Podcasts about hi dave

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Mr A. N. Onymous says, Hi Dave and Jamison, Long time listened, second time caller! I wrote a little while back with a common new-manager question about how to handle one of my reports who was at the lower end performance wise, but at the top end on the pay scale. I'd been trying to manage it by getting raises for the rest of the team in order to balance things out a bit (and make the rest of the team happy). I did consider Limogeage but having them on the team was better than a vacancy. Fast forward a year or so, and the problem resolved itself when this team member left - or so I thought. We've had a few months gap before opening recruitment again, and it turns out this team member wasn't happy at their new role and has applied to come back. Given they negotiated well with us the first time I'm guessing they've had a healthy pay bump at their new role. What should I do? On the one hand I know their performance, they do deliver well and I'm happy working with them and managing them. Would it be rude to offer them to come back at their previous salary (assuming they're the “best” person when we interview)? Will they be offended if we don't offer them the role? We haven't had interviews yet - so help me Dave and Jamison, you're my only hope! AI has taken over my team mate's brain. HELP! I work for a ~10ish or so team building a B2B finances related app for several platforms (mobile, web, backend, etc). On the Web team, there's only two of us. I've been on this team for around 4 years now, and during this times I've had several coworkers (the previous ones have either left the company voluntarily or involuntarily, moved to other teams, or completely left the field). I'm 100% convinced it's not because of me, so let's take that out of the question right away :-). All of this to say is that I tend to be the person that knows the most about our (quite large) codebase. We work on a ten-year-old React application with some technical debt, but overall I think it's pretty good. My coworker comes from Android development. While he's a great developer and has AMAZING soft skills (probably a listener of this podcast!, or maybe not because he has not quit yet?) he's a little bit lacking on the general “Web Stuff (TM)” knowledge and many of the specifics details of our codebase. A bigger problem is that he seems to have totally given up on learning web skills or understanding our codebase and is instead just tab-tab-tab-ing autocompleted AI crap all over the codebase. His code works as expected, but when reviewing his PRs I feel like a slave of the AI. I'm not reviewing another human's work, but just what some AI model is doing. While it works, it's terrible code for another human to maintain. For example, there's lots of “inline” crap that we already have utility functions or libraries for, regexes everywhere, custom CSS all over the place instead of using our design system, abuse of the CSS cascade instead of using our CSS-inJS solution, large files with lots of code repeating existing logic that's already somewhere else, and code comments every 2 lines or so which provide no value, but that's what AI does to explain things. I'm not against AI (I also have explicitly to say this to prevent it killing me in the future). I use it for explaining things to me, writing utility functions, suggesting improvements, or as a google search replacement that saves a lot of time. But leaving AI to do your work mindlessly while you sip orange juice and watch how it codes is wrong. We're not there yet. These PRs work and are difficult to reject because management wants to ship fast. However, they are harming the codebase. We'll get to the point where only AI will be able to touch it due to the amount of repetition, duplication and overall non-human friendly code. How do I tell this person “Please stop doing this and instead learn things properly, and use AI as a tool and stop you being the tool of the AI” without hurting any feelings, and without being seen as the AI grinch? Thanks for your help! Love the podcast, and why scroll keeps jumping up when writing on this form? Seems like AI is boycotting me.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey, I am a web developer getting bored of the regular development work. I am interested in finance and the monetary system and due to the overlap of finance and engineering I feel down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and even spiked interest in crypto like Solana and Sui. I am pretty sure most of crypto is a FUD, delulu or straight up scam, yet the technology looks appealing and interesting to learn. So that said, I am still really interested in learning more about crypto and dabbling in the development space of that. Yet, I am hesitant because I fear that this could reflect negatively on me. What do you think? Is a bit of crypto okay or really that bad? Hi Dave and Jamison After five years as an engineering manager, I want to return to coding. But I'm facing a few challenges: First, I worry about leaving my current team. It feels like I'm abandoning the people I've been supporting. Should I make this transition elsewhere to avoid this awkwardness? Second, I'm struggling to find time and energy to rebuild my technical skills. After a full day of management work, it's hard to open the laptop again for coding practice. Finally, I've been humbled by how rusty my coding skills have become. Tasks that would take a practiced engineer minutes are taking me days, which is frustrating and denting my confidence. How have others successfully navigated this pendulum swing back to an IC role without burning bridges or burning out? Thanks, a rubber duck

Here's some information about Nicole, in case some of you are new to Sexual Assault Survivor Stories. Nicole is a frequent guest on this show, and I want you to know some information about her. This information is published by Force Science, Nicole's employer, on their website: “Nicole Florisi, PsyD Candidate, LEO Director of Curriculum & Content Development, Staff Instructor Force Science Biography Nicole has extensive experience as an educator, police officer, and therapist. She provides front-line instruction in de-escalation, crisis communications, and force encounters investigations. With over 25 years of experience, she has held positions including communications specialist, patrol officer, patrol sergeant, investigator, and acting chief. She has held previous roles as a Law Enforcement Subject Matter Expert at and as the Executive Director for the Verde Valley Sanctuary; a shelter dedicated to providing services for victims of sex trafficking, sexual violence, and domestic violence. Nicole is currently working on her doctorate in clinical psychology. She holds two post-master's degrees; one in Human Factors Psychology and one in Trauma Counseling; an M.S. in Professional Counseling; and a B.S. in Public Safety Administration and Emergency Management.” Just over a month ago, Nicole Florisi reached out to me to let me know that there was a not-so-great situation that had recently come to her attention regarding a domestic violence/sex assault shelter. She told me that several residents of this particular shelter had reached out to inform her that there were some pretty extreme reports of inappropriate behavior and abuses perpetrated on shelter clientele at the hands of some of the shelter staff. Before I go any further, I want to emphasize that these reports were not initiated by Nicole, but rather by clientele residents of the shelter referenced in the reports. At the time Nicole reached out to me in July, we were not releasing the name of the shelter. But since the time of that recording, reports of the abuses and poor living conditions at the shelter were made public through an article published by the local newspaper, the . The shelter at the center of the reports is Verde Valley Sanctuary (VVS), which is the shelter at which Nicole had been the Executive Director. And the reason clientele of the shelter were reaching out to Nicole is because they know her, trust her, and thought that Nicole may be able to help. These reports had started coming to Nicole in the fall of 2023, and Nicole forwarded those reports, via email,  to the shelter administration and board of directors in October, 2023. Because Nicole did not receive any type of acknowledgement of her report from either the shelter or administration, she forwarded a second report to the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence (ACESDV). The response that Nicole received from ACESDV, was that “ACESDV has visited the program and has not seen anything of concern.” But the reports of abuses and lack of services continued to come in from shelter clientele, and now were also being received by staff employees that had been terminated by the new Executive Director. Those same previous VVS personnel were forwarding some of the resident complaints to the newspaper, which in July 2024 published a story, “”. When Nicole reached out to me last month and told me about this entire situation, I was resolved to get her on SASS and discuss this situation; not to disparage Verde Valley Sanctuary, but to give an additional voice to the affected clientele residents, and to educate, discuss solutions, and talk about reporting options to my audience in case they are currently in a similar situation or find themselves in a shelter of any kind, anytime in the future. CURRENT SITUATION: Since it has been over a month since Nicole and I recorded this episode, I recently reached out to Nicole to let her know the episode was going to be published today (20 August 2024), and to ask her to provide me with any updates that may be available to keep you, my audience, appraised of the situation. Here is the update that Nicole sent to me: Hi Dave!  Here is an update so far: After the newspaper article came out, VVS responded to the claims with many false and misleading statements.  We are in the process of responding to this at this time.  The VVS Board President has been making untrue and disparaging remarks about me (and others who brought this to light) in emails to donors.  I do not know the status of my complaints to the state funders, as they are not required to report them to me.  Personnel from sister agencies have come forward to me after hearing about these claims, stating their clients have been telling me about how fearful they were of staff and of their mistreatment, and they have a lot of concerns about working with VVS at this time.  I had hoped we would have something more positive for you by the time this show aired, but we are still fighting the lies, manipulation, and corruption on behalf of the clients. No one should ever be victimized or re-victimized by those who are supposed to help.  Talk to you again soon, hopefully with better news. -Nicole  I hope that this episode provides some enlightenment and valuable educational information to all of my listeners, whatever situation you find yourself in. If you're a victim or survivor of rape, sexual assault, or any form of interpersonal violence and find yourself in circumstances that necessitate your need to utilize a shelter, of any kind, I hope this information is helpful. If you never need the services of a shelter but know someone who currently is in a shelter or may need a shelter in the future, please pass this episode on to them. Please hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast platform you found this show, and leave a review, if you would…it helps more than you know! Also, don't forget to do your part to help bring justice to victims and survivors of rape or sexual assault. A great way to do this is to Start By Believing! I am providing some website information, as well as links to the newspaper stories. In addition, you'll find my email address, as well as Nicole's, below. Nicole gave me permission to publish her email addresses and would welcome any inquiries for additional information or help for those who are in a similar situation. Please look at these sites, and pass them on to others who may find the information helpful:

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Happy Birthday Dave and congrats on the 400 episode milestone! Last year I was recruited away from my cushy Sr Dev role at Chill MegaCorp to an exciting technical leadership role at Fast-Paced MegaCorp. It felt like a huge level up since I had always wanted to pick up some of the softer communication and leadership skills to add to my arsenal while still working on technical problems. The 30% pay raise sealed the deal. Fast-foreward one year and I am burnt out, feeling disengaged and thinking about quitting. Compared to my previous role, everything here is urgent and high priority. There is little structure on my team, no planning or intake, and we just react to emails and pings from other teams about things not working. Our Sr Dev is very knowledgable but often gets short and impatient with me. My Sr Manager has said things like “sleep is for the weak” and frequently sends emails in the middle of the night. We have weekly evening releases that have gone till 4am. We are expected to always be around in case of a production incident – which happen very frequently because of the sheer complexity of everything and high dependency between internal services. I have considered moving to another team, but unfortunately this seems to be a company wide culture. I am considering cutting my losses with this company and moving back to an IC role with better work-life-balance. I am grateful for all the leadership skills I have picked up this past year and learned a ton in such a fast paced environment, but its been a whole year and I still haven't gotten used to the “always on” culture and overall chaos. Is it normal form someone to shift between management and IC like this? What do you guys recommend? Hi Dave and Jamison, thank you for the show. It is the engineering podcast I look forward to most every week. I work at a company that, maybe like many others, has lots of title inflation. As a result, my title is much higher than it would be at a larger (and public) tech company. For example, “senior” may be one or two levels below senior elsewhere, and “staff” would be “senior” elsewhere. We also have “senior staff”, which might be “staff” elsewhere, but more likely that might just be a more senior “senior” engineer, too. My question is: How should I consider approaching a job search where I am knowingly (and reasonably) down-leveling myself in title? Should I include the relative level on my resume (for example, “L5”)? Should I not address it unless a recruiter or interviewer asks about it? Briefly mention the seeming down-level in a cover letter as comparable responsibilities and scope as my current role? I have worked hard for my promotions, because salary bands required the title change for the money I wanted, but now I am worried it will complicate applying to other companies. (Thank you for selecting my question!)

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hello Dave and Jamison, I wanted to say thank you for your podcast. It's been a great wealth of information and comic relief. Can we bring back the guitar intros? I work in the technology arm of a large corporation. There are no younger engineers. I am one of the youngest at just shy of 30 (my first tech job after going back to school). I receive praise for my eagerness to learn and grow and how much I try to engage with the org. I feel like if we hired more Junior engineers it would both increase the engagement of the org and give senior engineers more of a sense of purpose to pass the torch. One of my favorite engineers from whom I get the best advice has been here for over 20 years and they are awesome! I also get great advice from people on my team but some of them are cruising or in a “couple years till retirement” mode. Should I try to convince management to hire more junior engineers? Is there anything I can do to relate more to older org members? Hi Dave and Jamison! I'm an engineering manager tasked with getting the team back to an open office (hybrid). My team works very well remotely, with the occasional in-person meetup. I believe that in terms of productivity, work-life balance, engagement, and turnover, RTO will negatively impact the team. I'm torn between representing what I feel is good for the team and supporting the company's decision. I've already expressed my concerns with management, and the overall sentiment seems to be that anyone who doesn't like it can find a new job. Aside from this, I like my job, team and company and don't want to quit over this. Any tips on finding a balance representing team needs and implementing higher-up direction?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: “Hi! Love the show, long time listener. So an architect noticed an issue with credentials embedded into request body being logged. I had planned to resolve that, and someone already had done so for another instance. I took a day or two to figure out how to fix it globally, and even tied it into another filtering we did. That would mean one list of sensitive data patterns to maintain – that we already had, and don't need to worry about which context keys to scan in. Scan them all, CPU time is free after all /s I opened this PR, and received no feedback for a day. Another engineer did mention an alternate approach that would resolve this particular case, but I was trying to fix it globally so we didn't have to maintain a list of keys to scan on. Next day he mentioned he made some click ops change that resolved THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE, meanwhile still not providing any feedback on the PR. This approach is IMO a maintenance burden: keep two different filtering in sync, proactively add keys to strip. High chance of mistakes slipping in over time. So I said OK works with some caveats, and rejected my PR. I can not explain why but this incident tilted me hard. For one thing he essentially grabbed my ticket with no communication and resolved it himself. Then he provided no feedback and went with a different approach without consulting anyone else. Worst of all, he ended up with an (IMO) markedly worse fix that I had already dismissed as being too brittle and likely to miss things in the future. What do? Am I unreasonable to feel undermined and disrespected?” Hi Dave and Jamison, long time listener love the show. I work on a team that is relatively small in size but we own a huge scope including multiple flavors of client-side app and a bunch of backend integrations. We recently launched our product and since then there have been constant fire due to various tech debt that we never fix. Our manager has attempted to ask the team to share the burden of solving these tech debts, but there are only very few that are actually doing it. I can think of many reason why they are not able/willing to take on the task, likely due to other priorities or unfamiliarity with the part of the codebase. Due to my familiarity with various component, I'm usually the one proposing the fix and actually fixing it. I have started to feel this is taking a toll on my own career development because I ended up not having bandwidth to work on those bigger projects/features that have high visibility and good for promotion. I do think solving the tech debt is important work and don't mind doing them. How would you navigate this situation? Thanks for the awesome podcast!

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Kate asks, Hi Dave and Jamison! I'm in a situation where my predecessor, Jane, was a super helpful “Mary Poppins” type. She did anything and everything beyond her role for the sake of being a team player. I was told she even went as far as providing homemade snacks for meetings. I, on the other hand, am a one trick pony; I only do the tasks I'm paid for. I'm often indirectly compared to her and worry I'll be seen as an inadequate despite doing my duties well. Should I go with the “ol reliable”? Or wait to see if her legacy fades? Thank you so much!! I've been involved in a project (architecture, design, code review) that has been ongoing for several months now, and I've put many hours and days supporting the project success, but only on the engineering side and not the PM. The obligatory announcement email blast came not too long ago, and my name was dropped from the pretty long list of people who have been involved with the different aspects of this project. On one hand, I feel that I should have been acknowledged for my contribution to the project success, especially when exposure to LT is at play here, but on the other hand I don't want to play politics at work, I want to make great products for our customers while learning a lot and working with smart people. My question is should I care? I hate the fact that it's even bothering me.

The extraterrestrial comedy podcast where we probe Russ Kellett otherwise known as E.T. Rider. Yes, Russ Kellett, is E.T. Rider. Russ has a dashing of fashion and style for a while. Russ is allegedly truthfully also being covered in alien urine juice which is giving Russ super powers. You see Russ, is a super soldier for the alien army. It all started with a space gun, or nana's space gun, alongside some very early extraterrestrial visits. This would eventually lead to Russ being pumped full of alien liquid by Dracula and next thing Russ knew, Russ was training to be a super solider alongside a U.K. celebrity singing superstar. Alongside all this Mr Moonwalker shares yet more evidence that he has indeed been abducted by extraterrestrials. But before we finish up this description… Why is Russ encountering Imhotep the Mummy? All that and more on this week's file.     Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/butitwasaliens   Store: https://butitwasaliens.co.uk/shop/     Probe us: Email: butitwasaliens@gmail.com Instagram @ ButItWasAliensPodcast Twitter @ ButItWasAliens Facebook: @ ButItWasAliens - join Extraterrestrial Towers     Music:  Music created via Garageband. Additional music via: https://freepd.com - thank you most kindly good people. Towards the end of the episode you will have heard the ‘Staff Roll' aka credits theme from 1990-1992's Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System composed by Hero of Sound Kōji Kondō. Nintendo allegedly truthfully doesn't mind us closing out with this tune… What a game that was by the way! P.S. Hi Dave. We're watching you.      Sources: Metro article and video: https://metro.co.uk/2022/05/16/yorkshire-russ-from-yorkshire-claims-hes-been-abducted-by-aliens-16650188/   YouTube video of Russ explaining his super soldier life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptd03SgfMI4&t=1s    You can find Russell Kellett's book E.T. Rider on Amazon at approximately £9.99 at the time of recording.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave and Jamison! What do you do when one of your immediate teammates is constantly competing against you? I really don't like competition. Ignoring the competitiveness + praising his value did not work. Some examples: Leaving code reviews comments showing off obvious knowledge which does not really add value to the PR Constantly harassing you to pair on trivial matters (I think because “pairing with someone less experienced” is a trait desirable in our engineer scoring framework) Picking up a bigger version of whatever ticket you just did Trying to be the first to “answer your question” in public without actually answering the question (this makes it difficult for me to actually get answer for question I ask because other would think it's “resolved”) Part of me feels flattered that somebody who has more years in the job sees me as worthy of competing against, but at some point it became annoying and counterproductive. Appreciate your thoughts. Please don't tell me quitting my job and saying goodbye once and for all is the solution

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I recently applied for a job for a great company. The interview went well until we talked compensation. I said I expected to get a pay raise for changing jobs, but it seems that they can only offer me as much as I already have. I have never negotiated salary before. With my current job (which was my first) I happily accepted what they offered and we have had regular bumps without negotiations. Although I am really interested in the job, I feel like it is a defeat not to get a pay raise when I'm changing jobs for the first time in my career. The benefits are also not as good. Do you have any advice? Should I lower my expectations for a non-consulting position and switch despite not getting a raise? Should I negotiate harder? Wait for something better? Hi Dave & Jamison, we recently started a new project with a new team of devs that never worked together before. The team consists of two experienced backend devs, two junior backend devs and a couple of frontend devs. One of the junior backend devs has a mindset of just jumping into tasks, doing things without any previous analysis, just writing code for the first thing that comes into his mind. I like him being proactive, but this is causing big trouble: bugs, technical debt and often absolutely useless code. We had several discussions in the team pointing out some of the problems, but he is not interesested in changing his behaviour. During the last discussion he didn't react to any of our arguments, just insisted on doing things his way. After that discussion we realized he even made some commits on an issue that has not been in the sprint nor has been refined yet _while we were talking to him_. Our team has no dedicated lead nor a scrum master and we work remote only. The next organization level is our CEO. I love the company, i love the team, i love the project, i even like this dev on a personal level. If we talk to the CEO i suspect it might have a bad ending for the junior dev since he is still in probation period. I know that we must talk to our CEO if things do not change. Do you have any advice? How can we reach him? Thank you for your great show!

The extraterrestrial comedy podcast where we probe the Calvine UFO. This allegedly extraterrestrial incident resulted in the most amazing photo of a UFO presently known (at time of recording in 2023). The witnesses to this amazing event dived in to a bush. If you saw what may be aliens, would you dive in to the bush? What the witnesses actually saw was a diamond, structured craft in the sky being circled by Air Force jets and being in the bush allowed the witnesses to take a sneaky photograph. What happened to the witnesses who took the photo though? We take a gander at that photo and come up with our own theories as to what the craft is aka go over the common theories - military, or aliens? Can we believe that our military have this kind of technology, with instant acceleration to Mach 5 and higher, without suffering the effects of G-force, crazy technology, yet haven't used this for nefarious world-conquering purposes?  We have a lot of evidence for this one but we're still none the wiser. Hi Dave. All that and more on this week's file.     Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/butitwasaliens   Store: https://butitwasaliens.co.uk/shop/     Probe us: Email: butitwasaliens@gmail.com Instagram @ ButItWasAliensPodcast Twitter @ ButItWasAliens Facebook: @ ButItWasAliens - join Extraterrestrial Towers     Music:  Music created via Garageband. Additional music via: https://freepd.com - thank you most kindly good people. In discussing Indiana Jones (the storage facility), the theme song aka The Raiders March from the Indiana Jones franchise played in the background. This was composed and conducted via John Williams and courtesy of Polygram, Sony Music and Colombia Records. As often but not always, towards the end of the episode we played the Staff Roll aka credits theme from 1990-1992's Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), composed by Nintendo's legendary Hero of Sound, Koji Kondo.     Sources: Nick Pope write up and link to further sources: http://nickpope.net/wpte19/the-calvine-ufo/    Vocal Media Earth: https://vocal.media/earth/the-calvine-photo-the-world-s-clearest-ufo-photograph-has-been-found-after-it-went-missing-for-32-years    Journal News Online: https://journalnews.com.ph/the-calvine-photo-revealed-updated/    Dr David Clarke write up: https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/secret-files/the-calvine-ufo-photographs/

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Dear Dave and Jamison, I work for a medium sized startup, and our planning process sucks! We used to do quarterly planning, and it seemed like the product managers had no idea what was going on at a higher level. The big focus seems to have changed every quarter that I've been here, and the whole planning process is a charade: 75% of the so called ‘road map' gets thrown away after a few weeks. Normally, this wouldn't bother me, but I end up spending a lot of time in meetings helping these product managers come up with plausible timelines and making sure that what the business wants to build is actually feasible, and it's bad for my morale to see so much of my work wasted. The product management team heard some of this feedback from me and others, and started changing to ‘continuous planning', but now there is even less structure for when they build the big spreadsheet roadmap for the quarter. They bought new tools, and don't seem to be using them. Should I suck it up and just check out or try and get a license to use the patented soft skills advice and quit my job? Hi Dave and Jamison in no particular order.I have been listening to the podcast for a couple of months now. I have enjoyed every episode and and the advice you give. I am a junior software developer who has been working at a startup 9 months ago. I was offered a remote junior position and accepted even though the company is based in a neighbouring city. This made sense at the time because I would not have to worry about commuting to the office. 3 months ago my manager suggested that I come to the office more often as this would benefit my development and give a me a chance to socialise with my co-workers. We agreed that I go in 3 times a week. Now the past few weeks there has been pressure to start coming to the office full time. I would be fine with this but the problem is that I currently do not own a car and have to rely on public transport to get to work. With public transport it takes almost 4 hours to get to and from work each day (I actually listen to multiple episodes of the podcast on each trip) There is about 40 minutes of walk time included in that because the nearest bus stop is not close to the office. As you can imagine that is physically draining and also affects my work life balance as I spend almost 15 hours of the day either travelling and working. My biggest concern now is that 9 months ago If I was offered this job but as full time on site I would not have even considered it. Do you have any advice with how to refuse going to the office more often without making it seem like I'm opting out of an option that is more beneficial to my career. Thanks in advance.

Do you feel like you may be flying blind when it comes to navigating the health of your culture? Well, today's guest admits he was. Yet he wanted to create a culture his staff could thrive in. Listen in as he describes the key steps that he took to move his workplace culture to one of the healthiest that we've worked with. I'd like you to listen closely: I'm going to give you the two-syllable abbreviation of one of the healthiest, flourishing organizations BCWI has ever worked with. Are you ready? The two syllables are . . .  StuMo. . . . StuMo, short for Student Mobilization.   To tell the story of their stunning, flourishing culture is my guest, Dave Riner, CEO, and President of Student Mobilization. Hi Dave, and welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.   Find full show notes here: https://bit.ly/daverinerstumo Share the love. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it on Apple Podcasts and write a brief review. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-flourishing-culture-podcast/id1060724960?mt=2   By doing so, you will help spread our podcast to more listeners, and thereby help more Christian workplaces learn to build flourishing cultures. Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on Twitter https://twitter.com/allopus  Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allopus/Email our host at info@bcwinstitute.org 

Tech News and Commentary Dave and the team discuss Dolby 5.1 in YouTube TV, TikTok’s ad revenue, Samsung foldable, T-Mobile affordable prepaid brand, , and more. Jeff asked: “Hi Dave and Chris, I just upgraded to Windows 10, and have found that certain functions work only with Internet Explorer The system is not able to […]

