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Is there a way for property managers to reduce delinquent rent payments by more than 50 percent? How can residents positively or negatively impact their credit score by 20-70 points?  Today, I am talking to President Dave Haldi and CEO Steve Jarvis of CredHub, which helps property managers report on every resident, including those considered a credit risk. It reports the positive and negative, incentivising tenants to make paying on time their top priority.  You’ll Learn... [01:47] CredHub: Name change, funding, continued growth, and creating transparency. [02:06] CredHub’s Competition: Most companies only process and record positive payments, not negative payments on individual's credit score. [02:28] Bolt-on Technology: CredHub connects and bolts onto rental software systems to validate positive and negative payments via rent roll system. [02:52] How it works: Provides property managers access to an individual's credit score information reported to credit bureaus and pass-through revenue opportunity. [03:27] RentCredit Plus includes identity theft resolution services and rental payment reporting to credit bureaus for $3.50 each month. [04:20] Customer Support: Resolution Services as Customer Support: If there is a credit issue, CredHub takes on responsibility to work with credit bureaus.  [05:35] Doing Good Things: CredHub helps people get back their financial health and credit for payments.  [06:42] Recapitalization: Report all data at scale to achieve goal of growing CredHub. [07:58] Lease vs. Mortgage: What’s the difference? Educate managers and residents. [09:13] Audit Proof: Information given to credit bureaus via CreditHub must be correct. [11:25] Collections: CredHub has credentials to create trade line for property managers. [11:54] Implementation Process: After CredHub has signed agreement, implementation takes about six weeks. Tweetables Increase credit score by 20–70 points; make paying rent on time a top priority.  CredHub: Bolt-on, backend, rent roll, data pole cleansing and reporting at scale.  CredHub: Gets property managers out of credit business, and puts them in property management business. CredHub reports the positive and negative, incentivizing tenants to pay on time. Resources CredHub CredHub’s YouTube Channel Yardi RealPage Rent Manager ResMan  TransUnion  Equifax Rogers Payment Fair Credit Reporting Act DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Dave: ...opportunity for property managers to help reduce their delinquency because we figured out a way to report the negative or late payments. The program can then help increase an individual's credit score 20–70 points on a positive perspective but it will also impact their score negatively and help reduce delinquency by over 50% encouraging an individual to pay on time and making rent their priority to pay. It started four years ago, validated the idea, worked with some property management companies locally. We changed the name to CredHub a little about a year ago, got funded, we've had continued growth, and built an automated technology with a dashboard to create transparency of what we had learned from the marketplace. That's what created CredHub and that's where we are today. Jason: Perfect. There's other companies in the space they that do this. Is that correct? Dave: There are a few companies but we're a bolt-on technology. Most of the companies that we have come across are payment processors and they may process payments only allowing to record positive payments on an individual's credit score. Our technology connects and bolts on to the back-end of rental software systems—Yardi, RealPage, Rent Manager, ResMan, et cetera. Therefore, we validate the payment that has been made because it comes out of the back-end of the rent roll system allowing us to report positive and negative. It also gives the property manager, on-site resident manager transparency to see what information was reported to the credit bureaus once it's been uploaded and helps affect the individual's credit score. So, we're different. We also create a pass-through revenue opportunity for the property manager to make some additional revenue for their bottom line through our program. Jason: Okay, explain how that works. Dave: So, we have RentCredit Plus, which also includes an identity theft resolution services because identity theft is such an issue today, especially in larger properties with mail rooms, et cetera. With that, we charge $3.50 for this program that is identity theft resolution services as well as reporting the rental payments to the credit bureaus, both positive and negative, on a monthly basis. It would be our best results or best practices or we make this program mandatory for all residents. We charge $3.50 per person on the lease including the co-signer and most of our clients charge $7. So, they make a 50% increase of what we charge for the product and for the services that we provide.  In addition to that, we also provide the resolution services, making sure that if they do have a credit issue, we take on all the responsibility to work with the credit bureaus to make sure if something was reported incorrectly, we will fix it. So, we provide that customer support from a third party's perspective, not eliminating the burden to the on-site resident manager and getting them out of the credit business because they're in the property management business. Jason: Got it, okay. So, Steve, what's your role at CredHub then? Steve: Yeah. So, I came in to the company about a year ago when we recapitalized the company as Dave said and renamed it to CredHub and that recapitalization was really meant to build this platform so that we could do this back-end, rent roll, data pole cleansing and reporting at scale. My career was always in automation and travel. I worked for the likes of Expedia and built alaskaair.com for Alaska Airlines and had retired from travel, and was looking for an interesting new project that really had an element of doing good things for people that needed it which, I believe, we're doing it at CredHub. The folks that are now going to be able to get credit for their Rogers payment or are young folks that are credit-invisible or folks that need to get back in financial health back on their feet. It feels really good to be working in this market. I'm CEO, so primarily looking at business development and strategy finance. The goal here is to really do this at scale nationally. You mentioned what makes us different and David had mentioned that the element of negative reporting of late and skipped payments and its impact on getting residents to pay on time for property managers. No one's really done that at scale. Like Dave has said, others in the market that are doing reporting are doing almost entirely positive reporting which it's pretty easy. The hard part is this is what we do is getting all of the data reported and doing it at scale. I came in with the recapitalization, with an element to really growing this thing nationally and doing it in a big way. Jason: Perfect. So, what questions do property managers typically want to know about CredHub? Steve: Well, one of the things, for me, especially coming into the property management space having been to trade shows, travel, and technology, the core of what we do is really, really easy to understand, which is really compelling. When we talk to property managers, it's pretty easy to get what we do in 90 seconds. Like really, wow, you can report positive and negative to credit bureaus, reduce my delinquency, I can add a revenue stream, and my residents will like it because I'm helping them. There aren't a lot of questions there. We do get some questions as we roll through closing clients on the legal side. We'll get a legal department and a property management company worrying about disputes from their residents but it's a fairly easy question to answer because the residents have a financial obligation. They have a contract called a lease. It's not that different than a mortgage. Property management companies who aren't being paid by the residents have every right to report that to the credit bureaus. There's an education process that I think we need to go through on that side of the sales process with property managers. Oftentimes, we'll get questions on whether this is optional. Property management company may want to have this be an opt-in for their residents. That's not how we work. We report the entire file to the entire resident population to the credit bureaus which is what they want. Our program really only works for property managers if everybody's being reported including those that are credit risk. Dave, do you have any other? Dave: Yeah. I think a couple of analogies would be and it really creates this carrot with the stick, encouraging people to pay on time and because they require everybody, all of the residents to be reported the messaging is consistent for everyone. It also has helped us because of our platform being so audit-proof because the information that needs to go to the credit bureaus has to be right. We found that we've really helped clean up the data that we're pulling out of the system because it has to be