more about you. I want this episode to be about you. So tell everyone about you.Brian: Well, here's one thing. First of all, I said in my bio there that I am a hard-core introvert and that's 100% true. This story sort of reflects that a little bit. It was when I first started the podcast. I think I had met Julie and I had met Meagan maybe once. I forget. Maybe not at all at this point, but one of you called me. I forget who it was. One of you called me on some afternoon and just wanted to say, “Hi. I just wanted to chat on the phone for a little bit.”Julie: That was definitely Meagan. I don't do things like that.Meagan: Probably me.Brian: I felt so bad because when you called me, I was at the main library and I couldn't really take a call. I couldn't really talk but I was totally whispering. I felt bad because I wanted to talk. I wanted to say “hi” but I was just not in a position where I could do any of that because there were people all around, and I was in the middle of something, and you can't make a whole lot of noise in the library. And so the call ended up being 30 seconds. It was like, “Yeah, hi. Thanks. Okay. That's cool. Okay, bye.” That was more impersonal than I usually am. You know, in the first place, I really am not the most personable person. I am not friendly at first.Meagan: Really? I think you were. You were friendly.Brian: But I felt bad about that call. But now we all hang out and we are all cool.Meagan: Yes. Now it's like, “Brian!”Julie: COVID has put a serious cramp in our style. We don't get to see you anymore.Meagan: I know.Brian: Yeah.Julie: One day. One day, maybe.Meagan: I know. COVID. Darn COVID. How've you been during COVID Brian? What have you been up to during it?Brian: It's been pretty great for me. I call it “working from home”, but at the same time I have been an essential worker at both of my jobs, and so I have really not changed my schedule at all too much. But it's been great for me as an introvert because everybody else in the office doesn't show up. They are all working from home.Julie: So you get to be all alone and enjoy being an introvert.Brian: So at both of my jobs, I pretty much have the whole building to myself. I can work at my own pace and I can play music as loud as I want. So it's been okay.Meagan: That's good. Have you taken on any side projects or anything other than everything that we send you?Julie: Everything that we send you?Brian: Everything you throw at me? No, not really. I mean, I have all my regular stuff. I have about a dozen blogs and a dozen side projects. I have always a thousand music projects at home which don't really have a deadline, so I have a mountain of stuff I can always work on. Sometimes I get to it. Sometimes I don't. Right now it is ski season, so I am skiing every Saturday and every Sunday for months on end. I am working both my jobs quite a lot these days so I don't have much time to do much of anything.Meagan: Where do you like to ski, Brian?Brian: Well, living here in Salt Lake City is pretty much the center of the universe. We have all sorts of good skiing here. I have one of those multi-resort passes so I have gone to Big Sky Montana this year. I've gone to Steamboat Springs this year. I actually have weekends coming up for both of those coming up shortly. I don't think I will hit Jackson Hole this year. I don't think I will hit Sun Valley this year. I don't think I will hit Aspen this year, but I have skied all over the West Coast.Meagan: What's your favorite resort here in Utah? What resort would you suggest of someone to come to Utah and try out?Julie: Megan is our skier. She probably wants to go catch you on the slopes one day.Meagan: Yeah.Brian: It's probably not the one that most people would come up with as the number one resort here in Salt Lake City at least, but I go to Snow Basin.Meagan: Snow Basin is awesome.Julie: I like Snow Basin.Meagan: That's the first place I go.Brian: At least for me. I was going to say, Snow Basin is better than any of the four here close to town. We have Snowbird, Alta, Brighton, Solitude. But Snow Basin is the one I prefer. Just got the best terrain for me. I am an advanced skier. I've been skiing my whole life.↔Julie: You got a lot of that in SoCal huh? Just kidding. I'm sure the slopes were amazing in Austria.Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I went skiing at St, Anton in the alps for a week. I skied Kitzbühel.Julie: Aw, what a dream.Brian: I skied the racecourse. The Hahnenkamm racecourse at Kitzbühel a week before the race. It was the day before they actually shut down the course for the race, which was totally cool. So I skied the Hahnenkamm in Austria.Julie: That's pretty cool.Meagan: That's super cool. I just started skiing this year.Brian: Really?Julie: Did you? For some reason, I thought you've been skiing for a while. I used to snowboard back in the day when I was cool and now I'm just a boring mom. I still have my snowboarding boots. I used to go to Brighton because it was the cheapest one. You could buy a half-day pass for only three of the lifts and it was only $40 instead of having to pay $90 for a full resort pass and so me and my friend would go up almost every weekend. We would go boarding and then we would go to the Porcupine Grill at the face of the canyon afterward and have nachos and hot chocolate which you wouldn't think go together but after you go snowboarding, they definitely do go together.Meagan: Oh wow. That's in my neighborhood. Yeah. No, I actually begged to snowboard as a kid. I begged my mom every