In this old episode, Alyssa brings her husband, David, on the show to discuss the challenges that can come with supporting a loved one with PTSD. David offers advice for supporters on how they can aid their loved ones on their path to recovery while also taking time to care for themselves. Due to some health issues this week, we are doing a repeat of Episode 26. We'll be back next week with the new regular content you enjoy! Check out the Light After Trauma website for transcripts, other episodes, Alyssa's guest appearances, and more at: www.lightaftertrauma.com Support the Podcast   Transcript: Alyssa Scolari: Hi friends, hope everybody's off to a wonderful week. I am just popping on for a few minutes today to let you know that there will be no official new episode this week. This is the first time that we are pulling a repeat episode, so we are going to be sharing the episode that I did with my husband, David, on loving somebody with PTSD or more specifically complex PTSD. This is a really good episode. It's one that David and I did together, and I hope that you all enjoy it. Alyssa Scolari: The reason that there is no podcast episode this week is because quite frankly, it has been a pretty horrible week. I had planned to share with you all a little bit about what has been going on, and I have been, I know I've been touching on the fact that I've had some health issues lately in my previous episodes, and I was really hoping to be able to record a solo episode so that I could share what I'm going through with you all, especially off the heels of having my doctor's appointment. Alyssa Scolari: We had a doctor's appointment and we got some kind of just bad news and it's nothing life threatening, of course, so I'm not dying or anything like that, but all in all, it's just very upsetting news. It's news that we were kind of anticipating, but upon hearing it, it definitely didn't help, and I think the weight of everything really set in for both my husband, David and myself. David and I are the ones that run the podcast and David does all the editing, and I think that he's kind of having a rough time as well. Yeah, it's just been a really difficult week. Alyssa Scolari: I will be back next week and hopefully I will have had time to process everything and then I will update you all on what's going on, but right now I'm just not feeling the best. Again, while I was hoping to be able to chat with you all about what's been happening, this weekend definitely looked a lot more like me hanging out in my PJs with my dogs, just being in the grief of all of it. I love you all. I am holding you all in the light and I ask that you all hold me in the light as well right now because things are pretty tough, but I will be back now next week, and I appreciate your patience and I hope that you enjoy this episode. [singing] Alyssa Scolari: Hey everybody, I feel like I need a new introduction. Because for every episode I'm like, "Hey everybody." And I sound so cheesy. David Scolari: No, we got to stay on brand. That is part of the brand and we're going with it, baby. Alyssa Scolari: No, it's too cheesy. Welcome everybody. No, that's really, that's terrible too. Anyway guys, hello guys, girls, they, them, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Light After Trauma podcast, I'm your host Alyssa Scolari, and as you may or may not already be able to tell, we are doing an episode with the man behind the scenes today, my husband David. He is the editor of the podcast and the technology guru. Most importantly, I'm married to him. Hi Dave. David Scolari: Hello. Alyssa Scolari: The reason behind this is because as much as I think it's very important to give a voice to trauma survivors, I think it's also equally important to give a voice to the ones who are on the sidelines supporting us and loving us through our PTSD recovery journey. I thought that it might be helpful for folks if David came on the podcast today to share a little bit about what it's like to love somebody through PTSD. Yeah, here's Dave. David Scolari: Hey everybody. How are we all doing today? Alyssa Scolari: I can't, I'm going to have to edit that part out. David Scolari: Dave, edit that part out. You watch that rat bastard. He'll leave that right in there. Alyssa Scolari: I guess I'll just start firing questions at you. David Scolari: Go right ahead. Alyssa Scolari: It's so weird because I've actually never done a podcast that somebody sitting in the same room as me. March 23rd will be three years that we've been married. David Scolari: Yes ma'am. Alyssa Scolari: When I first met you, we met in 2016. David Scolari: Indeed. Alyssa Scolari: Did you have any idea that I had a history of trauma? David Scolari: Not a fricking clue. Alyssa Scolari: When did you find out? Do you want to talk about from your perspective how it all went down? David Scolari: Yeah. I guess probably the first time I knew that you had been through something was I think were driving to my aunt and uncle's down in Long Beach Island. On the drive there, you nervously told me that you were seeing a therapist for some things, and I'm sure you were like, oh my gosh, I'm going to tell this guy and he's going to be like, "Get out." In the middle of the Pine Barrens and drive away never to be seen again. Alyssa Scolari: I did. It was so funny. I dropped that on you like, to the listeners out there, when we were dating, I at first didn't tell him I was in therapy because at the time I guess I embraced the shame and stigma around being in therapy, which I no longer do. I now have no problem and will tell the whole world, obviously, that I'm in therapy, but I was a different person back then. What I did was I waited until we were in the car, so you couldn't abandon me. We were on a barren road where there was no cellphone service. I don't think consciously I was doing that on purpose, but I think subconsciously I was definitely like, "All right, I'm going to trap him, tell him I'm in therapy and there's nowhere for him to run." David Scolari: For folks who aren't familiar, in South Jersey, there are what we call the Pine Barren forests, and when you're driving through A, yes, there is no cell phone reception, B, there's like nobody out there, no houses, no towns, no convenience stores for long stretches of the road. So yeah, you're not turning around, you're not going anywhere, you can't just drop somebody off there. I mean, unless, I don't know, you were the mafia and you were doing something down there, but anyways, so yeah. Alyssa Scolari: Yeah. I made it so that you couldn't leave me, but even then I didn't tell you that I had a history of trauma because I didn't know. David Scolari: Right. Yeah. I mean, that's the first time I knew you had some things you were going through or working through- Alyssa Scolari: Eating disorder wise. David Scolari: Right. Alyssa Scolari: But when in your recollection were we talking about the fact that I then had PTSD? I don't think it wasn't until after we were married. David Scolari: Yeah. Because I don't think you really uncovered your trauma and kind of started to come to terms with some of it until after we were married. Alyssa Scolari: Conveniently. David Scolari: Which, by then, we were locked in baby and I wasn't going anywhere. Alyssa Scolari: Which obviously we kid. Part of the reason why I really thought, again, that it would be helpful to have David on here is because he sort of has been through this process with me and he can look at it from a different lens. He didn't know what he was walking into. Obviously, we got married and then it wasn't until shortly after we got married that I started to have all of these memories come to the surface. Can you tell me what that was like for you? Because there's so much I truthfully don't remember because I was in such a bad place. David Scolari: Yeah. I mean, obviously you were, it's tough, right? Because you have your good days and your bad days and some days we were just in the middle of doing something random, watching TV, going out somewhere, talking to somebody, hanging out, and you can start having those memories flood back into your consciousness there. I'll be very honest, I would say probably the word to use would just be unexpected, because with the recovery process and remembering things, you don't, there would just be days again where it, just out of the blue you would be angry, you would be sad, you would be enraged, you would be all sorts of emotions and I would kind of just be blindsided by it. Yeah, it was never consistent in terms of when you would uncover stuff and remember things and then have all those emotions associated with that. Sometimes, you wouldn't even know why you're crying or being mad or angry just because you were dissociating or other things. It would just come out of the blue. Alyssa Scolari: What was that like for you being on that kind of roller coaster? David Scolari: I mean, I think the word roller coaster is an apt kind of way to describe it. It can be challenging sometimes, because it can just come out of the blue and sometimes no matter the words that I say or the actions that I take, it's just sometimes a process where we got to cry it out. We got to yell it out, scream it out, and let your body kind of just process in the moment what you were remembering or going through or the things you were feeling. Alyssa Scolari: I'm sure that for those of you listening, if you have loved ones who have PTSD or complex PTSD and are going through this journey or did at one point, this is probably all sounding very familiar to you where it's like, especially if you're married to that person or that person is your romantic partner, it's sort of like one minute we're talking about something that's seemingly not emotional, he's asking me what I want for dinner and I'm curled up in a ball and the couch sobbing because I can't make up my mind. I'm frustrated because now I'm having flashbacks of other times when I couldn't make up my mind in the middle of a trauma. He's like, "What? I just asked you if you wanted pizza or spaghetti." And I'm balling and it's comical in retrospect. Right? I mean, wouldn't you say like it's funny in retrospect? But, let me tell you something. When somebody asks you if you want, or if you're that person that's like, "Hey babe, do you want pizza for dinner or would you like chicken?" And that person just curls up into a ball and sobs, it's, I think, extremely stressful and extremely taxing. Right? Then, on top of it, we had the pandemic. We've been stuck. Not stuck, because I like you. I mean I love you. I'm such a jerk. We've been in this house for, which our house is not big. It's very small, very close corners, close corners, or close quarters? David Scolari: Quarters. Alyssa Scolari: Oh, okay. Well, there we go. David Scolari: Dave, edit that out. Alyssa Scolari: Yep. Edit that out, Dave. We've really not had any time apart, and I've still been going through quite a bit. Does that, like are there times where you're just at your wit's end? David Scolari: Oh, yeah. I mean, sure. Sometimes, again, just because what you're remembering, what you're feeling, or what happened that has brought forth, whether it's at your job or whatever, has kind of brought forth memories. Sometimes, I'm trying to calm you down, I'm trying to get you grounded again. Sometimes I can say things and it helps ground you. Sometimes what I say doesn't help ground yet. Alyssa Scolari: Sometimes it makes it worse. David Scolari: Sometimes the dogs do a much better job of grounding you than I do. In fact, they probably way, way better. Alyssa Scolari: I like my pets. David Scolari: Indeed. Alyssa Scolari: What are some things that you think people can do when they see their loved ones struggling when they see their loved ones dissociating, because this has been a learning process for you as well. This isn't something that I've been going through by myself. I've been going through it with you. Although, at times it feels like I'm by myself. What are some things that you have learned along the way that could help? David Scolari: Probably, one, patience. I think even in when I go, "Do you want Wendy's or McDonald's?" And you then start bawling out on the couch. I'm like, "Oh, this this ... Oh, okay. We can go someplace else." But no, when that happens, I think the first thing that even sometimes when I'm like, "Ooh, this is like the third time today where we're having a meltdown." There's part of me, that's like, "Ooh, not again, here we go." Part of what helps get me through it is to realize that it's not you. It's the people or events that have caused the trauma that is now welling up inside of you. To recognize that it's not you being a bad person or anything like that, but it's those events and those people. It really helps put it into context and allows me to go, "Okay, hey, maybe this is the third time we're bawling our eyes out on the couch today, but that's okay. We have a rollercoaster ride ahead of us and we'll be there and get through the ups and the downs." I think that's one, just kind of having that context. Alyssa Scolari: Just reminding yourself and reframing like, "This is not that person. This is that person's trauma. That person is not fully present right now." David Scolari: Yep. Not letting the trauma define the person, you in this particular case. I think that's hugely important for anybody, that reframing that, putting it into context really allows you to see the person that you've fallen in love with. Alyssa Scolari: Well, how is it that you know and are able to tell when I'm dissociated, or when I'm not present? And how are you able to tell it's the trauma? Because I think some people out there, and I think, you don't have a background in trauma, right? You have no degree in trauma. This has been such a learning experience. I think that there are a lot of people out there that have zero experience with trauma, have a loved one who's been through trauma and like, how are they supposed to tell if it's dissociation and how are they supposed to calm their own defenses? How can they educate themselves? How can they calm their own defenses? Because I'm sure there are times when I am dissociated and there have been times where we have fought and you have lost your patience. What would you recommend for somebody who just has no understanding of even what dissociation is? David Scolari: Yeah. I think it's really having a conversation with the person who is going through that trauma, whether it's a friend or spouse or whatever. I think for you and me in particular, having conversations either outside of your episodes of crying or anger or whatever. Alyssa Scolari: After I've calmed down and grounded myself a little bit. David Scolari: Yeah. I mean, honestly I think it's ... I think I've learned the most, and again, maybe this isn't for everybody, but I've always learned the most about what you've been through and what you're thinking, or have felt at the time like right after we've kind of grounded you a bit and gotten you to a point where you've calmed down a bit, then we're able to like, we have some really good conversations that can go from anywhere from five minutes to maybe an hour or more. We kind of just break down like what you were feeling, what memories came back, and that has really helped me put things into context in terms of, "Oh, okay, this is what triggered this thought.' Or, "This is what welled up inside of you." That's really just added more and more context over the years that I've known you and we've been going through this process and yeah, just really helps put it all into context. Alyssa Scolari: I think one of the biggest takeaways from that is this, the concept that it's not going to be helpful to talk it out in the moment always. It's really important to try to help that person when they're really triggered or really dissociated to get to a state of calm first, because when I'm dissociated, there's really no talking it out with me because you won't win. Whatever you say, I hate it. In that moment you're not David, right, in my eyes. You're one of my abusers. In that moment, I can't stand you. Whatever you say is going to be wrong. It's going to make me worse. I'm not going to like it. I'm going to say something that's going to trigger you. Then, that's how blow ups happen. One of the things that you've really learned, which I think is going to be helpful for people to hear, is that it's not really about talking it out in the moment. It's about what can we do to ... How can I help this person to ground themselves and calm down, and then we will revisit this later. David Scolari: Absolutely. What, and I think you you've said this often, especially sometimes in the moment. Me, I'm a very logical sort of person. Alyssa Scolari: Ugh, are you ever. David Scolari: I always try and talk things out and you're like, "Listen, I totally, logically, get what you're saying. I hear you David, but I don't, like I can't feel that." With the disassociation, you may hear the words, you may agree with the words in some part of your brain, but another part of your brain is just blowing up and being like, "I don't care what you're saying. I'm just in this space right now where I'm hearing it, but I'm not processing it." Alyssa Scolari: Yeah. I think that's exactly it. Going back to even something that might not seem trauma related, like when we first got married and we, as David said, he is all about logic and I am all about like flying by the seam of your pants. Like, okay, let's not look at our bank account. Let's just get on a plane and go on vacation. David's like, "Okay, but the budget." Right? Speaking of budgets, when we first got married, he was like, "Okay, well let's create a budget." Because we really did not have, I mean, we were very poor when we, I think it's fair to say. David Scolari: Oh yeah. Alyssa Scolari: Yeah, we were extremely, extremely poor when we first started out. David Scolari: Nonprofits, surprisingly, don't pay a lot of money. Alyssa Scolari: Who would've thought? We both met working in a nonprofit and in that nonprofit I was an employee and David was a volunteer. We really were making like the salary of one person working at a nonprofit. David Scolari: Right. Probably more like a salary of somebody working at McDonald's or Wal-Mart. Alyssa Scolari: Yes, we were essentially making minimum wage. David was like, "Budget. We got to look at a budget." I, for, and now I kind of understand, I understand a lot more why now, but this is like three years removed. Back then, when we talked about a budget, I lost my ever loving shit. I mean, like shut down, cried hysterically, or got mad at him because he wanted to do a budget and I would refuse. That was a point of contention, like one of the biggest points of contention in our marriage, I think, when we first started out. It was a huge trigger for me. Now I understand why, but back then I had no idea. Again, it's not always helpful to try to figure it out in the moment, because logically I knew we had no money. I knew we had a ton of debt. And I knew that budgeting was the only way that we were going to be able to sustain ourselves. Emotionally, I mean, my emotions took over and I was incoragable. You couldn't talk to me about budgeting at all. I thought, I mean, I thought you were going to kill me. I'm sure you want to do at times. Because he would just say the B word, he would say budget, and he could just, right? David Scolari: Oh yeah. Alyssa Scolari: Like, you could just see the change in me. David Scolari: Yeah. Alyssa Scolari: You might not have the answers. You might not be able to talk it out in the moment, but I also think it helps you've learned a lot coming to therapy with me. It helps that I'm a trauma therapist so I've been able to teach you a lot about trauma. For the listeners out there, I don't think everybody kind of has that luxury of happen to be dating or married to somebody who specializes in trauma. One of the things that I think helped you and could help other people out there is go to therapy with your partner. David Scolari: Or find maybe like a support group or something. Alyssa Scolari: Yes. Because, it's very hard. If you are the one supporting the person through their recovery journey, it is very, very difficult and very taxing on the relationship. David has come to therapy with me. I think you learned a lot. You've read books on trauma. I think you've even learned a lot through editing this podcast. David Scolari: Yeah. Also, the nonprofit we worked for did a lot of trauma informed sorts of trainings, even though I myself am not a therapist. All employees did a lot of that sort of training because they wanted to be a trauma informed organization. Alyssa Scolari: Yep. Pick up a book, go to therapy, find a support group, because it's so important to recognize that this is very taxing for our loved ones who are trying to support us through this. What are some ways that you have found that help me and could potentially help other people with trauma, like ground themselves in the moment? David Scolari: Sure. I mean, listen, sometimes I am able to just talk it through a little bit and get you grounded that way. I would say the other way would, I mean honestly, be the dogs. I mean, they do the most ridiculous things during some of your most intense episodes there and it just causes us to laugh. I think that that moment of our dogs laying in the most awkward position possible coming up and licking your face or doing other things just gives that two second break in what you're going through, that dissociation, and kind of makes you laugh for a little bit. You might still be in that dissociation a little bit, but then I see really that you start to come down off of that dissociation because just the dogs and the situations and the things that they do or just they coming up and you petting them just really helps calm you down and kind of grounds you. Sometimes pets, other kind of external stimulus that can be, I don't know, relaxing, or just to kind of break that tension there in a dissociation, I think, can be really helpful or has been helpful for you. Alyssa Scolari: Yeah. I mean, I think redirecting me, sometimes you will get me out of the room that I'm in. Sometimes you'll encourage me to take a bath. Sometimes he will encourage me to work out even when I don't want to, and I might curse the entire time, but then after I do it, I feel better. I think that you help in a big way by taking care of a lot of like the, kind of like the mundane tasks around the house and making sure that I'm like fed and hydrated and taking my meds. You do a lot. I mean, there's a lot that you do that helps me be able to manage all of this. But with that being said, sometimes I think that supporters of those who have trauma, if they take on too much, then their plate gets overwhelmed and there is only so much you can take. Right? One of the reasons why the dogs helped me so much, just because dogs have never hurt me, right? Men have hurt me. Men have abused me. That's why sometimes, as great as you are, you're still a symbol for everything that has hurt me. Sometimes I want nothing to do with you. Sometimes I just need to be with my dogs. Sometimes, I will just verbally kind of assault you. What would you recommend for somebody who's in that position? For somebody who's sort of trying to support their loved one through their PTSD journey, but is also like, okay, I'm kind of at the end of my rope here as well, because I think we get to those spots too as a couple where it can be you're at the end of your rope, I'm at the end of my rope. Okay. Well now what? What do you recommend? David Scolari: I think the key here is really taking care of yourself. Yes. We're going to say that word self care, or maybe it's two words. Is it? Is it two words or is it one word, hyphenated? Alyssa Scolari: It's two words. David Scolari: Two words. All right, well. Alyssa Scolari: Self-care for you. David Scolari: Self-care for me, yes. Alyssa Scolari: Yes. David Scolari: I don't know, reading a book, playing video games, watching my own show that I like or something like that can just give me that mental little break to help me recover a little bit so that the next time you're having an disassociation or whatever, I'm mentally refreshed. I think that's key is, yes, taking care of the person who has that trauma, of course. Cleaning or cooking or making sure the person is taking their meds and encouraging them, sitting through with them as they go through a dissociation or an episode or whatever, those are all things that are important to do. You also, there is something to be said when we hear about self care is you got to take care of yourself before you can take care of somebody else. If you're not eating, if you're not taking a mental break, if you're not doing X, Y, or Z for yourself, that helps you physically and mentally, you're not going to be able to take care of the other person. I think that really is key, to do stuff for yourself. Whatever that may be. Alyssa Scolari: Yeah. I think that that's important because the supporters of those who are in recovery can't pour from an empty cup. I just want to be clear that what we're saying here is not drop everything that's important to you as the supporter and take care of the person going through recovery. It's trying to find a balance of supporting your partner while also taking care of yourself. Wouldn't you agree? David Scolari: Yes, ma'am. Alyssa Scolari: But then I also think that even with all of that being said, right, there are going to be times where it's still going to feel like too much. At that point there also, I think, should be a discussion. Wouldn't you agree? David Scolari: Yeah, sure. Alyssa Scolari: What does that discussion look like? It's not like, "I don't love you and can't help you anymore." Right? But also, like, you can't be expected as the supporter to lay down and kind of take, especially if you're the target, right? Just because we're supporting somebody through PTSD recovery doesn't mean that we kind of lay down and a doormat and allow ourselves to be targets for their anger or rage or whatever it may be. Sometimes we do that as trauma survivors. I do it. I've done it to Dave quite a few times. What do you recommend for people who find themselves in that position, but are afraid to speak up for fear that like, well, this person's already going through so much. I don't want to tell them that what they did hurt my feelings. David Scolari: Yeah. I mean, I think once that person has calmed down and grounded themselves, I think it's perfectly acceptable to then kind of go up and say like, "Hey, listen, I know you were going through that dissociation and whatnot. You were saying X, Y, and Z things because of the trauma you had in the past, but that really hurt." Or, "I didn't like the way you did this or said that." Because I think that's important because everybody's a human being, right? We all make mistakes and we all have feelings and emotions, whether we've been through trauma or not. You, as the support person, are more, are entitled to your feelings and entitled to respect and whatnot. We can understand that the person or the loved one, whoever they are, has been through trauma and is saying these things, again, as we mentioned earlier in the episode. Context is important and we can understand that they're saying this yelling, screaming, crying, saying things to you that may hurt your feelings because, not because again they're a bad person, but because they have had bad things done to them. That being said, you also are a human being who has emotions. You also are entitled to respect and to love and all that stuff. Yeah. Sometimes just saying it and hearing, being able to say like, "Oh yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I just was in the dissociation." Like, listen, I know that, I don't get, my feelings may be hurt, but at the end of the day I know it's not you being bad or trying to be mean to me intentionally. Yeah. But even just hearing that sorry, and like, yeah, that was a bridge too far just reaffirms that that love and respect that you have for me And I have for you when helps me move on. Alyssa Scolari: I guess my last question for you is of, it's been such a difficult process and such a hard thing for you to see me through and for me to go through, obviously. What would you say, because I noticed, and I think about this often that if you hadn't seen me through this, you'd be a very different person today. What about you and who you are has changed for the better because of what I've gone through and what you've supported me through? David Scolari: I think I've, one, become more open about talking about my feelings, which is something that I didn't do before I met you. I generally, I'm a private person. I don't like to talk about those things, but having met you- Alyssa Scolari: I'm doing a happy dance right now because it's so true. You didn't like to talk about anything. David Scolari: No, that's true. Alyssa Scolari: Now, here you are pulling stuff out of me. Sorry, I said I wasn't going to steam roll and I'm steam rolling. Go on. David Scolari: No, go right on ahead. It's your podcast. You can do what you want. Yeah. I think, one, talking about my feelings more, whether it's related to something that happened during a dissociation episode, or just something that happened at work or in life in general, just talking more about that, which I think has been extremely helpful for me to kind of be able to talk about and process those things. That's certainly something that's helped me keep me grounded and sane and whatnot. I think at the end of the day, as I learned more and more about you and I love you more each and every single day. Yeah. I think, I know when we started dating and whatnot you were always afraid of, "Well, if I tell him this happened to me or that I'm in therapy or this, he'll love me less." But I don't, I love you more each and every single day. Alyssa Scolari: It's given you a lot more patience. David Scolari: Indeed. Alyssa Scolari: I think it's helped to you to get to know me on a deeper level. David Scolari: Mm-hmm[affirmative]. Alyssa Scolari: It's helped me like in the same regards, it's helped me to get to know you on a deeper level as well. Well, thank you. I appreciate you coming on here, because I know that you're more of a behind the scenes kind of guy. But, it's definitely important. To all the trauma survivors out there, tell your supports how much they mean to you and to the ones who are listening who are supporters, you mean the world to us. We couldn't get through this process without supports in our lives. Thank you. As difficult as it may be sometimes, and I just want to point out that this is David's perspective. This is one person's perspective. Somebody else might feel differently about it. That's okay too. If anybody has any questions about what we talked about and questions for David, please feel free to reach out. You can reach out on my Instagram or my Facebook, or you can email me or go on my website, which is just the Alyssascolari.com. Feel free to ask questions, because this, I think, is a really important topic and not one that we have talked enough about. With that being said, very thankful for my husband, for Dave, for everything that he does for me. The podcast would not be possible without him. Yeah, I think that's all we got. I think that's a wrap. David Scolari: That's a wrap. Alyssa Scolari: The last thing that I wanted to just let you all know is that I have started a Patreon. You will see it in the show notes. We have really, really enjoyed, well, I have really enjoyed creating this podcast and creating this awesome content for all of you. I am honestly shocked that in less than six months this podcast has just taken off. It's taken off in ways that I never thought that it would. As it's gotten bigger and bigger, it's requiring much more time, much more effort, and quite a bit of money. I did start a Patreon. If you like what you hear and you are interested in contributing at all to that, I would greatly appreciate it. Any little bit counts and all the money goes towards really just helping to keep this content awesome. As great as it is, keep it high quality and to just keep things rolling out smoothly on a weekly basis. Just wanted to let you all know about that. Again, any contribution would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening everyone. For more information about today's episode, and to sign up for the Light After Trauma newsletter, head over to my website at Alyssascolari.com. The really great thing about being a part of this newsletter is that not only do you get weekly updates on new podcast episodes and blog posts, but you also get access to the private Facebook community as well as access to all sorts of insider tips, resources, and info graphs that supplement what we talk about on the show. You also can connect with me and other trauma warriors. I'm super active on the Facebook community. I look forward to talking with you. [singing].

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT I've yet to meet Jackie Walker in person, but in our chats over the phone and video, she's quickly impressed me with her knowledge, insights and enthusiasm for digital signage. Many of the people I've dealt with at big media companies speak an unfamiliar, very buzz-phrasey language that I barely grasp, but Jackie works for one of the biggest - Publicis Sapient - and speaks like normal people. Based in Houston, she's the head of strategy for that giant agency's work in what's called dining and delivery. That puts her front and center in planning out and then executing things like digital menu displays and the overall ordering experience at major QSRs. Drive-thrus and their digital displays were a big part of how many QSRs got through COVID lockdown periods - when in-store ordering was restricted - and now we're seeing a lot of operators who didn't have drive-thru adding that capability. Jackie and I had a great chat about the value proposition and ROI model for drive-thru display technology - including mashing up a lot of things like loyalty apps, readers and other technologies to customize or optimize what consumers see when they get in front of screens. If you sell into or service the QSR space, this is a valuable listen. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Jackie, welcome. We've spoken in the past and know each other a bit. I don't think we've actually met in person, and who does that any more?  You work for Publicis Sapient, and you've been leading strategy for digital menu boards for a couple of big QSR brands. What does all that entail?  Jackie Walker: Yeah, absolutely. Publicis Sapient, for those of your listeners who aren't super familiar with us, we are a digital business transformation firm. So we work with many brands, many QSRs in particular, around how they can use digital to really optimize the way that they are connecting with their customers. It's on a lot of fronts, there's some mobile work, of course, loyalty work, customer relationship marketing, all of these suspects. But I specifically have really been working very closely on digital menu boards which have been really interesting. The brands that I've been working with and I've now worked with five of the top twenty-five and different categories, right? A couple of the burger brands, a coffee brand, a chicken brand. What's really interesting, I think, for these larger brands is that they're really trying to push the envelope on what they're trying to achieve with their digital menu boards. But nobody has really figured out how to do that yet. So when we go in on the strategy engagements, we're really focused on the customer experience as a lens. So the team is generally, me, a couple of strategists, a product manager sometimes, and a couple of UX people, so visual designers and user experience folks who can really think about the way you organize an experience for our customer to make it super easy, and we really look at three lenses, right? We look at where the brand is from a brand identity customer experience perspective. So as they think about how to transition from just translating a print menu, which is generally the way that this starts, right? How do you move from translating a print menu to actually thinking about broader digital capabilities? So we try to understand where they are with that. What's their mobile experience? How do they think about this on their digital channels today?  We think about where they are from a technology standpoint. So that's really interesting work, right? Talking to their restaurant technology groups, sometimes their customer technology groups, trying to understand what they're doing from a loyalty standpoint, where they are with the point of sale capability where they are with their digital menu board vendor. If they're already down a path, so what are the capabilities they have and what do they don't have, and really thinking about those lenses so that we can get to a view on where they go from a user experience standpoint and then also, how do they continue to push the envelope as they build in more and more digital capabilities?  So you've talked about pushing the envelopes. When digital many boards first started being applied in larger QSR chains, it was all around the operational issues that changes could be made a lot more efficiently and you can do dayparting. I gather what you're saying is the larger brands, at least in their heads, are way beyond that now?  Jackie Walker: Yeah. It's a funny thing, right? I think we're still talking about some of those basics. Everybody thinks of Mcdonald's as the gold standard, which makes sense. They're the largest, they were the first to scale outdoors. But that's recent, right? So they just finished their rollout in the US at the beginning of 2020. So it's not actually that long ago that some of this hardware was being installed. So I think dayparting is still something that brands are very much thinking about. They're thinking about how to leverage dayparting. So if you look at the McDonald's menu, there are some obvious changes with the dayparts. You look at the background color, for example, breakfast is blue, lunch is yellow, dinner and late-night is black, right? That's the most obvious, but if you squint, you can't really tell the difference between the products that are laid out for lunch, dinner, and late at night. They're doing very subtle things with reorganizing products, but they're not really leaning into that capability yet. So as brands are starting to think about dayparting, thinking more about. What can you do from a business perspective with that? Can you do promotions that are specific to a time of day, right? Can you have a special late-night menu that has different pricing on some of your most snackable items, as an example, do you play with brand voice?  So some of these QSR brands really have quite playful brand identities. You think that some of these brands could have a really fun and differentiated late-night experience versus what they're trying to accomplish during lunchtime, that would be consistent with their brand. So still thinking about that, I think now the big thing is loyalty, and so with loyalty and I keep beating the drum on this one, that is really going to fundamentally change the drive-thru experience. Again, McDonald's pushing the envelope here.  They completed their national loyalty rollout in July, in the US, which is their largest market, and what's sneaky, and I don't know if everyone's recognized it is now in McDonald's app, you can actually set it up so that when you go through the drive-thru, you can pay with your stored credit card via your app. So you go to the window, just you go up to the menu board, just like you normally would, you talk to the crew member, you place your order. You give them this code, and now it's applying loyalty points. It's using any coupons or offers or points redemptions that you've applied but it also does the payment through that mobile interface, which is really interesting. It's subtle but if you think about the experience of a customer, they don't have to go to the pay window anymore at all. You've just really streamline that. You don't have to hand your credit card out through the window. You avoid all of that kind of silliness. So I think that's a really interesting change, and I think other brands are really going to be forced to emulate that, and that's going to be a huge shift.  Yeah, and that's part of it, right? If you have a lot of active use of your loyalty app, also blends payment in there when they get into the drive-thru lane long before they even get to the presale window, a system like what McDonald's bought with that Israeli company Dynamic Yield is that they pick that stuff up, they know that Jackie's back in and she's got her kids with her maybe or whatever, and when you get to the presale and when you get to the order window, they can dynamically recast that menu to suit your preferences or what they think might be your preferences and how they can upsell you on stuff? Jackie Walker: That's where it's headed, yeah. So no one is really doing that particularly effectively yet, but that is absolutely where it's headed. The challenge that a lot of these brands are still working on is customer identification, and we've been talking about that for so long, we used to talk about license plate recognition, still talk about Bluetooth. How do you figure out who's in the car? Are you creepy and use cameras? What are you doing? So brands are really still experimenting and figuring out what is the best tech for that. McDonald's right now is just doing a shortcode so the customer still has to do some work, they have to open their app, they have to see that code, they read it to the crew, right? Code is different every time. So you have to actually look to see it, in that transaction, what your code is.  But certainly even testing Bluetooth, DNKN is interesting. DNKN's been partnering with a company called Blue Dot not so secretly, which does pretty advanced geolocation. So they're actually using really tight geofencing to trigger customer identification and doing some customer greeting based on that.  So it would actually say, “Hi Dave, or Hey Jackie”? Jackie Walker: Exactly, which is, I think still a questionable use case, right?  Yeah. People will start looking in the rearview mirror and go, “okay, who's following me?”  Jackie Walker: Yeah, exactly. My favorite actually is not the “Hi Dave!” at the beginning, but the “Thanks, Dave!” at the end of the transaction like that's been a topic is how do you personalize that screen at the very end of the order confirmation, which is funny because if you actually sit in a drive-thru for a while and watch, which I do, because that's part of my job as the digital menu board super-nerd.   “Who's that strange woman standing in the parking lot?” (Laughter)  Jackie Walker: Oh God, Dave, I have so many funny stories. My husband always makes fun of me. It's like, “Excuse me, there's a suspicious woman in leggings and a Volvo in the drive-thru!” It's yeah, it's funny. But you realize that most customers have already driven away by the time that thank you sign presents anything, so they're not seeing that. So if you're investing a bunch of time and energy figuring out how you're personalizing that screen, all you're really doing is creeping everybody out because you're showing the next customer in line, the previous customer's information. That's an interesting thing, and then Tim Horton's is playing with scanners. So actually installing QR scanning hardware in the drive-thru lane, the customer opens their app, has the QR code open, and scans on the scanner, which I'm intrigued to see how that's going to go. I think there are definitely some pretty strong cons with that in terms of that hardware investment is not going to be small, and then, we've all done grocery checkout, self-checkout, and you try to scan something even in good lighting, that can be quite challenging. So now you have a mobile phone trying to scan in direct sun. I'm predicting, there'll be some challenges with that.  In Canada with snow and -30 and everything else.  Jackie Walker: Yep. Sticking your hand out the phone with a big mitten on. Edmonton in February doing that. I'm not sure it was going to be a big take-up, but you never know.  Jackie Walker: So I think, brands are, to go back to the original question, what are they doing? There are still a few basics, right? Let's figure out how we're going to identify the customer. Let's build that foundation. It's really about how we're going to use dayparting more effectively really, gets the promise of that, suggestive selling is another area. That's quite interesting. So we've been using those examples in the industry for 10 years. Show ice cream when it's hot out, show hot coffee when it's cold out, but now the technology is definitely there to do much more sophisticated things. So that's where things like McDonald's dynamic yield do come into play in a big way, is making some suggestions for customers that go well beyond what you could do with rules-based kind of recommendations, and then now it's like let's start using our imagination and getting creative.  What does personalization look like if you know a customer, do you make it really easy to reorder recent items? That's a great benefit for both the operator and the customer, right? So if you show somebody buys their Whopper Jr., mine is no pickle, no Mayo, with cheese, if you know that I order that every single time you show that on the board and you just say, I want my Whopper Jr. my way, and there's a POS integration for the crew member to hit one button. You just saved a bunch of time, and really provided some additional value for the customer. So I think those types of executions are going to be really interesting. Certainly in places like Canada, where you have a pretty substantial number of commuters who would go into a Tim Horton's every morning and they're going to order their Double Double or whatever it is, and they're not going to move off of that because that's what gets them on the road. To be able to just know that, okay, Dave's here and he's gotten his Double Double, and there's nothing involved other than payment, or maybe even not that if if you flash your phone right away. Jackie Walker: Absolutely. Yeah, it's really powerful, and it's those moments, I think that are going to be the most interesting or where there's clear value to the customer and there's clear value to the operator, right? Everyone benefits from that kind of investment.  Is that seamlessness a big part of it where there are different systems and it all just works and it makes your drive-thru experience better? Jackie Walker: That is I think the kind of gold standard and that's where it's headed. I think it's really interesting, for a long time, brands were buying digital menu boards and it was really, they're buying a piece of hardware, especially outdoor because everybody's really terrified about making this big hardware investment. You really focus on the hardware and then you get some software along for the ride and you hope that the software has the out-of-box capabilities that you need to do what you want to do with it.  I think now more and more brands are recognizing that that's not really how it's going to work for them. It's really about creating this customized experience that can integrate with their systems. It can integrate with their point of sale. It can integrate with their loyalty program. It can integrate with their master product data. These are really powerful benefits to an integrated system, that is software first and experience first and the hardware is just supporting it.  I'm curious about drive-thru right now because of COVID. Prior to COVID, the idea of selling drive-thru was that it could do all these things, here's the value proposition, and so on, and it was being marketed that way.  With COVID and the inability, at least in some jurisdictions, to even go inside to dine and order stuff, if you didn't have to the drive-thru, you were in a world of pain in terms of operating your business. Has that deferred the whole idea, that you could do all these things with it and just made it operational for the moment, or at least in the past year, we needed to put in drive-thru just so we could do transactions and sell food? Jackie Walker: Yeah, I think that was a huge benefit for QSR. You think about the drive-thru that was pre-built for COVID, it's the ultimate kind of contactless almost service method. So I think quick-serve has a huge advantage over other types of restaurants, even if you think about fast-casual where some of them may have had drive-thru or curbside pick up, but that was a very small part of their business, whereas quick service has been trying to optimize drive-thru for years and years, and spend a lot of time and energy and money investing in ways to make that channel more seamless. I wonder what's different now, and exciting is that the emphasis for a long time has been on the operational aspects of drivers. So how do you improve the speed of service and how do you improve order accuracy? Those are the two big things, and how do you drive throughput? Now there's this question and I think loyalty is a big part of the impetus for that. How do you create meaningful customer interaction? So not only how are you getting the customer the food they want, at the speed you want to get it to them and they want it to go. But how do you actually provide some additional value in that interaction and provide a differentiated experience? Which is exciting!  How would that work and look?  Jackie Walker: Yeah. So I think one of the things that's different about quick-service restaurants is that they still have a very large portion of their customers that are cash customers. You think about Starbucks, they've been extraordinarily successful at getting a ton of customers to just use mobile order pay and it's easy peasy. And then the challenge from an operation standpoint is just how do you get those mobile orders customers served quickly.  QSRs are going to have a steeper hill to climb with that. They're trying to drive digital adoption. They're trying to drive known customer rates, like what percentage of their customers do they actually know that are registered customers or credit cards that they can attribute to a customer. But that behavior of people is gonna start on mobile ordering everything. So far, there's not really any evidence that there's going to be consistent. Customers like deals and offers that provide a lot of value. But if there's a way that you can hook into deals and offers without the customer actually having to complete the transaction in the mobile app, that's really powerful. Drive-thru is all about impulse. I can just pull in and grab my thing and go, and I don't have to think about it. I don't have to sit here go through the fifteen steps and in a mobile app to order. So I think it's really going to be that balance between bringing forward that enhanced digital capability with loyalty, which includes reordering, personalized offers. It includes all of those things and bringing that to bear in the drive-thru lane itself, and the menu board becomes a very powerful tool in reinforcing those value adds.  If your customer is asking questions in the drive-thru you're in big trouble, right? So if you have a loyal customer, they don't know that you've registered with them, but you know it's them that's there, or they can't tell that you applied their points the way that they thought the points were going to get applied, to get a free ice cream cone you really create some significant operational challenges. So menu boards, I think, are becoming more and more of a tool to be able to reinforce to customers that you've got their back and things are going to be accurate in the way that they expect them to be. That's super powerful. Is there an easily defined, easily sold, and easily acknowledged ROI model now for these drive-thru displays? Because by and large, they are being put in by the local franchise owner, not the head office, so that there's a significant $10-30k infrastructure investment to do this, and local operators are looking at this one and going, “I didn't save for that,” or, “Why would I do this?” or “What am I going to see?”  Jackie Walker: Yeah, I will say that there does seem to be a pretty big sea change with regard to the franchisee's state of mind when it comes to this investment. I think there's real acceptance and I've worked with a couple of brands now where the initiative is spearheaded at the brand level, right? There's much more power when it comes from the brand and that capability is built centrally. The franchisees are just footing the bill for installation in their individual restaurant or set of restaurants but the franchisees are basically saying, let's go faster. How fast can I get this thing installed? And, they can't go as fast as the franchisees want them to go.  I think what's interesting with the ROI model, in the early days, the math worked better for indoor because the capital investment indoors is a lot cheaper. There's a little bit of the cost savings of printing and having people up on ladders and the liability that goes along with that, the inflexibility of print. You could make a pretty good case for the return on investment with those indoor boards on cost alone. With drive-thru, your capital investment is quite a bit higher because the hardware has to be much more rugged to be able to withstand that outdoor environment. I think what is shifting is now the value prop is not just about the cost savings and the increased flexibility. But it's also about the direct upside. So now that you have these additional digital capabilities, how do you actually build a customer's check by adding capabilities that are unique to digital? So getting really strong with the way you're using day partying or really thinking about suggestive selling and how do you do that in a consistent way, which is really driving. How do you encourage customers toward your more premium menu items? And you can get quite sophisticated in the way that you use that channel to build checks. Is there an acknowledged metric around that? So pulling this out of my head, if you make this investment, it should pay for itself in the first 18 months or the first 26 months or whatever it is?  Jackie Walker: Yeah, the economics depend a little bit on the restaurant, but generally the kind of rule of thumb has been, you're going to get like a 3% to 5% lift just by moving from analog boards to digital because the customer experience is just much better. I think the challenge is that wears off eventually is your customers get used to digital. You don't have that Disney effect on the third visit and fourth visit. But over time, it's all about driving that incrementality and the numbers are hard there, Dave, because a lot of people don't want to share. The brands don't want to share how successful or not successful their suggestive sales capabilities are. But generally speaking, it's all about driving that ticket over time, and then you can do the work back on the break-even time.  But I think in general, what you said 18 to 24 months is in most cases probably about right.  And I'm sure as in many things, the other QSR operators, regardless of category or size, pay very close attention to what the giants do, like a McDonald's and if they're doing a full rollout across their whole estate, across the United States, they're not doing that for giggles and they've thought this through? Jackie Walker: Absolutely. With the ROI model, part of it is, what is the direct benefit, from an economic standpoint, but then the other part of it is very much keeping up with the Joneses kind of mentality or keeping up with the McDonalds in this case. How do you actually ensure that you're meeting customer expectations because once customers get used to that slick experience, you pull into a random Taco Bell with a ten-year-old backlit WITH half of them are blown out and they're all scratched up and dingy, customers do notice that stuff? So I think there is a little bit of just leveling up that guest experience and it is going to be contagious.  All the big brands are really starting to think about how they do this, and I think now with the price of hardware coming down and the big players converting, so McDonald's is already there, RBI is rolling out across Burger King, Popeye's, and Tim Horton's, they're going to be the next big player to reach scale. It's really just a matter of when, and not if everyone's going to go digital on these drivers.  So let's talk about inside the store. We talked mostly about drive-thru displays, but inside the store, digital menu boards have been around a lot longer, but they're changing too because you're going to see a lot more service ordering and a lot more pickup and you need digital menu boards that have to also function as queue management or notification, right?  Jackie Walker: Yeah. So I think what's happening is there's actually a proliferation of use cases if you want to think about it that way. So the digital menu board at the front counter is really just about providing a menu to customers that are in the restaurant and you're right, it's pretty well understood. I think that's interesting when I talk to customers about drive-thru, they get really excited about its personalization, and the word I always pushed to use is optimization even more than personalization because you get the benefit for unknown guests as well. But once you get that working like a well-oiled machine, you start to understand customer behavior at the store level, you can actually apply those same principles at the front counter, right? So you're not targeting your messaging to an individual customer because that front counter board is meant to be a one-to-many experience, but you can 100% tailor that experience to the restaurant. So you can curate the menu for the types of purchase behavior that exists in that store or that type of store. So I think the front counter is going to continue to evolve, with regards to that, to become a little bit more curated benefiting from the investment at the drive-thru.  The kiosk is another huge piece. I laugh and I think we've talked about this before, when COVID started everyone thought, oh my God, it's like the death of kiosks, nobody's ever going to touch it, touch screen ever again. But actually, it's done quite the opposite as we've understood better, that face-to-face is much worse than touching a screen and using some hand sanitizer. But what's interesting is that from a rollout perspective. Brands still think of kiosks as very different from menu boards, which I find fascinating. The way that it ends up shaking out is, brands think about their mobile experience and most brands are furthest along on mobile ordering. Then when they think about kiosks, it's the app, but on a big screen and a lot of brands actually manage it that way. So it's not the in-store tech groups that are managing that kiosk, it's actually the digital groups, the customer experience, technology groups that are delivering them. And then you have the menu boards and they are very much firmly still in the restaurant technology side of the house. So there are different problems to solve altogether. I think more and more, there's going to be a little bit of consolidation across that. I always encourage customers to think about as you're doing drive-thru, you're building these mechanisms from a backend standpoint to actually deliver curated content and be smart in how you're merchandising product dynamically. There's absolutely a play for that on front counter boards and a play for that on kiosks, and the kiosk is after all another piece of in-store hardware, and then to your point, Dave, there are these other use cases, right?  So are brands going to start to put more queue management screens up like McDonald's has, where they have now served these customer numbers and they have the list for in-store and list for mobile. Do they start to do some things with digital displays near pickup areas as more and more customers are starting to use take-out options? I've even heard some thought around, are there going to be digital screens at mobile pickup? I'm still not sold on that one. Like a sign made out of metal does just great for, telling you a customer where they need to park. We'll see who's able to first define a use case that has a clear ROI for putting screens at those parking spots.  The last thing I wanted to ask about was some fundamentals around digital menu boards. One of the things that I've found through the years and seems to be getting better as people learn is you have these eye charts that they try to cram so much stuff into a single display that you really can't read anything and it's mentally overwhelming, you look at it and go, oh my God, I'll just order the thing that I've got in my head and get the hell out of here.  Is that sort of thing important? Color choices, font choices, certainly the volume of text, the size or point size, all those things? Jackie Walker: 100%. Yes, and I think I'm glad you asked this question because this is my favorite question, right? If you look at how most of the brands: McDonald's is a good example, Burger King is a good example. It looks like the problem they've been trying to solve is how do you jam all the shit that you had on six panels print now on to two or three digital screens. Like if you just look at it, you can see that's what they thought they were trying to do. Really the opportunity with digital menu boards is to get more precise about what the content is because you can have advanced analytics, you can link what you display to a customer to a transaction. You can start to have a much better data-driven merchandising strategy. So you can really think about the use case for the drive-thru, which to your point is you have a customer that's freaked out, they're going to be in front of that board for probably 10-15 seconds looking at it at a peak time before they start talking or the crew member starts talking to them. So if you're trying to show them 85 SKUs, there is no way that any human is understanding 85 SKUs in 10-15 seconds. So the opportunity is really about curation, and I think when we approach menu board design, we don't think about it from an old-school menu sings print menu point of view. We think about it from a digital frame of reference.  How do you guide wayfinding for a customer? How do you establish a kind of system design and a foundation that's going to allow the operator of the brand to substitute products in and out and see how they perform when they're in these different slots? Think about designing a poster, you think about designing a digital framework. I think curation is key. That's that to me really all of these personalization tactics that you talk about, it really comes back to how do I show less stuff that's more meaningful and the tactics are all different ways of getting at that problem. So I think that's what's most exciting about the move to digital menu boards is we can start playing there and as an industry get much smarter about how you actually serve the customer at that moment? How do you show them the least amount of information to get them through success? Either help them get what they wanted to get, they knew they wanted, or inspire them to try something new. Build tickets, improve their level of confidence. These are all the things that become front and center in this new digital menu board experience. All right. Super interesting. I appreciate you taking the time.  Jackie Walker: Lots of fun. Dave, always looking forward to talking to you soon and maybe meeting you in person.  Yes. If we ever travel once again and do things like Trade Shows.  Jackie Walker: Amen. Thanks so much, Dave.  

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions Listener Lisa asks, Hi Dave and Jamison! How do you answer the statement “You're very quiet. Like really quiet”? Me? I tend to give a small smile or recently, I said “I know.” I'm a software developer in a large defense company and I'm on my third and final year of my rotational program. I just rotated back to the same area as my first rotation, so I know a couple of folks. However, I'm not SUPER close to these people. My team is fairly new, but most of the members started at the same time, unlike me, who started just three weeks ago. I want to try to know people and get close to them, but at the same time I know my energy lowers after a couple interactions. I have always been known to be quiet, but I don't want to be known as the odd developer out on my team. The team seems to already know and like each other. I still talk, but only when I have things to say. I tend to stick to doing actually work, while others walk around and talk to people. Especially in the environment I work in, I assumed that we should limit ourselves to mostly chargeable time because we would have to make up the time we spent talking about unrelated work topics. It also doesn't help that most of my team sit around each other, while I'm in a separate area. I think it would just be awkward for me to stand over their area just to talk, then having to make up that time later on. Should I just accept that I'm mostly an introvert even though I want to belong/to be part of the team? I feel like I want to talk to everyone, but at the same time I sometimes can't relate to what they're talking about or I'm just not interested in some of their topics. Aside: I feel like there's a lot of extroverted developers here and it's different from what I'm used to. Hiya! I haven't listened too all your episodes, but out of the ones I've heard, it seems like you both suggest quitting our jobs. How many jobs have you quit? My dad had told me a couple years ago (when I was looking for a job) is that if you quit too many times, potential employers would think that you aren't committed or are only looking to get more money. Is this the case? Will companies think that if I quit multiple times?

Psalm 23:6 “Better Than I Deserve” Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I love a phrase Dave Ramsey uses on his radio programs-- He will greet a caller with a kind hello, and almost every time, the caller will say “Hi Dave, How are you?”-- This is actually pretty odd to me, as I actually have called into a radio program to ask a specific question-- Now as a podcast producer and host, I would want the caller to just get to the question, and skip the pleasantries-- Dave almost always says- “Better than I deserve… what can I do for you?” Jesus shows time and time again that He can and will provide for those who follow Him. Just as a shepherd provides for the sheep, so does Jesus provide for His followers. No better description of this exists than Psalm 23. It's been a wonderful journey these last few weeks. If you happen to have missed an episode, I highly encourage you go back and listen to the entire set. It's been a great honor to produce these teachings, and a great reminder to all of us how much God loves and cares for us. Scholar's believe David is an older man when he wrote this Twenty-third Psalm. He had seen tragedies and disappointments, but he also had come to know God - The shepherd who gives to his children more than they deserve. Think about this great summary I found from another pastor: provision - I have all that I need; peace - I have rest from a weary journey; protection - I have safety from my enemies; providence - I have guidance in times of confusion; presence - I have a companion when the way is lonely; paradise - I have a home awaiting me in heaven. David knew that God was with him in green pastures, beside him at the still waters, before him at the table, behind him pursing him with goodness and mercy, beyond him preparing a heavenly home, and with him all the while as the good shepherd. David had been given more than he deserved. Encouragement Positive mental attitude Enthusiasm, Dreamer, Coach, Mentor, Friend Charlesrgrimes@gmail.com charlesrgrimes.com Twitter: @charlesrgrimes https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-grimes-2b78444b/ https://www.instagram.com/encouragers_united/ https://www.facebook.com/EncouragersUnited/?modal=admin_todo_tour https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS-40nUSl9SCekbbhk3FzYw?view_as=subscriber Encourage Everybody is a paper goods & gifts brand that creates unforgettable products that allow you to be creative, have fun and encourage everybody! We believe in the energy and the warmth of the written word to change the world one letter at a time! From a simple sentence to a palace of paragraphs, pick up a card and encourage a loved one! encourageeverybody.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/encouragers-united/message

Do you feel like you may be flying blind when it comes to navigating the health of your culture? Well, today's guest admits he was. Yet he wanted to create a culture his staff could thrive in. Listen in as he describes the key steps that he took to move his workplace culture to one of the healthiest that we've worked with. Thanks for listening in! I'd like you to listen closely: I'm going to give you the two-syllable abbreviation of one of the healthiest, flourishing organizations BCWI has ever worked with. Are you ready? The two syllables are . . .   StuMo. . . . StuMo, short for Student Mobilization.   To tell the story of their stunning, flourishing culture is my guest, Dave Riner, CEO, and President of Student Mobilization. Hi Dave, and welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.   Find full show notes here http://bit.ly/daverinerstumo Share the love. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it on Apple Podcasts and write a brief review. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-flourishing-culture-podcast/id1060724960?mt=2  By doing so, you will help spread our podcast to more listeners, and thereby help more Christian workplaces learn to build flourishing cultures. Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on Twitter https://twitter.com/allopus Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allopus/ Email our host at info@bcwinstitute.org 

Register for the next LIVE episode at ClubHouseWithRussell.com Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: Hey, what's up everybody. It's Russell. Welcome back. I hope you liked the last episode. What you think about a live version of the marketing secret show? Anyway I hope you guys enjoyed it. First off, I think it brings a different energy level. When I know it's live, I got to show off to all the people I get to see their faces. It's hopefully you guys enjoyed that part of it. And hopefully, went to clubhousewithrussell.com and when registered so that you, that way, when we do the next live podcast, you can be on it. So that's the first thing. And then number two is, this episode we're actually going to share the Q and A's, there's about 40 minutes of Q and A with people who were there. And so in the future, if you want me to answer your questions, like, come on the show, go to the clubhouse with russell.com register, show up on the show, and then I'll talk about a concept and then we'll open the lines for Q and A. And you see some people got hot seats coaching sessions during this Q and A, which is really fun. But I think the reason I want to share these with you here, because I think most of the conversations that happened, there's something that each of you could learn from those conversations. So I hope you enjoy it. And again, if you do, make sure again, go to clubhousewithrussel.com and register, and that way you can potentially be on our next live show and get your questions answered. So with that said, theme song, we come back, you guys will have a chance to do the Q and A, for part two from our last episode, which we talked about the real secret behind the value ladder, and you hear everybody's questions and hopefully we get some gold for you in the conversations. With that said, queue up the theme song, and we'll see you guys soon. I don't normally do a lot of Q and A cause I just always get nervous that someone's going to ask me one of those questions. And so, but we're going to do it. Yhennifer, is going to help me out here. We're going to bring some of you guys up to stage. So if you've actually... Yhennifer, what's the process, they want to ask a question to come stage, they have feedback, or they want to talk about their value ladder or whatever, what's the process? How do we play this game? Yhennifer: Yeah. So let's do this. So this is the process guys. There is the little hand in the bottom. I see it going up the numbers. So make sure that if you want to ask a question or add on to this conversation and bring some value, you can actually raise your hand. We'll start bringing up five people at a time, and then we will let you ask your questions. So make sure that you also invite some new people, right? We can still invite people as we're here on this call. Everybody will get a chance to listen in this awesome value. And then one more thing I want to share before we bring people up, is that a reminder that this is being recorded, so this conversation is going to be recorded and let's see, we're going to bring up a few people as you come on here, please mute yourself. And we'll unmute you one at a time, that way there is no static in the background. Yhennifer: Okay. All right. We got a few people that we invited on this stage. So we'll start with the first one, Stacy. Stacy is a health coach Institute founding partner, bootstrap from startup to 270 amazing team members. So welcome Stacy to the call. We're so excited to have you here. What question do you have for Russell? Stacy: Hi Russell. Russell: Hi Stacy? Stacy: I haven't followed you in a long, long time so I'm excited to finally get to talk to you. Russell: Oh, really good. Stacy: My question is when you are first introducing someone into your ecosystem and you have this product suite, do you have a value ladder that you present at the beginning? So just real quick, ours is, we have a call center, so we're doing cold traffic to a call center basically. I mean, we have a Funnel in all of that, but just in the beginning, people seem surprised that we're a school. So they take the initial program and that there'll be graduate programs on non and ours are all pretty high ticket offers. We're not doing $27. Our first program is like $5,000, but still we want them to be able to ascend. And so do you have an Ascension map and saying, "Hey, you're going to be here for the long term. Here's what it looks like." Russell: Yeah, definitely. Stacy: That makes sense question. Russell: Good question. So a couple of things. So I'm going to answer two folks. One of them answers your question. One will answer probably people whose businesses may not have started at 5,000. So I'll kind of answer both ways and then we can go deeper. But so in our world we have so many front end offers because I love creating front end offers. And so we're driving traffic to front end offers plus the events all over the place. And so what happens to someone, they couldn't click on an ad and they made the first thing they see is just our events or a high-end coaching, excuse me, or something like that. So whenever they do that, it goes through that initial sequence of three or four emails that are tied to that Funnel. And then they're done, it drops them into a followup Funnel that starts at the very beginning of our value ladder. And so it's a 60 email sequence that I wrote that I sat down and said, "Okay. If my mom was to come into my world, she doesn't want a Funnel. Is she barely knows an Instagram is, what would be the process? How would I grab her hand and take her through this process? What would it look like?" And so the first thing I would do is I would show her this video on YouTube that I did that actually explains this concept. Then number two, I would show her my book. Number three, I would have listen to these three podcasts episodes. Number four... And I sat down and mapped that out, where I would take my mom if she was coming into my world for the very first time. And so we wrote that out and it took a long time. It was kind of a pain, but it was worth it. We wrote a six email sequence that takes them through all of the Funnels and the videos and the podcast things in order that I think is the best strategic order. So I'm go through them and a rolled those out put them in a sequence. And now everyone joins my world. They may get like one or two emails about whatever the thing is that they registered for. And it was done. It drops into that sequence and it takes them through the path that slowly sends them through all the core offers and training and everything we have a in the most strategic order. So that's kind of the first half of it. The second side, I think you were more talking about is when someone comes in and they pay 5,000 and you have this Ascension yeah, for me, I used to have multiple high-end coaching programs until a year and a half ago, or maybe two years ago, we took down the Inner Circle, but at Funnel Hacking Live, we're kind of reopening three programs. We have our two Common Club X our Inner Circle in our category Kings. And inside of that, everyone's going to know that like, here's the Ascension, right? If you're a zero to a million dollars before you got a two comma club award, this is where you live, you live in two comma club X until you've gotten that. And you've earned it, now you move up to Inner Circle. And the Inner Circles from a million to 10 million, that's where you live to get 10 million. And from there, you send up to a category King and so they see that and it's in front of them. And the more you talk about it, the more you mentioned it, the more people naturally want to send up. In fact, when I launched my Inner Circle, most of the marketing happened on my podcast. I would just talk about my Inner Circle members all the time. And people start messaging me. Like, "I just want to be in the inner circle so bad." And they kept seeing that that was the essential naturally wanted to go. And so I just talked about all the time. I put those people on my stages. I told stories about them and the books I told about them. And I was always just talking about my Inner Circle members. And naturally, people keep seeing that. And they certain wanting to, this is what I want to go. This is the path. This is the journey I want to go on. And so, anyway, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's kind of how we structure it for people to be able to see. Stacy: You did. You just totally sparked something for me that I wasn't thinking about before. Thank you so much. Russell: Sweet. Well, great to meet you officially. Thanks for hanging out. Yhennifer: Thank you Stacy for being here. Awesome. So now we're going to move on to Ryan Peterson. So Ryan is a digital marketing strategist, voice of the Entrepreneur Secrets Podcast and holds up the one percent summit. Welcome Ryan. Ryan Peterson: Hey, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me up. Yeah. Russell, my question which is people who are starting out start on their value ladder. I mean, mapping it out is one thing, but where should I really focus my efforts and energy to get the most value, I guess for myself? Russell: So wait, say that again, your phone broke up a little bit. So you're saying you have your value out, you mapped it out. Where should you be focusing on? Is that what you said? Ryan Peterson: Yes. Exactly. Like what stage of the value ladder should I be focusing on? Russell: So show me where your business is right now. How much do you have built out? Where's it at right now? Ryan Peterson: Yeah, so right now, I have a podcast that is been a little difficult to going to create content daily and whatnot with had a baby recently in any way. And then I had a summit that I launched was a lot of fun and what I realized I don't have a next stage of my value ladder built out yet. And sitting back and thinking about it. I figured I should have thought out kind of the more pillars of my value ladder before I really start on the front end. And I'm assuming I was probably premature in building out the beginning of my value ladder without something more valuable towards the end, if that makes sense. Russell: Got you. I know where that's coming from. So I'd say a couple of things. I do think it's important people to start publishing and doing a summit or something initially, just because it gets momentum, gets you talking to people, finding your voice, like in our coaching programs, we start with that. But then the next thing is, you're saying, where do I make money, right? Where should I focus at? And so it's funny because when I first, this is like always been my biggest fear with talking about a value ladder is, if I can remember when I wrote the Dotcom Secrets Book, my first group of people that came into coaching afterwards was like, "Okay, Russell. So first I'm going to write my book, then I'm going to do my thing. And when they had the whole value ladder and all the stuff they were going to do." And I was like, "Wait, what?" The book is the hardest thing ever. Took me a decade to write a book. Don't start there. That was the biggest thing. Or they were trying to get all the things in place before the launch, any of it. And I'm a big believer nowadays. I try to guide as many people as possible. It's like, "Start at the very beginning." Where if you're doing a summit, doing podcasts, whatever, just to get the motion, getting into momentum. And then for me, the thing that I think is the best and just can be different for everybody. But for me, it's doing something about the thousand dollar price point and doing a webinar for it, right? Because I obviously love webinars, but that's where I focus at. Or if... I guess partially depends on the skill set of the entrepreneur, right? If you think you can be good at a webinar, that's where I would lead as my first big thing that I'm going to be spending a lot of money on, driving traffic and stuff like that. Some people are better on phone, right? If that's the case, I've started the higher ticket offer. Some people are horrible on the phone, horrible presenters, if so, I would do more of a traditional sales Funnel, where it's more written copy and stuff like that, kind of depending on your skill set, but I would definitely be picking one of those. I don't think you did out of order. I think the order's correct. I think it's starting publishing, is doing a summit because the summit introduced you as your dream 100, you get to know people, you start building a little bit of list. And now with that list, now you're able to go back and say, "Okay. Hey guys, my webinars starting come registered for my webinar. You have a chance to test it against traffic who knows who you are." And the second phase is, "Okay, here's all the people I interviewed in my summit. Now it's dream 100. Now, let's do a promotion to each of their lists, promoting the webinar, right?" And then that starts getting webinars better and cleaner and more efficient. And then the third step now is like, "Okay, I promote to my list. I promoted my dream one hundreds of lists. Now I'm going to go out and start buying Facebook ads or buying traffic to push people to the webinar." That's literally how we launched Clickfunnels. It was exactly that, right? I spent a lot of time building relationships with people through summits and other things. And then when Clickfunnels launched, we did a big webinar to our own list, made a bunch of money, which our dream 100 list made a bunch of money. And it wasn't till, I think we were probably year, year and a half into Clickfunnels before we ever bought our first ad. And before that it was all just focusing on those relationships we built through our own efforts. And so I think I would probably recommend something similar for you as you've done the first two steps. If you've done a summit, you got some relationships now, now it's like, okay, go and build your webinar or whatever the bigger one is. And now you can leverage your list and your relationships to launch it. And then from there you start transitioning to paid ads. Does that make sense? Ryan Peterson: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much. That was invaluable. Russell: Very cool. No worries. Thanks for hanging out. Yhennifer: Awesome Ryan, thank you for being here. Now, we're going to bring up Mark. Mark helps real estate agents and teams to automate processes using workflows to scale their businesses while protecting their families time. Mark, what is your question? Welcome to the call today. Mark: Well, first off I just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you, Russell, for what you have done. Honestly, I am the product of the value ladder. I had zero comprehension of what you do and have done all these years until November. And I've spent the last 30 years developing software for real estate agents using what we call workflows and it's different than Funnels and stuff like that, but it has some similar. Not sure where I needed to go. And whenever I saw, I forget what it was that actually started at first, there was some kind of free thing that you had. Then I got the three books. I read through the three books. I did the one Funnel away challenge twice. We've already signed up for Funnel Hacking Live. I want to be on the two comma club by September, if not, I mean, it will be September of next year whenever you have it. But the whole idea of the frameworks that you brought to me, I just want to say thank you. Russell: That's awesome. Mark: It's just been amazing what it has spurred in my mind because of what you have taught, not only the free stuff but even the low level price stuff. I mean, just amazing. So I would love to buy you a dinner sometime and just take your brain. I know everybody else does too, but golly, you do not know what you have done to touch my life in the lives of my family. So just want to say thank you. Russell: That's amazing. I like you for that. I appreciate that. We've got a shot. If you would ask me a question to pick my brain right now, we got a moment. Mark: Well, you start talking about the frameworks and stuff, that was my biggest aha, was the frameworks, was the four core pieces of, four core strategies and I've come up with details and stuff. And right now it's just content. I'm just trying to build the content. And I am failing in providing that on a regular basis, but I'm in the muck of building other content. And I started the idea of building a book. And then you made some kind of comment in a previous thing. It's like, put that off until later. It's like, okay, I'll put that off the later. But I am building kind of the topics of that and that'll come eventually, but man, it's just like a light bulb went off and my energy has just gone through the roof. My wife is saying, who is this guy? Russell Brunson, because he has changed my husband. And it's just been amazing. So that's all I wanted to say. Which is thank you. Yhennifer: Okay. Russell: Thank you, man. I feel great. Thank you. Yhennifer: Russell, this is the part where you put the mic drop, you do the thing in the background. Russell: There we go. I appreciate it. Yhennifer: Thank you, Mark for being here. We appreciate you so much and see you at Funnel Hacking Live. Awesome. Russell: Absolutely. Yhennifer: Now, yeah, we're going to bring on Ms Bates. She is a certified life coach. Best-Selling author. Master EFT practitioner. Welcome today to this call. Let us know what you have for Russell. Any questions? Welcome. Ms Bates: Well, thank you. So Russell, I love you. I know it's a crazy way to start but, I just do. Oh my God. Yhennifer: That got real weird, real fast. Ms Bates: I know. It's just amazing. You have been such an inspiration to me. I'm a solopreneur and I'm just so grateful for everything that you've done and that you put out. Russell: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Ms Bates: So here's my question. I'm a solopreneur and I've been working on different lead magnets. I've been testing different things like meditations or like do's and don'ts lists. But my question is once someone is in that Funnel, right, they go through that. My desire is to have them come to me for one-on-one coaching and then to put them into a group coaching program. And I'm wondering what the length of my email sequence should be. Russell: Got you. So walk me through what it looks like right now. So they come through a lead magnet and from there you're selling them into a high end thing. Is that right? That's the first thing? Ms Bates: Right. Russell: And what's the price point of the higher end thing? Ms Bates: The price point of the high end thing. It's a six months, $6,000. So if that is something that's out of their price range, then I down sell them into a group. Russell: Got you. And then what's the price on the group? Ms Bates: And the price on the group is 199 a month or 1997 for the year. Russell: Very cool. Do more people want to do the one-on-one work with you or the more do the group or is it kind of a just... Ms Bates: More people want to do the one-on-one work with me. I'm starting to try to move away because what I'm looking to do is scale, right? Which of course my time I can do more with a group than I can with the with the one-on-ones. So that's, I'm just trying to figure out how long I should be nurturing them? Russell: Yeah. The reality is especially those are the two core things you're selling. It's not so much how long do I do it for, it's part of everything you're doing right? It becomes part of your communication. You should be talking about it at everything. Do you know what I mean? For a long.. So it's not just like a 10 day or 30 day email sequence or whatever. It should be weaved into everything you're doing. So every communication, every email, every podcast, everything you're doing is always talking about these things and the people you have a chance to work with. I'd almost flip it around because you're going six... Are all the sales happening on the phone right now, or people buying just organically yet? Ms Bates: Nope. They're all happening on the phone. So it's all me like I'm doing the sales call, I'm doing everything. Russell: Is it what you got? Or do you like it? Ms Bates: I'm kind of falling in love with the sales part of it. So I want to get good at that before I outsource that. Russell: Yeah. Because I would almost flip it around a little bit where let's say, because you're saying you're into EFT as well, right? Is that what the coaching is based on that or something different? Ms Bates: Yeah, it primarily is based on that. Russell: Oh, very cool. So if I was doing it, I would make friends that are tied to specific things, right? Because I'm assuming you're doing tapping for, like you focusing on anything or is it like just kind of tapping as a whole? Ms Bates: Yeah. So for whatever reason, my focus has lately been it's multilevel marketing that are in the mid tier and they're having blocks getting to their next level. And so trauma resilience is a part of my passion and I know that those kinds of blocks show up for people. So I help people power through that and then get to the next level. Russell: Very cool. So I'd almost have something where the front end is tapping for trauma or for whatever it is, like something that comes in there. And then the first thing I would try to sell them is the $200 a month program. It's similar to that. I think that's if going to Annie Grace, she's the alcohol experiment. If you look at her model kind of Funnel hacker, that's what she's doing. She has a webinar right now that sells I think it's the same price 200 bucks a month. Or they can buy a year for, what is that? I think a year for 1997 for two grand, basically I believe is what her model is and that's where everyone goes through initially. She's not talking to those people, it's all being sold through a webinar and then after they've gone through like an hour long webinar, some signups some didn't. But then from there, the next part of the sequence is like, "Hey, if you're interested getting one-on-one help with me, go fill out the application here." And what'll happen is a couple of things, is it you'll start making money on a whole bunch of people you never talked to, which is nice, right? That's the first step. And the second step is that then when you start getting people on the phone, those people are going to be way easier to close because they sat through a 90 minute webinar with you. They’ve seen the value in those kinds of things. The craziest thing is when we... So I had my first big coaching program, my Inner Circle I ran that and it was a lot of work we had, I don't know, 20 or 30 people in it at a time. And then that's about time to Clickfunnels' launch. Clickfunnels launched. And it was a 90 minute webinars selling a thousand dollar product. And we started doing that like crazy. And then what was insane is that somebody will watch the 90 minute webinar side of Clickfunnels, found my coaching page on the thank you page and start applying. And my program went from 30 people to a hundred people in like two months. Like it was just caught on fire because the sales calls now easy. They're like, "We just watched Russell those 90 minutes. We want that." I was like, "Okay." And we're trying to sell them. Literally this is my credit card. I don't need any selling. It became so easy because the webinar pre-framed them. And again, not everyone's signed for coaching. Tons of people bought Clickfunnels there. And then the cream of the crop rose up and they came and they were ready. It's almost like if you flip your model a little bit, I bet you'd have more success because first off you going to making money off people who you haven't talked to you and the people you talk to, you're going to be more pre-framed to actually come in and buy from you. Ms Bates: Thank you. So the invitation initially is for the webinar or do I still put them through, like go through the freebie and then to the webinar and then to the group on, so you're up moving back this up, you're saying make the offer on the webinar for the group and then an application to one-on-one coaching. So that's my offer? Russell: Are you in a webinar right now or? Ms Bates: No, I'm not doing a webinar. Russell: So first thing I do is whatever you do and I'll keep doing it because you don't want that to stop. Like somebody to be like, take your eye off the ball. I keep doing that. Just it's working. Don't mess with that. So that's for sale. On the side, I would start creating webinars specifically to sell your $200 a month program. And then you start driving traffic directly to that and that'll become this new path. And then when that past making more money than the other one, then I would transition everything over. But don't mess with those working right now. Because it's working, I don't want to affect your business, but this is how I think long-term, this will become something that will be much more sustainable, more powerful for you. Does that make sense? So that's kind of how I would do it. Ms Bates: It does. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I love you again. Russell: No worries. Love you too. Thanks for hanging out. Yhennifer: Awesome, Ms. Bates, I'm glad that you got your question answered guys. Just a reminder, you guys can add some people onto this call. We're still going to be here for a few more minutes. We're so excited to be here. Guys? Russell is dropping some nuggets, okay? People pay thousands of dollars to get this coaching. So I'm so excited for all you guys that get a chance to ask Russell questions. So now we are going to bring Richard. Richard is that how you pronounce your name? He's a travel advisor. A key to the world travel, Disney destination expert. If I messed up your name, I'm sorry, but I hope I'm saying it correctly, but it's your turn. Welcome to the call. Richard: Thank you guys so much for having me through. You can call me, Rich. Everybody can call me Rich. That's fine. Yhennifer: Rich. Richard: So Russell, just want to say, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm currently rereading probably the third or four time Expert Secrets. I was in Own Your Future this past week. I was part of that lead challenge that you had, the five day lead challenge. I like in your world, bro. So just want to say, thank you. Russell: Thanks man. Glad to have you here. Richard: Yeah. So my question is really so as a travel agent really my value ladder is bringing leads in, educating them on the best, we'll take Disney for instance, the best Disney vacation ever, right? I provide value, value, value, and then they go through their trip and then after that it's pretty much done. So that's kind of like the result, right? If I was to say, a problem to solution. My question is for you, what else should I think about to really continue to bring more value? And really, I don't have like a $7 lead magnet to a $97 to a mastermind to Inner Circle, all that how should I be thinking about my value ladder? Russell: So right now taught value ladder, someone goes through is a Disney cruise or Disney trip, what exactly are they getting in the end? Richard: So doesn't matter. It could be Disney world vacation, Disney cruise, basically it's a vacation. Russell: Got you. One thing, so my family has done a bunch of Disney vacations. We just got back a little while ago from one and it was funny. We were joking. We did our first Disney cruise. Like when you get on the boat, there's the dudes with the big old Disney hand or Mickey mouse hands on their high five. And you're coming on and they're giving you drinks. This is amazing experience coming on, it's the photograph and you need to get on the boat. And then the boat's amazing. And then when the cruise is done, you get off and there's no one greeting you it's like dead. When you walk off, it's like they shove you out to the buses. And you're just like, "Wow. It's over that. That experience has ended really bad." And it was funny, because then the next time we're booking a cruise, right? The last thing you remember from Disney was just like horrible experience where it's just ended. And we're sitting by the buses waiting for our thing. It ended on this really down note as opposed to an up note. Richard: Oh no. Russell: And so then we're like, Worsley book cruise and right? Well, Disney was cool, but it's kind of weird at the end. And then, so we booked with a Norwegian next time or whatever. And so it's the little things like that. So like I would be looking at okay, because obviously in a business like that, people who do those things, do those things, right? We did Disney, we did the VIP tours, did all kind of stuff. And we spent a lot of money and it's awesome, and we had a great experience. And what's crazy to me just as a marketer is like, when we got done, they're like, all right, we'll see you. And I'm just like, you realize people come to Disney and pay for VIP tours, come to Disney and pay for VIP tours. I was like, why didn't somebody Jetta offers something right there and right. Or the next day, or call us next week. Like, how was the experience? What was it like? Nobody did that to me. And I was like, we probably would have been probably still will because the experience was great. We'll probably re-booking for whenever, but they could have doubled their money right then on the spot while we're at the peak of emotional intensity, as opposed to waiting further down the line, that'd be the first thing we're looking at is like, how do you capture that right? In a way that now you can like, get them booked on the next thing. Especially again, people are paying higher and stuff. They travel more often. It can be every six months they're looking for something like that. And that becomes this huge high ticket recurring program. That'd be the first thing I would kind of think through. Do you have a process now when someone finishes that you take them through to get them to re up for the next thing? Richard: Yeah. I'm working on my follow-up scripts right now. The email followups after they've gone through. And then, yeah, even just what you were saying, what happens now? What happens next? They're kind of like in this, I had an amazing experience and then kind of the experience kind of dies off. Russell: Yeah. Had to get that back up and because that'd be the biggest thing. Because now you're not going and finding a new lead, convincing them, you're going through a process like it's, you've got them. You just got to get them to it again. Mark Joyner, was my first mentor and his second book is called the Great Formula. And inside the book, he says the secret to successful businesses is getting your customers to take a second drink, right? The first drink is like, you just go through all this effort from the ad to the conversion, to everything for the first drink. And we got him and then we like forget about and go try to get more people to give him drinks. Like, no, they're like the money in your business, which just comes back to value ladders, is like the second drink, right? Because that's all pure profit. You don't have to get the ad. You don't have to do the stuff. They're already sold. You just got to ask them for a second drink. And it's shifting the focus to that. Because I'm assuming you got a lot of things happening on the front end. It's just, man, how do you get the second, third and fifth vacation? And who do they know that can vacation with them, right? Like we vacation with our friends now. And so it's like, we have a good experience. The next trip. Usually we're riding our friends. So it's like, Hey, let's build a bigger trip. Like who else can you bring? You bring your family, your friends, and crafting something with them where now that's just for you, it's just pure profit. Richard: Yeah. I'm even going through Expert Secrets. And I don't want to take up too much of the time. Sorry. Just even thinking about, who do I want to serve, right? I've been called to serve a certain group and I have that kind of my avatar down. And so it's just serving them. It's not just Disney cruises or Disney vacations. It's, "Hey, have you thought about an all-inclusive Cancun resort?" Something different but still an experience that they can have. And there like you said, I think I like what you said in terms of just keep that first drink, that second drink, that third drink. So maybe just thinking about my email or marketing afterwards, if it's a survey, if it's something and just say, "Hey, how was it? What'd you like about it? Hey, did you know that this is happening? And you can book this next time." Russell: Oh yeah. I think even pre-building a trip. My wife would get stuff sometimes in email, or she'll see people, our friends on social media who posts these pictures from this trip. And then she's, "Oh, where'd they go?" And she'll call them up and find out. And then we ended up going that same trip. We would do those kinds of things versus like, Hey, here's getting them to socially share trip with other people. And then vice versa is like you coming to them like, Hey, so inside of our community here, we've got this community of, I don't know, whatever you call them are our community of travelers, right? And here's someone just went to Mexico, check out what they get in, check out this trip. And here's four or five people on trips. If you want info on these trips, let me know we can connect you with the same thing. But look at these pictures from everybody and creating a culture like that, where everybody is kind of sharing their trips amongst each other. And then you're the one that's booking them back and forth and it can be really cool. Richard: I'm actually building the Facebook group right now. And that's where I'm funneling every everyone too. So that I can go live there. I can go talk to people and just tell them, "Hey, these people went on this trip." And then have them come on as a Zoom call and just talk about their trip and what they liked and maybe inspire others to book that same trip. Russell: Nice. Awesome, man. That's very cool. What a fun business. Richard: Thank you. Thank you very much. And like I said, thank you so much for all you did for me and just all the value you provide. Russell: Oh, no worries. I appreciate that. Yhennifer: Thank you. Rich. Thank you for being here. We're going to bring on JJ. JJ has helped celebrities, artists, big brands and media companies create over 650 million in revenue by building relationships, my favorite thing in the world. What questions do you have for us so JJ? JJ: Oh my God it's Russell. What's up Russell? All right. So how many questions? What's my limit? What's my limit here. Yhennifer: You get one. JJ: I get one. Oh, God. I got to make this good. Russell: Don't mess it up. JJ: Really long one or really short one? Russell: We'll see. Give us the first one first. Just kidding. JJ: All right. On a serious note. So before you hired the best community manager in the world, and brought her on your team, how did you build those relationships with, I mean, your company blew up, I've been watching you from the beginning and I mean, within just a year or two, you blow up faster than almost anybody in the digital space. How did you keep those connections and build those connections and keep that community strong? I mean, you have the biggest, and I hate to say the four letter word, cult, behind you in the world when it comes to software. How did you do that in your value ladder? Russell: That's such a great question. And it's funny because Dave would have, you guys know he's now the CEO Clickfunnels has been for the last almost a year now. He does a great job, but it's funny because he'll go off call and coming to me, he's like, man, Russell, you've dug your wells so deep. He's like people just say yes to anything I ask them to do. And I think it was what you understand is that people, depending on when you came into my world, when people come in, it's like you see something, you saw Clickfunnels, you saw this, you saw this. But what people don't know is that I was in this game for man probably, I mean, years now, 10, 12 years before we launched Clickfunnels. And that time was doing that building relationships. In fact, I joked at the very beginning of this, I've been doing this so long, before Facebook, before MySpace, like Friendster was the hot social network when I was in college, when I started this game. And Friendster did not have an ad platform, Google had an ad platform, but a year into my business, they the Google slap happened and it ended. So I had a decade where we were not able to buy ads. There was nowhere to buy ads. You can buy banner ads kind of, but they didn't work that well. And so all I could do, the only way to get traffic was through relationships. And so I went to every event. I have to go to events and find out who the people that have traffic. And this is for me, it's hard because I'm super introverted and scared to death of people. And so what I did is I found extroverts who I liked. I said, "Hey, come to this event, I'll pay for you to go with me." And we go to these events. I'm like, okay, I have to meet all these people because they have traffic. These people have email lists and they got a blog and they got these different things. And I spent a decade of doing that, right, of going and talking to people, getting to know them, building relationships using the assets I had to help them to promote them, to either promote their stuff or to help them with different things wherever I could do. And so I spent a lot of time doing that. I think that's what people don't understand. They think that like, oh, he came out of nowhere. It just blew up. It's no, I spent so much time going out and building relationships. So when Clickfunnels came about, it was nice because it wasn't me just cold calling and Hey, you're who I am yet, but you should pro Clickfunnels. It was like, Hey, this is Russell, and we're friends and this is this project I'm working on. What do you think about? What would you do if you were me and the most amazing minds in the world, sharing with me what they would do, if it was them and giving me ideas and strategies and then they felt like they were part of it when we launched it and rolled it out. And so I think that's a big part of it, obviously you're tied into the relationship side of things, but I don't think people put enough effort into that. They focus on the quick ask, the quick wins. And not like, how do I actually build a real relationship? I was telling someone because we were last week at the Dean and Tony launch and somebody asked me, how'd you get to know Tony Robbins? How did you know? And I was like, "Well, I spent 12 years of my life serving him in any way I could, before I ever asked him for anything." It was 12 years of like, let me just help him and help him and help him. And since then, man, he's done so much promoting the last three or four years. But it came from a decade of building relationship. And I think you can build a relationship faster than that. Tony's obviously super human and the hardest person on earth to get a hold of. But it comes with leading first, serving and having to help people and getting to know people and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was a lot of digging my well, before we launched ClickFunnels. JJ: Well thank you for saying that you're on the stage. Because you come into some of these clubhouse rooms and you get these marketers, "Oh, you got to buy ads. You've got to buy ads." I didn't buy ads for 10 years, myself. I mean, you know Brad Hart. I work with Brad Hart now. He didn't buy ads for the first five years of his business and build those relationships first. Thank you for saying that. But honestly you really, I mean, I think leveled up your game by hiring a community manager. She's up on the stage. She's keeps your community engaged. Love Yhennifer. So throwing some love towards Yhennifer. So my second question... Yhennifer: It has to be quick, Jay. JJ: It's fast. You can beat me later. What is your favorite Oreo cookie? Russell: My favorite Oreo cookie. So actually when Collette and I got married, they toilet paper our car, we were driving out and they got Oreos and they stuck them to the side of the car, but the Oreos had pop rocks inside the frosting. And I remember pulling off the car and I was like, "This is disgusting, but I love pop rocks." And so, yeah. And I don't think I've seen pop rock Oreo frosting since then. But if they ever bring it back, I will be the first in line. So that'd probably be my favorite. I don't know. JJ: Oh. Yhennifer: That was a good one. Russell: That was worth it. Yhennifer: You guys heard it. You guys heard it first. If you find that out there, go ship it to the Clickfunnels headquarters, because boss we'll be happy. Russell: Oh man. Yhennifer: That was so good. All right. My girl McCall. McCall is the founder of Charisma Hacking. What question or anything you want to add? Russell: And hold on. And she's a speaker at this year's Funnel Hacking Live event. Yhennifer: Are you going to to be there? I'm so excited. First of all, before we get McCall to talk, guys, if you have not bought your tickets to Funnel Hacking Live, go to funnelhackinglive.com, get your tickets and I'll see you guys there. McCall, the mic is yours. McCall Jones: Oh my gosh. Hi friends. Thanks so much. I was just going to add two things that helped the value ladder really make sense for me in the last year and a half. Since I started this. Russell, you know I study everything that you do. And the first thing that I did was read.comsecrets. Something that was a little bit hard for me at the beginning that, I mean, you teach on all these things, but it was the one product will create the problem that the next one will solve. And the first thing that I thought was like, "Oh my gosh, I have to create those problems. And I have to create those problems for people to ascend my value ladder." You had said something, I don't remember if it was in a podcast or I just heard you speak on a live somewhere, but you talked about the customer Ascension ladder and kind of the education part of it. And it put it all into perspective for me of the way that all of the sudden, I was able to shift my mind instead of being like, "Hey, you have to create problems from the bottom up and the problems that one will solve, it will open up a new problem to create the next product and all of that." Instead I thought, "Okay, the customer Ascension, where do you eventually want people to go?" So your Inner Circle and your category Kings and all of that, and then map out the steps that it takes to get there. And then with each program, with each step of the value ladder, it's just like, "Oh, what do you need to educate people on in order for them to want to join the next program, right? So it's an educational process that helped me with the very bottom of it, because I know that I think it was Ryan was talking about summits and creating consistent content and all of that. When I put it into education, all of a sudden the bottom of the value ladder made so much more sense to me because at the beginning, nobody knew what gurus Maggie was, right. It was like what the heck was that? Russell: You had invented a new term. Yeah. McCall Jones: Yeah. It was like, this is crazy. And it's hard to do that, right. You know you're in a really scary place in business where you're trying to solve a problem that people don't think that they have. And this education kind of form of this value ladder when you said that it really helped me think like, "Oh, okay. The bottom of my evaluator needs to be educating on my frameworks." So my whole opt-in bottom of the value ladder, what people can do with podcasts or the video content they're creating the summits, all those kinds of things. If they're consistently educating on their frameworks at the bottom, right? They first let people know what they're doing, right? And the problem that they're solving. And then from there, it's like, okay, now that you know what the problem is, and you can accurately say, oh, I do have that problem. Wow. Then you can move them up into paid products, and you can continue to educate them until they get to the highest level. But that was the thing that helped me the most, because at first with the problems, it was just hard for my brain to kind of wrap around it. And then it was like, oh, if you can accurately help somebody get through one specific step and then educate them on what they need to know in order to join the next program, then they will continue to ascend your value ladder because they will have a problem that's solved and they will have the education they need in order to address that they have a new problem. So that was something that helped me. Yeah. Guys, come to Funnel Hacking Live. You have to be there. Russell: Yeah. The thing I would add to that too, is like, I think a lot of times people are so stressed. I got to figure all these pieces and all the things. And one thing that I noticed when I first started doing this and I've noticed other people's that a lot of times you don't know what the next thing is until you start doing your thing, right? You start selling your product. For me, it was funnels, funnels, funnels. I wrote the book, we created a software and all sorts of stuff, that was it, right? That was the plan. And then as people started signing up and they buy the book and buy the funnels, then it was the next question kept coming and coming, it wasn't me making this up. It was like, oh, here's the question that everybody keeps asking like, okay, how do I solve that problem? How do I solve that problem? So the customers will bring you the problem. You don't have to invent them. You just do your thing in the best of your ability. And then listen. And if you listen, then the next thing will come to you and you know exactly what to do so. McCall Jones: Another really interesting, I'm so sorry. I just will be really fast. But at the beginning, I've built these frameworks for 20 years, but I didn't know what my people needed. And if you try to force what you know on people, instead of what they need, then your products won't sell, right. But instead it was exactly what you said, as far as finding your voice, the same thing was, I think it was Dave who just popped into this room, Hi Dave? It's about finding your frameworks, right? So creating your content and making sure that you're publishing on a consistent basis. It's creating these frameworks and refining them and seeing what sticks for people. And then it's not just like, well, I know this, that's what I should create a product around. It's like, no, no, no. People will listen. And they will. It's exactly what you said. They will tell you that market research is so invaluable. And then in that next program, if you're building it from the ground up, then you educate them. You listen to their problems and you let them ask questions and then they will reveal what that next product needs to be. Super interesting. Russell: Very cool. Well, thanks for call. Excited to see you again soon at funnel hacking live with all of you guys here who are listening in as well. I hope it's going to be amazing. Yhennifer: Awesome guys. Make sure that you click on that little greenhouse, make sure that you're following the Marketing Secrets Live Club. There's going to be many more. Right, Russell? Russell: Yeah, this was actually really fun. I hope... Did you enjoy Yhennifer? That was fun. Yhennifer: It was amazing obviously, listening to you. The value that you provide and also being able to speak to our funnel hackers here that we're excited to chat with you. Russell: Yeah. So I think the game plan we're going to try and keep news a few times. If it sticks, then we'll keep doing it. But I actually really enjoyed not just talking about topic and pushing the podcast. That was nice to get feedback or questions or like getting McCall, like doubling down. Like it's something I learned that helped me to make sense. And that was way more valuable to have that a as actual application of the concept, not just the concept. So I loved it. It was fun. So we'll let you guys know kind of moving forward when we'll keep doing these. But that was awesome. So thank you so much for helping facilitate it and make it all happen. Thank you guys all for listening. And will let you guys know when the next party is going to start. And I think, hold on, I got an outro. Should I do an outro? Yhennifer: Wait, before you put that outro, like do one of those money signs, money noises, things. Russell: Let's see. Yhennifer: Come on you got the buttons over there. Russell: There's a button there… We got… We're so funny. Yhennifer: That is amazing. All right. So we're going to close out with this out show. Thank you so much guys, for being here. See you guys in the next one. Russell: All right. Thanks everybody.

“Hi, my name is Dave and I suffer from Masklophobia.” “Hi Dave!” Dave makes absolutely no progress on his phobia in Episode 7 as he claims that all 2 of his issues stem from Halloween. Jason makes a great impression on his new boss. And both agree that a new holiday – “Falladay” should be implemented across the board. 

Episode 138 : A Proper Freakout Alex is back, and he brought Nick along for Nick's birthday week special! Happy Easter/Passover/whatever else you celebrate in spring! We start off talking podcasts and annoying apple commercials. Our first actual topic is Fish Fry's in Pittsburgh on Fridays in Lent. Topics include church fish fry's and McDonalds and local restaurants! Nick makes a good transition for once and we talk about the reopening of Pennsylvania. Nick went to the Pens game on Monday and shares his “beer and food” story and we reminisce about the DG Garden reopening for spring and drooling over Cilantro Y Ajo food truck. We talk Grist House and Cinderlands Brunch and rage about American cheese. Nick then has a full on freakout about Dave from Four Points recognizing him from the podcast (Hi Dave! Thanks for listening!) and then we get into their new spot and what is in store at the Northside taproom. We wrap up talking about Nick's birthday and who to support if you want to give him a birthday gift (donate to afsp.org or anywhere worthwhile to you). Cheers and thanks for listening! Beers We Drank: Spacedelic Haze Cactus - Grist House (IPA - 7.0%) Music: All The Way Up - Eddy freemusicarchive.org/music/eddy/2_D…th-CloudBounce

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions I recently took over to manage development at a small company that has been around for a few decades. We just wrapped up a four year effort to move to a more modern web stack. The development style before my new position is best described as ‘Wild West’. My direct boss’s philosophy can be illustrated with the following phrases: “We are going to have to rewrite it, so just get it out fast.” “Just hardcode the sh*!@ out of it” “It just has to look like it works, but it doesn’t really have to work.” My boss is the co-founder of the company and ran development before me. I have made a concerted effort with my current team to introduce best practices, Unit Testing, PSR standards, APIs and so forth but engagement is really low. I’ve tried every way I know how to get them to care about quality code, tests, standards, etc but they just don’t respond. They are more concerned about getting things out fast which is nice but not my top priority. I’d rather have clean, predictable code that doesn’t break in production. How do I get my team to buy off on these principles? Hi Dave and Jamison How do I communicate all of the self-study that I’ve done to potential employers? I transitioned from a bachelor’s degree in the health sciences to the software industry and I have now worked as a data scientist for a couple of years. I spent a lot of time and effort taking free online classes in mathematics and computer science through Stanford and MIT. Over 3 years I’ve probably done the equivalent of half of a math degree and about a third of a full CS curriculum. And even though I’m employed now, I still keep working on more advanced classes in my spare time. How can I communicate this to potential employers considering that I’m not getting any academic credits for my effort? Should I just leave this off my resume? Is it okay to mention that I have audited those classes? Any other ideas? Thanks for the lovely podcast.

Längste Tunnel der Welt, Bildarchivierung, Wildwasser und wie ein Freund beim Kajaken ums Leben kommt Aufgeladen zu den Polarlichtern im hohen Norden - Teil 7 „Hi Dave. Hoffe, dir sind noch keine Schwimmhäute gewachsen?“, scherze ich, weil er Engländer Dave trotz des Dauerregens jeden Tag mit seinem Kajak die Wildwasserflüsse der Region unsicher macht. „Ha, ha, ha, du hast Humor. Nein, mir geht es gut. Der Regen ist für mich und meinen Sport ein Segen.“ „Sind die Flüsse durch den Dauerregen nicht extrem gefährlich?“ „Durch die heutige Technik sind die Boote sicherer geworden. Trotzdem hat es mich gestern erwischt und ich wurde ganz schön über die schroffen Felsen gezogen“, erzählt er, zieht sein Hemd aus und zeigt mir seinen Rücken. „Mein Gott Dave, das sieht ja furchtbar aus“, entfährt es mir entsetzt, denn bei seinem Anblick könnte man glauben, er sei von einem Grizzlybären angefallen worden… In diesem Podcast sprechen wir über die längsten Straßentunnel der Welt, über extremes Wildwasser und wie ein Freund beim Kajaken verunglückt. Viel Freude beim Reinhören. Blog: https://denis-katzer.de/de/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanjadeniskatzer/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deniskatzer/ Link zu unseren Büchern: https://denis-katzer.de/de/shop/itemlist/category/97-buecher Mit unserem Lebensprojekt „Die große Reise“ möchten wir als Botschafter von Mutter Erde ein Zeitdokument unseres Planeten schaffen. Wir wollen einen Gegenpol zu einer Welt bilden, die sich jeden Tag ein bisschen schneller überholt. Mit dem Motorrad durch Indien, zu Fuß und mit Kamelen durchs Australische Outback, mit dem Fahrrad von Deutschland in die Mongolei und nun die längste E-Bike Expedition der Welt, sind nur einige der vielen Expeditionsreisen. Bisher 432.000 Kilometer ohne Flüge, über 10 x um die Erde / einmal zum Mond. Das ist die bisherige Bilanz.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions Taylor asks, Is it frowned upon to not want to be promoted and get more responsibility? I want to keep a good work-life balance but feel that saying so will have my manager think less of me. Hi Dave and Jamison, love your show! The time has come to quit my job and I am wondering if I should keep a copy of the scripts I wrote for the project?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions I’m a team lead right now, but I’m leaving the company. When I discussed with my manager, I recommended a team member to take over my position and suggested raising his salary. In the end, the manager asked that team member to take over as team lead, but refused to raise his salary or even give him the title. He said he needs to prove that he can take responsibility as a team lead. Then he will get the title and raise. But I feel they just want to procrastinate and save the money. What can I do to help my team member fight for the title and raise? Hi Dave and Jamison. You have a great show and I really enjoy listening. I am currently a software engineer at a small/medium sized tech company in the healthcare industry. I was recently asked to interview for a similar role at a pretty large hedge fund. I am wondering if there would be a big culture shift if I were to end up making that change. I am under the (possibly inaccurate) impression that for bankers something like an 80+ hour work week is common. I’m wondering if this impression is accurate, if it extends to the finance industry as a whole, and how much it extends to developers rather than bankers/traders if so. I also remember you guys mentioning in a previous episode that video game developers also typically work long hours. Are there other industries where this culture is typical?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions Hi Dave and Jamison, I’m in my mid twenties working at a large company with 1,000+ devs. My direct manager (let’s call him Bob) is probably in his late forties, is from a different country, and has a wife and two children who live in his home country. He currently manages ~20 devs in multiple scrums. Last month, I had my mid-year performance review with Bob. I am pretty sure that I’ve done a great job during the first half of the year. I made a few performance improvements, designed and partly implemented a few new systems, and even saved the company from a potential lawsuit. I think that I’m already delivering much more than the typical junior would already. Bob seems to disagree. He only gave me a mediocre review. When I pushed him for his reasoning, he seems to avoid the question and just told me to focus on the whole year review instead. Last week, I just came to know that Bob is filing a divorce. I would think that he is probably feeling quite depressed. Nonetheless, it bothers me to feel that my review score is somehow related to his personal affairs. He rushed all of his reviews on the last deadline though. I get the feeling that he is dispirited and didn’t focus on giving his team a thorough and honest review. I don’t want to bring this up to Bob’s manager as it would probably make him even more miserable. I also don’t think I can give him divorce advice. What would you do? Hi there. I just graduated from undergrad and will be starting my career in just a few days. A big question on my mind going in is whether software development is the right career for me. I landed here because my parents saw me tinkering with HTML as a kid and pushed me into a CS major and this job. Me personally, I had wildly varying attitudes towards programming in college. Some days I was so hungry that I threw myself into hackathons and side projects; other days I was ready to drop my CS major. All this left me unsure of where I really stand. I’m grateful to have ended up on this path, but as I think more long-term, I question whether I’m really here for the long haul. What signs could I look for to gauge my compatibility with the tech industry or help me decide whether this career is really for me? Either way, thanks so much for making this podcast - it’s been a great window into the world that I’m about to join.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave and Jamison, my name is Bob Marley. I am a senior software engineer at a tech company. How do I deal with a chronic toe-stepper-onner? I have a coworker named Jimi Hendrix - also a senior software engineer - who has a habit of getting involved in and trying to manage my projects. He joins meetings and slack channels, uninvited, and starts asking people for status updates and questions them why things are done a certain way (and not the other), what’s taking so long on unfinished tasks, etc. Jimi basically feels that my projects are his to oversee and manage. So far, my response has only been passive aggressive - e.g. taking discussions to a different slack channel or thread, or meeting the team members offline when he is not around. This is obviously not working out and it is not sustainable so I’m looking for some advice on how to deal with it. It’s not hindering the project so I don’t have a strong reason to complain. Other than the fact that it drives me nuts when Jimi gets involved and asks for a status update on a project which I have fully under control. Should I just do nothing and wait for the problem to go away due to him getting moved to a different project? But how do I keep my sanity until then? And what if even then he finds a way to step on my toes? Have you guys experienced this kind of situation? Is there a permanent solution to it? And no, I don’t want to quit my job. Please help! Yours truly, Bob Marley Hi Dave and Jamison. Love the show. I have been gathering informal peer feedback from my team. I was told I am doing well, and I should be doing “more high leverage work”. I interpret that as coming up with design patterns, best practices, and mentoring other developers. I mentioned that to my manager, and while he agrees, he also said there is no additional head count for the coming year, and knowing that there is a backlog full of features, my concern is that I will be the primary person tasked with writing those features. How could I negotiate/convince my manager to let me do more tech lead work instead?

🎉🎉🎉 Celebrating 200 episodes! 🎉🎉🎉 In this special episode, Dave and Jamison share crazy work stories contributed by listeners to celebrate 200 episodes of Soft Skills Engineering Right out of graduate school I was in the process of interviewing and got through two phone interviews to get the final in-person interview at a location-based startup. The office was mostly sales but also had a small dev team. The in-house recruiter gave me a rough itinerary two days before: get there at 8AM, have four hour-long interviews with the team, then possibly a coding “quiz.” I was skeptical of what the quiz was but all she said was that everyone who got through the other interviews wouldn’t have a problem, it was multiple-choice, and it would take less than half an hour. I get to the office 20 minutes early but have to wait 45 minutes more for my first round of interviews because an internal meeting went over; the recruiter apologizes and asks if I want breakfast, and I say I’ll take something small like a bagel; she says okay and disappears from the room never to return with food. I get through the culture interviews just fine, though I thought it was a bit odd that several of my interviewers (including a VP) brought in their catered breakfast/lunch into the room but never offered me to get some and I had to go find my recruiter so I could get a cup of water between interviews. The final interview was with who would have been my boss: the senior engineering lead. She proceeds to ask me the normal bank of engineering questions and then lets me ask anything. She starts sending me the vibe that the engineering team isn’t really respected and that as a junior I’d be expected to put in overtime and be on-call on weekends without comp-time and without being able to have a say in when I would be on-call. Then I get some seemingly weird questions: Do you work well with loud noises? How noise canceling are your headphones usually? Is it okay that I would develop on a Windows machine? The engineering lead takes me to the recruiter’s office so I can wrap up the day but the recruiter had left early and nobody knew where she had gone so I was escorted to the front door by a receptionist and left. I didn’t hear back for a week and got a call late in the evening saying they had moved on with other candidates. A few days later I got an email from the engineering lead apologizing for my experience and that they were revising their hiring process due to my experience. Hi Dave and Jamison, I have a crazy work story to share for your 200th show! In my first role as a developer I was working for a small agency building websites for clients. One day I was uploading a new site, which involved FTPing into the server and doing all the config myself. I didn’t really know what I was doing, all of this terminal stuff was pretty alien to me at the time. For some reason or another I needed to change the permissions on the files for this site, so I uploaded it to the server and ran a chmod, (which was a brand new concept to me - luckily Stack Overflow had my back. OR DID IT?) Anyway, when I ran the command, my terminal went crazy and way more files went flying up the screen than I had for my website, so I thought ““that doesn’t look right””, hit ctrl-c and went to lunch, thinking I’d fix it later. When I got back from lunch, everyone was rushing about like headless chickens. Everything was down. When I enquired, it turned out that for some reason everyone was locked out of the entire server. After several hours it turned out that all of the permissions for every file on the server had been changed and nobody had any access to anything. Also, every client site had been brought down in the process. To make matters slightly worse, when I enquired about backups, it turned out that the main server WAS the backup server, because the main server died a couple of years before and nobody had bothered to fix or replace it. Whoops! I didn’t fess up - I was too scared - but coincidentally, a few days later I was fired. Oddly, during the firing, no mention of this incident was made and to this day I have no idea if the two were related. At the time I was devastated, I thought my career was over and I shed tears over how I was going to be able to provide for my family. However, in less than two weeks I was in a new role with a 25% pay increase, and my career has bloomed ever since. So 👍🏻 I guess! And here ends my tale. I hope you enjoyed it - it was devastating at the time, but now I can look back on it with both amusement and bemusement. Thanks for all of your work bringing this podcast to us for 200 weeks, I hope you continue until you also accidentally lock everyone out of your own servers. This is a crazy interview story. It was with a healthcare tech startup. The building was across the street from the healthcare tech company where my wife worked. After meeting the 9 people on the team and doing some white boarding, I met with the CEO. When he asked why I was excited to work at his company, I mentioned in passing that my wife worked at the company across the street. CEO then says “Oh, wow. They just announced that they are going public.” At this point, the company had not announced that they were going public yet, but my wife already knew about it and told me that it wouldn’t happen for a few months. I demurred, but the CEO pressed more “Yeah, I saw it on the news this morning.” Yep. The CEO of a company that rivals my wife’s was asking for insider trading information. I actually had to rehash my conversation to my wife’s boss to make sure I didn’t give away anything important (which I fortunately did not). After that, I decided I would never work for any company in the same industry as where my wife works. About 7 years ago I was looking for a side income. A fellow engineer I worked with told me that the park he spends his weekends at was looking for someone to build them a website, run some wires and a bunch of other IT odd jobs. I was interested so I made the drive down to the park which further confirmed my suspections of my co worker: it was a nudist facility. I sat in my car for a few minutes to consider my options and walked in. It’s weird how being the only clothed person in the room made me feel so awkwardly naked. I spoke to the owner, shared my resume, and my co worker showed up (naked) to vouch for me. I got the job but only under the condition i ““wore the uniform””. I agreed and worked there over the summer weekends for a few months doing everything in the buff. Being near the beginning of my career I wanted to put this on my resume, but didn’t want to expose the private parts of this job. I ended up listing it as ‘contracter’ with just a note: references available on request. The company I work at is a privately owned B-to-C e-commerce shopping platform. Over the past two years the non technical management has been trying to position themselves to be bought out. Their strategy has been to create a new layer of director level management and hire in candidates directly from FAANG with the specific intent of injecting “FAANG” culture into the company. I guess the thought is - if you want to be acquired from a player like FAANG, then become a mini FAANG. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been working out so well. The 💩hit the fan. The new director have absolute power, and as it goes, ““absolute power corrupts absolutely””. The new Director of Engineering did a culling of senior engineers and managers that raised any questions to initiatives proposed by the director (you know, healthy project analysis probing to make sure potential risks are considered). One day, 15 devs were let go. These were senior engineers with years of domain knowledge. Not surprisingly, the platform started to have issues. Payment processing integrations started going down, checkout processes needed maintenance - but… the domain knowledge was gone. In the usual “throw more people at the problem” approach, everyone was assigned pager duty, even for systems they didn’t know. The system got so bad that the director resorted to shutting off one of the major payment processing integrations since it couldn’t be fixed. This had repercussions of course, and we started losing completed checkout conversions. The rest of the senior engineers were leaving voluntarily at this point. Now that the ship was pretty much on fire, and the engineering department pretty much destroyed, we found out that the director was applying to another job at the new Twilio office in the city 😂. We found out he got rejected because his reputation had preceded him and the recruiters at Twilio had actually heard about the mayhem he was causing at our company. But it gets better! One of my coworkers thought it would be a funny prank to put a Twilio sticker on the director’s office window. Nope, my colleague was promptly fired. We later found out that the director was so pissed that he ended up going through the CCTV surveillance recordings to see which employees had entered the building early to find out who put the sticker on his office window 🤦🏻‍♂️. Had a manager who had transitioned to IT help-desk work from teaching elementary school and then worked their way up to manager over a large development team. They never let go of the elementary teacher mentality. The highlights were: Requiring multiple forced-fun team activities a year, like cubicle decoration contests. Playground level nick-names for everyone on the team. (Think banana-fo-fana level rhyming). All team members got emoji stress balls, and were required to place the ball that reflected their daily mood on the wall of the entrance of their workstation.

Tech News and Commentary Dave and the team discuss AT&T’s new subscription service, Blackberry’s fate, foldable phones and the alternatives, Ring’s lack of effect on arrests, and more. Pete in Madison, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk 97.3 and asked: “Hi Dave, my issue is that my laptop once I upgraded to windows 10 takes literally about […]

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/heydave7 Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heydave7 Watch this video on what a 10x company is: My TSLA Exit Plan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9HtG-jJSTY Recent SpaceX Articles: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/bt3vwm/2016_starlink_revenue_projection_looks_positively/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/11/spacexs-satellite-internet-service-could-warrant-a-30-billion-valuation/#7e99ae321ff8 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-future-multibillion-dollar-valuation-starlink-internet-morgan-stanley-2019-9 https://www.ccn.com/in-spite-of-elon-musk-spacexs-valuation-has-surged-122233-since-2002/ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/spacex-starlink-may-ipo-a-new-elon-musk-stock-for-investors.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter∥=sharebar SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell shared SpaceX is planning on spinning off Starlink and IPO’ing it. In this video, I’ll share my initial thoughts on the upcoming Starlink IPO Starlink's goal is to cover Earth with high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet access. According to current government documents, Starlink may consist of nearly 12,000 satellites by the end of 2027. “Right now, we are a private company, but Starlink is the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public,” Shotwell reportedly said. “That particular piece is an element of the business that we are likely to spin out and go public.” Shotwell said two years ago “it will cost the company about $10 billion or more” to build the Starlink network. Is it a 10x generational company? 1) disrupting large market 2) significantly better product and ability to defend superiority 3) world-class execution 4) clear and probable path to 10x valuation in 5-10 years In this video, I also answer questions from the following viewers: Jungle Jim “Dave, great video and thanks for sharing. Your dedication to investment education in an ethical and responsible way is greatly appreciated. I for one would really enjoy how you would spend that 100 hours of research on a company before you buy the first shares if the research proves promising. What are the typical sources you use? How far back do you go in a company's financials? How much weight do you give the product reputation vs the leadership's track record or unique vision?” Mai Huynh   “Dave, First of all, thank you so much for your daily video. They have provided a ton of knowledges to a new investor like me. You have mentioned that you would like to build a YouTube channel for audiences who invest with deep analysis and you would like to teach quantitive and qualitative skills. I “bravo” you on that. I wonder if you plan to open a webinar course to teach us those skills with blackboard and charts, and show us where you can find your information resource. Many thanks in advance!!” h mejia “Hi Dave. I’m new to your channel. I appreciate your calm non salesmen demeanor. You explain in very simple but articulate language. It contains the unmistakable ring of truth. I look forward to learning from you. Thank you.” Steve Bim “Dave, thank you for all the quality, free, yet so valuable knowledge. I’m 25 and you are like my rich dad.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/heydave7 Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heydave7 Watch this video on what a 10x company is: My TSLA Exit Plan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9HtG-jJSTY Recent SpaceX Articles: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/bt3vwm/2016_starlink_revenue_projection_looks_positively/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/11/spacexs-satellite-internet-service-could-warrant-a-30-billion-valuation/#7e99ae321ff8 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-future-multibillion-dollar-valuation-starlink-internet-morgan-stanley-2019-9 https://www.ccn.com/in-spite-of-elon-musk-spacexs-valuation-has-surged-122233-since-2002/ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/spacex-starlink-may-ipo-a-new-elon-musk-stock-for-investors.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter∥=sharebar SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell shared SpaceX is planning on spinning off Starlink and IPO’ing it. In this video, I’ll share my initial thoughts on the upcoming Starlink IPO Starlink's goal is to cover Earth with high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet access. According to current government documents, Starlink may consist of nearly 12,000 satellites by the end of 2027. “Right now, we are a private company, but Starlink is the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public,” Shotwell reportedly said. “That particular piece is an element of the business that we are likely to spin out and go public.” Shotwell said two years ago “it will cost the company about $10 billion or more” to build the Starlink network. Is it a 10x generational company? 1) disrupting large market 2) significantly better product and ability to defend superiority 3) world-class execution 4) clear and probable path to 10x valuation in 5-10 years In this video, I also answer questions from the following viewers: Jungle Jim “Dave, great video and thanks for sharing. Your dedication to investment education in an ethical and responsible way is greatly appreciated. I for one would really enjoy how you would spend that 100 hours of research on a company before you buy the first shares if the research proves promising. What are the typical sources you use? How far back do you go in a company's financials? How much weight do you give the product reputation vs the leadership's track record or unique vision?” Mai Huynh   “Dave, First of all, thank you so much for your daily video. They have provided a ton of knowledges to a new investor like me. You have mentioned that you would like to build a YouTube channel for audiences who invest with deep analysis and you would like to teach quantitive and qualitative skills. I “bravo” you on that. I wonder if you plan to open a webinar course to teach us those skills with blackboard and charts, and show us where you can find your information resource. Many thanks in advance!!” h mejia “Hi Dave. I’m new to your channel. I appreciate your calm non salesmen demeanor. You explain in very simple but articulate language. It contains the unmistakable ring of truth. I look forward to learning from you. Thank you.” Steve Bim “Dave, thank you for all the quality, free, yet so valuable knowledge. I’m 25 and you are like my rich dad.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/heydave7 Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heydave7 Watch this video on what a 10x company is: My TSLA Exit Plan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9HtG-jJSTY Recent SpaceX Articles: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/bt3vwm/2016_starlink_revenue_projection_looks_positively/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/11/spacexs-satellite-internet-service-could-warrant-a-30-billion-valuation/#7e99ae321ff8 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-future-multibillion-dollar-valuation-starlink-internet-morgan-stanley-2019-9 https://www.ccn.com/in-spite-of-elon-musk-spacexs-valuation-has-surged-122233-since-2002/ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/spacex-starlink-may-ipo-a-new-elon-musk-stock-for-investors.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter∥=sharebar SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell shared SpaceX is planning on spinning off Starlink and IPO’ing it. In this video, I’ll share my initial thoughts on the upcoming Starlink IPO Starlink's goal is to cover Earth with high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet access. According to current government documents, Starlink may consist of nearly 12,000 satellites by the end of 2027. “Right now, we are a private company, but Starlink is the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public,” Shotwell reportedly said. “That particular piece is an element of the business that we are likely to spin out and go public.” Shotwell said two years ago “it will cost the company about $10 billion or more” to build the Starlink network. Is it a 10x generational company? 1) disrupting large market 2) significantly better product and ability to defend superiority 3) world-class execution 4) clear and probable path to 10x valuation in 5-10 years In this video, I also answer questions from the following viewers: Jungle Jim “Dave, great video and thanks for sharing. Your dedication to investment education in an ethical and responsible way is greatly appreciated. I for one would really enjoy how you would spend that 100 hours of research on a company before you buy the first shares if the research proves promising. What are the typical sources you use? How far back do you go in a company's financials? How much weight do you give the product reputation vs the leadership's track record or unique vision?” Mai Huynh   “Dave, First of all, thank you so much for your daily video. They have provided a ton of knowledges to a new investor like me. You have mentioned that you would like to build a YouTube channel for audiences who invest with deep analysis and you would like to teach quantitive and qualitative skills. I “bravo” you on that. I wonder if you plan to open a webinar course to teach us those skills with blackboard and charts, and show us where you can find your information resource. Many thanks in advance!!” h mejia “Hi Dave. I’m new to your channel. I appreciate your calm non salesmen demeanor. You explain in very simple but articulate language. It contains the unmistakable ring of truth. I look forward to learning from you. Thank you.” Steve Bim “Dave, thank you for all the quality, free, yet so valuable knowledge. I’m 25 and you are like my rich dad.

Recorded Dec 05, 2019 Dave Gets a shoutout, Goldie Lies about spending on microtransactions, we discuss Red Guardian from the upcoming Black Widow film, and Riot shields are OP. All this and more on this weeks Scuzzcast Music by Dj Quads

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave and Jamison, thanks for the awesome show. How should I conduct myself at software conferences when my dev community heroes are in the midst? I recently attended a conference where one of my developer heroes was in attendance and I was really looking forward to meeting them. I couldn’t muster up the courage to introduce myself. What do you do in these situations to break the ice and not come off as a creeper or a nuisance? It’s a weird feeling to hear someone’s voice on a podcast every week or read their blog posts and feel like you are best friends with them while knowing that the other person has no idea who you are. Am I overthinking this? Recent new listener here and I must say that I love the show and to keep up the good work. My question can possibly be answered with the standard soft skills answer BUT I have my reservations about quitting my job. I work at a consultancy doing work in a niche web development framework that interfaces with an old monolith ERP system that I’m just not excited by but I am very good at creating web applications in. I know eventually these skills will become obsolete, and I had a new job opportunity recently that I decided not to take. Am I being stupid? Should I stay in the niche and hope I can get a newer job in the future where they just accept I can learn new tools?

Guest Bios Show Transcript Guest Bios Show Transcript Christians are divided over whether marijuana should be legalized. Some say the drug is an essential pain medication and even an aid in worship! But others claim it's a dangerous, unregulated, gateway drug. This week on The Roys Report, Jonathan Merritt, who supports legalization, will be joining me to share how marijuana delivered him from chronic pain.  But challenging his position will be Dr. Richard Poupard, an outspoken critic of legalization. I really hope you'll join me for The Roys Report, this Saturday morning at 11 on AM 1160 Hope For Your Life, and at 7 p.m. Sunday evening on AM 560 The Answer. This Weeks Guests Dr Rich Poupard Dr Rich Poupard Earned his Doctor of Dental Surgery from Northwestern University Dental School.  He practices as a Board Certified Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon in Michigan.  He has special interest includes medical ethics and Christian Apologetics.  It is this interest that led him to study and complete his Master's degree in Christian Apologetics at Biola University.  He is published in the Christian Research Journal on topics such as ethics of cosmetic surgery, abortion, gaming, pornography and marijuana use.  He has been hosted on multiple podcasts including The Bible Answer Man and Hank Unplugged.  He is married and has five children.  He enjoys reading, golf and board games.  Jonathan Merritt Jonathan Merritt is an award-winning writer on religion, culture, and politics. He serves as a contributing writer for The Atlantic, a contributing editor for The Week, and is author of several critically-acclaimed books and has published more than 3500 articles in respected outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. As a respected voice, he regularly contributes commentary to television, print, and radio news outlets and has been interviewed by ABC World News, NPR, CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox News, and CBS' “60 Minutes.” Jonathan holds a Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Master of Theology from Emory University's Candler School of Theology. He is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including the Wilbur Award for excellence in journalism, the Religion News Association's columnist of the year, and the Englewood Review of Books “Book of the Year” award. David E. Smith David E. Smith is a Christian husband and father to eight children. He is also an experienced Executive Director of two non-profit public policy organizations, including the Illinois Family Institute. David works to educate and activate Christians in Illinois to "boldly bring biblical perspectives to public policy" for the welfare of families in the turbulent culture of Illinois. David also serves as a GOP Township Chairman and is an ordained minister and elder in his local church. Show Transcript Note: This transcript has been slightly edited for continuity. Segment 1 JULIE ROYS:  What should Christians think of marijuana?  Welcome to The Roys Report, brought to you in part by Judson University. I am Julie Roys. And today, we're going to be debating a hot topic in both the culture and the church. Some people say marijuana is a miracle drug that can bring relief for chronic pain and ease depression. Yet, others say it's a dangerous drug, especially for young, developing minds. Plus, marijuana can be a gateway to harder drugs, and legalization can lead to the proliferation of social problems. In Illinois, where this show originates, we just legalized marijuana, but the law hasn't gone into effect yet. That happens in January. But marijuana—both recreational and medical—is legal now in 10 states and the District of Columbia. And support for it is growing. In 1988, only 24% of Americans supported legalization. But in 2018, 66% of Americans supported it. And Christians, who once vehemently opposed the drug, seem to be softening. In fact, there's a prominent Christian leader who now openly admits he uses weed three-to-four times a week. And he claims it enhances his worship experience. So how do you think Christians should think about this issue and should they support legalization? This week, Judson University student Carista Richie asked people that exact question and here's what they said: STUDENT 1:  “I don't, okay, I don't know much about it but I have, I know that it helps people with some medical conditions. So I think that it should be legal in that way, for that, but otherwise no.” STUDENT 2:    “I think that, as Christians, we are supposed to not smoke marijuana. But I think that the de-criminalizing of marijuana makes the justice system more equal and more fair for people of color.  And therefore, we should support it.” STUDENT 3:  “In order to worship God and have God be the number one priority and thought in your mind, you need to be in the right state of mind. And you aren't able to control that state of mind whenever you are under the influence of a drug that is going to make you think, or hallucinate or whatever that may be. And you are not going to be in the right state of mind to focus on God one hundred percent. STUDENT 4:  “I think the Bible is very clear about not taking or using anything that is going to kind of change your state of mind.  But I do think that the laws need to be set in place to kind of differentiate between what recreational use and what medical use is. I think that saves a lot of benefits from using marijuana medically. So yeah, that's my answer. STUDENT 5:  “No.” CARISTA RICHIE:   “Okay. How come?” STUDENT 5:  “Because it distorts your perspective of reality and you shouldn't run away from the reality God gave you. STUDENT 6:    “I don't think they should support it. I think it's a gray issue in Christianity. I don't think it's a wrong, like a right or a wrong but I don't think they should support it, but if they do, then I think it's OK. JULIE ROYS:  Well, what do you think? The number to call is 312-660-2594. And I know there's a wide variety of opinions on this issue, even in the faith community. So I encourage you to call in.   But joining me today, I have guests on both sides of this issue.  Supporting legalization is Jonathan Merritt, an award-winning author on religion, culture, and politics—and someone who grew up as the son of a prominent Southern Baptist preacher. But Jonathan, I'm going to guess—you're no longer a Southern Baptist. Am I right on that?  JONATHAN MERRITT:  Well, I, in order to be a Southern Baptist you have to attend the Southern Baptist church and since moving to New York City, I'm at a non-denominational church. So the answer is no. But no ill feelings toward the tradition of my heritage. JULIE ROYS:  Sure, but would you say you've moved? Like if there were a Southern Baptist Church, do you think you'd attend that or do you feel like you've moved a bit from sort of that conservative foundation? JONATHAN MERRITT:  I've moved somewhat but the real  reason, I think, for my shift is that I love kind of a quasi-Anglican or more of a liturgical expression of worship. And so that's one of the main reasons why I attend the church I do today. JULIE ROYS:  Yeah and I know that this issue of marijuana is something that has shifted as you've grown. And I'm going to get into that in a second. But I want to introduce my second guest, which is Dr. Richard Poupard, a board-certified oral surgeon and member of the surgical staff at MidMichigan Regional Medical Center. And Dr. Poupard is a critic of legalization. So Dr. Poupard, welcome!  Great to have you. DR. RICHARD POUPARD:  Oh thanks so much, Julie.  It's great to be here. And hi Jonathan.  JONATHAN MERRITT:  Hi, hello. JULIE ROYS:  So Jonathan, let's just start with you because you have an interesting journey on this issue. Again, brought up Southern Baptist, brought up basically thinking marijuana is something that you shouldn't ever consider or touch. But that's changed over the years. So tell us a little bit about your journey. JONATHAN MERRITT:  Yeah, it was a view that I held growing up, that it was just sort of a an unmitigated moral wrong. And I had no reason really to challenge that view. So I held that view for decades. And in 2015, I developed a chronic pain disorder that doctors have classified in different ways. Some have called it fibromyalgia but, regardless, the kind of a nagging pain condition that prohibited me from working full hours of the day. Really, I think, was one of the impetuses for creating a lot of anxiety and depression and even, at the end, a little bit of almost suicidal thoughts. And so a couple of years ago, I was in California, and a friend of mine had urged me to go and see a physician there. And I did, and was prescribed medical marijuana. And even though I was very afraid to try it, I was sort of at the end of my rope. I tried every kind of medication known to man—pain killers, nerve pills, you know, anti-seizure medications and nothing had even come close to working. And so I tried it and found that because of medical advances, I was able, without really having the experience of a high. You know people talk about, you know, tripping over like almost like you would be drunk. I didn't really have that but I had a massive pain reduction. And it just brought me to tears and I think induced a real re-thinking about the morality of this issue, at least in some cases, for me. JULIE ROYS:  And can I ask what form you took the marijuana in? JONATHAN MERRITT:  Yes, it was an edible form. So it was almost like a piece of candy. It wasn't like smoked. It was like a something that you just sort of chewed up and swallowed. And then kind of over time, released into the body.   JULIE ROYS:  Okay. And do you know what the percentage of the THC was in that drug?    JONATHAN MERRITT:  You know, I don't know. I remember when I was picking it up—you sort of, you go to the doctor and then the doctor sends you to kind of like a dispensary, like a pharmacy. And I don't remember the exact percentages but I remember that you could kind of choose. And it was a lower percentage of THC, a high percentage of CBD. So he was like, you know, I said I want to be able to funtion. I want, I don't want to really want to get high. I'm taking it for pain. I kind of explained it and then he was able to kind of select and recommend a product to me.       JULIE ROYS:  Okay. Dr. Poupard, I asked all those questions because I've talked to you about this issue before. And this was, I think, a couple years ago, maybe 2017. And at that point there wasn't a lot of great labeling of the drug. And most medical marijuana, it was my understanding at that point, from our discussion, a lot of it was just the joint that you would smoke.  And you would get high and you'd call that medical because you got a prescription for it. Has it changed in the past few years? DR. RICHARD POUPARD:   In some ways it has, you know.  Obviously, even when I first wrote my article in the Christian Research Journal even five years ago. The comps, the CBD oil was just coming out. With Charlotte, who found that CBD, dissolved in oil, was an effective treatment for her seizures. And since that time, that then actually the FDA has approved medications that are enriched in CBD. I mean, now when it comes to the products that are available, it's widespread everywhere. CBD, obviously, is seen—that the health claims and it's really gotten out everywhere. And it's kind of on fire in terms of those that are claiming that it's going to pretty much fix everything. But in terms of, you know, I do believe that most of the, even though there's many other options, I find that in my studies, that those that are taking compounds from marijuana, for medical reason for pain relief, you know, tend to use more edible type of solutions because they are long-lasting. And those that are actually taking for more recreational reasons, still tend to smoke it because you can get the desired dose. And control the desired dose better that way—get a better and bigger hit as opposed to taking the edible. JULIE ROYS:  Yes, sorry about that. We have to go to break.  But when we come back, I want to talk a little bit about the difference between the recreational and the medicinal use of this.  But also, I want to talk about a pastor who says smoking marijuana, or taking CBD and THC, it actually enhances his worship experience. What do you think about that?  Again, you're listening to The Roys Report. We'll be right back after a short break. Segment 2 JULIE ROYS:  Well, can marijuana enhance your worship experience? Welcome back to The Roys Report. I'm Julie Roys. And according to Pastor Craig Gross, that's exactly what marijuana does. And we're talking today about marijuana—how people of faith should view this drug. And many Christians, especially conservative Christians are against using the drug. But Craig Gross, the founder of a ministry in Pasadena, California, that helps people overcome porn addiction, is a marijuana enthusiast. Gross says that he uses cannabis 3 to 4 times a week, and he says it's also an aid in his worship. On his website ChristianCannabis.com, he writes that in 2017, he discovered cannabis-infused mints, which contained about five milligrams of THC. He said this “microdose” was perfect for him. And shortly after he started using it, he said he had an intense spiritual experience. This is what he writes and I quote:  “There, in the midst of a break from a convention, at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, the Lord met me in ways more powerful than I have ever known in my 42 years on this earth. My head stopped spinning and I heard His voice. I got clarity. I got direction. I got out of my head, and I let God into my heart in a lasting, visceral way.” Interestingly, Gross, just last month, resigned from his ministry for porn addicts that he launched 17 years ago. He actually passed that on to someone who had found help through that ministry. And now he is giving a new cannabis business his full-time attention.  What do you think of that? Is Gross a little bit whacked out—or is he on target and enlightening his fellow Christians? The number to call: 312-660-2594. And before I go to my guests, I do want to go to our phone lines cause Tracy's on the line right now. And Tracy, from what I understand, you're for legalization of pot, not just medicinally but also recreationally? Yes? TRACY:   You know, I am but I think that we're really talking about two separate issues here. The first is the morality and the spiritual responsibility that a Christian has—to be true, honest, honoring of their bodily temple and these things. Right? The criminalization or de-criminalization—I think it's a completely separate issue. The people that are going to smoke pot, it's clear that they're going to do it whether it's legal or not. And when I say smoke, let's say take. People are going to take marijuana. JULIE ROYS:  Okay, so you're saying legalizations, let's put that on the side, okay? The legalization. So what do you think about Christians using it? Are you for that or against that? TRACY:  I believe that marijuana is an intoxicant like many others. I believe that, unlike some others, it is more possible to use this intoxicant in a responsible way—the way one would use wine with dinner. JULIE ROYS:  Okay, so just a little bit. Maybe get, you know, a little buzz but not intoxicating. And what do think about the worship experience thing? Enhancing your worship experience with marijuana? TRACY:  You know, and I think that sounds great and it's a really good way to make someone feel not horrible about what they're doing. And I don't know the pastor's heart. I don't know anyone's heart. The Lord knows their heart, not me. But I think . . . JULIE ROYS:  But you're cool with it. TRACY:  Well, it's disingenuous to say that, you know, I'm using this because it enhances my spirituality. I didn't begin living my life as a conservative Christian. I came to that through the grace of God, okay. And there was a time when I used intoxicants more than I would care to admit. JULIE ROYS:  So you think it might be a little bit of a rationalization for wanting to use it period. TRACY:  Absolutely. JULIE ROYS:  Okay. All right. Tracy thanks, thanks. I want to go to our guests and give them a chance to weigh in. I appreciate your comments.   Again, joining me today, Jonathan Merritt, a Christian author and advocate of marijuana—and Dr. Richard Poupard, an oral surgeon and critic of using the drug. So Jonathan, I'll throw that to you. Your thoughts on Pastor Craig Gross, or I should say ex-Pastor, I guess, and his enhancing worship experience with the drug. JONATHAN MERRITT:  Well, I think it strikes me as a little strange, right off the bat. I have a lot of friends who practice Easter religions, who make use of these kinds of things—psychedelics, psychotropics for spiritual enhancement. It's not something that's normally a part of the Christian tradition. And I don't have any real experience with it but I can tell you one thing in my experience. I grew up journaling, you know, just sort of writing down my thoughts from my quiet time and journaling. But I will tell you when I had my pain condition, I couldn't journal because I was so consumed with thoughts about my physical state that I couldn't quite piece my thoughts together to journal in my spiritual journal. But I will tell you that when I was able to kind of clear that out, just a little bit, I was able to journal. And I guess maybe if that's what someone says is an enhancement I suppose that's one thing. It's very different, I think, than someone using to quote “reach an enlightment,” kind of drawing from non-Christian traditions. And I feel like when I read Craig's words there, it kind of confuses me as to what side of the line he's on, I guess, in this discussion. JULIE ROYS:  Yeah, and, you know, I know for me it kind of sets off some red flags because I remember reading, and this is going to date me, but Keith Green—his autobiography, not autobiography, his biography—that was written after he died but Keith Green was a Christian artist who really stood out, I think, in those early days of Christian contemporary music. Very straight-up artist. If you don't know him, you should check him out. He's like my all-time favorite. But Keith wrote, I remember, talked about how, before he came to Christ, he would use a lot of drugs. And it became a portal not just for, you know, first it was like these very happy spiritual experiences. Then it became much darker and he began to suspect that this was really a portal for Satan to reach him. So it seems like it can open us up. Dr. Poupard I'd like your thoughts on that. Open us up to whatever influence can come in which could be light or dark. Correct? DR. RICHARD POUPARD:  Well, I think so and I think that's a great concern for when we have now this increasing popularity of marijuana. By the way, mentioning Keith Green also dates me too, so I'm with you with that. One thing about this topic and it's really a good example. We're talking about there's a big difference between using any medication for a treatment of a pathology, treatment of an illness. And, you know, returning the goal in that, of course, is to returning our body to its normal state. For someone who has neurogenic pain, chronic pain that's refractory to other treatments—to have something that can bring you back to where you can now be and worship God correctly and function well, you know. That's something that we absolutely need to celebrate. At the same time, there's that next step in which we think that in taking this medication, we can actually increase our worship. This is nothing new. This has been going on for millennia.  In Eastern religions and the like, where people want to become close to the higher power by changing our brain chemistry. I think it's pretty clear that we should be very concerned about that. And Craig Gross himself, I mean, he started out basically, once again, taking the medication for chronic migraines, I believe. But now is an advocate for selling and selling it actually on his web site.  Vape pens that have praise and persevere and peace on it.  And I think the peace that we get from our faith does not, should not be coming from, you know, the THC found in a vape pen. JULIE ROYS:  Yeah and it does make you a little bit leery when he goes from doing ministry and now he's in a for-profit business, you know. What's behind all that, you know?  I don't know but it does, sort of make you think about the interest, the heart with all of that. But I want you to just comment on our caller who said, “Why can't marijuana be a little bit intoxicating, just like say drinking a wine with your dinner?” Can it be used in that way? DR. RICHARD POUPARD:  Well, I don't have personal  experience but the research shows that an intoxicating dose of marijuana usually happens at basically like four puffs of a joint. And very few advocates of marijuana, that use it recreationally, use less than that. So, you know, the whole point of smoking marijuana, especially recreationally, is to basically dose yourself to a certain point in which you feel then good. And it's known that when you go past that point, then other things like psychosis and paranoia can kick in. So in general, I don't know anybody who uses marijuana recreationally as a non-intoxicating manner. Now when you're using it for medical purposes, if you're, you can do micro-dosing and things like that but that will bring us to the fact that whether or not research has shown that these things are, actually on a populaton level, effective for treating the things that are claimed to be treated. JULIE ROYS:  Well again, that's Dr. Richard Poupard, an oral surgeon and critic of legalizing marijuana. Also joining me today, Jonathan Merritt, an author and proponent of legalizing marijuana. Joining me in just a little bit will be someone who can talk about legalization laws, state legalization laws and if you don't want marijuana coming to your town, what you can do. Stay tuned. The Roys Report will be right back after a short break. 3rd Segment JULIE ROYS: Well, welcome back to The Roys Report, brought to you in part by Judson University.  I'm Julie Roys.  And today, we're discussing what Christians should think about marijuana. Is it okay for Christians to use marijuana? Does it matter whether they're using it medically as opposed to recreationally? And what about legalizing the drug? Should Christians support legalization or not? I'd love to hear your thoughts. The number to call is 312-660-2594. Also, joining me today to debate this issue are Jonathan Merritt, who's an advocate of marijuana—and Dr. Richard Poupard, who's a critic of the drug. And we'll return to that debate in just a minute. But I wanted to take a minute to discuss advocacy, especially in Illinois since this show does originate here in Chicago. And a lot of our listeners are in Illinois. Although I want to mention this week, kind of excited about this, we're adding a new station—WBIS Awesome Radio in Greenville, North Carolina. So welcome to all of you listening in North Carolina. We're so excited to have you as part of The Roys Report listening audience. And I should mention that in North Carolina, speaking of marijuana, marijuana is not legal, although lawmakers there have introduced a medical marijuana bill. And we'll see what happens with that bill when the state legislature re-convenes next year. But in Illinois, the question of legalization is somewhat of a moot point in Illinois. That's because earlier this year, the state legislature legalized marijuana. But now there's initiatives to ban dispensaries in certain towns. This is similar to what's been done across Michigan. There, the drug is legal, but more than 500 cities have opted out of the Marijuana Act and are banning marijuana businesses in their towns. So, joining me now is David Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute. He's someone who has been very involved in this issue. And I believe he joins me now. Hi Dave? Can you hear me? Okay, looks like we weren't able to get him on the line. We will get him on the line before the end of this show. And I want him to comment on some of these issues of opting out and what your cities can do. But let me take it back to our guests Jonathan Merritt and Richard Poupard. Jonathan, before the break we were talking a little bit about medical vs. recreational use. How do you feel—I know you want it to be legal, you want Christians to be engaging on this issue and talking about this issue—but what do you feel about the recreational use? Do you think that there's a legitimate place for Christians to use marijuana recreationally? Wait, we lost Jonathan. Okay, well Dr. Poupard can you hear me?  DR. RICHARD POUPARD: Yes I can.  JULIE ROYS: Okay, all right so I guess we've lost a couple of our guests there. My apologies to those of you listening a few technical issues today but do you think I think it’s pretty clear you don’t think there’s any any place for using this drug recreationally. Correct? DR. RICHARD POUPARD: Well no, I think especially from a Christian standpoint, I don’t see an argument that can be laid across that says it is a good thing to use this drug as a life enhancer. And it’s interesting that the playbook that the pro-marijuana advocates have used extremely effectively in terms of beginning by talking about how it can be effective to treat illnesses and we should be able to have access to it for compassion. But frankly, I agree with in terms of treating patients with (inaudible) disorders. And then quickly turning to say that it should be completely legal for everybody to use because it's safe  and it’s a better intoxicant, say, than the ones that we currently accept. I think that’s been very effective. And that idea has been kind of pushed across our culture. And I think we should push back on that. I don’t imagine a better culture with more of us engaging with marijuana. And in fact, a lot of the proposed advantages of marijuana of over say alcohol have been shown really to not be effective. We thought that, for a while, that increased use of marijuana might decrease the opioid problem that we have. And some early data showed that might be the case. Well the latest stuff that came out, the latest studies show that it has a negative effect. The more people who smoke pot actually end up on opioids further. In things for instance with intimate partner violence. We used to think that well, it would be better if husbands, or partners, if they were high, maybe they’d be more relaxed and there would be less likely to abuse their families. Well, now it turns out that  even in terms of when we account for all the other variables, that those who smoke pot actually have a greater incidence of abuse even with controlling alcohol use and everything else. So I think that both in a spiritual aspect, which is what I’m concerned about as a Christian, but also the cultural effects I think are going to be great and, right now, unknown. JULIE ROYS: I think we have Jonathan back on the line. Yes? JONATHAN MERRITT:  We do! JULIE ROYS: Yay! Okay. Sorry about that friend. Didn't mean to drop you. But, so we've been talking a little bit about using marijuana recreationally as a post to medicinally. I wanted to know your input. Do you think it should be legalized recreationally as well as medicinally? JONATHAN MERRITT: I do. I do, and not because I think that recreational use is healthy or good or even advisable for a Christian. But simply because of all of the difficulties that have come with making it illegal. You know, I think I would make the same argument for other dangerous drugs—tobacco as well as alcohol, both very, very dangerous drugs—that there’s a difference between making it illegal and being able to sort of enforce those laws—and to do so in a just way—and also then encouraging people to use something responsibly that can be used irresponsibly. JULIE ROYS: I can understand that. And so Dr. Poupard, what do you think about that? Is this too hard to regulate at this point that we should just say, “yeah it should be legal, even recreationally even if we wouldn’t do it or advocate doing it?” DR. RICHARD POUPARD: I actually agree with Jonathan. I think it’s wise for us to look at the laws that we presently have. And in instances in which they have been unjust, we should look at changing them. But I don’t think that necessarily leads to a full legalization. Just as an aside, decriminalization of marijuana might be a good step. Instead of putting those with small amounts of possession in jail, small fines and the like, I think would be a next step that maybe we may consider taking. I think that’s different then making it legal. Now there’s an assumption, I think, in Jonathan’s comment that if we do make it legal, then people would be actually, you know, more apt to use it responsibly. And I would disagree with that. I think that even when we look at states that have passed medical marijuana laws, for instance, most—to be honest with you—most of the time that those with medical marijuana cards are not using it for legitimate medical purposes. JULIE ROYS: Okay, Dr. Poupard. We need to go to a break. When we come back, let's talk a little bit more about that. I also want to get to how this affects the developing brain of adolescents. And we do have David Smith on the line from the Illinois Family Institute. We will be right back after a short break. Again, you're listening to The Roys Report with Julie Roys. We'll be back.  Segment 4 JULIE ROYS:  Well, what should Christians think about marijuana? Is it a medically important drug and relatively harmless to those who consume it? Or is it a dangerous drug, especially for younger, developing minds—and maybe a gateway drug? Welcome back to The Roys Report. I'm Julie Roys. And today we are talking about this controversial issue with guests on both sides.  And I want to let you know that if you missed any part of today's broadcast, or just want to listen again or share it with friends, it will be available at my website today about an hour after the broadcast. So just go to Julie Roys, spelled ROYS, dot com and click on the podcast tab. That's Julie Roys dot com. I also want to let you know that next week, we're going to be discussing an extremely important topic—how churches should minister to abused women. Just this week, I published the first of two investigative articles about women who were in abusive marriages and sought help through the Soul Care ministry at Harvest Bible Chapel during the years 2012-2016. The women say the ministry failed to protect them, and instead protected their abusive husbands. If you'd like to read that article, it's available at my website, Julie Roys dot com. But on The Roys Report next week, Judi Noble, an experienced counselor of abused women, will be joining me. And she has tons of insight about how churches should respond to this issue. And clearly, churches need a little bit of help in this area. So I hope you'll make a point to join me next week on The Roys Report. But returning to the topic of marijuana again. Joining me Jonathan Merritt, an author and proponent of legalizing marijuana and Dr. Richard Poupard, an oral surgeon and critic of legalization. And also right now Dave Smith joins me, the Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute and a good friend. So, David, so glad you could make it. DAVID SMITH:  Hello, Julie. Glad to be on The Roys Report. JULIE ROYS: Well, I am glad to have you. And I know a lot of people listening especially here in Illinois, again, where this show originates but I know there's people listening online in communities all across the country. But in those, in states where marijuana has been legalized, is this a moot point? I mean, is it water under the bridge? There's nothing that we can do? Or is there something people can do in communities if they're concerned about legalization? DAVID SMITH:  Well, here in Illinois, we have the blessing of having an option, in the law that they just passed, to be able to opt out our local communities, and even our counties, out of retail sales. So, in other words, use and possession of marijuana will still be legal, however, there will be no pot stores or retail sales of it in the community, if they zone it out. And we want to encourage listeners to consider this seriously and reach out to their local mayors, aldermen, their city council, their county board members and encourage them. You know, if you don't want to become a destination point, you know, for drug use and for marijuana purchases, you can opt out and you can encourage your lawmakers, your local officials, to pass an ordinance to ban it. Also, for your listeners in Chicago, while the city of Chicago probably won't consider such a ban, local precincts, each precinct within the city of Chicago, can ban the retail sales, just like they can with alcohol. They can make the precinct dry. While in this case, if you lived especially in a precinct that's near a business district, you may want to consider passing the local ban in the precinct to safeguard the community. JULIE ROYS:  And Dave, why would somebody want to do that? Why would a community want to do that? When you say a “destination point” what's your concern with it? DAVID SMITH:  Well, that's because especially when there's no cap on the THC levels. You know, the addiction levels, that can come with high THC levels, will bring in a lot of addicts. And we've seen in Colorado even. For example in Pueblo, Colorado, the homeless community has exploded in Pueblo, Colorado—a lot of people coming just for the pot. And being able to use the pot in that community. And so, we're also very concerned about people driving in and out of the community—your neighborhood, going to get their next, you know, stash of marijuana. You know, what state of mind are they in currently? We know that THC stays in your blood a lot longer than alcohol does and it could affect your fine motor skills. So who's on our roads? Who's driving through our communities? And in what state of mind and intoxication are they in?  JULIE ROYS:  Well, Dave thank you for informing us on those things. I appreciate it and I appreciate your work on the part of Illinois citizens. So appreciate you joining me. DAVID SMITH:  Thank you, Julie. JULIE ROYS:  Let me throw this to Jonathan Merritt. You're in, I know, in favor of legalizing. Do you share some of those concerns, about your community being a destination point for people that might come in, that might have THC in their blood? And the homeless, you know, some of these claims it's increased because of legalization. What do you say? JONATHAN MERRITT:  Yeah, I mean, I'd have to see some of the data on it. One of the difficult things, I think, for all of us who are trying to figure out what we think and what we believe about this. And I know this, just from being a journalist, is there's so much conflicting data out there. And so, you know, you can find a study that shows there's a rise in this or there's lower levels of this. I think one legitimate concern would be how safe the roads would be. And that's something that I just can't get away from even as a person who, you know, if you look at the whole issue, supports legalizing it. It seems to be quite a risk to road safety. Because it's difficult to test for, it's difficult to decide if there was really alcohol mixed with marijuana. It's difficult to know what levels of marijuana you've consumed. So is it safe to drive or not? And I don't think there's anyone in America that wants more unsafe drivers on the roadways, where their spouses and their children and their friends are also trafficking. So I think that's a very strong argument and that's one that I think we need to talk about. JULIE ROYS:  And also ER visits tend to go up in communities where they've legalized marijuana. Is that correct, Dr. Poupard? DR. RICHARD POUPARD:  Yeah, the latest study in Colorado, the ER visits have increased three times since this complete legalization has occurred, mostly for both hyperemesis as well as marijuana related psychosis. And anecdotally, a lot of my emergency room colleagues I've spoken to, even since we've legalized in Michigan, even though we don't have dispensaries yet, they've seen a significant uptick in problems in the emergency room. And my main concern is, also, there's no question that as we have increased access to marijuana, even though, obviously, it's going to be illegal for those under 21 to have, that our kids are going to have increased access to it. And not only that, at a much higher potency than we've had in the past. As a father of teenagers, that certainly is a concern, especially with the data known. We know it affects a developing brain in ways that can sometimes be irreversible—that between impairing function, processing speed, memory, and attention span, and concentration. And you can actually measure these changes with an IQ test. I hope Jonathan agrees with me in his article that, you know, we have to do try to do what we can to keep this away from kids. Most medical groups say, actually, under 25 but certainly those that have a developing brain.  JULIE ROYS:   Yeah, and that is such a big issue. But I know I talked to my daughter, for example, you know she's a teenager, about this issue, how she feels. And a lot of these talking points, that you hear from the marijuana lobby, they get right into the main stream, there's no doubt, and there isn't necessarily a lot of good education on these sorts of things. And a book that I read, you know, what is it, Telling the Truth About Marijuana to Our Kids, talked about even the link between violence and marijuana use, especially when it's introduced when these minds are developing. And isn't there a propensity, even if you've used marijuana, not a lot, it's in a small group of the population, but you never know who it is, where paranoia and some violent tendencies may come out if you're using marijuana? Is that correct, doctor? DR. RICHARD POUPARD:  Well, there's no question that marijuana has a positive correlation with psychosis, and psychosis has a positive correlation with violence. So that being said, as the book stated, that there is definitely, most likely a correlation between marijuana use and violence. At the same, you know, one of the concerns—the truth of the matter is that the majority of people who smoke marijuana and have in the past, smoked it when they're young and they kind of grow out of it. And that makes it seem like it's not dangerous. You don't have a lot, like a tremendous number of people, who are, you know, show addictive tendencies. But as we look at any drug, any medication, we can't just look at the average person. We have to look at what effect it has on even the rarer individuals.  JULIE ROYS:  Let me throw that to Jonathan because Jonathan you said you have friends, you know, that you were saying, that are into Easter religions, use some psychotropic drugs. But marijuana use—I'm guessing you have friends that have used marijuana and used it for awhile. I mean, what's your impression about did they start when they were young? Was it a gateway drug necessarily to harder drugs? What's your experience? JONATHAN MERRITT:  You know, I don't have any friends, now this could be more a statement, by the way, in my friend group than it is, you know, like a scientific sample size, but I don't have any friends who started out using marijuana and then transitioned to cocaine or heroin or something hard. But, you know, I live in a fairly affluent neighborhood in New York City where people are working and it's different. I would imagine it would be different in different communities. There's different levels of availability of certain things and so I don't know that that would be truly reflective. I do think that one thing that we need to talk about is when we talk about marijuana use, you almost have to explain which type of marijuana use you're talking about. Because I'm betting you have lots of people listening to this, who are Christians, who would say they don't want to legalized this.  They don't want this being used for recreational use but if you talked about my situation—a very serious Christian, who is trying his best to follow Jesus every day of his life, who came down with a disorder that he didn't ask for, who tried every legal medical remedy out there and found no help. Who really thought he was at the end of his rope. Who found some help using medical marijuana that did not make him high or incapacitated. I think there are a lot of people who'd be so sympathetic about that and would say I don't know that I can say that's a bad thing based on what it means for me to follow Jesus. And so it's a little different sometimes now we're having to figure out what we're really talking about when we are talking about marijuana usage.  JULIE ROYS:  Yeah, I know, personally, I don't have a problem with medical marijuana provided that it's truly medicinal. In other words, it's prescribed by a doctor for a legitimate medical condition and the amount of THC in each dose is clearly labeled. And there's controls in place to assure the consumer that what's stated on the label is accurate. I think that's another issue. It seems like in some of these states, there's not really good controls over these things. But I think if somebody has that medical marijuana, I think that's okay but I think what isn't okay and this is where I think the Bible is really clear. It's against intoxication of any kind. Ephesians 5 says, “Do not get drunk on wine . . . but instead be filled with the Spirit.”  Proverbs 20, verse 1 says, “Wine is a mocker and strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” So I think that's pretty clear. So Dr. Poupard thank you so much for joining me. Jonathan thank you so much. I appreciate the discussion. And friends let's continue this discussion as we're in our churches. I think it's important that we talk about these kind of issues. So, I Peter 5 encourages us, “Let us be sober-minded and watchful.” God has important work for us to do. And the last thing we need as believers is another distraction. Thanks so much for listening today. Hope you have a great weekend and God bless.  Read more

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I have a lot of software developer colleagues who are 20 - 35 years old but none 50+. At what age does a software engineer’s career end? Hi Dave and Jamison, thanks for the great podcast. I recently started a new position on a small remote team. The co-founders are increasingly dismayed by my lack of Slack-question-asking, although I have reassured them that I’m not too shy and I will ask when I’m stuck. I have daily one-on-one meetings with one co-founder, where I do ask questions about the code base, story requirements, potential side effects of my solutions etc. It’s an open-source project with comprehensive and Googable developer docs, so between those and my debugger I can figure everything else out with a bit of research. A co-founder told me that he expects to see me asking one or two questions per hour, and strongly implied that I need to do this if I want to survive my probation period. I was actually let go from my last job at the end of my probation period due to “brisk communication style” and “not asking enough questions”, so I’m freaking out now. I don’t want to annoy my colleagues with a constant stream of inane RTFM-style questions, but I’m stumped on how else to hit my question target! Can you help me come up with ideas? Is there some big picture reason for this obsession with question-asking that I’m missing?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave and Jamison, love the show and your advice, there’s no podcast quite like yours out there in the audiosphere. I’m a long time listener, first time question asker. “I’ve been doing a really good job lately. I’ve had feedback from my manager and my managers-manager that I’ve exceeded expectations and gone above and beyond over the last year. While the compliments are great to hear, I’d like to approach my manager about a raise to go along with it. Do I wait until performance review time in three months and hope that I get a what I’m hoping for, or bring it up now? How do I approach this conversation without sounding greedy, braggy and potentially asking for too much, leaving a bad impression when I’m on such a roll? I don’t feel like I can keep up at work, 😬, my team is super clever, young and all singles. They spend weekends, evenings and spare time learning. We are introducing a new tool or framework every couple weeks and it is exhausting. I am constantly learning a lot from them and the projects always go really well. 🤷‍♂️ - I’m not sure how to have a good conversation about it as they all love the learning culture. Any tips?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Great podcast! Love what you guys are doing and very happy that you are doing this for such a long time! Here’s the question. I started to work in a Startup a year ago. When we were negotiating the salary we agreed on amount X, and CTO promised that after a year it will be increased. He did say the exact sum. So, the year has passed, I followed up CTO about the salary raise, and he delegated the task to the manager, who decided not to give me a raise. When I asked ‘why?’ he said that I am good at negotiating my salary and I’m getting what the market is offering. I don’t feel bad about not getting more money, but the fact that the CTO break his word concerns me. I don’t think I can trust this company when they are promising anything and I started to care less about what I’m doing here. Am I delusional that a programmers salary has to increase even by 2% on a yearly basis and how to find a way to trust company in the future? Or just drop this and take the default SSE case - look for another job? Thank you for your answer. Hi Dave and Jamison, Absolutely love the show. I share an office with a peer who works on my team. We are both early in our career and are lucky to work under a very hands off manager. However, I feel my peer is taking advantage of the situation and is slacking off. He is rarely in his office and often states that he is ““working”” from home. When he graces us with his appearance in the office, he asks the most basic questions. Granted, those questions are internal and specific (not easily Google-able), but still, I feel he should have known the answers after a year on the job. He intentionally exploits our monolith’s slow builds by running full builds all the time and complain that it is slow. Then plays video games in the office until the build is complete (about 4 hours). Then makes a minor change in his feature code and kicks off a full build again, even though he could build incrementally (about 2-3 minutes). What do you recommend me to do? Should I spend time and energy to answer his lifeless questions? Should I confront him?

Why Dave Decided to talk to Carolin Soldo: With over 10 years of experience, Carolin has cracked the code to helping clients go from zero to full-time income in less than four months and break through the million dollar mark. She has helped build numerous multi-7 figure businesses, including her own international coaching company. Whether you’re starting a new coaching business or are ready to scale your existing business, Carolin and her team are here to help you reach your highest level. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: Bypassing The Competition: (1:10) How To Identify Your Avatar? (6:23) Utilizing An Application Funnel. (13:20) Problem Solving And Urgency. (17:00) Quotable Moments: "I'm building businesses, but I'm giving women a voice, give them power and make them feel confident and they just enjoy life so much more." "If you are someone who's brand new to building a funnel, you want to be as specific as possible." Other Tidbits:  Carolin works with passionate coaches who are ready to live the abundant and purpose-driven lifestyle they’ve always dreamt of. Whether you’re starting a new coaching business or are ready to scale your existing business, Carolin and her team are here to help you reach your highest level. Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00         Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Every. Welcome back to funnel hacker radio. Yeah, Speaker 2:     00:19         your host, Dave Woodward and I wanna introduce you guys to one of our two comma club winters. I'm so proud of her. She's just been crushing it. Carolyn Soldo, welcome to the show. Speaker 3:     00:27         Yeah. Hi Dave. Thanks for having me. Speaker 2:     00:29         I'm so happy for those of you guys. Don't know Carolyn. She said over 10 years of experience, he's cracked the code. Really helping clients go from zero to a full time income. Get this in less than four months and also being able to break the million dollar mark. Huge, huge numbers. A super proud of all the. She's done our. We talked a lot about some things she's doing as far as live events and webinars and really the whole idea as far as how you can actually take your passion, turn into profits, and it fits in exactly with what a lot of our current customers are trying to do. So Carolyn's kind of dive in and talk to people about what it is that you're doing and how you first of all tell people as far as obviously get 10 years of experience here, but what's the big kicker for you? How in the world are you able to help people go from zero and within four months to a full time income? I mean, that's a huge, huge claim to fame. Speaker 3:     01:18         It is. Well, let me preface that by saying that we don't guarantee anything. Of course we all have to make, but no, I mean we have hundreds and hundreds of testimonials and they're coming in every single day of people going from literally ground zero where they have a job or they're staying at home with their kids and we have lots of female clients to where they were placing their incomes and they're working in the coaching industry pretty much full enough for what I would consider full time. And our secret recipe is that tactical advice. So were, you know, other courses might tell you to do, you know, a Webinar or my tell you to get visibility online and market yourself. You know, what they're not telling you is the how. So they're telling you to run a welder an hour. I tell them go sign up for click funnels, go here, do that. So it's very, very tangible and I've noticed that people need to know exactly how to do it, you know, in the nitty gritty. And we give our clients such detailed advice that they can bypass the competition because there is no guesswork. There's no wondering how to do it or which systems to use or you know even what to say because we have so many templates that have been proven over time and that we can really fast track them to become profitable in a very short amount of time. Speaker 2:     02:44         I love that. It's so funny you mentioned that as far as this whole idea of giving really, really detailed information on how to literally just had a meeting with Russell and with Julie and we're looking at doing some things, trying to find a way of making it even easier inside of click funnels by providing even greater detail on exactly how to do it. And I think it's probably one of the things a lot of people miss. So many people speak at a high strategic level or you know, 10,000 foot level and it's hard when you've already done it and you've gone through it and you've built it yourself. You kind of assume well by now everyone else kind of knows that. It also. And you forget what it was like two, three, four, five, 10 years ago and you're like, oh, that's right. I really, I didn't know how to drag and drop things. Speaker 2:     03:27         I didn't know where to put things and I don't know what a headline is and it's those basic things that you kind of take for granted what you've been doing it for awhile yet at the same time, those are those little details is what allows people to feel from what I've seen in your audience and with your group now, they just love you. I mean your testimonials on your pages. It's crazy. I mean people are raving all day long about what you've been able to do and help them build and I think it's because you care so much and you provide such great, great detail. Speaker 3:     03:54         Yeah. I always tell my clients problems will come up. This is not going to be a cakewalk. You're coming into this. You're running a business or launching a business. There will be trouble, but one thing I can promise you is that I will have a solution for you. Come to me with a problem. I'm going to help you figure it out and we will work on this thing until it works. It may work after a day, it may work after 10 days or four weeks or whatever, but we will have a solution for you because we've seen a lot, you know, maybe I can't say I've seen it all but probably pretty close to it now. So it's about being able to solve these problems and having you know those, those, those steps was just tricks in your back pocket and you can pull out and give to clients and that you said went very detail oriented and giving them exact instruction and steps because we don't assume they know anything. Speaker 2:     04:42         Well, Carolyn, I know for a lot of people get into the whole coaching business a lot. Them get real frustrated with dealing with the people who are the newbies and they much rather just deal with. Once it got success, then I can take them from making money, whether it's four or five, $6,000 a month to six figures, seven figures, but getting people started is probably some of the most difficult things that any coach deals with. So I'm kind of curious as far as why did you pick that part to focus on so much Speaker 3:     05:09         compassion and because I started this because I love making women shine and, and men too. I have nothing against man. We have some men in my program, but to me I came to this country as an immigrant. I came with nothing and I literally booked myself to where I am today and I had to go from feeling like nobody feeling like who am I? Am Not Worthy. I looked bad. I have this accent. Like I was an underdog right? To where nowadays, you know, I wouldn't say that I'm the best thing in the world but. But I have a certain confidence now and I see that in my clients. Like I see those, those women come into the program, they have so many self doubts and they think I'm just mainstream. I'm just like this normal woman, Mike. But they go through this and not only do they have a business and clients, but they also changed in sight. They become stars. They appreciate themselves so much more. Like they speak highly of themselves. To show up completely differently than they were before. So I'm building businesses, but I'm giving women a voice, give them power and make them feel confident and they just enjoy life so much more and, and I also know what it's like, you know, Speaker 2:     06:23         that's honestly one of the things I had this conversation with a figure award winners yesterday about this idea of really knowing who your Avatar is and I've as I take a look at your page and your funnel and everything else. Yeah, I understand you've got a few men. You totally focus on women and I think it's one of the things were a lot of people miss it, especially in the coaching thing where you think, you know, I can help everybody if you tell people a little more about how, how do you identify your Avatar? What exactly is your Avatar and why'd you pick them? Speaker 3:     06:55         Yeah. My avatar is someone that like me, so I see coaches when they're focused on an avatar that is damn essentially a couple of years ago, maybe even a couple of months ago, and they actually went through it. Experienced felted no, but it's like they succeed more than anybody else that you can study it, right? You can. You can have that work experience, but if you've lived it and felt it, it has to be an emotional attachment to it. Then I think you can really create a powerful messaging and and specific and sharp messaging and the success of your marketing has to do with your message. You can run webinars all day long if the message isn't where it needs to be, it will not work, right? The page can be pretty and in all kinds of colors, but if the words don't say what they need to say, it will not work. Speaker 3:     07:43         So I always say, look at your own biggest accomplishments. Who biggest failures? Who biggest challenges, what have you overcome in life, in relationships with money, with your career, with your children, with your house, and look at these areas and pull out you credibility. So I love education. Don't get me wrong. I love actual work experience and I have an Mba and I have work experience too, but I focus on the things that I've really felt in my core in my heart because then I can speak passionately and I think as coaches what inspires people to most. It's been a CSP and passionate because that inspires them to follow us and to maybe want to be like us. Right. So, so that's what we have to have. Speaker 2:     08:27         I love it. So when you're looking at your Avatar, you started advertising for them. You're advertising for more than just women. So what is your. When you kind of dial in your Avatar, is it women? Are they currently employed someplace else? Are they they already have a passion or is it someone who's a stay at home mom? What's. How do you identify or narrow down your Avatar to be more specific on exactly what it is you're looking at? Speaker 3:     08:48         So you want to start a really narrow. In the beginning I actually only worked with health coaches, so I have a health coaching background by. That's how I started in the coaching industry and then I became a business coach, so I said, I feel comfortable in the health industry. I know the industry, I know the struggles of health coaches. I'm going to be the business coach for health coaches, and then later on I said, well, my system works for any niche really, so I'm going wider. So if you're someone who's brand new building a funnel, you want to be as specific as possible. Just women stay at home. Moms who are over 40 have two kids and our 10 pounds overweight, like really nail it like my because then your marketing becomes very easy because once the right people see it, they'll be like, yep, that's it. I want this and nothing else. There's no convincing. There's no more selling. There's no more funnels that have to be six weeks long. You know? One or two emails could be enough to get these people in the door and say yes to your product. Speaker 2:     09:45         I love it. What does it take a look at some of your funnels? What things you focused on is the whole webinar funnel and I think you and I were talking about before we started recording here is you actually not only bring people in through your webinar funnel, but now once they're in through the webinar funnel, they attend a live event and while they're at a live event, you actually give them the same funnel that they got into. If you don't mind, can tell people how that works and why. Speaker 3:     10:10         So I coach coaches, right, and I only coach on things I know work, so I do something, I try it. I tested myself and if it works I gave it to my clients because then I can say this is gonna work and I know how to fix it and do it for you as well. So we have created a template now in click funnels that we're going to give to our clients that is built based on our model that we're actually using like that. The coaches have to coach them the things they actually do. If you don't do it yourself, I'm not going to do it myself either. So coaches have to coach them. What they actually do and many don't do that, but I don't. So we've given them a template. We're going to roll that out to our clients that actually building similar funnels to attract their clients as well. And those could be consumers who are the businesses have a, trying to make it so simple as possible as plug and play so that they have these short cuts, their success, fast track their success, um, and, and do what they want to do is if they don't want to be marketing, they want to coach clients, they want to help people, they want to transform people. So we were trying to really simplify that marketing process. Speaker 2:     11:19         Also possibly doing a done for you service for them or is it a you've given it to them and letting them do it? Speaker 3:     11:25         That is on my plan, but not anything I can invest in immediately. But there is a huge demand for done for you services because you know people, especially the new ones in this market, but we don't know a whole lot. They don't know. It can drag and drop. Like I said before, they don't know what a headline is, you know, what are, all of these systems have very confused and they struggle a lot. So, um, I know there's lots of providers out there. Maybe in the future I'll have it. I think it would be great, but we don't have it right now. Speaker 2:     11:56         All right, so people come in through your webinar funnel. So walk me through the funnel. I assumed basically land on a registration page. They register for the Webinar. What happens next? Speaker 3:     12:04         Yep. They watched a Webinar. So we run the Webinar once an hour and a webinar or a Webinar. I to actually do it both ways. I do live webinars, but I also have everything supplemented with webinars. So they go through that. I don't sell anything on my webinars. Yes. This is for coaches to coach coaches. If you're listening right now and your coach does this for you. So on my webinars I give, I give steps and if you've ever listened to Russell's perfect webinar strategy, that's one thing you could follow right away. It rocks. It's really good. So do the Webinar and at the end of it we pitch a conversation, so I use the funnel to book discovery calls and the discovery calls are hosted either by me or someone on my team. So I actually have a sales team that works for me and we then enroll clients over the phone. Speaker 2:     13:02         Awesome. So is it an application funnel? They're filling out an application for scheduling a call. Speaker 3:     13:08         They are scheduling a call, but they're also going through an application. So we have both. Yes. Speaker 2:     13:14         Give me an idea as far as how long has this a super lengthy application or is it real short, basic information? Speaker 3:     13:20         We have to ask this a lot. So we tested several things. We had the application before the call booking at the application after the call booking now, right now what we have is the application after the call booking. So they booked their call first, then they're being presented with an application form and if you, if you don't get the application, we follow up with them and we say, hey, you know, please fill out this form. It's really important for us to have this information to give you the best experience we can on that call. So your name, your your website, what are your goals, what are you struggling with right now? And I had a really short but I also had a really long, so right now we have eight, seven or eight questions on that forum and I feel that that's the sweet spot if I don't have enough questions, it's just an easy for people. Speaker 3:     14:06         If it's too long, it's too cumbersome for them to fill it out. So you know, you want to really ask them about their biggest struggles. You also want to ask them about their biggest goal is and how they think you can support them. My, what do you think we can do to help you in your business? What do you think we can do to help you with your health? For example, we asked them about their ability to invest. That is on our forum as well. We ask them how they could invest. So credit cards, loans. We actually, because those are the things we believe in in our, in my business, I believe that someone has to have funds to run a business, right? Nothing to hide. And we asked that question, um, you know, which, which gets them into that mindset of knowing what I'm running a business, I'm taking it seriously. Speaker 3:     14:51         Um, and then they also tell us about their website and what they do as a coach. So they're niche programs, cme half and, and who they want to serve. And we look at the form and it helps us sort of squeezing out some people if they say something that they're not a coach for example, or they don't even know who they want to work with yet effective, too new. It may not be the, my time for them, they may not be ready for us yet. So, um, we sort of evaluate who we want to talk to and then we take the calls and be enroll people consistently. So I don't ever launch anything. I don't open and close my doors. My sales are pretty consistent throughout the month. And if I want to scale, I scale up. You know, that the amount of people that are coming into the funnel, I take more calls, a hire more people for my sales team and that's how I've been able to grow my business very quickly. Speaker 2:     15:43         So is it a one step close on the call or is it a setter and a closer type of thing? Speaker 3:     15:48         We have a confirmation, so right now that sort of booking on call and then we have found and we'll call them up to confirms the appointment. Right. So you could call them, we call them apartments specialists. They call up and they say, you know, amazing, you've booked a call with us. We're so excited. I want to make sure that this is the phone number, make sure you really show up for this call. So they kind of feel them out a little bit. Um, and it also helps us reduce down. No, shows my hands, a lot of people that may not be right for whatever reason. Um, and then we have the sales team, we have people sitting in different countries with different time zones and they take a call and then we for the most part in bold over the phone for his time. Um, we also do follow ups. Of course some people need that time. They need to look at their finances, they need to make decisions and it's not about pressuring them. It's about helping them make the right decision. Speaker 2:     16:45         So from the time of person watches the webinar about how long before they, when they schedule their calls, it scheduled within the first two, three days after that. Is it a week long? How long is that? When do you typically use? Speaker 3:     16:55         Very interesting. I recently had somebody approach me that's like Helen, you know, much longer funnel because people need to be in your funnel for like a month before they buy it and you need to offer them low on products and you need to like give them all these freebies and things. And I said, well, let's test it. That's actually a look at how long our sales cycle is. And I looked at my client's home last year and, and I looked at when did they join my list and when did they buy it? So my sales cycle of, I know it's about five days. I love that. That's awesome. Come on my list. And then five days later I don't have any low end products. I don't have, I have freebies, we have books and we have and all these things are great and we do email them out and, and you know, we'd be targeted people with that stuff. Speaker 3:     17:40         But for the most part, I believe that when you offer people a solution they really want and it's a solution to an urgent problem, they experience might now they don't need to test drive you and sample you and warm and being warmed up to it. They have an urgent problem. I'm sick right now. I need a solution. I don't want to sample platter anything. I need this solution right now. And then they see it in front of them. They can usually make a decision quickly. You gotta be able to solve an urgent problem to make that happen. Speaker 2:     18:15         Yeah. And I think that's the problem a lot of people struggle with is there's not enough pain for their client. If there's not a pain for the client, the client's going to go, oh, I'll take a look at it later. There's no urgency, there's no scarcity involved. It's just a matter of like, oh, I'll get to it later. So I love. I knew you were. I didn't know what is within five days. That's awesome. I knew it was within a couple of weeks, but five days is fantastic. So they schedule and then from the time they schedule a. How quickly does the person, the appointment manager basically call him? Reconfirm their call? Speaker 3:     18:44         Well, we call same day. So we have someone on the every single day. Yeah. I mean if they book in on a Saturday, we may not reach them until that Monday and she doesn't work on the weekends. But usually it's the same day. And then I'll calendar is open sometimes more if we have someone on vacation or we don't, you don't have the coverage. We may open it up more, but ideally you don't want to have more than two to three days because you know they watch these webinars and the webinars are there for a reason. They get to know you, they trust you. You know when you're watching a webinar and you're like, oh, I got this. This guy has got such good energy and he's still fine, and he he knows so much and you hear his story and he also gives you some really tangible steps so you like him. Speaker 3:     19:28         You see these opportunities for you. It all kind of makes sense and you want more naturally, but it also screens out people who are not right for you. So the Webinar is a screening mechanism that brings in the web people, but also rejects how, if the wrong people who are not bad for you so you have the leads that you get from the Webinar are amazing because they. They know you, they listened. When we have people come in these calls, they say, Oh yeah, Carolyn set this on her webinar. She, she told me that he thinks they're just so warm. They're so ready. Whereas if they don't have, if they have not seen the Webinar, they'll say, who is this Carolyn? Like, can you tell me more about her? What does she even do? This just not ready to buy yet. Speaker 2:     20:12         I love it. So what's your price point then when you're selling? What's the actual product? Speaker 3:     20:16         So we started 8,000 and that's our entry level product and we go all the way up to higher end programs that are a little bit longer for more advanced coaches. So my sweet spot is people who definitely want to enter the coaching field or struggling coaches who want to finally become profitable. But I also work, we work with more advanced coaches too because we have some people in our programs that are stars and the arise quickly and they're just sort of taking off, right? So we give them a chance to work with us for longer and that's our powerhouse coach program where we mentor them for 12 months and then we talk about other things that come up in at this and this, the hiring, you know, managing clients' systems. We showed them how to run events and we go a little bit higher end or upstream with the topics. Um, but yeah, it's fun. It's between 40 and 60,000. Speaker 2:     21:11         I think that's. I knew, I knew you were in the 50,000 range. I think it's really cool if people understand you have absolutely no real low end. Your low barrier offer basic is eight grand and I think people understand you don't have to. So nothing drives me crazy when I hear somebody say, well I got to start off with a free trip wire or something in the low seven to $27. And then from there I'm going to go to the ebook and my upset. I'm like, you don't have to stop there. Start there. In fact, I think probably one of the easiest ways is to start where you can actually start making money and so that you can actually spend more to acquire more clients even if you're in the four, four 97 to $2,000 range and build your confidence from there. And then take it again. I love 8,000 and $50,000 or 40 to 60 is just amazing. Congratulations on all your success. Speaker 3:     21:57         It works well. I mean there's so many different business models, so many different teachers out there and they all work well. If you really master those ways of doing business right. For me, I've tried it all. I had the trip wire and I had the $27 ebook and I had all these things but nothing changed. I didn't have more quality. I didn't want to buy more from me. They liked the book, but the ones who wanted it wanted it no matter whether they bought the $27 ebook or not. So you know, I sat next to shortcut this whole thing, kinda down simplify it and do it that way and it works. Speaker 2:     22:33         I love it. It kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier as far as the pain. If there's not enough, I mean if there's a lot of pain, a 47, $27 book is not going to solve the pain. And so I think that's one of the main things. You've specialized and so well as really finding those people who've got a ton of pain going on and then solving it right away for them. So congratulations. Speaker 3:     22:52         Thank you. Speaker 2:     22:53         Was we kind of get close to wrapping things up here. Any other words of advice you want to give to our users? Listeners? Speaker 3:     22:59         Okay. Stick with it. Speaker 3:     23:02         I see so many amazing men and women do things and they have such great opportunity and potential, but they give up way too soon. Any marketing strategy, any final you get in clickfunnels, anything you will have a try will only work if you do it until it works. So if it doesn't work the first time, you may have to do a 50 webinars. You may have to change those lights. 100. It doesn't matter. You need to go at this with, I don't want to say radical forest, but like master would really put your all into it and don't stop working on it because then they stopped with this and then they try something else and they stopped and the niche, why this? And they stopped in and, and they give up and then, and then they get frustrated and they say, oh, nothing works for me. It's all, nothing works you, you know, these people. And it's a shame. So I think mastery and sticking with it. That's your secret right there. Speaker 2:     23:57         Oh, I love it. Well, I know people are gonna be dying to find out more about you. So how do they get more of you and I'm working to connect with you. Speaker 3:     24:03         Yeah. So my website is Carolin soldo.com and Carolyn with a c and an I. and if you want to, how about would russell say heck my funnel for you, if you want to check out our Webinar, it's Carolyn Soldo.com/passion. Speaker 2:     24:23         I love it. So it's c a r o l I n s o l d o Dot com. Forward slash passion. I will put that down in the show notes so you guys have it there as well. For those of you guys are driving or working out, listen to this. Want to make sure you get the access to that. So Carolyn, thank you so much. Appreciate your time, appreciate the value, always continue to give to our community and again, wish you all the best. Speaker 3:     24:42         Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 4:     24:44         Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me where I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people. At the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, don't we just reach out to me on facebook? You can pm me and I'm more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if people would like me to interview. I'm more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do that do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.

Today's Discussion: Season 1: It's been so much fun with lots of unique guests! It's been a wild and crazy ride! Thank you for joining me on this journey so far Season 2: Each month will have its own topic August is Parenting Month September is Cancer Month, featuring some amazing women who aren't afraid to talk about the "C" word. November is Women in the Military Month, where I talk to women about what it's like to serve, the physical and emotional toll it can take, and how they're bravely handling it all. What do you want to hear about? Message me, and let me know. And some other things: My Vacation at Beachside Village Resort in Lauderdale-by-the-sea in Florida. It's the best vacation place EVER! So many free and wonderful things are included, plus a perfect view of the ocean! If you're looking for a getaway, I highly recommend it. (no, I don't get paid to endorse it, it's just that great!) "Hi Dave and Lucky!!" @BVR And that's about it. It's a short episode because so much excitement is coming, and I need to get ready! Can't wait to talk to you in the new season starting next Wednesday.   You can find me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejenhardy/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorjenhardy Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thejenhardy   Thank you for joining me, Jen Our music is "A New Day," by Scott Holmes This episode is sponsored by the book, "The Sick Mom's Guide to Having Fun Again: If I can do it, you can too!" available on Amazon. 

Nathan and Kevin wrap up their series review for Batman the Enemy within with the finale episode 5. Also find out their overall thoughts on this season and what they plan on collaborating on next! Also.... Hi Sean, Hi Dave

What makes up good impressions? The impressions you leave on your clients determine their willingness to work with you in the future. When good impressions outweigh bad impressions, clients will want to do business with you again. So how do you ensure you are making good impressions while dealing with your clients? Let me tell you a story About a year ago something happened to our washing machine. Every time we tried to do a load of clothes the washer would start up and then stop. Lights on the front panel would start flashing but nothing else. I tried the first trick in the book and banged it a few times, but it didn't help. It was time to make a service call. I called an appliance repair guy I had used in the past only to discover he had retired. He was kind enough to give me the names of several people I could contact, and I dialled the first one on the list. A woman answered the phone and seemed confused when I started talking. She interrupted me, asked me to "hold on" and put the phone down for what seemed like minutes before a man finally picked up. I told him what my problem was and made an appointment for the next day at 10 am. The following morning at 11:20 am a rusty pickup truck with a magnetic sign on the door advertising the repair business pulls into my driveway. A couple of minutes later a middle-aged gentleman walked up to my door wearing sweatpants and an old Van Halen T-shirt. His branded sweat-stained baseball cap confirmed what the tuck said. This was the repair guy. The first thing out of his mouth was an apology for being late. Apparently, there was a long lineup at the drive-through coffee shop that put him behind schedule and then he got lost trying to find my place. I invited him in and showed him the washing machine. The first thing he did is start a wash cycle that ended with the same results I had been getting. He then proceeded to press a certain combination of buttons that put the washing machine into a diagnosis mode which allowed him to see what error codes the machine was generating by what lights flashed on the console. He then pulled out a sheet of paper and compared the flashing lights on the washer to their error code on the sheet. At that point, I asked him what his thoughts were, but he told me he still had to run more tests before deciding. I let him get back to work without any more interruptions. After watching him for several minutes, I started to understand what he was doing even though I didn't understand what the flashing lights meant. Finally, after several minutes he told me that it was the same error code that kept coming up. This confused me since I was seeing different lights flashing every time he did something. But I'm not an appliance repair guy, so I took his word for it. He then told me the error code indicated a faulty motherboard and on a machine as old as mine he didn't think it was worth repairing. I thanked him very much. He wrote me an invoice. I gave him a check and sent him on his way. For some reason, I wasn't feeling confident with his assessment. So I called my wife, explained the situation and told her that before we run out and purchase a brand new washing machine, I would like to have someone else come in and look at it. It may cost us a bit more, but I would feel better after a second opinion. I went back to the list of names my retired appliance repair guy gave me and called the second one on the list. This time a man answered and introduced himself as Dave from, and he mentioned his company name. I explained my washer problem, and he asked a few questions. He then told me he was booked up for the week but his last appointment for that day wasn't that far from where I live, and he could stop by afterwards if that were OK. At 5:05 pm Dave called me to confirm I was still home and told me he would be there in 15 minutes. At exactly 5:20 pm a white van with professionally applied graphics of Dave's logo and contact information on the side, pulled into my driveway. When I opened my door, Dave was there wearing blue work pants, work boots and a blue button shirt with his logo embroidered on the pocket. Before stepping into the house, he took out a pair of disposable booties and put them over his work boots so not to damage my floors. I showed Dave the washing machine, and he started doing the same thing the first guy had done. Except, Dave didn't have a paper to refer to, and he explained everything he was doing to me. He described how diagnosis mode worked and what each flashing light we were seeing represented. He then explained how he had to press a specific button combination to reset the machine after each test. Otherwise, it would give him random errors codes, and he wouldn't be able to diagnose the problem. To my knowledge, the first repair guy never did that. After only a couple of minutes looking at the machine, Dave told me he thought a drum sensor that was causing the problem. He explained to me that there’s a sensor under the drum that measures RPM and from what he could tell it was sending out false information. Dave went out to his truck and returned with a new sensor. He replaced it and tested the machine, and it started working again. He then told me that he was 99% sure the new sensor fixed the problem but we wouldn't know until the machine had gone through an entire wash cycle and he wasn't going to wait around for it to do so. So Dave took the old sensor and put it in the box the new sensor had come in. He then told me to run the machine for a few days. If everything turned out fine, I could dispose of the old sensor, and he would send me an invoice. However, if it turned out that the problem was more than just the sensor, he would replace the new one with the old one again, and he wouldn't charge me for it. We shook hands and Dave left. A few days later he called to see how things had worked out and I told him the washing machine was working fine. A few days after that I received an invoice in the mail for $75. $40 for the new sensor and $35 for the 30 minutes Dave spent at my house. Our washing machine is still working today. Good impressions vs bad impressions. Think about the story I just told you. According to my old retired repair guy, everyone on the list he gave me was an experienced and competent appliance repairman. From what I was able to discover while Googling contact information for both repair guys, each had been running their appliance repair business for over 15 years. Both had good ratings on Google, and the reviews for both were favourable showing past satisfied clients. I don't dispute that each one knows his craft. Sure the first guy misdiagnosed the issue, but nobody's perfect. I'm confident that in his mind the problem was a faulty motherboard. It's not their skill I'm questioning. It's the impressions they left on me. The first guy left a bad impression. Staring at his vehicle to his attire to his demeanour. The second guy, on the other hand, left a good impression on me. From the moment he pulled into my driveway to the moment he left. How good impressions affect decisions. Fast forward to this past weekend. My wife and I woke up Sunday morning to a fridge that wasn't working. Luckily the cold weather at this time of year in Canada was in our favour. We were able to save all our food by putting it on our back deck in coolers and plastic bins, but I knew we couldn't last like that. I needed to have a repair guy look at our fridge as soon as possible. Who do you think I called? Even though it was Sunday and I knew Dave worked Monday to Friday 9 am to 5 pm I decided to call and leave a message for him to get Monday morning. I dialled his number, and when his answering machine picked up, I proceeded to leave the following message. "Hi Dave, It’s Mark Des Cotes here. I don’t know if you remember me, but you repaired my washing machine last year. I’m calling because there’s something wrong with our fridge…” At that point in my message, I hear the phone pick up, and Dave say “Hi Mark, Dave here, what’s the problem with your fridge?” I was stunned. I wasn't expecting anyone to pick up and I told Dave as much. He said to me that he can listen when people leave messages and that his ears perked up when I mentioned that I was a past client. And then when he heard me say I was having a problem with my fridge, he decided to pick up. Dave told me he wasn't busy that afternoon and offered to come by and have a look. I was about to give him my address when he told me he remembered where I lived and he would see me at 1:00 pm. More good impressions. Dave tested a bunch of things, explaining to me the whole time what he was doing. Unfortunately, unlike the washing machine, we both agreed that the investment required to repair the fridge wasn't worth it. We had to get a new one. With all the good impressions Dave had left on me through our two encounters, I didn't question his assessment. Good impressions and your design business. So what does my story have to do with your design business? Simple, Good impressions make a difference. You can be the best designer around, but if you don’t make good impressions on your clients, you could be losing them to lesser quality designers that do make good impressions. How do you make good impressions? Be courteous Don't just listen to your clients speak, hear what they have to say. Involve the client in your conversations, shake their hand every time you see them. Look them in the eye when talking with them. Be punctual Show up when you say you will. Deliver when you say you will. If for some reason you can’t be punctual, let your client know in advance. Apologizingafterwards is too late. The bad impression damage is already done. Be Presentable Unless your clients are part of the corporate world wearing a suit or fancy dress may not be necessary, but you should still look clean and presentable. Wear professional looking clothes. Be conscious of your grooming. If you wear fragrances, make sure they are not overpowering. Don’t show up to a meeting with a backpack, carry your things in a good looking case or portfolio. Act professional Have answers to your client's questions. If you don’t have the answers, offer to find them and get back to your client. Answer your phone in a professional manner. Reply to your emails in a professional manner by always addressing the person you are talking to and signing the message, so there's no question as to whom it came from. All of these things will make good impressions. If you do it right, you’ve already won half the battle when it comes to landing and keeping clients. If you have design skills to match, you have nothing else to worry about. What are your experiences with bad or good impressions? Let me know by leaving a comment for this episode. Questions of the Week Submit your question to be featured in a future episode of the podcast by visiting the feedback page. This week’s question comes from Joshua I have been on my own for the last year and I am struggling to decide where to spend advertising dollars. What is the most efficient way to gain new clients? Working with the local chamber of commerce, FB or IG ads, or some other avenue. My clients have been good at referring to me but since I am new I do not have a giant book of business to pull from. Any ideas would be great! To find out what I told Joshua you’ll have to listen to the podcast. Resource of the week Four Week Marketing Boost The Four Week Marketing Boost! is a guide I created that will help you strengthen your marketing position, boost your brand’s awareness & social presence and ultimately ensure you are in tip-top shape to offer a best first impression to potential new clients. This guide is divided into 20 short actions that easily fit into your regular day and are designed to take as little time away from your client work as possible. Although you can complete these exercises quickly, it is recommended you tackle only one per day, spending no more than 30 minutes per task. After 20 days you should be in a comfortable position to present your most favourable image to potential clients. And yes, this guide is free! Get it by visiting marketingboost.net Subscribe to the podcast Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Stitcher Subscribe on Android Subscribe on Google Play Music Contact me Send me feedback Follow me on Twitter and Facebook I want to help you. Running a graphic design or web design business all by yourself isn't easy. If there are any struggles you face running your design business, please reach out to me. I'll do my best to help you by addressing your issues in a future blog post or podcast episode here at Resourceful Designer. You can reach me at feedback@resourcefuldesigner.com

Dave ambushes Steve and Falen about an event, Hi Dave $5,000 winner, Who's Telling the Truth, update on the Super Bowl Party Group Therapy from last week, new Group Therapy, should you quit your job, and more!

Dave ambushes Steve and Falen about an event, Hi Dave $5,000 winner, Who's Telling the Truth, update on the Super Bowl Party Group Therapy from last week, new Group Therapy, should you quit your job, and more!

Dave ambushes Steve and Falen about an event, Hi Dave $5,000 winner, Who's Telling the Truth, update on the Super Bowl Party Group Therapy from last week, new Group Therapy, should you quit your job, and more!

Dave ambushes Steve and Falen about an event, Hi Dave $5,000 winner, Who's Telling the Truth, update on the Super Bowl Party Group Therapy from last week, new Group Therapy, should you quit your job, and more!

Debbi Mack interviews crime fiction author Dave White on the Crime Cafe podcast. The transcript is below, if you'd like to read it. Debbi: Hi! This is the Crime Cafe. Your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I am your host, Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that The Crime Cafe 9 Book Set and The Crime Cafe Anthology are on sale at all major online retailers for $1.99 and $.99 respectively. So, just go to my website debbimack.com. That's debbimack.com and click on Crime Cafe and you'll find the links for the books, as well as how to subscribe to this podcast. And with that, I'd like to introduce now, it is with great pleasure that I introduce now my guest, Dave White; the highly acclaimed Dave White. Dave: Hello. Debbi: Thanks for being here Dave. It's great to have you on. Dave: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a while. We've been talking about this for a while, so this is nice. Debbi: This is awesome! I'm so glad you could be here because I've seen you so often at conferences and I'm such a shy person, I don't know why I didn't just walk up to you and say, “Hi Dave, I'm Debbi”. Dave: I'm shy too. It takes a lot for me to introduce myself to people, so I get it. I understand. Hi Debbi! Debbi: Hi Dave! And you're from New Jersey. I am originally from New York, so that's all the more reason why would should know each other. Dave: Exactly, exactly. Debbi: So, you're the author of the sixth book so far series, correct? The Jackson Donne books. Dave: Right, there are five Jackson Donne books and one standalone called Witness to Death. Debbi: Oh, Okay! That's a Jackson Donne also then? Dave: No, Witness to Death is a stand….wait, now I gotta count my books. There are six books total and five Donne. Debbi: Ok, five Donne done. Dave: Yes, exactly! Debbi: So, tell me a little bit more about the character Jackson Donne. Dave: Jackson Donne is a, we can go through a long history here. He's a former private investigator. In the first novel, When One Man Dies, he was a private investigator, mourning the death of his fiancé and asked to solve a hit-and-run where one of his close drinking buddies was killed. And from there, the series kind of grew because Donne clashed with his former cop partner, Bill Martin, several times throughout the series and Martin kind of became an arch enemy for a couple of the books. Since then, Martin took Donne's private eye license, got it taken away, Donne kind of became a freelancer and tried to go back to college and he was very much like, you know they pull me back in. Every time he thinks he's out of the private eye or the crime business he gets pulled back in. He's been on the run to Vermont at one point. He was in prison. He's had quite the five-book life. Debbi: Oh my goodness! I was going to ask you about his journey as a character. It sounds like he's had a rather rough one. Dave: Yeah! Debbi: I think of this right away. His fractious relationship with the police. What was it that caused that rift between himself and the police? Dave: In the books, Donne was a narcotics agent with…there was a New Brunswick police narcotics committee I guess you would call it as part of the police force and they were corrupt. They were stealing drugs, they were doing drugs, they were skimming money off the top anytime they busted someone up and what Donne finally realized was he was going down this dark hole, he became a drug addict (that sort of thing), so he turned in the narcotics force; everybody except his partner, Bill Martin, who he kind of let off easy. He kind of destroyed the narcotics force, but Martin was able to keep his job. The rest of them went to prison and Donne left and become a private investigator. So that's kind of what started it because now all the cops kind of hate him for turning in these guys and Martin really holds a grudge because...

Brett Berhoff invites us for an exclusive backstage experience in his Legends of Music series, where he brings you the most intriguing conversations with the most inspiring minds from around the globe! Today I'm spending time with the world famous Paul Reed Smith, founder of PRS Guitars. PRS Guitars is one of the largest electric guitar manufacturers in the United States of America.  These incredible instruments are found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Guitar Museum, Musical Instrument Museum, and the Smithsonian. Continue The Experience at BrettBerhoff.com/PRS PRS Guitars are played by countless Rockstars including John Mayer, Carlos Santana, Blake Shelton, Neal Schon (Journey and Bad English), John McLaughlin(Top ranked in Rolling Stone Magazine's Greatest Guitars of All Time), Linkin Park, Orianth (Michael Jackson and Alice Cooper), Mark Tremonti (Creed and Alter Bridge),  Zach Meyers and Eric Bass of Shinedown, Ricky Skaggs, Martin Simpson, Tony McManus, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks(The Allman Brothers Band), Alex Lifeson (Rush),  Bernie Marsden (Whitesnake), Brent Mason, Dave Navarro (Janes Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers), David Grissom, Dusty Waring, Gary Grainger (Rod Stewart), Mark Holcomb, Martin Simpson, Jose Rios, Boscoe Fance, Brandon Autry, Matt Brooks, Justin Lyons, Tom Johnston and Michael Carter.   This list of exceptional musicians only represents a portion of the PRS artists.  Over the years, these artist have been involved with or have one themselves Grammy Awards, Cannes Film Festival, Brit Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, VH1 Big, Radio Music Awards, American Music Awards, Billboard Century Awards, CHCI Medallions of Excellence, Grammy Hall of Fame Award, Guinness Book of World Records, Hollywood Walk of Fame Award, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and many more!   Please visit BrettBerhoff.com or the TheBBEnetwork.com for more information on this and other great shows!   You can find more on PRS Guitars at PRSGuitars.com Other PRS Artists include: Aaron Marshall - Intervals Ace - Skunk Anansie Adam Gontier - Saint Asonia Adam Hall - Another Lost Year Adam Hawley - Jennifer Lopez Adam Smith - Superbob AJ Larsen - Madison Rising Al Di Meola - Al Di Meola Al Schnier - Moe Alan Price - Madam Adam Alex Bruno - XY Alex Gaskarth - All Time Low Alex Grossi - Quiet Riot Alex Huston - Dead Beggars Alexandria Reyes - My Elysian Alexi DiPippo - Rome In A Day Andrea Braido Andres Osorio Andrew Synoweic Andy Davis - The Band Perry Andy Guerrero - Flobots Angel Fernandez - Marc Anthony Angel Paz - Rock Of Ages Angelo Bruchini - Massive Attack Anthony Armstrong - Red Anthony Rankin Anton Cosmo - Waking The Parade Antonio Bernardini - Sober Ariel Pozzo - Miguel Mateos Art Alexakis - Everclear Artie Renkon - Scott Stapp Band Artur Gadowski - Ira Barry Graul - Mercy Me BC Kochmit - Nonpoint Beau Tackett - Blake Shelton Bernard Gann - Liturgy Bernie Godwin - The Stick People Bill Nershi - The String Cheese Incident Bob Britt - Wynonna Judd Bob Minner - Tim McGraw Bob Weir - Ratdog / The Grateful Dead Bobby Ingram - Molly Hatchet Boscoe France - Boscoe France Band Boscoe France Brad Delp - Boston Brad Delson - Linkin Park Brandon Autry Brandon Mills - Decyfer Down Brendan Bayliss - Umphrey's McGee Brendan Steineckert - The Used Brent Poe Brent Rowan Brent Wilson - Sara Evans Bret Gerringer - Laws of Average Brett Campbell - Pallbearer Brett Danaher - Pat Green Band Brian Bassett - Foghat Brian Bunn - Thomas Rhett Brian Craddock - Daughtry Brian DeNeeve Brian Franklyn - Kenny Rogers Brian Nutter - Keith Urban Brian Olson - Fall From Grace Bruce Kulick - Grand Funk Railroad Bryan Ewald - Jarflys / Starbelly Bryan Laurenson - Copeland Bryan Olesen - Vota C.J. Pierce - Drowning Pool C.T. Fields - Lovebettie Cailyn Lloyd Calvin Nichols - Jimmie Van Zant Carl Heiman - Righteous Vendetta Casey Callahan-Hean - Jimmie's Chicken Shack Casey Newsome - Screaming For Silence Cesar Ramirez Chad Wilkinson - Crimson Fool Chan Kinchla - Blues Traveler Charlie Colin - Train Charlie Crowe Charlie Simpson - Fightstar Chen Balbus - Orphaned Land Cheska Zaide - A+ Dropouts Chris Anderson - The Outlaws Chris Babbitt - Gemini Syndrome Chris Haskett - Rollins Band Chris Henderson - 3 Doors Down Chris Kelly - Galactic Empire Chris Lee - Moogatu Chris Loocke Chris Mandra - Telesma Chris Robertson - Black Stone Cherry Chris Rodriquez - Keith Urban Chris Shucosky - Cinder Road Chris Wrate Chrissy Paolillo - KLIK Christopher Goodwin - American Fangs Christopher Goodwin - American Fangs Chuck Jacobs - Kenny Rogers Clayton Cagle - Apothesary Clint Lagerberg Clint Lowery - Sevendust Clinton Cunanan - Another Lost Year Cody Canada - Cross Canadian Ragweed Cody Kilby Cole Phillips - Cole Phillips Corey Lowery - Saint Asonia Cosmin Lupu Craig Defalco - Laidlaw Craig Morgan Curtis Chambers - Eminem Curtis Wright - Jamey Johnson Dallas Perkins Dameon Aranda - ARANDA Damion Mantle Damon Johnson - Disturbed / Slave To The System Dan Candia - Falling Through April Dan Estrin - Hoobastank Dan Fulmer - Presence Dan Kanter - Fefe Dobson Dan Kinzie - Bottom Line Daniel Lopez - Stereopop Daniel Rego - Demonic Resurrection Danny Irwin - Screaming For Silence Danny Lohner - Nine Inch Nails Darin Smith - Tim McGraw Darran Smith - Funeral For A Friend Daryl Brown - The James Brown Band / Soul Generals Daryl Hall - Hall and Oates Dave Cabrera Dave Delhomme - American Idol Dave Hill - Colouring Lesson Dave Weiner - Steve Vai Dave Young - Devin Townsend Project David Immerman David Wallace - Jake Owen Davy Grahs - Pop Evil Davy Knowles Dean Deleo - Stone Temple Pilots Deborah Hicks - Joan Zen Denis Desloge - He Is Legend Denny Colt - Ven Helsing's Curse / Tang Denny Hemmingson - Tim McGraw Denny Jiosa Denver Dalley - Desaparecidos Derek Mount - Family Force Five Derek Wells Derek Williams - Chasing Saftey Devin Malone Dhruv Ghanekar Dominic Cifarelli Dominik Witczak - Coma Don Carr - Oak Ridge Boys Donavan White - Vertical Horizon Donna Grantis - Prince / 3RDEYEGIRL Drew Goddard - Karnivool Drew Recny - Superbob Driver Williams - Eric Church Dru Decaro - Miguel Dustin Belt - Big Time Rush / Heffron Drive Dustin Lynch Ed Eason - Carrie Underwood Ed Robertson - Barenaked Ladies Eilidh McKellar Elaine Koo Emil Werstler Emmanuel Sotela - Akasha Emrah Demirel - Pitch Black Process Eric Bass - Shinedown Eric Friedman - Tremonti Eric Gunderson - Love & Theft Eric Miker - Decemberadio Eric Varnell Eric Weaver - 12 Stones Ethan Roberts Eugene Pao Evan Taubenfeld Forrest Anderson - Hot Tub Limo Frank Romano - Usher Frank Solari Gabby Alipe - Urbandub Gabriele "Rusty" Rustichelli - KLOGR Gary Kemp - Spandau Ballet Gary Larsen - Royal Teeth Gene Quade - Sam Grow Band George Dolivo - Rhino Bucket George Miadis - Sonar Lights George Pajon - Fergie / Black Eyed Peas George Solonos - Marianne's Wish German Daffunchio - Las Pelotas Gerry Leonard - David Bowie Godfrey Townsend - Alan Parsons Project Grant Mickelson - Taylor Swift Greg Foresman - Martina McBride Greg Hind - Little River Band Greg Paulson - Arkaik Gustavo Cerati - Soda Stereo Hayden Fogle Hayden Maringer Hayley Sales Heath Robinson - Tyler + The Tribe Hector Cervantes - Casting Crowns Henry Kaldre - The Henry Maneuver Howard Leese - The Paul Rodgers Band / Heart Ian Perkins - The Gaslight Anthem Ira Mayfield - Kelly Bell Band Isaac Ellsworth - MoneyPenny Island Styles - Lotus Crush J.R. 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Trapt Tyler Valendza Vaja - Vaja Vasti Jackson Vernon Reid - Living Colour Victor Johnson - Waboritas / Sammy Hagar Vijay Joseph Vindell Smith VivaSantana - VivaSantana Walker Teret - Lower Dens Wes Anderson - Fiction 20 Down Wes Ryce - No Green JellyBeenz Wyzard Xandao Meneses - O Rappa Yiannis Papadopoulos Yossi Sassi Zak Soulam PRS Guitars Signature Dealers are below, you can find the full line of PRS Gear here: American Musical Supply www.americanmusical.com Oakland, NJ Brian's Guitars www.briansguitars.com Hamden, CT Chicago Music Exchange www.chicagomusicexchange.com Chicago, IL Dan's Guitars www.dansguitars.com Honolulu, HI Dave's Guitar Shop www.davesguitar.com LaCrosse, WI Eddie's Guitars www.eddiesguitars.com St Louis, MO Guitar Center www.guitarcenter.com Westlake Village, CA Guitar Maverick www.guitarmaverick.com Keller, TX Guitar Ressurection www.guitarrez.com Austin, TX The Guitar Sancturary www.theguitarsanctuary.com McKinney, TX The Guitar Store www.seattleguitarstore.com/ Seattle, WA John Mann's Guitar Vault www.guitarvaultusa.com Bedford, NH Lark Guitars www.larkguitars.com San Antonio, TX Martin Music www.martinmusicguitar.com Memphis, TN Moore Music www.mooremusicev.com Evansville, IN Musician's Friend www.musiciansfriend.com Westlake Village, CA Music Store Live.com www.musicstorelive.com South Burlington, VT Music Villa www.musicvilla.com Bozeman, MT Northeast Music Center www.nemusiccenter.com Dickson City, PA Righteous Guitars www.righteousguitars.com Roswell, GA Sam Ash Music www.samash.com New York, NY Sweetwater Sound www.sweetwater.com Fort Wayne, IN Washington Music Center www.chucklevins.com Wheaton, MD Wild West Guitars www.wildwestguitars.com Riverside, CA Willcutt Guitar Shop www.willcuttguitars.com Lexington, KY zZounds www.zzounds.com Oakland, NJ

Want to join in on the conversation call 888-563-3228 or go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/contact Today I interview Jeff Chen of the new Podcast Monetization Platform JoyRide. I also share some podcasting news, and my community comes out (thanks to the kind heart of Steve Stewart) and wishes me a happy birthday as I turn 50!. Joyride has been mentioned in Forbes, Market Watch and many other publications as they just launched in December of 2014.  According to one article, "JOYRIDE allows users to search over 100,000 different podcast shows in a variety of categories, and is seeking to convince podcast listeners to donate a monthly fee to their favorite programs. JOYRIDE is one of several companies GOOGLE is using for its developer program for ANDROID AUDIO, a version of the operating system developed for smart cars. How Much Does Joyride Cost? It's free to sign up, and their website states, "Joyride charges 5% in fees plus credit card processing fees of 2.9% + $0.30 per contribution." When I asked Jeff if there was a fee for removing your he replied via e-mail, "Hi Dave. Nope! Those are the only fees we charge!" With this in mind,  when a listener donates $1 to you take home 62 cents and joy ride takes 38. If someone donates $3 you receive $2.46 and Joyride keeps .54 (that 30 cents per transaction really seems heft when you are only receiving one dollar - so make your rewards good enough to inspire people to pay more). How Does Joyride Differ from Patreon? The biggest difference is JoyRide can work on YOUR Site (so you don't have to send people to joyride.com/yourcampaign). Patreon currently takes fess on the money coming in, and they also charge a fee when you remove the money. They go into great detail on their website, and as some people pay with paypal, and other use a service called stripe, it is somewhat difficult to understand. I appreciate Patreon trying to give as much as possible, but it seems to add a certain level complication into understand exactly how much you're going to make. I am testing patreon if you want to see my current efforts. How I Plan on Testing Joyride On Saturdays (10:30 am) I host the "Ask the Podcast Coach" we do an hour long show, and then typically another 30 minutes "off the air." We are going to start a JoyRide campaign for those who want to hear the additional 30 minutes. I realize, that podcasting is a small niche, but it should be interesting to see how this works. I will be documenting the process along the way. For more information go to www.getjoyride.com Happy Birthday Dave Jackson Thanks to Steve Stewart who rounded up a bunch of my friends to send in birthday wishes. These included: Steve Stewart from Money Plan SOS Darren Dake from the Coroner Podcast Vernon from the Events Supremecy Dr. Nina Savelle Rocklin from the Win the Diet War Addie from the Do it Podcast Hani from the Simple Podcast Press Jeff Brown from the Read to Lead podcast. Jonathan Chambers from the just luanched Missional Man podcast Mark from the Oh Beep Podcast Mike, Izzabella and Zara from Music Radio Creative and the Audio Production Podcast Ralph Scott from the Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll podcast Ryan Park from Food Crafstmen Steve Stearns from Outside Health and Fitness Wayne Henderson from Media Voiceovers Ken Castler from Thinking Outside the Box Elsie Escobar from She Podcasts, and The Feed  Ready to Start a Podcast? Join the School of Podcasting  

A jolly look at some of the problems posted on the Bed Wetters Monthly Podcast Facebook Page !! Darren & Jo don't have a clue what they are doing