correct. We provide an error submission report and that report can go back so it's something that maybe the on-site resident manager or assistant manager can help clean up as they're going through their lease renewals or new residency. We found errors or mistakes when maybe a check has come in, it got incorrectly posted. Because ours is third party, it helps to create checks and balances and the system is audit-proof. It provided an additional layer but easy for people to log into and make the changes. And we support them seven days a week, 24/7 if they have an issue. I think the other questions that may come up is, "Well, how does this work?" One of the things for a property management firm who works with us, we create a trade line at the credit bureaus. We have credentials and privileges with TransUnion and Equifax so we credential them and create a trade line with the bureaus. Therefore, if we are working with somebody and we pick a date that we report on the 10th of the month, rent is late at 30 days because we pay rent in advance. If an individual is delinquent or pays late after the 10th or they don't pay, Fair Credit Reporting Act says, "It can't be turned to collections until 90 days." If we report on the 10th, we're going to be 50 days ahead when that person can go to collections affecting their credit score, encouraging them to pay the property manager in full and not having to lose that income that could be the cost of going through collections. That's a piece that becomes critical in what we do and a lot of questions get surrounded about that but we have all the credentials to create the trade line necessary for the property manager. Jason: How difficult is this for a property management business owner to implement? Maybe you could talk a little bit about the process. Dave: The process is we meet with them, we work with them on the pricing, and figure out when it would work for them to implement. Once we have a signed agreement, we try to implement it within six weeks if that works for them.  Once we've got credentials with the bureaus, then our data team connects with somebody in their office. It usually takes an hour, but once we pull the data to get it out of the system, then we go through some testing on our end making sure that the data is correct. Once we've confirmed that, we give them four weeks or a month. Let's just say, we signed a contract in August. We would give them the month of September, lay out a timeline that we work with them to educate their on-site resident managers, create a lease addendum because we know that our best practices if they sign, if they put the addendum in the lease, it gets explained to them helping that education of why it's important to pay your rent on time. Then, they sign the leases with the addendum. We have a template, but we can make changes to the addendum depending on how they want to implement it. And then we would begin reporting on the 10th of the following month or on a mutually-agreed date they want to pull it. In some states like Washington, with just changing the 3-day evict or 14-day evict, we used to report some property management firms on the 15th but because of that change, they have asked us to report on the 5th. So, we can change the pull date and the report date helping encourage the protection of the property management company for these individuals who are playing the system or gaming the system and not paying their rent on time. Jason: Okay. Cool. It sounds pretty simple, sounds like a really good idea, really good service. Now, can landlords listen to this, besides property managers, also implement this, or homeowner? Dave: Yes. We work with any property type or size. If they don't have a rent roll system, we just create a spreadsheet for them, collect the necessary information, and then they can upload the spreadsheet themselves through our portal. We have a variety of ways we can connect and help very managed. Jason: Very cool. All right. The CredHub sounds like a brilliant idea. It reports the positive, it also reports the negative, incentivizing the tenants to make sure they're paying on time. It gives them the benefit of building some credits so there's a carrot and a stick connected to this. You also have identity theft resolution they can be tied to this that can be a profit center. Ultimately, how much does this cost the homeowner or property manager? Or do they just make money doing this?  Steve: Pass-through revenue model, they make money doing this. We bolt onto their existing system, we help them do the lease addendum with the residents and they actually make money. We like to think of it as a win-win-win. It's good for the residents, it’s great for the property manager, and obviously, we're in business for profit as well. Jason: Win, win, win. All right. Anything else that anybody should know? How can they get in touch with CredHub if somebody's listening to this and they wanted to get started, they wanted to check you guys out? How can they connect? Steve: credhub.com would be the best place to go. We have a YouTube channel that has some really simple videos on it, you can link to those from the CredHub website. In fact, our animated “what we do” video is in the hero image right on the homepage. We have a Contact Us section and a there's a form there that property managers can sign up with the number of units they have and we'll follow-up. That's probably the best way to do it is just to come visit us at credhub.com. Jason: Perfect. Sounds like a no-brainer, it makes sense. I think what you guys are doing is going to help out a lot of people which I resonate with and I appreciate you guys coming out on the DoorGrow Show. Dave: Thanks for having us. Jason: All right, we'll let you guys go. So, checkout CredHub at credhub.com. For those that are new to watching or listening to the DoorGrow Show, be sure to like and subscribe. Leave us a review somewhere that would really make a difference and check us out at doorgrow.com. If you're wanting to grow your property management business, or you're in need of a new website, or you're just wanting to make sure that your business is growing as effectively as it could, reach out. We'd love to talk to you. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

Quick show notes Our Guest: Francois Lanthier Nadeau What he'd like for you to see: Snipcart V3 | His blog where he talks about destigmatizing mental health His JAMstack Jams: The Decoupling Philosophy of the JAMstack | Stackbit | Netlify | Sanity.io His Musical Jam: His "Is that Soul I feel in my guts" playlist Other Technology Mentioned Jekyll Middleman Nuxt Gridsome Our sponsor this week: TakeShape Transcript Bryan Robinson 0:02 Hello everyone and welcome to yet another fun packed episode of That's My JAMstack the podcast where we asked the age old question, what is your jam and the JAMstack. Bryan Robinson 0:11 I'm your host, Bryan Robinson and this week I'm joined by the former marketing lead now CEO of the e commerce startup Snipcart. I'm talking of course about François Lanthier Nadeau. Bryan Robinson 0:22 Also back this week is our amazing sponsor TakeShape. Stick around after the episode to hear more about their content platform or head over to takeshape.io/thatsmyjamstack for more information. François, thanks for thanks for coming on the show today. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 0:37 Yeah, you got it. It's my pleasure. Bryan Robinson 0:39 So I've been following following you on Twitter for a little while, but I go ahead and give us an introduction. who you are what you do for work what you do for fun. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 0:45 Yeah, good. Same thing actually been following you on Twitter for a while to listen to some episodes recently. So yeah, I'm CEO at Snipcart, it's an ecommerce solution for developers and then also the organizer of the JAMstack Quebec meetup that we host here at the Snipcart offices in Canada, in Quebec, Canada. For fun I play video games I read, I listen to audiobooks and podcasts I write, and I try to spend as much time with meaningful people like my girlfriend, family and friends. And that's pretty much it. Bryan Robinson 1:24 And what kind of things do you write? Like, is it is it tech stuff? Or is it not tech stuff? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 1:28 It's actually both. I come from a marketing background. So sometimes, all right, I don't know tactical stuff on content marketing or SEO. But sometimes I'll write more personal stuff. I kind of have this semi official mission of talking more openly about mental health. And I've had some personal issues with this in the past and I try to share stories and tips and lessons regarding this. So yeah, sometimes it's more in that order. Bryan Robinson 1:59 Okay, great and That's definitely a an important mission in tech. There's a lot of people not talking enough about it. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 2:05 Yeah, I think men especially sometimes, sometimes we have a harder time. So I don't know. It's Yeah, I find some some value in Redemption of my own and trying to do that. Bryan Robinson 2:17 Excellent. All right, so So let's talk about the JAMstack a little bit, It's a JAMstack podcast. So what was your What was your entry point into the JAMstack or into the idea of static sites or whatever you like to call it? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 2:30 Yeah, we used to call it something like modern static site. It was Middleman and Jekyll. Mostly that got us into this space. So when we were just starting out as a SaaS, ecommerce, Saas for devs, we were just, you know, trying to get some traction to our site and some signups and stuff. So we were experimenting with different content marketing, strategic And at one point, I was asking our developers about tools they love and our co founder and lead developer, Charles mentioned Middleman. And he was saying that it was gaining a little traction and popularity through the dev community. So we we tried to build a site with it and integrate Snipcart with it. And it went just fine. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 3:23 Yeah, Snipcart is a front end centric, e commerce shopping cart that lives basically just in your front end. And we do all of the back back end logic. So it was a good fit from the start with the JAMstack approach. But it wasn't designed as a JAMstack ecommerce tool. We kind of stumbled upon the whole paradigm and tooling to these marketing experiments, if you will. Bryan Robinson 3:53 Cool. And Snipcart started in what? 2013? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 3:59 Yeah. Yeah, that's about right. Late 2013. Bryan Robinson 4:03 Okay, and and so so through that, that experimentation? Did y'all shift away from middleman? Are you still using that sort of thing when you're playing with your marketing stuff? Or is it in the new? The newer stuff that's coming out? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 4:16 Oh, most definitely. So we try to evolve and experiment alongside the community with tools that were popping up. So we kind of created open source demos and get them repurposed for established tools like Jekyll. But we also, I mean, we also, for instance, experimented with Gatsby when it was just an open source repo with no website, or branding, or it wasn't that big of a deal, you know. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's part of our DNA to try and experiment and have thousands of side projects. Like developers usually do. So we thought we might as well try to harness this into, you know, attraction channel that brings us people and that also helps the community when we do these tutorials and and GitHub repos and stuff. Bryan Robinson 5:15 So obviously, being not necessarily a JAMstack company, but a company that is very strongly tied now into the JAMstack. How are y'all other than the side projects approaching the philosophy of the JAMstack? I'm real curious about e commerce and the JAMstack. I think that's going to help us take take it to the next level. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 5:33 Yeah, ecommerce is... it's a complex based. And you can you can see that just by looking at the wide spectrum of solutions that are offered both to developers and non developers. In terms of influences and application of the actual philosophy, I'd say we, we really embrace or try as much as we can to embrace DX first philosophy. So it's as JAMstack caught popularity and fire and everything because it offered a good developer experience. And that sense, we're kind of trying to do the same thing with Snipcart. And we have been from the start, it's always been a developer first solution, something that is not constraining. It lets you work with the tools you love. And that's lightweight that improves your workflow instead of constraining it. So that that strategic in that approach of like the bottom up influence in terms of business, so we first try to influence and convince a developer that it's a great tool. And then we leverage the developers authority and influence inside a company or towards his client, their client. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 6:55 To make make sure the managers and merchants are on board with that tool. Also. So this this the, the dx is something we're really trying to focus on right now. And you see, it's funny because the dx is great. Like it's important to provide a good developer experience. But then if the end of to some non technical client or some marketing team is done, and they do not have like the ease of use that developer had when they were working on on their stuff, it's not it's not good for the gemstone. It's not good for the old ecosystem was tooling. And that's why you're seeing a lot of tools pop up, to cater to this problem. So editing CMS site building, hosting, one click deploys, all of that stuff is is is layered on top of the the core dx experience of the jam stack. And yeah, we do the same thing with the hosted merchant dashboard. So the developer works with snap cart, they integrate it on a static site, let's say or with a headless CMS. And afterwards, the merchant is off is offered a hosted dashboard to manage the e commerce operations. So they don't have to play with code or get repositories or whatnot to manage your sales, ecommerce. Bryan Robinson 8:25 And so, one of the great things, especially on the developer experience side of thing is this kind of whole host of API's that are available for us. I'm kind of curious for your perspective on on. There's been some pushback from non JAMstack developers about kind of this this fractured ecosystem not fractured, that's a bad word, but like a multi faceted ecosystem. Are you experiencing that with, with people with clients, like oh, well go login to Snipcart for your ecommerce dashboard, but over here to manage the other side. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 8:56 Yeah, that's that's actually a great question and I was talking was, there's this pendulum in tech that I feel is swinging between monoliths and then thousands of SaaS that are fragmented, like you were saying, but so some people would prefer the administration part to be enabled in one single place for their clients. And for these people, if they're motivated, and I don't know, talented in terms of the tooling they're using, they can, of course, integrate a lot of Snipcart functionalities inside a CMS directly. So we expose we have an API for this and we've seen it done on various sites. CMS, like Craft CMS is one of the first that did it well, so there are some plugins for snip card into some other cmss that can help in that regard. We tried to develop them ourselves in the beginning, but we realized it was just a whole mess, like maintaining everything we're developing with the other plugins that are specific to a certain CMS, for instance. So yeah, I'd be lying if I said, sometimes it isn't a pain. But many times, the ease of implementation and customization of Snipcart is a bigger benefit than the pain of having to login into an extra dashboard. Bryan Robinson 10:30 Sure, and I mean, from from my experience in agency world from a few years ago, we would create a Shopify site, but then also use another CMS through the marketing side, and that itself was a pain too. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 10:40 Yeah, it can happen. But you know, Shopify is a great tool also. And I'm not like, I know that we used to say it was a very closed ecosystem and whatever in the beginning, but I think it's evolved a lot and some developers, they get so it also depends on It's so it's so complex choosing a tech stack nowadays because of this whole host of options. But the I think the thing that's very cool with the JAMstack is that it can grow well, it can evolve well, so you can start with a minimal number of tools, and then build upon them. And maybe when once you get to a point where you have enough revenue enough traction, maybe then you you move to a platform that's more monolid. So yeah, I don't know, I think it's a very solid entry point for web projects. Bryan Robinson 11:38 And it kind of I feel like e commerce especially it's this kind of world where you can ramp up complexity super quick. You can start very, very simply, and even like Shopify in terms of its you know, quote, unquote, simplicity is relatively complex and you get stuff like big commerce and Magento. And I shudder anytime I think about e commerce personally, but It gets complex fast for, for that end users. But for customers at that point? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 12:07 Oh yeah, most definitely. I always joke about. So a Snipcart, we built an e commerce tool for developers. So developers don't have to worry as much about e commerce as they they could have. But if we were to start again, we probably build another product, because it's super complex. And I hear these kinds of echoes from people who are building on top of email Also, sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it's infinite number of features, feature requests coming in from every angle. And having just stepped up a CEO slash product owner. Geez, I can tell you that prioritizing and saying no, and developing the right stuff that benefits both the clients and the best Isn't this? It's a challenge. Yeah, Bryan Robinson 13:04 Especially since you've got both you got to maintain that perfect kind of developer experience and give, you know, user experience for the e commerce managers to Francois Lanthier Nadeau 13:12 Oh, yeah. Oh, of course. And, like, we're, we're proud of what we built. And it's a good product. But I'm not the I'm not. I don't know. I don't have pink glasses. I know that it's an imperfect product. And also, like, we come from a place of a hybrid bootstrapped start. So we were bootstrapped inside a web agency in the beginning, like six years ago, but we soon grew into our own company that's distinct and profitable and whatnot. But we're still a bootstrapped player in a mostly non bootstrapped world, the e commerce giants and whatnot. Most of them are VC backed or have big money. So the challenge in terms of what we're working on, that becomes critical. And in a sense, in other areas it served as well to have this proximity and smallness and agility. So, Bryan Robinson 14:17 So so with Snipcart being adjacent to the to the JAMstack. What's your current jam in the JAMstack? What's your favorite philosophy or product or technology? Yeah, that's, Francois Lanthier Nadeau 14:27 That's, that's, that's a question that you record it and then a few months later you might want a new answer. But one of the philosophies that I like the most about the JAMstack is the notion of decoupling. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 14:41 So, I try to mimic this into my work in my personal life too. So at work, you know, we're trying to do wanting well, and not to be over to place product. And it's hard since we're doing e commerce and e commerce is all over the place. But in terms of management, and internal Team, we're also trying to delegate and trust other parties to do their job well, so we can sync up when it's time, but we don't walk on each other's shoes. And you know, in life, it's the it's the same thing. I think the non technical and non startup part of my life really feeds back into the work one. So I'm trying to decouple officially some activities and relationship and discussions. So so I can, you know, work on some other skills and stuff and then have a different point of view in a different energy when I come back into the business and development world. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 15:41 And yeah, so to answer the question in terms of tooling, more specifically, Stackbit that was on the podcast, I think the last one or one of the last ones. That's that's very good tool. And we were talking about layering some user friendly tooling on top of dx. Cool for dev tooling. They're doing a great job at this as a not not not developer, I can like build a JAMstack site, and in minutes. So this is great Netlify for developers. Also, they're building a platform that's becoming very rich and useful. And internally, we're using more and more Sanity as a headless CMS. And Nuxt, to generate the static site. And some more dynamic functions in the fronted. So we've used this for our new documentation. We released the V3 of Snipcart, a few weeks ago or months, and yet we're using this for this and we'll probably use anything Nuxt to an or maybe Gridsome for the upcoming marketing site. So yeah, I mean, it's this is a dynamic ecosystem. People are motivated people are friendly when we were in New York, was speaking on a panel gems tech conference conference in New York for e commerce and I don't know it just it's a great vibe. And I feel like it's it's cool community to be a part of right now Bryan Robinson 17:06 How's the actual physical community for for the JAMstack meet up and up in Quebec? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 17:11 Oh, it's small but growing, and we're around 20 people when we do the meetup. And what's fun is that we've like we're always gathering feedback in iterating each meetup and some of the feedback we've been getting is, okay, so I know I can make my own blog with Gatsby and it's very cool and react and whatnot. But I want to do this in production. I want to do actual work for a client in my agency or as a freelancer with this. So show us some production examples. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 17:46 So we kind of decided to do some more real life technical demonstrations of look at this website and the wired we built, it is running for clients and some marketing people are using it. And it's a real production ready project here, how we here's how we bundled it. So that's great. And we're trying to push towards this like have more agencies use static sites for simple sites, have more agencies trying to experiment with headless CMS to decouple the front end if the clients that need to push some stuff on mobile on some some screens or some and desktop, so I think it's growing but it's Yeah, it's still a teenager in terms of adoption on its life cycle. Bryan Robinson 18:33 Alright, so I don't want to you know, blow our time estimate for the episode of the water but what's your what's your actual jam right now? What kind of music Are you listening to favorite song favorite artists? Yeah. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 18:44 I've been curating a Spotify playlist on my personal account that I titled, is that soul I feel in my guts. It's a weird mix that really makes me feel like alive and it's like the Janis Joplin and other Sam Cooke and other cool artists like this. So this is this is my answer Bryan Robinson 19:08 So you're going to give me that link right? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 19:10 Of course. Yeah. Bryan Robinson 19:11 Perfect, perfect because actually, I love that that type of music too. So got it. I'll be listening to that personally and then we'll put put it in the show notes too. Cool. Bryan Robinson 19:19 And so so finally, what do you want to promote today? What do you want to get out in the open in the community? Francois Lanthier Nadeau 19:24 Um, great question. Well, your podcast, it's good. Thank you for doing it. Much appreciated. Of course, Snipcart's latest version, the V3 is out, snipcart.com. You can check out the documentation and tell us which think other than that. There's this semi official mission of Destigmatizing mental health in tech and my personal life that if some people are interested, flanthiernadeau.com. So my name .com. I have written about this over there. Bryan Robinson 20:00 Great, and we'll put that in the show notes to to make sure everyone can find their way over. Cool. Cool. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time and talk with us today. And I hope you keep doing some amazing stuff over stuff card. Francois Lanthier Nadeau 20:10 Okay, well, thank you have a good day. Bryan Robinson 20:14 Everyone is Bryan again. And I want to take a second to thank this week's sponsor TakeShape. TakeShape calls their offering a content platform. And that's really the best description for it. They have a handy CMS, a static site generator and a simple GraphQL API already for use on the JAMstack. They may have all that power, but they also work within your current workflow. I'm currently converting one of my sites over to use the TakeShape CMS but because I can bring my own stack site generator, I don't have to rewrite a lot of code. I just changed where my data come from, and bam, instant upgrade to my CMS. Bryan Robinson 20:43 They also have new features coming on all the time, like their new mesh product that allows you to mix and match data from multiple sources into one neat graph qL interface, you can sign up for a beta of that new product over at takeshape.io/thatsmyjamstack. Bryan Robinson 20:59 And while you're here, don't worry Get to leichhardt Subscribe, all those great things that you can do and your podcast app of choice to the that's my jam sec podcast, the more likes and subscribes and all that good stuff that we get, the more people find out about this amazing new way of doing design and development on the web. As always, thanks for being a listener and we'll see you next time. Until then keep doing amazing things in the JAMstack.Transcribed by https://otter.aiIntro/outtro music by bensound.comSupport That's my JAMstack by donating to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/thats-my-jamstack

Greetings Glocal Citizens! Let me introduce myself, I'm your host Florence Amerley Adu. I'm CEO and co-founder of LEAP Transmedia. Our vision is to seeds and sows a fertile ground for improving education and economic outcomes for Ghanaians and Africans across the diaspora. Do you dream about “doing something” abroad? Then consider Glocal Citizens required listening in the due diligence, trusted advisor and inspiration department. In each episode, I visit with dynamic diasporans making local and global impact designing and applying their craft. We explore how their passions have rooted them throughout their lives, while at the same time feeding the branches compelling them to keep reaching “beyond.” We also discuss the personal and professional dimensions of glocal citizenship. Then we round out the discussion with a deep dive into to the business of their business, covering the technical and operational components of the work of “doing something.”

What we set out to help you with in this episode, is to eliminate the feeling of feeling behind the eight ball with your posts. Business owners have enough going on and feeling frazzled over what to post and when to post. It really sucks. She helps us know where to start, how to make your organic content serve your set goals, and how to make your organic content speak to who your customer is, so that when they see and read your posts, they feel like, "Yeah, that's me," and they want to see more. Whitney also stresses consistency and how consistency is necessary for both the algorithm and to building the relationship with people online. Carey Sperry:                   Hi, everyone. Welcome back to episode three of All Social Y'all Podcast. Today, we have Whitney Stovall here with us to speak about organic social, and how to get the game on ahead of posting content. Basically, how to get ahead of it, how to not feel frazzled. Carey Sperry:                   Did you guys feel like I did on a daily basis, where you're just trying to figure out what you're going to post today, or later today, or even tomorrow morning, and feeling like it's a stressor? That's what we want to address today. We have Whitney Stovall here today. You want to say hello Whitney? Whitney Stovall:             Hey, how are you? Thanks for having me. Carey Sperry:                   Yes, yes. Thanks for being here. I met Whitney, it's been about seven or eight months. Is that how long we've been working together? Whitney Stovall:             Yeah. Carey Sperry:                   About that long. Whitney Stovall:             Yeah, something like that, about seven months. Carey Sperry:                   Yes, where I was needing help in our business, and for our direct posting, and ... Hell, I just couldn't keep up with it myself because I'm serving our clients, and I'm launching this podcast, and I'm doing a million things as a business owner, and I really wanted someone ... I'm CEO, business owner, founder, and I know social media and how to do content myself, and all of that. But I was like, "I really feel like our business could be better if I had someone that was dedicated to it, and could really help us plan ahead, and not feel like we were last. Like our clients are first and I was putting us last." Carey Sperry:                   And so, I found Whitney, and she has done an amazing job of brand consistency, calendaring, thinking of different ideas and reminding me of content that I need to collect when we're in life, and when we're in the business, and even on the weekends, things that I can capture and share, where she can beautify up, as I say. Carey Sperry:                   That's what we're going to talk about today. I guess I'd start with a question, Whitney, is where do you recommend a business owner start with planning ahead and not feeling frazzled in last minute with their content, their organic? Whitney Stovall:             I believe the number one thing or the first thing you should do, is decide what your goal is or what your goals are, and link those goals, your social media goals to your overall business goals. Whitney Stovall:             If your goal is to grow your brand overall, and to just get in front of more potential customers, then you need to ensure that on the social media end, you're amping up the content that engages with your customers or your potential customers, and really gets your message and your mission out there. And once you have a goal, then you have an idea of who your customer is or at least you should begin to think about who your customer is. And then from there, begin to develop your content. Whitney Stovall:             As most people start with the content ... And don't get me wrong, content is very, very important. But in the process of it all, it's more so like the third step because you really have to start thinking about what it is that you want to do. A lot of times, and I'll speak from experience, if I get in front of my screen, and I just want to post something that day, I get stuck because I don't know what I want to post. There's a thousand things I can post. There's so many things going on. Whitney Stovall:             But if I have a plan, even if I deviate from that plan for whatever reason, at least it's there, and I can always have it to reference, and go back to. You have, like you mentioned earlier, consistency. Versus it's kind of a one off situation or a tone that isn't carried throughout all of your posts. Carey Sperry:                   Yeah. You go to some handles or whatever, some brand's presence, whether it's a personal brand, someone that's in the fitness space, or it's actually a big business, and their posts don't have any aesthetic is what they call it. You know, where it has some consistency and expectation, like you just don't know what you're going to get when you go to their presence. Whitney Stovall:             Right, right. And that's the one thing you don't want because you want to cultivate a community and create an experience for your ... And actually, I was discussing that today with someone. You want to create an experience that really connects with your customers. And you can't do that if it's not consistent because they don't know what to expect, and they don't know who you're talking to. They're like, "Are you talking to me? Well, maybe this isn't for me. This has to be for someone else or a different customer segment of their customer base." Whitney Stovall:             You want to definitely, when someone goes to your social media or clicks on a post, for them to know, "Okay, they're talking to me, they're solving my problem, they're speaking in a way that I understand, that relates to me as a full person." And so, your content that in a lot of different ways. Whitney Stovall:             For instance, if you have an older base, you might discover that they aren't necessarily into all the frills and the thrills. They really just want the facts, or they really like videos, and so on, and so forth. And so, you can cater toward that, and develop content based off of what they want and what they need. Carey Sperry:                   Good point. When you say create an experience for them, do you mean within the specific post, or do you mean within a series of posts, or both? Whitney Stovall:             Within a series of posts. Your one post would be a moment in this experience. I would say if somebody are the most successful or biggest brands that are known, on particularly Instagram, are really great at doing this visually. You might click on their page, and you just see everything is like this. You feel like you're on the beach or you feel like you're about to go to this really great restaurant, from the moment that you click on that handle. Whitney Stovall:             And so, every post is a lead in to that. And the same fashion with blogs, right? When someone clicks on one blog post, it's usually in connection to a bunch of different topics that relate to one overall topic. And so, your social media is very much like that. You have one overall goal, one overall mission, brand experience you're trying to cultivate, and then each one of your posts are a piece of that. Carey Sperry:                   Back to goals because you mentioned that again, that's important because that brings through your purpose. Is a goal ... Let's say I want to get appointments, or if you're a hairdresser, "I want to get people to schedule with me online." Or if you're a school, you want to get students, is that what you mean by goal? Whitney Stovall:             Those are more like your business goals, right? And those are great. Let's use that as an example. If you are a hairstylist and you want to get appointments online, then that's your ... Or you want to get appointments, right? You want to increase your revenue by X amount of dollars. Then your social goal will look something like you're looking to convert X amount of people, in order to reach X amount of dollars. And so, your social goals are based upon conversion, engagement, reach, things of that sort. And your business goals are usually based on where you look to take your business in the next quarter or the next year. Whitney Stovall:             And so, relating those or connecting those I should say, can really, really make the difference in your business. Because I would say, for instance, I have a nonprofit, and 75% of the people who visit our website come through our Instagram page. And so, that is a huge converter for our organization. Carey Sperry:                   Ah! They find you on Instagram, and then they want to learn more, and they want to be connected more, and so then in your bio they click to your website, and it's driving traffic to your website, where you can then get them to volunteer, or you can have them read your blog, and do all kinds of stuff, right? Whitney Stovall:             Yes, correct. Exactly. Exactly what that does. And so, it's very important that each of our posts conveys something about our brand or our mission. And so, we do a lot of a mix of user engagement or user generated post I should say, as well as branded posts, to keep people feeling like everyone's a part of the community. No matter if you click on whatever I like, dancing kid posts or something about books in the community, it all relates to our overall mission of supporting men and boys, and us wanting to get people to support that mission as well. Carey Sperry:                   I get it, yes. With that, you mentioned ... With your goal being getting a certain number of people to follow or like, and the reach, reaching because the algorithm, Facebook decides, and so Facebook owns Instagram, they decide who they're going to put your posts in front of, your organic post, and that's why it's become ever increasingly over the course of 2019, to get to be successful strictly with organic. It's possible but it is very, very hard, and it's become close to impossible without paid ads. But you have to do both. You have to do both organic and and paid ads to really succeed on social. Carey Sperry:                   And so, if people are looking at the number of likes and people that are following them and then, ultimately converting, wherever that means, to a landing page where they can sign up for something, or making an appointment, or going to your website, whatever metric is, how long should people expect that those things are going to take? How do you gauge some sort of expectation or do you just need to do it and do it consistently every day to figure out how long it's going to take your brand? Whitney Stovall:             This is the key because really, you can honestly have a really successful post right out the gate, right? But if that isn't carried through, it really won't matter. Or if you don't have a plan to carry it through, it really won't matter because you won't have the next steps. Whitney Stovall:             Just having the process in place, in order to carry you through longterm, is really how you generate growth. Because social media, as you mentioned, algorithms change daily. And social media platforms pop up, they die down, and so if you have your systems in place, it ensures that you are not always giving in to the tide or to every change, you're being affected greatly by it. Whitney Stovall:             I would say definitely, longterm is better. I would say different analytical tools will give you a report, from a week all the way to a monthly basis. I prefer to look on a three week to four week basis, to really determine if something is having an impact. Only because like I said, things can fluctuate and they can change. If I have 30 days in front of me, I say, "Okay, consistently for 30 days." And usually, when we make our calendar as well, we do it for a minimum of 30 days. I can say, "Okay, this has worked. This hasn't worked. This is what people are responding to. This is what people are saying," and make changes accordingly. Whitney Stovall:             As long as you consistently ... Let me also add. Having a longterm plan doesn't mean that you just put it into place and you never look at it. You definitely have to continuously check on it, track changes, monitor your different platforms, and your different engagements, to ensure that with all the changes, that you're still staying the course. And if your goal is growth, that you're growing as well. Carey Sperry:                   I have a Facebook, let's say I'm just Joe, Joe or Sally, business owner, and I have a Facebook page. I've had it for three or four years, and I have barely posted on it. And if I post, I'll post once in July, and then I won't post again until October. I have very few followers. But then I want help, someone professional like we are, to help become successful. Is that something that through organic posts, that I can expect success in a month or two? Whitney Stovall:             I would say on the smaller level, yes. For instance, if you're doing something locally, and you are using local, very niche hashtags, and you're engaging with local influencers, or people who have a following in these different communities. Because the great thing about social media, is that every social media can develop some type of hub or community of other pages of people that you interact with, so you can expect modest growth. But I would say not to expect very grand growth until later on down, once you've built those little footsteps and created that traffic. Whitney Stovall:             Because right out the gate, you have to start somewhere. I think honestly, the thing about social media is that it gives you this persona, that you blow up overnight. And there a few of those success stories but for the most part, people really work daily to build these pages. Whitney Stovall:             With Hello, My Name is KING, and that's my nonprofit I mentioned earlier, we have been building our page for almost six years, at this point. Every year things change. We aren't as consistent as a lot of people in our little community and hub, who literally post four, five, six times a day. They're on every trending topic. And so, I can definitely see my growth, how we've grown, compared to how they've grown because the different cookies, as you can say in a way, through social media they've created. Whitney Stovall:             Yeah, I would say just expect modest growth in the beginning. When you're setting goals, you want your goals to be smart goals. You want to be realistic about what you can achieve in the time that you're given. If you only have a little time and your network isn't the largest, be realistic about that but also, use that as a foundation to build upon because you definitely can get there, it just takes time. Whitney Stovall:             The more that you put in, actually in the planning and the foundation of it in the beginning, it will be so much more helpful because trust and believe, you don't want to jump in and create a page that blows up and then you don't even have the system in place to support it. I've heard a lot of people say that, like, "Oh, we really wasn't expecting this to take off. And now, I feel like I have to post every day." And they feel really pressured and rushed, and they don't really understand where they want to go or what to do because it's a lot with social media to keep up. And so if you start small and slow, it actually is beneficial to you in the long run. Carey Sperry:                   Yes. I explain to people that it's similar to having any kind of a big goal, physical or maybe you start a new career, you become a nurse, you want to go into that midway through your life. It's really anything you can think of that's a big goal, it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't even happen in a month or two. It takes time and it takes consistency. This sounds cliche, but anything that's hard is worth it. Carey Sperry:                   If you were to start that when you were younger or if you take a physical goal ... Let's say you haven't lifted weights for five years, you're not suddenly going to become a competitor in a month. It takes time. And so ... Whitney Stovall:             Exactly. Carey Sperry:                   Yeah. Let's say you then make a plan and you think you know what your goals are, at least what you think your goals are before you really get started and start listening, what are some of the indicators that you look at Whitney, that can help pivot maybe? You and I have pivoted a little bit a couple times on a few things, and I like how we do it quickly. We're like, "Okay, this is working great. Let's do more of that. How can we do more of that?" What are some other considerations and things that you look at as you're getting going in couple of few months with a plan? Whitney Stovall:             Yeah, so social media has gotten really advanced, particularly Facebook, and the insights that they have on Instagram, and then with Facebook business manager. If your business has a business page, you definitely need Facebook business manager because the insights not only can make a great difference in your presence on the platform, but in your overall business goals because of all the different ways you can segment your audience, and re-target, and track, and so on, and so forth. Whitney Stovall:             But yeah, so these social media platforms have great insight tools that literally let you know what your audience is responding to. And you can look at it over the course of that day, the course of that week, month, year, lifetime, so on and so forth. And it really gives you insight as to over time, what it is that people are responding to. And it also can let you know if you're deviating from your goals. Whitney Stovall:             If you're looking to target a certain demographic and they're not ... With most social media insights, you can at least look at age, and gender, and location, and things of that sort. And if you're not targeting those demographics, then you know that you need to reshape and restructure the way that you're going about your social media plan and direction. Whitney Stovall:             Definitely, take a look close insights, and also the numbers because I definitely believe in numbers. But beyond the numbers, look at what the people are saying, what people are literally commenting, who's commenting, and then in which ways that people are engaging with you. Are they sharing your posts? Are they using your hashtag? Because that's very important in just the overall growth. Because like I said, those little pieces is what helped to build your reputation and your brand online over the course of time. Carey Sperry:                   Exactly. And there are definitely some types of brands that are easier to market on and get engagement, than other brands. People don't really like engaging with content, marketing content. Marketing content, it's normal. But if it's something new, and more sexy, or something trending, or if it's something where there's a huge, huge need out there for most people, so some people have a lot easier time with it. Or if it's just aesthetically pleasing. With some brands B2Bs have a harder time. Carey Sperry:                   And while we're speaking of that, not to get off track, because I do want to talk a little bit about the calendaring. With B2Bs, you mentioned user generated content. I think a lot of our listeners might not know what that is. I think it's a great way for B2Bs to capitalize on bringing their customer to contribute to contents. Can you talk a little bit about that? Whitney Stovall:             I definitely agree with you 100% there. User generated content is content that your customers basically post. Maybe it's a product, maybe they post a testimonial, or a picture of you in action giving them a service, so on, and so forth. But it's something that they post themselves, in support of your brand, and your mission, and your product. Maybe they use your hashtag. Either way, they basically, shout you out. And that is, I would say one of the number one ways to be successful on social media, mainly because it adds to your social proof, so people don't have to question whether your product works or if it doesn't work because someone's validating it right here that it works. Whitney Stovall:             Another great thing about user generated content, is that it saves you time, right? So you don't have to consistently develop content all the time because you have a unofficial partner on, who's on your team, your customers, who are almost like your brand ambassadors, right? They are out there, in the space, on your behalf, yelling from the mountain tops how great you are. And so, that is invaluable for your business in so, so many ways. Whitney Stovall:             Definitely, if you have a product or a service, encourage people to use your hashtag. If you do a giveaway, a contest, that's another great way to get user generated content. I supported a lighting company one time, and they were a huge manufacturing international company, and one way they got user generated content, was they would have people take pictures of their light, spot their products out in the street or something, and submit the best photo, and then they would give a prize away every month or something. It was a really cool way to get ... And it helped them get content for inspirational photos and things like that. They never told anybody. But that was another way they actually got photos and stuff, without having to go out to every company in every city to take a picture, right? It was a really, really good tool that we used in so many ways. Carey Sperry:                   I love that idea. Yeah. And on the flip side of that, don't be afraid to ask your customers because nine times out of 10, if not 10 out of 10, they'll be like, "Yes. I would love to." And whether it's a text, and you can just erase their name out of the post because really, all people need to see is the authentic words, and that it's coming from a customer. And the little nuances that they put in their words, are things that you wouldn't think to say quite like that, you know? That's such a great way. I agree with you. It's really the best way to do it right now. Carey Sperry:                   Okay, in calendaring, I just think this is so important. That's why I want to close without missing this for our listeners. The calendar is so helpful to actually think ahead about the month. What's coming up in the business, what events do we have, what are we really trying to drive to our customers this month, what new products or offering services do we have coming out? Carey Sperry:                   And then, we put it into a calendar with specific posts, certain times of day. And by the way, everyone asks, "Well when should I post? Are there best times of day to post?" The answer is yes but it's also what your customers, what your audiences like, so you have to listen to that as well. There's no just blanket answer for that. But how do you go about putting together a calendar, Whitney, and what do you think is an idea or two about what a great calendar offers? Whitney Stovall:             I love a 30 day calendar. Some content managers and creators will swear by a six month calendar. I personally like a 30 day calendar because I feel like it gives you wiggle room, while still having, like I said, that foundation and that structure. That's one. I like a 30 day. Whitney Stovall:             And then, I like to go buy theme and quarter those things off. If our overall goal is to increase engagement, and we know that people engage with this type of content, and they're looking to have this problem to solve, then for the first quarter I might focus on one sub topic of that, and then the next quarter another sub topic, and so on, and so forth. Whitney Stovall:             That helps me to breakdown my plan, I should say. And then from there, I legit go day by day, and then determining based on how many posts I want to post that day, include content for that, as well as graphics, and media, and so on, and so forth. Whitney Stovall:             And so I think the important piece about this, is that it really just gives you a visual, not only a ... I'm thinking of Instagram, the layout visual. Not only that type of visual but it gives you a content visual of what it is that you're going to be saying that month, what it is that you're conveying to people that month. It's a really, really great way, like I said, to help to bring it all together. Carey Sperry:                   Yes. I love it, and the clients that we've done that for, they just sing accolades, like, "Oh my gosh, I've never seen anything like this, and this is so helpful." And I just feel so good when we hear that, so it's a great idea everyone. Take the time to sit down and do that or let us know if we can help you. Whitney, you're on LinkedIn. It's W-H-I-T-N-E-Y Stovall, S-T-O-V-A-L-L, and everyone check out Hello, My Name is KING. We hope this was helpful. If so, give us a subscribe, like, write us a review, and we will see you next time. Thank you so much, Whitney. Whitney Stovall:             Thank you again. I had a great time. Carey Sperry:                   Thanks for listening to the All Social Y'all Podcast. For free resources and materials, head over to allsocialyall.com. that's allsocialyall.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you, what subject areas would you like to hear about in future episodes? You can share that with us by dropping me a comment on our website or in Instagram at allsocialyall.  

Kristin Cavallari said it the best, "I'm CEO, b*tch!...!" — But badass CEOs aren't just born, they are made. ⁣ Stephanie Gilbert, founder of The Social Media CEO and CEO Yeah! is going to show you exactly how to set up your business to scale so that your bank account matches your ambition, and your self-care routine is on point!  Tune in to learn who (and how) to hire out, and the next book you absolutely must read.

HOLY SH*T I'M CEO | Stepping into the CEO role

Data Privacy, Public Wifi and Other Updates www.ASCGrp.com LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2DlO6Lq LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanadcock/ Facebook: https://bit.ly/2IuqhoO Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascgrp #AlanAdcock #CyberSentinel #Hacking #CyberSecurity Is public wifi safe? Can your data be compromised if you're connected when you're out and about? Find out today on Cyber Sentinel. Welcome to Cyber Sentinel. I'm Alan Adcock. I'm CEO of ASC Group. We, on this show, talk about ways to defend your data and keep your company safe online. You can find us on social media at #cybersentinel and we wanna have your questions so we can answer those on our show. Do small businesses need to be concerned about data privacy? So yes, all businesses need to be concerned about data privacy. We see data breaches reported in the news on a regular basis. You've probably gotten a letter in the mail saying that your data had been breached. I got one of these from the National Archives, of all places, that they had disclosed all of my personal data many years ago. So, in general, small businesses don't have good data privacy policies in place and systems to secure that data. Definitely wanna review that in your organization. Make sure that that data is stored in secure locations on your network. Make sure it's encrypted and make sure that your staff are trained on how to handle this. Some industries, like the medical field, have good regulations on how to do this, through the HIPAA rulings, that they are required to adhere to, but all businesses need to be thinking about how to keep that secure data, or that sensitive data secured so they don't disclose that information on their clients on the web. Is public wifi safe to use? Yeah, so public wifi is an issue that comes up a lot. Everywhere you go now, there is public wifi. People are very used to connecting to public wifi access points with all their devices, their telephones, tablets, laptops. There's a lot of things to be concerned about and to think about before you get connected. Oftentimes, we'll find that people will go into an establishment, look at the wifi that's being broadcast and just pick one and connect. You don't know for sure that that is the actual establishment's wifi. If you connect to a rogue access point that someone has set up, then they're gonna be able to track all of the information you send over that access point. If you're trying to access secure systems, putting your password to login to websites, they're gonna capture all that information. So be very careful when you connect to public wifi that you're connected to the legitimate access points for that establishment and not something that's been set up as a rogue access point.

Website: www.ASCGrp.com LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2DlO6Lq LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanadcock/ Facebook: https://bit.ly/2IuqhoO Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascgrp #AlanAdcock #CyberSentinel #Hacking #CyberSecurity #DarkWeb - So, the good guys get a big win on the Dark Web, today on Cyber Sentinel. Welcome to Cyber Sentinel. My name is Alan Adcock. I'm CEO of ASC Group, an IT consulting firm here in Atlanta, Georgia. On Cyber Sentinel, we address questions that you send into us over the internet, and so let's get to it. - [Narrator] What is the Dark Web? - If you're not familiar with Dark Web, Dark Web is kinda this secured area on the internet that you have to use tools like something called TOR, which is the onion router, to go in and access these sites in an anonymous way. And so, the Dark Web is a place where there's all kinds of things for sale, information, you can buy credit cards, you can buy personal records, you can buy information to use for doing IRS tax refund scams, all of the malware virus toolkits, rootkit toolkits, all that good stuff is for sale on the Dark Web. So anyway, there's a site called the Wall Street Market. It was taken down, primarily in Germany. A lot of people's houses got raided over this. So, some of the interesting stuff that came out of this article, on this one site on the Dark Web, there were 5400 sellers, so people offering up information and tools for sale on that, 1.1 million customer accounts had been created on this site for buyers, and there were about 63000 items open for sale at the time that they were able to take this thing offline. So, that kinda gives you an example of the scale of what's out there in the Dark Web. Most people would love for their, most small businesses would love for their website, their online store to have those kinda numbers for their legitimate goods, as these guys had. But that one is no more. So, through a large effort globally, Europol was able to take this one offline and give us a win for the good guys.

www.ASCGrp.com LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2DlO6Lq LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanadcock/ Facebook: https://bit.ly/2IuqhoO Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascgrp #AlanAdcock #CyberSentinel #Hacking #SocialMedia #CyberSecurity - So, are you concerned as a business owner that you're employees are wasting too much time on social media during the day? Find out the answer to how we can stop that, as well as other cyber security issues, today on Cyber Sentinel. Welcome to Cyber Sentinel, I'm Alan Adcock. I'm CEO of ASC Group here in Atlanta, and on this episode we're gonna talk about some more ways to keep your data safe and defend your corporate network. We want to hear more questions from you, so find us on social media at #CyberSentinel and we'll get those questions answered. - [Narrator] Are there steps I should take before using public wifi? - So public wifi comes up a lot. We've talked before about making sure you're connected to a legitimate public access point. Other things to consider, the PC or Mac that you're using, is that encrypted, are you using proper password controls on that device? If you need to access corporate data or financial data from a public location, please make sure that you've got a VPN software client on your machine, that you've connected to that VPN before you go and access that data. Things like, personal email, things like that, probably not a big deal. Corporate mail, always assume that that corporate mail, someone's gonna read that, so that, again, you might want to be connected to a VPN before accessing that. Make sure that you've got good malware protection on there, your antivirus is up to date. All those general good machine hygiene items before using public wifi.

At the height of the economic recession in 2009, Michael Brody-Waite quit his job at a Fortune 50 company to become an aspiring entrepreneur. Looking back now, he humbly admits, he had no idea what he was doing. "I know it says I'm CEO, but I had no idea how to be a CEO, how to run the business … We were creating an industry that had never been done before without any investors or advisors." But 16 years of sobriety and three powerful words - experience, strength and hope - gave Brody-Waite the unwavering will to push on. "For me, getting clean was the hardest thing that I ever did, and so I started saying, well, how did I do that? And I went back to those words. I needed to find experience, strength and hope as an entrepreneur." Six years later, his startup was bought by a publicly traded company. Brody-Waite is now the CEO of the Nashville EC, giving back to the very organization that helped him years ago. Only this time, he is offering his personal experiences as a mentor, his strengths navigating the often confusing community waters and a hope to better connect the local entrepreneur ecosystem. "In recovery, I was always taught you can't keep anything unless you give it away." Included in this episode are stories and perspectives from local entrepreneurs: LeShane Greenhill (Founder and CEO of Sagents and Sales Cocktail), Julia Polk (Chief Strategy Officer and CFO of IQuity) and Shawn Glinter (Founder and CEO of Pendant Biosciences). All three attribute their success to the mentorship they received, and today each pay it forward serving in a variety of mentor roles.

On this LAB Radio, episode Aaron Mangal and Chris Groshong talk security, the Internet and origin story of how MetaCert helps protect users from malicious links with CEO and founder, Paul Walsh. Paul Walsh, CEO and founder of MetaCert and co-founder of W3C Mobile Web Initiative Paul is an early web pioneer in security and safety for users having helped create projects like the W3C Mobile Web Initiative who's mission includes "ensuring that the Web be available on as many kind of devices as possible". He also helped create standards and classifications for Uniform Resource Locations (URLs) as a part of his work at the W3C organization. "I'm CEO of MetaCert. In 2017 we completely eradicated phishing on Slack for the crypto world. In 2018 we pretty much brought a stop to phishing for the crypto world on Telegram. 2019 is going to be our most important year - our mission is to eradicate phishing for everyone who uses our new email security solution for native mobile email. Previously... I was part of the team that helped to launch technologies such as AIM, Internet Radio, Online Games and X2 56K Modem Protocol while working at AOL during the 90's. I co-instigated the creation of the W3C Standard for URL Classification/Content Labeling and I'm one of the seven original Founders of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. I also own a full patent for Malware and Phishing detection and prevention inside a mobile app WebView with more pending. I own an Indian restaurant in Ireland - Michelin Star for 10+ years. [I am a] Irish. Father. Wine Drinker. Advanced Open Water Diver, Snowboarder, Skydiver Wannabe and Seasoned Traveller." -Paul Walsh This new broad access of the web we are seeing today has brought new challenges such as malicious individuals who seek to steal peoples data and even worse Cryptocurrency and the value within. The MetaCert team began by providing authenticity and monitoring of social media channels like Telegram and Slack which has a wave of malicious bot attacks on users, encouraging them to click on compromised links and put their sensitive data into fake websites which ultimately leads to theft. MetaCert aims to protect businesses from malicious threats and unsafe URLs inside Messaging Apps MetaCert has a patented enterprise-grade security API which can lookup over 2,000 shortening services and check it against a massive database of 10 billion classified URLs across 65 categories in a fraction of a second. MetaCert boasts the biggest threat intelligence system on the planet. The second to them is OpenDNS (run by Cisco) which has classified 2 million domains across 60 categories. One of the reasons for building its own threat intelligence system was to prevent false positives (which is a problem with current solutions on the market automatically blocking too many innocent sites). MetaCert recently released a beta of their email security solution which helps verify the safety of links: After listening to this episode you will learn: How Paul was an early semantic web pioneer in the 90s and created the W3C Mobile Web Initiative Why Paul felt websites and search engines should show more metadata and have an identity certificate What a Universal Resource Identifier (URI) is and why they are important How Webview works and was a vulnerability in our mobile use of the Web Why they got a patent in place for security around Webview to protect themselves from tech giants like Google Why the first iteration of MetaCert was for child safety and built a database for pornographic content How MetaCert saw the opportunity to organize and classify URIs and created the biggest Cyber Threat Intelligence Database to date How the MetaCert API works How MetaCert leverages a reward system for compensating people (Validators) for helping identify and log links Why the MetaCert "Green Shield" icon has become a pillar in their branding and marketing to the public Paul's vision for decentralizing governance around content, link filtering and working group/committee creation A fake news identifying browser add-on called TrustedNews which is 100% powered by MetaCert About how Paul is considering moving away from Ethereum (first time mentioned in public) For show notes and more visit: LAB Radio Episode 49