year. “Mom, I want to snowboard. I want to snowboard” and she was like, “Nope, nope, nope. Too dangerous. Too dangerous” and refused. And so this year for Christmas, my husband surprised us with also a multi-pass and said, “We are--” because you guys probably know I hate winter. I hate it. I hate it. I hate being cold. I like being at the pool feeling the sun and going outside on hikes, and sports, and obviously, as of last year I really took up cycling, and so I just like to be on my bike. So yeah. “We are going to make your winter better.” I will just tell you right now, if you haven't ever skied before and you have snow In your area and you are listening, go skiing. It has changed my winter life completely. So I love that you ski, Brian. I always remember we would always try to get the podcast recorded at the end of December, or really November, so we weren't driving in the winter and we would try to get enough through February because we were like, “We don't want to drive to the studio in winter.”Julie: The studio is an hour away from my house. In some of the snowstorms, it took me two hours to get home, and then there was that one time Meagan made me run out of gas on the freeway.Meagan: Yes.Julie: That was at midnight. It was awful.Meagan: Yeah. We were recording with Brian. This is how much of a champ Brian is. He would literally stay with us at the studio until 11:30 PM. It's insane what this man does for us. So we just are overly grateful for you. But I always remember he was telling me-- I swear there was two years or something that you were like, “Yeah. I'm going to Jackson this week.” And you would go and ski in Jackson. It's one of my dreams to go and ski because we have a cabin there and now that I ski, I want to go skiing there because I have heard it's amazing. I've also heard it's pretty steep though. Is it steep?Brian: Great one. Yeah. They have something for everybody.Meagan: Good, because I am still not as advanced or confident. My husband says I am a really really good skier. I just lack confidence.Julie: We need to get your confidence for skiing just like we want people to have their confidence for birth.Meagan: I know. Okay, one last thing. What advice would you give to parents listening to the podcast? What do you feel is one of the most important takeaways from listening to all of the stories?Brian: The biggest takeaway, and it's the most obvious thing in the world. Birth is not easy. It is a monumental challenge. You can only be as prepared as you can. You could write down every single thing that you think is going to be a part of your birth plan and both Julie and Meagan will tell you there is not a single birth plan in the existence of the history of the universe that didn't go 100% according to that birth plan. There's always going to be some curveball in there that you were not prepared for. It's impossible to prepare. You can't prepare for absolutely everything. You can make a birth plan. You can make a backup plan. You can make a backup backup plan. The best thing you can do is just learn, research as much as you can, listen to the podcast, I don't know what else to tell you. You can't be prepared for everything but you can just try.Julie: And trust your intuition.Brian: Yeah. And the other thing is that-- I'm sure you've said this Meagan or Julie in the past on one of your episodes and I know it's easy for me to say, “Well, keep this in mind.” But keep in mind that you are the mother. You are in charge. All the nurses, doctors, the providers-- they can tell you, “Okay. We need to do this,” and if that doesn't line up with your birth plan, you say, “No, wait a second. I am doing it this way.”Julie: Boom.Brian: “I'm doing it this way.” You say it twice. You say it loud if you need to. “I'm doing it this way.” And if they say, “Okay. We'll work with this.” It might get to a point where they say, “You know what? This is medically unsafe or medically unwise.” At that point, you say, “Okay. I will listen to what you have to say.” Otherwise, you are saying, “I'm doing it this way. I'm doing it my way.”Meagan: Yeah. And it's okay to say, “Why is this medically unwise?” It's okay to question that.Brian: Yeah. You are in charge. Not them.Julie: Love it.Meagan: Okay. You're awesome, Brian. We love you. We love you so much.Julie: Yep. Don't ever go anywhere. We are going to keep you forever as our secret weapon. Our not-so-secret weapon anymore but I am still going to call you our secret weapon.Brian: Awesome. Okay.Meagan: If you ever decide to go back to Austria, are you still going to stay with us, or are you going to be like, “Peace out Meagan and Julie?”Brian: Well I mean, we haven't actually ever been in the same building for a year now.Julie: Yeah, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where he lives.Brian: And we're still making a podcast, so whether I'm in Salt Lake City or in Vienna, we can still work it out.Julie: Boom.Meagan: Perfect. All right, okay. Well, if you guys want to know more about Brian after this episode, message us and we will get your answers. And Brian, seriously, you are just a miracle in our lives. So, we love you. We appreciate you. Thanks for joining us today and telling us more that we didn't know about you. And for the ski trips.Brian: Totally awesome.Julie: Wonderful.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Head over to thevbaclink.com/share and submit your story. For all things VBAC, including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan's bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy