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Alexandra Hoffmann, the founder and CEO of Crisis Ally, has many years of working in the corporate world to help leaders learn how better to manage and deal with crises they and their organizations face. She says that she began thinking about dealing with crisis management as a child. Not that she faced unusual or horrible crisis situations, but the concept peaked her interest from an early age.   Growing up in France Alexandra wanted to be a police officer. As is required in France, she studied the law and obtained her LLB in criminal law from Parris University. She went on to secure two Master's degrees, one in corporate security and also one in business administration. Clearly she has a well-rounded knowledge that she decided to put to use in the world of managing crisis situation.   Our discussions range in this episode from topics surrounding September 11, 2001 to how and why people react as they do to crisis situations. Alexandra has many relevant and thought provoking observations I believe we all will find interesting. On top of everything else, she has a husband and two small children who keep her spare time occupied.     About the Guest:   Alexandra Hoffmann is the CEO of Crisis Ally, which helps Crisis Leaders and their teams build the right capabilities to thrive through crises. Crisis Ally serves clients internationally. Thanks to a career with the French government and large international corporations, Alexandra has a rich operational and multicultural experience with strong expertise in Business Resilience, its boosting factors, and best practices to manage it.   Alexandra is regularly interviewed in the print media to discuss corporate resilience topics, including Authority Magazine, Business Insider, and Thrive Global. She also writes for ASIS Security Management Magazine and the Crisis Response Journal and regularly presents at events.   Over the course of her career, Alexandra has served in a couple of NGOs as a volunteer, such as the American Red Cross and the French Red Cross.    Alexandra has an LLB in Criminal Law from Paris University, France, an M.Sc. in Corporate Security from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, and an MBA from the University of Phoenix. Alexandra is also a Certified Coach, trained in Neurosciences, and a Certified Yoga Teacher. Last but not least, Alexandra is a mom of two!     Ways to connect with Alexandra: Website: https://www.crisisally.com/ LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahoffmann/     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes      Michael Hingson ** 00:00   Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, good morning, it is morning here where I am. Welcome to unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to chat with Alexandra Hoffmann, who is the founder and CEO of Crisis Ally. And I am no stranger to crises, as many of you know, having been in the World Trade Center on September 11. And so I'm really anxious to hear what Alexandra has to say and to just chat about crises and whatever else comes along. She's also a mom. And that could be a crisis and of itself. And I bet she has stories about that. So we get to listen to all of that, and hopefully learn some things and just have a little bit of fun today. So Alexandra, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Thank   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 02:03 you very much, Michael, for having me with you today. I'm really honored and very excited as   Michael Hingson ** 02:08 well. Now you are located where I'm   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 02:11 actually located in France, I'm French.   Michael Hingson ** 02:15 So right now it's what time where you are,   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 02:19 it is almost 6pm My time.   Michael Hingson ** 02:22 So you're eight hours ahead of us, or actually nine hours ahead of us because it is almost 9am here where I am. So that's okay. It makes life fun. Well, we're really glad that you're here. Why don't we start by maybe you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Alexandria growing up and all that kind of stuff.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 02:46 All right.   Michael Hingson ** 02:47 That kind of stuff makes it pretty general, doesn't it?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 02:49 Super General? And shall I start?   Michael Hingson ** 02:53 Wherever you wish at the beginning?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 02:55 All right. All right. So I was born and grew up in Paris for until I my 20s I would say so. Nothing, I would say nothing exciting around that rights. And it started getting really exciting, at least for me when I started traveling around the world, after finishing my master's degree in law back in France. And I had an opportunity to start traveling to Asia, especially more specifically Vietnam, and then Hong Kong. And that really triggered a whole different life for myself, to discover the world to learn about new cultures to learn about a new job, which actually led me to where I am today. 25 years later. So so that's it for me in a in a really, really small nutshell. And apart from that I'm really part of a family with an older sister younger brother, and yeah, we had a pretty happy life. So everything went smoothly. For for me when I was when I was young, I want to say   Michael Hingson ** 04:09 no, no major crises or anything like that, huh? We   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 04:13 had some, like, you know, like every family I want to say and but yeah, I mean, my my sister got sick when we were young and that triggered a major crisis I wanted maybe that's, you know, that started planting, planting a seed at the time, about crisis management and willing the will to care for others and to, to care for for the human beings I want to say. But yeah, I mean, apart from that we had a very regular life,   Michael Hingson ** 04:52 I want to say so you have two children. How old are they?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 04:55 I have a six year old boy and a three year old girl Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 05:00 oh, probably great ages and the crises will start when they start dating.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 05:07 Yeah, I mean, we've had prices as well, since they were born. But very, very normal prices. I'm gonna say nothing critical. Yeah, very new prices.   Michael Hingson ** 05:16 There's a husband to go along with all of that. Yes, there is one.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 05:20 We have our prices as well. So yeah, I mean, that's life, right. It's downs. And that's, that's part of the journey. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 05:33 It is. Well, so tell me about the the travels, you said you traveled to Asia and so on? What prompted that? Going to Asia and other places. So   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 05:42 I actually went to, to the US as well. And what prompted me to travel there is really the fact that I'm actually having a crisis because my kids want to watch in the room right now, which is completely unexpected. So my husband saved the day. But let's see for how long. So so no, I started traveling to Asia, because I, you know, I had this opportunity and then move to the US right after 911. Okay, because I wanted to start studying in corporate security. And I knew that there was a college back in New York, who is actually specialized in this. So I really wanted to take this opportunity, especially after 911 to really go there and and dive into this topic and really get get the knowledge, I want to I don't want to say the expertise at that point, right, because it was really early in my career, but at least learn as much as I could about this topic to then start my career in corporate security. Back in Asia was more mostly focused on law, on law and work, basically, because I was originally a law students, right, so but really, what triggered me to travel to the US was really to study corporate security. And originally, you have to know that I wanted to I studied law back in France, because I wanted to be a police officer. And in France, when you want to become a police officer, you have to go through law school, basically, it's it's mandatory. I know, it's very different than the US. So but my mind changed when I started traveling. And I realized I wanted to discover the world and speak English all the time. And, and there are new things and discover new cultures, basically.   Michael Hingson ** 07:39 Yeah. And you know what, that's interesting. I've talked to a number of people who said the same sorts of things when they got to travel or when they wanted to travel. They very much enjoyed learning about new cultures and different kinds of environments and different kinds of people. And I know, even around the United States, and I've had the honor of doing that. And I've traveled to a number of countries, overseas, and so on as well. It is always fun to learn about new people and who they are and where they are and what they do and why they're the way they are. And it certainly is not up to me to to judge one kind of people as opposed to someone else. Everyone's customs are different. And that's what makes it so much fun, isn't it? Yeah,   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 08:22 then I I couldn't agree more. And I, I need diversity. That's, that's, you know, that's how I feed myself. My soul, I want to say, right. So that's why meeting those diverse cultures and people is is a requirement for myself.   Michael Hingson ** 08:41 Outside of France, what's the favorite place that you've been to that you really liked? Or do you have one? New York? Definitely.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 08:49 Yeah, definitely.   Michael Hingson ** 08:50 Definitely. New York.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 08:52 I spent enough years there to fall in love with it. And yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 08:57 yeah. There's nothing like New York. Yeah, you're you're absolutely right. I mean, there are other places that are so much fun as well. But there's nothing like New York, it's a great place to be in a great place to go. And it really is a city that is Frank Sinatra sings in the song, it doesn't sleep, because there's always something going on. And I remember for a while when I lived back in the area, or when I would travel there, places like the Carnegie Deli, which unfortunately closed which I'm sad about. But we're open to like four in the, in the morning. And then they opened again at six or 630. But they were they were open most of the time and other places there and always activity, which is just kind of cool. And one of the things I really liked about New York, and I don't know how much it's changed in the last, well, 20 years since well, 19 years since we moved, you could order any food or anything to be delivered, which for me was very convenient even being in the World Trade Center because I could order from some of the local delis and not necessarily have to go down and they would bring You showed up, which was great. Yeah.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 10:02 No, it's, it's it's Yeah. I mean, I have so many memories there. And it's there is no place like that. I can't say that I would live there again, especially with young kids, right, right now, but it's, yeah, it's New York is part of the now it's been part of me for many, many years.   Michael Hingson ** 10:25 It's definitely an interesting and wonderful place to go. And I can very well understand why it's a favorite place of yours. And it's one of my favorite places as well. If we had to move back to that area, we lived in Westfield, New Jersey, my wife and I did and it was a better place to live for us, because my wife being in a wheelchair also needed a more accessible house than we would typically find. In New York City. She has now passed on, she did last November. But we've talked several times that if we ever had to go back that she'd rather live in the city, it's a lot more convenient, it's a lot more accessible. And there's just so much not only to do but so many conveniences to get her whatever she would need. It's pretty cool.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 11:11 Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's everything is practical there. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 11:17 Well, I think that's really pretty cool. So for you, you, so you've been involved in the law and corporate security. And I can see where those two concepts actually blend together, I assume that that you would agree that they they really can dovetail upon each other in some ways, and knowing about the law, and then dealing with security and so on, is is something that that you have a lot of background to be able to address.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 11:48 It's especially because I studied criminal law, right? So we're not supposed to I mean, we're not meant to chase criminals within the corporate environment, right. But it is connected in a way, especially from a value standpoint, I would say. Also the mindset. And we do have some times to conduct investigations, and also the fact that we have to constantly prepare for disruptive events, but also respond to those disruptive events. It's, it's highly connected, it's a very different job, but it's very connected. Let's put it this way. Yeah. So   Michael Hingson ** 12:26 in terms of dealing with crises, and so on, and we've joked a little bit about it earlier, but he but in all seriousness, what are some things that lead you to really being interested in, in wanting to work in the arena of crisis management, whether crises of your own that you've had to face? Or just what kinds of things shape your experience to want to do this? It's   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 12:51 I that's what I was telling you. That's the reason why I was telling you the beginning, maybe my childhood planted a seed on this, you know, with my sister getting sick and, and us having to adjust? I don't know, I, you know, I don't know for sure. But I know that 911 was definitely an event that triggered me to say I want to help serve corporate sector, the corporate sector, to help protecting the people working for the corporate sector, right. So that when a disruptive event happens, nine elevens or anything else, you know, professionals are there to assist them and make sure that everything is done to the best of our capabilities, basically, to protect and serve that within those private organization.   Michael Hingson ** 13:45 Tell me a little bit about your thoughts concerning September 11. And what what you observed in terms of what was successful and maybe not so successful about managing that crisis? Oh, wow. I know, that's a pretty open ended question. But it's, it's a fascinating one, I would think to talk about it   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 14:06 is a fascinating one. Well, for one thing, it's it, you know, it was a long time ago, I must say that, unlike you, I was not in New York at the time, right. I was actually sitting in Hong Kong, but when it happened, and I think it was basically, I don't know what word to use, actually, you know, by seeing what what happening and not understanding how we could not see this coming right. At the same time. I've read a few things since including one book that I always recommend my clients or anyone who's in my workshops or conferences to read, which is called the Ostrich Paradox. And it's a book that talks About, among other things, 911 and that explain that a lot of cognitive biases went into the process of risk management at the time when it comes to preparing for those disruptive events. Right. So, I think I mean, from what experts are saying, I think one of the big thing is that cognitive biases played a huge, huge role in this lack of preparation, I want to say and I mean, it's not like a preparation is it's in this event, I want to say, right, but at the same time, when you have planes landing at the top of building, you know, there's nothing that not much you can do to prevent the building from collapsing. Right. But so, yeah, it's a it's a difficult question. I want to say,   Michael Hingson ** 15:52 yeah, it is. And it's a it's a challenge. When you say cognitive bias, what do you mean by that?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 16:00 Yeah. So when, as risk managers and as humans, okay, that's what the the so the, the, the Ostrich Paradox covers this area, in talks about six cognitive biases, which are humans, okay? It's everyone has those cognitive biases as risk managers, the author's highlight those six cognitive biases, alright. And some of them or the myopia bias, it means which is we are not meant our brain is not meant to, to see far ahead in the future. The thing is, when we manage risk, we are supposed to for to foresee the future. So we have to go against against this cognitive bias to evaluate risks. So when you think of 911, that's one of the biases that went into play. But this specific bias, okay, myopia, go, go happens in many, many other situations, right. Another thing is the bias of amnesia, we forget. So there were other situations where the World Trade Center had been attacked, as we know, right. And yet, you know, what I'm saying,   Michael Hingson ** 17:16 I do this,   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 17:17 this is human, our brain is not meant. Our brain is just meant, meant to focus on the now and here. And here. And now. That's it, because he wants to, it wants to make sure that we are that our life is not at stake, basically, and that we can survive. And then we can take care of for close family, let's say children, if we do have children, or at least partners, right? So apart from that our human or brain is not has not been built, to explore so far in the future and so far in the past. So when we analyze risks, that's something to really take into consideration and just mentioning two of those cognitive biases, right? But there's also the hurting effects, right? It's not going to happen, think about COVID. Think about the war in Ukraine, it's the same, it's not going to happen. Something like this cannot happen. At the time, everyone thought that was just that could have just happened in a Hollywood movie. Right? It's so this book is really, really interesting to the Ostrich Paradox. It's very insightful. And you can talk about we can talk about natural disasters as well, you know, the Fukushima event, all those events, you know? How have been tell me Sorry? No, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, no, all those events, if we didn't, didn't have this cognitive biases built in, right, could have been handled differently, or seen differently, but we are who we are anywhere around the world, right? So we have to, to, to, to, to be aware about those cognitive biases. And I think that's the most important one. And in my work, I try to make my clients aware of these as much as possible, because it's these are really, really important in what we do. But   Michael Hingson ** 19:18 is that really the way we're wired? Or is that a learned behavior? In other words, it seems to me I've heard so many times throughout the years that people do have the ability to do what if? And that the that's in a sense, what makes us different from dogs or other animals that, that we do have the ability to do what if? But I'm wondering if it's really so much our brain is wired not to, since it's a concept that all of us talk about and some people swear by? Or is it a learned behavior that we learn not to think that way? From what   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 19:58 I know because I'm not a neuroscience? It's so, okay. Don't Don't quote me on this. That's okay. From what I've learned, from what I've learned. Studies, scientific studies show that it's actually the brain the way our brain functions. Okay? Now, there is actually one bias that's called confirmation bias. Okay? The confirmation bias is that say, I'm telling you want to think about something red, okay? And when you're gonna start looking around, everything's gonna be red, all of a sudden, you're gonna start talking about a subject, like, let's say we talk about confirmation bias, or any cognitive biases, for what we afford for what we say, Okay? I can bet anything that in the next coming days, you're going to hear more or Yeah, hear more about cognitive biases as well, because you're going to be much your brain will be much more attentive to those signals basically. So in a way, yes, it is trained behavior. But at the same time, this is also how your brain is wired, to be more attentive to signals, the heat that it that it that it recognizes basically, right, right.   Michael Hingson ** 21:12 The the problem I see, and this isn't disagreeing with you, because I think it reaffirms, what you say is that at the same time, we think that soap September 11 happened, it'll never happen again. Or we maybe hope it won't happen again. And I think that we do become a little bit more attentive and attuned to trying to look for the signs, because so much of our world now talks about it that we're in a sense, forced to think about it regularly. And so we do. Also, I think, without getting into politics, we have any number of people who are supposed to know better, who say, well, it won't happen again. And, and so we don't have to worry about that kind of thing. Or they go overboard the other way, of course, it'll happen again. And we completely have to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, otherwise, we're going to be victims again. And in all of those cases, what it seems to me is that in reality, September 11, occurred, there are probably a lot of good reasons. Well, a lot of reasons why it occurred. We as a society didn't choose to understand some people, as well as perhaps we should have. I'm not convinced having read the September 11 report that with all of the information, we would have been able to predict and stop September 11, from happening, because I just don't think the information was there. That's one thing that the bad guys did very well. And the bad guys aren't a religion. The bad guys are a bunch of thugs who acted in the name of religion. But nevertheless, they they did what they did. And I think that, that what, what we also try to do is to put things out of our minds. I had a customer in New York, around the time of September 11. And we had been talking with them about it was a law firm about purchasing tape backup systems to keep all of their data backed up and stored in they would store it off site, September 11 happened and I happened to call the customer the next week, to see how they were doing. And they were had been town Manhattan, so they weren't directly affected by the World Trade Center. But the person that I had been working with said, Well, my boss said, we're not needing to buy any backup systems now, because September 11 happened, so it'll never happen again. So we don't have to backup their data, which is really crazy on one side, and on the other side, short sighted because you shouldn't do it for the reason of whether or not the World Trade Center happened or didn't happen. You should do it to protect your data.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 24:02 That's myopia. That's also optimism. Optimism is also a cognitive bias. They meant the author's mentioned in the book, The Ostrich Paradox, that we, we want to think we want to hope for the best. So without getting into politics. I think one of the big bias that comes into play is this. Because no one wants another 911 shoots you know, no one wants a COVID prices. No one wants the war in Ukraine, at least normal people, right.   Michael Hingson ** 24:36 People don't there are some there were not normal. No, no, what no one wants   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 24:40 that, you know, 1000s of people dying and things and no one wants, right. So I think I want to I want to hope maybe that's my own optimism bias talking but I want to hope that that's the case for most politics, right. It's they They just have they simply have this optimism bias plus the enormous workload that they have to deal with, right? So you combine everything the cognitive biases plus the workload, and that's a recipe for disaster. I have plenty of examples in France, of disruptive situation that happens with people's lives at stake. And, you know, it's just the workload of intelligence services was so much that every the, the, the intelligence was basically at the bottom of the pile and no one saw it or paid attention to it. It's, it's a lot of things, basically, it's a lot of things.   Michael Hingson ** 25:40 It's interesting, we, over here, have been keeping up to at least to some degree, with the issue in France about raising the retirement age that McCrone wants to do what he wants to raise her from 62 to 64, as I understand it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but over here, the minimum retirement age is 65. And they they've talked about an even social security over here, has changed his rule slightly. But it, it's a little bit difficult to understand the vehemence that people are displaying, raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Over there, and then there must be some solid reasons for it. But nevertheless, that's, I gotta believe, a major crisis that y'all are dealing with over there. It's it's,   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 26:31 you know, it's complicated. And I'm not, it's, the thing is, I'm also a business owner. So retirement is not really a topic in my mind, I   Michael Hingson ** 26:46 understand. Right.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 26:50 And I come from a family, business owners as well. So culturally, I was not really raised in an environment where we would just focus on when we're going to stop working. My dad was a really hard working men. And so I think I am too, I have no plan of work of stopping working, basically, because I love what I'm doing. And I may adjust as I'm growing old, and you know, but as long as I'm healthy, I'm fine. And I'm giving you this response. Because there's a big gap in the French, in French society, between people like myself, I want to say, because I have I want to say, the service job, basically, where I'm only using my brain to do my work, right. I'm not using my body. So my body's not being I want to say worn down over the years. But I think a lot of the complaints are coming from people working for companies and industries, where, you know, they have to actually use their body every day to carry heavy things around to work all night to care for children to care for elderly. And obviously doing this until a certain age is getting more and more difficult, right. So I think that's where the gap come from, in all I knew that's where the gap comes from. In France, it's that this part of the population, and rightfully, I want to say wants to be able to start early enough, when their body is not completely broken. Basically, that's where the if I want to summarize,   Michael Hingson ** 28:39 right, and I figured as much that that would be the reason that most people would would take right or wrong. That's the feeling.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 28:49 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So things have calmed down now. But we have other things we have in France, we have disruptive events on a regular basis. I don't know if you saw what happened this past couple of weeks, with the demonstrations at nine going on not demonstrations, the the How to see with the youth being really, really angry because there was a murder of a young kid. Yes. Yeah. So, riots. So that's the word I wasn't I wasn't looking for sorry. So there we've had very, very violent riots over the past couple of weeks. It's it's complicated, very societal, very complex, societal subjects, very complex subjects.   Michael Hingson ** 29:42 Is that still going on?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 29:44 I don't know how it's come down. It's gone down. Yeah. Yeah. You   Michael Hingson ** 29:49 know, if I can just go to an off the wall kind of thing. We've had our share over here of riots for one reason or another and And we've had our share of, of that kind of crisis. And so one thing I have never understood personally, and it's just me, I think, or at least I'm going to say it's, it's my mind anyway, is I understand why people may be very upset and why they riot. Why do they go around looting and breaking into stores and offices and other things and stealing things and damaging things that oftentimes don't even have anything to do with the subject of what they're writing about?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 30:29 Yeah, I I know. I know. And yeah, I I disagree. I wholeheartedly disagree with that way of demonstrating basically, all heartedly just disagree with that. I mean, we can't we can't be angry, like you said, and they had every I mean, people had every right to be angry with the situation, but as far as the damaging people's goods and and life projects and and life savings for many, many of them. I yeah, I that makes me angry.   Michael Hingson ** 31:12 Does anyone have an explanation for why that kind of behavior takes place?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 31:18 I guess they will have to put it on someone. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 I guess so. Yeah. Yeah,   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 31:24 I get they have to, you know, when we're, when we're really No, when I'm really angry, which is, which doesn't happen every day, obviously. Unfortunately. Yes. If I'm not conscious of what's going on, I can have a tendency of, you know, looking for someone who's responsible, but me, right. But   Michael Hingson ** 31:42 me is exactly right. You know, we never look at what could we do? Or what could we have done? Yeah. And there's not always a good answer that says that there's a lot we could have done. Take over here. The thing that we saw a few years ago, the George Floyd murders, the George Floyd murder, you know, most of us were not in a position to do anything about that. I suppose some people could have attacked or forced that officer to leave George Floyd alone and not kneel on his throat for nine minutes. And some of the officers should have done that. I don't know whether they have any guilt for not doing that. But still, there was so much that happened after that, that really ended up being not related directly to it, like damage and looting and all that. That is so frustrating. And it seems to happen all the time. And I've never understood that kind of behavior. And I could be angry and frustrated. But still, it's it's strange that that kind of thing goes on and makes the crisis worse. Yeah.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 32:48 And I think it's, I mean, whether it's for the George Floyd crisis, or what happened in France couple of weeks ago, I think it's just communities being really tired of that level of, you know, if you really high level of frustration that's been going on for years and years and years, for many reasons, justified or not justified, right. But I know that in France, we have a community of people who is who are actually is really frustrated about what's going on, you know, built this gap building and building and building day after day, between the rich and the poor, between who can have access to everything and who can not have access to everything. Yes, we have a free health system in France. But and free school, and you know, if I summarize, it's never completely 100% free, but it's, you know, it's nothing compared to what you guys have in the US. Okay, just put some perspective here. But at the same time, yeah, there's still so many things which are not fair in the system itself. There's still a huge lack of diversity in the way we approach a lot of topics. And yeah, it's, it's like, like I said, it's, these are really complex matters. That's why it's hard to pull to just pose a judgement on everything, right? It's really easy when we, when we see things like this to watch the news and say, Oh, my God, he's wrong or she's wrong or whatever. Well, I agree. It's, yeah, it's I think it leaves a lot of football thoughts and when I bring it back to myself, right, to say, okay, what can I do? The one thing I tell myself is okay, what can I do to raise my kids properly? And what can I do to serve? You know, my, my fellow human beings and my my friends and my clients, and the best way I can to promote a different energy really So that's really what I tried to do. That's really what I tried to do. Because of course, like you said, most of us cannot have much impact on such events, right. But I really think that if a lot of us put a lot of positive and a different energy out there, we'll see different things happening as well.   Michael Hingson ** 35:24 You talk a lot about diversity. So I gather that you and and from your own experiences, you talk about it, I gather that you believe that diversity and experiencing diversity is an extremely valuable thing to do. And it leads to, hopefully, better grounding people and making them more resilient. Is that does that kind of sum it up?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 35:49 Yeah, but also more resilient. But more than that, much more open minded, much more open minded, because I think a lot of the frustration that may come from anyone you know, is about neglect. The fact that we don't know when we don't know when we don't understand something. So when we don't understand something, we're scared of it right, we can get scared of it really easily.   36:13 We're whereas Yeah, go ahead.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 36:15 Whereas when we try to face diversity, embrace diversity, and learn about diversity, asking questions and trying to understand others perspectives and points of view and ways of thinking, the opens up completely new worlds.   Michael Hingson ** 36:35 And that's why. And that's why I said what I did earlier about September 11, and are not understanding people. We could go back and look at history and the way we dealt with Iran. Many years before September 11, and before even the revolution, and so on. And we as I think over here, a people viewed it as being so far out of our sphere of knowledge and somewhat influenced that it was really irrelevant. And that's the problem that we don't tend to learn. And I think that goes back to something you said that a lot of people don't learn to necessarily take a wider view of, of things.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 37:22 And that's why that's why diversity is such a big topic and what I want in my life, basically right, and especially since though, since I've become the business owner, because I need to be challenged constantly to make sure that when I'm thinking, you know, being a business owner is very lonely, right? So, because you have no one I mean, I have a team, but they're not here to tell me what to do. Right? I'm supposed to lead, right? And so I'm actually looking for teams, where who can actually challenge what I'm thinking, what I'm asking what I'm saying what I'm doing, not constantly, but on a regular basis. Right. And also, with my close family, I'm actually being asked them, I'm actually asking them to challenge me on a regular basis to regarding my decisions. And all of this because we are blind, right? It's super easy to have blind spots all the time because of those cognitive biases because of our own fears, because of many, many, many psychological things that go on in our brain. So that's why I'm a huge, huge advocate of diversity.   Michael Hingson ** 38:33 What do you think makes a good leader, whether it's crisis or whatever? You've talked about leadership a lot? What what do you think are the qualities or traits for a good leader?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 38:45 There are, there are many that I could start listing. But if I had one, if I had to pick one category, that would be, as we say, in French, and several heads, which is being right is to know how to be knowing what to do is, is the easy part, I want to say especially as we build on experience, and as we grow older, and so on and so forth. I'm not saying that those decisions are always easy. But, you know, as far as being it's much more complex. And I think that's the most fascinating piece of leadership. Because it's about us, it's about us interacting with others. It's much more complex, because every single human being is unique. So even if we have an experience with certain kinds of people, it's going to be always going to be different with other other other people we encounter. Right? So focusing on being on top of doing is I think one of the biggest skills and responsibility a leader has   Michael Hingson ** 39:59 Yeah, I, I hear what you're saying. I also think that knowing what to do is a very difficult thing. And I think one of the good skills that any good leader has, is going back to what you said, also allowing people to whether you want to use the word challenge or state their own opinions, because they may know something about what to do in a particular situation that is even better than what you know. And a good leader has to be able to recognize that and look at all aspects. And I know when I was leading sales forces, one of the things that I told every salesperson I ever hired was, I'm your boss, but I'm not here to boss you around. I'm here to add value to what you do to help you be more successful. So we need to learn to work together. And I think that is such an important thing that many people who are in positions of authority never really understand.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 41:07 I completely agree with you, Michael. And I want to add to what I said before what you just said that when I talked about being it's being humble, among other things, being humble, but I didn't want to summarize leadership to humility, right? So it's being humble, it's being a good communicator, it's being able to interact with different cultures with different ways of thinking with it's also being able to admit, responsibility to admit mistakes to to celebrate, right. So it's all of this together. So that when decisions need to be made, it becomes easier and smoother. It's not going to be perfect. Okay, yeah, I always say that is there is no such thing as perfect, even especially in when we talk about dealing with crisis. Because that's also I think one of the biggest caveats of a lot of reading materials I see is that we think it's, it's, there's an end, there's an end to to it, right? And I think it's there is no such thing, it's always a journey. It's always a learning journey for every leader have read about or discussed with or met in person, no matter, right? It's always a learning curve. Sometimes we have up sometimes we have downs. And sometimes we succeed, sometimes we mess up. So that's why and what so that's why one of the things I really put forth is the fact that it's a journey. It's it's not a it's not the end. And   Michael Hingson ** 42:45 I think the times when perhaps someone messes up are the best times because those are the times that drive home the point something to learn here, even though there's something to learn, even when you're extremely successful, how can you maybe do it better, but we tend to focus on the mess up times more. And that's, that's fine. But still, it's not that we're a failure, it's that we need to learn and grow from it. And I suppose that get back to picking on politicians, I'm not sure they, they do a great job of that. But nevertheless, it's what any good leader should really do. And I think that it's a crucial thing. As you said, it's a journey, which is, which is really important. When did you form crisis ally.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 43:33 So I formed it at the end of 2018. At first, it was Alexandra Hoffman consulting, and it became crisis ally in 2020, during COVID, because when COVID Had I changed everything, the strategy, the business model, everything. And I also changed the the identity and I really didn't want the company to be about me. I want it to be about what we do and how we can serve our clients basically.   44:05 Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 44:08 You know, in the pandemic, the difference between the pandemic and the World Trade Center is that the pandemic, whether a lot of us necessarily recognized as much as we could have or should have, is it more directly affected everyone than the World Trade Center? Yes, the world shut down for a few days after September 11, especially the financial markets and so on. And yes, it was something that was an issue for most all of us. And I think it's true to say that the world stopped, but then it started again. And with the pandemic, we went through a different kind of situation that affected so many people. And I think a lot of us maybe didn't think it through as well as we could have. And I hope it doesn't happen again. But I'm not sure that that's the case. I know that in this country. We have an I've been reading over the last couple of days that deaths associated with the pandemic have brought the whole picture back down to, we're experiencing the amount of deaths we normally do. Even pre pandemic. So for the world, perhaps the pandemic is over. Maybe, or at least this one is over, but I guess we'll see.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 45:26 But, yeah, like it's, it's, it's hard to predict such things. I'm actually more concerned about natural disasters, if you want to, if you want my, my take on this one, much more concerned, because that's also easy. It's a confirmation bias, now that we see 911. Now, now that we've seen the pandemic, now, everyone is focused on this same with cyber attacks, basically, right. Everyone is focused on those because we've experienced them. I think we ought to be extremely cautious with natural disasters and what nature has in store for us because yeah, between the heat waves, and we had some major wildfires just a year ago, we're where I live. I know you've had your share as well. Canada has had its share recently as well, it's it's so professionally speaking from a risk perspective, natural disasters, I think are high on my list. And   Michael Hingson ** 46:28 of course, the the and I, I agree with you the course of the question is, what can we do about it? And, again, I think, for me, I think it starts with getting back to dealing with some of the cognitive biases, and to recognize we have to deal a little bit with what if we may not be able to predict a particular national natural disaster, but we certainly can be more aware and make some preparations and be   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 47:01 less surprised? Absolutely. Because Surprise, surprise, is what takes a toll on everyone. You know, surprise what, especially bad surprises, right like that. So being more aware of these, and like you said, like, like you said, and, and being less surprised by those events, it's much less traumatizing, much less traumatizing. It's much easier to cope right away, and to make decisions instantly, rather than just, you know, freezing. Here   Michael Hingson ** 47:32 in the United States. And I'm sure elsewhere, we hear a lot about earthquakes. And Dr. Lucy Jones, here in Southern California, and others talk about predicting earthquakes or seeing earthquakes before they reach us. And now they're talking about maybe 10 to 62nd warning, which people will tell that's not very much. But that's incredible compared to the way it used to be. And if we continue to encourage the science, we'll probably find other things that will help give us more warnings. I know in Iceland, they're actually learning how to do a better job of predicting volcanic eruptions. And they're doing a really an incredible job. And like with anything, it's very expensive. Right now, the technology is a little bit challenging. But if we encourage the science, it will improve.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 48:33 That's interesting, because that's one of the takeaways from the Ostrich Paradox book that's mentioned about Fukushima, one of the experts scientists had said, If we invest in this technology, we'll have what we need to be prepared for such an event, because it was very expensive at the time, they said no to it. Yeah. And then Fukushima happens.   Michael Hingson ** 48:53 And then Fukushima happened and Fukushima wasn't good.   48:57 They couldn't perceive the the tidal wave.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 49:03 Now, that's not what I want to say they couldn't perceive the risk as being high enough. The the measure the impact has been big, but the probability was so low for them was like, Okay, we're not going to invest millions or whatever, right, for something that has a super low probability from happening.   Michael Hingson ** 49:23 And then it didn't. Yeah. Which is, of course, the issue. I was at Fukushima, oh, no more than a year after it happened. And, but I hear exactly what you're saying. And we need to recognize that things do occur and that we have to learn to address them. And again, it gets back to this whole idea of what if and the reality is, I think, there there are people who have a gift of learning to deal with what if, and we ought to honor and recognize that more than we do. core, some of them are not really dealing with what if, what if they're making things up? But there are people who do what if and who do it very well. And a lot of the scientists are specifically trying to address that kind of issue. Well, what if this happens? And what's the theory behind this? And? And how can it change? And we just don't address science nearly as much as it should.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 50:24 And I want to add, from where I am, I have been working with the corporate sector 22 years now. I've never, I've never met a scientist to talk about risks like this. So this is also something to understand. There's so many silos that we ought to break, eventually, when we talk about, you know, managing responding to disruptive events, yeah. Because communities don't need in some communities would need to meet to increase the level of awareness on so many things. Like we're talking about risk science and scientific studies and knowledge. Right? Right. Of course, I'm curious enough. So I go on google now or any other platform to learn as much as I can. But when you sit, you know, put yourself in chief security officers choose or chief risk officer shoes. Yeah, has no time to do such thing. Right. And the thing is, because we're used to think in a silo, I've never attended any team meeting, where we've invited over a scientist to talk about, I don't know, the risk of AI, the risk of natural disasters, the risk of cyber the risk of anything. Never. Why is that? I don't know. Because it's, it's a, I think it's just we don't think about it. And by just discussing it with you, I realize that's a huge gap. I've actually started bridging that, you know, with my putting my small stone to this, to this siloed world, I've actually started seeing this acknowledging this between universities and the corporate world. So I started teaching to universities, at universities, sorry, okay, too, because I realized that there were so many things I wasn't taught back at university, and I wished I had known before earlier in my career. So things could have been, I would want to say, easier, right? For myself or my teams. So I'm like, Okay, let's go to university and teach students what I've learned along the way to bridge that gap. But that's not that's not so common. That's not quite so common. And by just discussing with you, I realized that we, we don't talk to the scientific community   Michael Hingson ** 52:51 in area and work on an   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 52:53 area to work on unless you know, people I know people who have PhDs and degrees like this. And of course, they they are part of the scientific community. But that I mean, having a PhD is not being a scientist right to so. So yeah, you get my point. Because I don't want to hurt anyone's, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.   Michael Hingson ** 53:14 I do know, I hear what you're saying. What's an example of where Crisis Ally has really made a difference in what a company does?   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 53:24 So I think what we try to do, each time we serve a client is really to make at least the teams who are supposed to work in this on the on these topics on these critical topics more resilient, more agile, and more adaptable to more sustainable, I want to say, right? ie we don't want people to crash. We want to be able we want people to be able to sustain protracted emergencies, protracted situation, right. So that's how we, we want to make a difference with the client we serve. And it's really about aligning the people behind one vision and one mission. So that's what we do when we serve clients. I have one specific example in mind, where there was a we were working with a team and there were there were a lot of misalignment around the mission, the vision around security, crisis management, business continuity, all those resilience related topics, right risk management as well. And we helped we helped the team align on these topics basically. So which I think will have some positive impact on the company as a whole.   Michael Hingson ** 54:52 So for you looking ahead, what do you think is the most exciting thing about the future for crisis ally and what you're doing and where you're headed.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 55:03 The most exciting things that we're growing, I mean, revenue is growing. So that's really, really exciting. And it's growing really, really a lot. So it's, you know, I'm trying to plan for that, and foresee well how to handle what's coming, basically. And so I'm trying to envision new new partnerships, I want to say and also maybe hiring people for the for the company. So that's, that's something I'm thinking about for 2020 2420 25, you know, because it's really, it's really growing now.   Michael Hingson ** 55:46 And that's exciting. And there's gonna be room for what you do for a long time. Have you written any books or any other online kinds of things? Not yet, have it done? With the Astrid.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 56:01 I've written articles, but I mean, really writing a book, I, you know, it takes time. And I haven't decided I haven't decided have decided not to put my energy on this. At this point in my life. That's fair.   Michael Hingson ** 56:16 So you have two children to worry about. And then their crisis right now is that they didn't need to come in the room. So you know, is that leadership probably? Well, I want to figure out a way in the future to continue this, this is fun. And I would love to chat with you more. We've been doing this for a while now. And I don't want people to get too tired of us. But I think that's a fun discussion and one that we ought to continue in the future. Whenever you're, you're willing to do it. But if people want to reach out to you and learn about Crisis Ally and so on. So the best   56:51 way for people to reach me is on LinkedIn. Michael, like you found me on that we found each other on LinkedIn. I'm all the time I'm on LinkedIn all the time. It's, I also have my website, my company's website, which is www dot crisisally.com. But what's your   Michael Hingson ** 57:08 LinkedIn name? That people can Alexandra Hoffmann.com H O F F M A N N? Yeah,   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 57:13 I have to bring it to carry my daughter right now. You don't see her Michael, but she's asking for my arms. But   Michael Hingson ** 57:22 nothing wrong with having a daughter around. I close my door, so my cat wouldn't come in and yell at me. Well, I want to thank you very much for being here. This has absolutely been delightful. And I do want to do it again. And I hope all of you found this interesting. What's your daughter's name? Amber, Emeril, Amber, and Amber. Yes, sir. Hello. Yeah.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 57:46 She got here with the headphones. So that's true. Well tell her how she left. She got bored. She got bored. Looking at the screen.   Michael Hingson ** 57:52 She's done now. Yeah. Well, thank you for being here. And I hope all of you enjoyed this, please. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love your thoughts. Please reach out to me and give me your your opinions and your views on all of this. And anything else that you'd like to say, You can reach me at Michaelhi M i c h a e l h i at accessibe  A c c e s s i b e.com. Or go to Michael Hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com/podcast. I hope wherever you're listening that you will at least please give us a five star rating and write a good review. We really appreciate your your positive and all of your comments. And and I hope that you'll do that. So that we can we can hear from you and Alexandra, if you or any of you listening out there might know of someone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please let us know we want to hear from you. We would love your suggestions and your recommendations. We value them and we will talk with anyone who wants to come on. So once more. Alexandra, thank you very much for being here. I've really enjoyed it. I hope all of our listeners have. And I want to just express my appreciation to you for being here.   Alexandra Hoffmann ** 59:05 Thank you very, very much Michael for the discussion. It was very interesting. And I must say you caught me off guard of guard with a couple of questions. But that was also a very interesting just for that. And thank you very much for for having me on today and for listening.   Michael Hingson ** 59:25 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

So, what did we learn on this week's show? 1) Cooking is about gathering. 2) Wine tastes the same at 9am as it does at 9pm. 3) Do NOT call John Anglo-Saxon. Thus endeth the lesson.

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein.我语言的局限意味着我的世界的局限。Phil：Thank you very much everyone for listening to this podcast and to my sweet voice. All the questions I've been answering on this one are questions that you actually could answer to yourself and share with friends. They're all about personal development, and I think everyone deserves to talk about this together. I mean, it helps you grow as a person as well. 非常感谢大家收听这个播客和我甜美的声音。我一直在回答的所有问题都是你实际上可以自己回答并与朋友分享的问题。它们都是关于个人发展的，我认为每个人都应该一起讨论这个问题。我的意思是，这个方式可以帮助你成长为一个人。The language right now being in a Latin American country, of course the main language is Spanish. I learned Spanish a few years ago, actually, it was in 2020. I've been privileged because I'm French, it's easier for me. So I learned it in three months and a half, then practised a lot with friends, girlfriend and whatever. 我们现在在拉丁美洲国家，当然主要语言是西班牙语。我几年前学了西班牙语，实际上是在 2020 年。我很幸运，因为我说法语，这对我来说更容易。所以我在三个月半的时间里学会了它，然后和朋友、女朋友和一起练习了很多。So to me, learning a new language when you travel, learning the local language is extremely important because it helps you to connect on a deeper level with the people that are in the place. This will lead you to get adventure that you wouldn't have lived otherwise. It'll help you to communicate better with the people, and as I said, just to connect in a deeper level and to have a better understanding of who they are and how they live.所以对我来说，旅行是学习一门新语言，学习当地语言非常重要，因为它可以帮助你与当地人进行更深层次的联系。这将带你去冒险，否则你 将无法生活。它会帮助你更好地与人们沟通，正如我所说，只是为了更深层次的联系，并更好地了解他们是谁，他们的生活方式。So now you heard a couple of lines of my personal story. Of course, if some of you wanted to get in touch with me, it's more than possible. So as a Western person, I have Instagram. So my Instagram is Phil Marshall, so P H I L, double underscore. Marshall, so m a r s h a l;. And if you do not have Instagram that's completely fine, and I will give you my email address. Are you ready? Because it's gonna be tough. p h i l dot m a r s h dot 97 at gmail.com. I created this email address about 10 years ago, thinking that it would be a trash email address and not on purpose. It became my primary email address. So I was like, oops. So now I have to spell it every time like this. I'm sorry for the pain, but that's my email address. If you go on to get in touch with me, I'm more than happy to speak with you. Thank you for listening to me, and I hope you have a good day, life, night, whatever. Wish you all the best. Thank you. 所以现在你听到了几行我的个人故事。当然，如果你们中的一些人想与我取得联系，那是也是可能的。所以作为一个西方人，我有 Instagram。所以我的 Instagram 是 Phil Marshall，所以 P H I L，两个下划线 Marshall，so m-a-r-s-h-a-l-l。如果你没有 Instagram 也没关系，我会给你我的电子邮件地址。你准备好了吗？因为它有点难喔， phil.marsh.97@gmail.com。我在大约 10 年前创建了这个电子邮件地址，认为它是一个垃圾电子邮件地址，而不是故意的。它成为我的主要电子邮件地址。所以我当时想，哎呀！现在我每次都得这样拼。我很抱歉造成麻烦。那是我的电子邮件地址。如果你继续与我联系，我非常乐意与您交谈。谢谢你听我说，我希望你有一个美好的一天，生活，或夜晚，无论如何。祝你一切顺利。谢谢。Phil 的IG是https://www.instagram.com/phil_msh/他的Email是 phil.marsh.97@gmail.com

01 La Vie En Rose (Original Extended Mix) Grace Jones 02 L'Anamour (VAYS Rework) Serge Gainsbourg 03 Voilà l'été (V4YS Rework) Les Négresses Vertes 04 Close De La (The Cure vs Mc Solaar) Bogoss Bootlegs 05 Les Princes Des Villes (V4YS Bizarre Rework) (Mstr) Michel Berger 06 La Bohème (Achraf Kallel Remix) Atthida 07 Like A Rolling Stone (V4YS Aint It Hard Remix) Bob Dylan 08 Sensualité (Antis Rework) Axelle Red 09 Stars (FunkShop VS MOTO ReGroove) Simply Red 10 Nue Au Soleil (Pamplemousse Rose Remix) Brigitte Bardot 11 Fio Maravilla (Delect X Le Goût du Son Remix) Nicoletta 12 Parce Que Tu Crois (remixed by DJ Nilsson) Charles Aznavour 13 Je Sais (Original Edit) Tim Serra VS Jean Gabin 14 La Bicyclette (Fat Phaze edit) Yves Montand 15 Nefertiti (Sam Karlson & Yann K Rework) France Gall 16 Moi... Lolita (Delect Remix for Le Goût Du Son) Alizée 17 La Madrague (Antix Remix) Brigitte Bardot 18 Le Coeur Grenadine (Extended Remix Yann Muller) Laurent Voulzy 19 Ne Me Quitte Pas (Original Mix) Rebeat ft. Jacques Brel 20 Vertige de l'amour (Discodena Redrums Mix) Alain Baschung 21 69 Année Erotique (Stef Konstan Deluxe Edit) Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsgourg 22 Résiste (Delect Remix for Le Goût du Son) France Gall 23 Douce France (Aarno remix) Charles Trenet 24 Les nuits sans Kim Wilde (Endrik Schroeder Edit) Laurent Voulzy 25 Manureva (RM New Decade Mix) Alain Chamfort 26 Je dois m'en aller (Le Gout Du Son Edit) Niagara 27 Ive Seen That Face Before (Libertango) (Jay-Ks Extended Rework) Grace Jones 28 Le Mambo du Décalco (Absolut Bibiche ReWork) Richard Gotainer

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is Lean Manufacturing. Our guest is Michel Baudin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelbaudin/), author, and owner of Takt Times Group. In this conversation, we talk about how industrial engineering equals the engineering of human work and why manufacturing and industrial engineering education needs to change because it has drifted away from industrial work and a future where manufacturing is not going away. If you like this show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/). If you like this episode, you might also like Episode 84 on The Evolution of Lean with Professor Torbjørn Netland from ETH Zürich (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/84). Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (https://trondundheim.com/) and presented by Tulip (https://tulip.co/). Follow the podcast on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/75424477/). Trond's Takeaway: Lean manufacturing might mean many things, but industrial work has largely been a consistent practice over several hundred years, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Having said that, if we want to go about improving it, we might want to stay pretty close to the workforce and not sit in statistics labs far removed from it. Efficiency is tied to work practices, and they cannot be optimized beyond what the workforce can handle or want to deal with. As we attempt to be lean, whatever we mean by that, we need to remember that work is a thoroughly human endeavor. Transcript TROND: Welcome to another episode of the Augmented Podcast. Augmented brings industrial conversations that matter, serving up the most relevant conversations on industrial tech. Our vision is a world where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is Lean Manufacturing. Our guest is Michel Baudin, author, and owner of Takt Times Group. In this conversation, we talk about how industrial engineering equals the engineering of human work and why manufacturing and industrial engineering education needs to change because it has drifted away from industrial work and a future where manufacturing is not going away. Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip. Michel, welcome. How are you? MICHEL: Fine, thank you. How about yourself? TROND: Things are good. Things are looking up. I'm excited to talk about lean manufacturing with you, having had such a rich, professional background. Michel, you're French. You originally, I think, were thinking of becoming a probability researcher, or you were actually, and then you went to Japan and studied Toyota. You have had this career in English, German, Japanese sort of consulting all the way back from 1987 onwards on exciting topics, lean manufacturing, and especially implementing it, right? The real deal. You've authored at least four technical books that I know about. And I think you listed probably a while back, having written 900 blog posts. You've been very busy. You are the owner of the Takt Times Group, which is a consulting firm on lean manufacturing. And you love math, but you have this very interesting attitude, which we'll talk about, which is math is great, but it's not always the best communication tool. Tell me a little about that to start off. You're a probability researcher that doesn't use math; I think that's fascinating. MICHEL: I use it, but I don't brag about it with people that it turns off. So I have to be in the closet for this because people who work in manufacturing usually focus on concrete things, things that they can see and touch, and abstraction is not something that they respond well to. So whenever you explain a principle, my approach is to state this principle and then dig into some very specific examples right away; otherwise, I'm losing the people I'm talking to. But anyway, that's what I've had to do. TROND: So, did I capture your background okay? I mean, you've had a very international life so far. I hope it's been enjoyable and not just professional because you've spent your time in Germany, and Japan, and in the U.S., So you're really enjoying the different kinds of manufacturing environments. Or is it that you just want to be close to where it's all happening? MICHEL: I've enjoyed living in many different countries. And so you mentioned I'm French. I was born and raised in France, but I'm an American citizen, and I spent most of my life in the U.S. I think of myself as being part French, part American, part German, part Japanese. Because when I'm in a country, I tend to immerse myself in the culture; I don't stay aloof from it. TROND: Well, I'm curious about that because in the abstract... so if we are in the world of math, then you could maybe say that efficiency techniques are global; that was the idea. Some people have that idea, let's say, that efficiency is a global thing, and there's one thing called efficiency, and everybody should just learn it because then it's all better. It seems to me that because you spent a lot of time in three different places, it shows up differently. MICHEL: I don't use the word efficiency so much because it's limited. There are techniques to improve manufacturing performance in every aspect of it, efficiency only being one of them, and these techniques are pretty universal. Now, when you're trying to help people in different countries, it's a postulate. You have to postulate what works in one place will work in another. So far, I haven't found any reason to believe otherwise. I have encountered many people who are saying things like, "This is country X, and these techniques don't work because our people are from country X." It's one of the most common techniques to refuse to implement anything new. The fact is the Toyota Production System wasn't supposed to be applicable to American workers until Toyota applied it with American workers in its joint venture with GM in the early 1980s at NUMMI specifically. It became a showcase. Later, Toyota opened its own factory in the U.S. in Georgetown, Kentucky, and applied the system there. And then, a few years later, it opened its own factory in France, and it worked with French workers. So it's really the idea that this only works in certain cultures or this only works in Japan. It's just the reality is different. It works pretty much everywhere. TROND: Well, that's fascinating, though, because, like you said, you have immersed yourself in these different factory and industrial cultures, if you may, and you are implementing lean in all of them or advising on lean methods. Why don't we start with that, then, perhaps? Tell me a little bit, what is lean to you? MICHEL: Lean to me...and I use the term less and less because I think over the past 30 years, it's lost a lot of its meaning. When it first came out, it was the latest in a number of labels that have been applied to the same thing. In the early 1980s, you talked about just-in-time then there was world-class manufacturing. A number of different terms were used and never really caught on. This one caught on. And the way I took it, I took it to mean generic versions of the Toyota Production System. There are very good reasons why you can't call what you're proposing to a company that makes frozen foods a Toyota Production System. There are also very strong reasons why you can't even go to a car company and do this. It's very awkward for a car company to openly admit to be using a competitor's system. So you have to have a label that refers to the content but doesn't refer to where it's coming from. TROND: So for you, at the basic level, if you strip away everything, it still is essentially the Toyota Production System, and lean is just to you, I'm just paraphrasing, it's a convenient wrapping for a way to explain it in a way that's non-threatening. But it is essentially the lessons from the Toyota Production System from a while back. MICHEL: That's the way I took it. That's why I adopted this label in the early 1990s, but a lot of time has elapsed since then. Because it became popular, very many people started using that label. And the content they were putting under it was pretty much...they were attaching this label to whatever they were doing. It has lost a great deal of its meaning which is why at this point, I rarely refer to it. TROND: So you're saying a lot of people are attaching lean to whatever they're doing, I mean, understandably so, Michel, right? Because it's become a very successful term. It sells books. It sells consulting. It does refer back to something that you think is real. So can you understand why people would do this if you are in consulting, or even in teaching, or you work in an industry, and you're managing something, why people would resort to this label? MICHEL: First of all, consultants have to have a brand name for what they're selling. It was useful. As a brand name, you have to call what you're offering by a given name, and clients look for this. It's a keyword they look for, and that's how they find you. So it's really necessary. I'm not criticizing consultants for using that. TROND: No, no, I understand it. And, I mean, you're also a little bit in a glass box in the sense that you are within the general tent of lean yourself. So I understand that. I fully understand it. MICHEL: What happens when it's successful is that more and more people jump on this bandwagon and say, okay, I'm going to offer a lean. When you look at what they're saying, it does not reflect the original content. By about 2000s, it had evolved into...what most consultants were offering was drawing value stream maps and organizing Kaizen events. Those two keywords are absent from the Toyota Production System. TROND: Can you explain...so this is interesting. Because I was going to ask you exactly this, what are the types of elements that you react to the most that you feel is really...because one thing is to say it diverged from the original content, but if it is kind of a valuable extension of something...but you're saying value streams and the Kaizens, the Kaizen practices they have very little to do with the Toyota Production System in your reading. MICHEL: That's right. The value stream mapping is a new name for a technique that they call; I mean the translation of the original name is, Materials and Information Flow Analysis (MIFA), Mono to Joho no Nagare in Japanese, flow of materials and information. So that's one idea. And there is a particular graphic convention that has actually evolved from Toyota that became the value stream mapping graphic convention, but it never was in the Toyota context. Mike Rother's own admission (He wrote Learning to See, which promoted this technique.) said it was not an important topic at Toyota. It has some uses, but if you go on factory tours in Japan, you don't see a lot of value stream maps. And so it's been taken...it was a specific tool for a specific purpose like figuring out how to work with a particular supplier. And then it was made into this supposedly all-powerful analytical tool that is the first thing that you have to do when you go into a factory is map its value streams, so that's taking a very small part of what Toyota does and make it into this big thing. As for Kaizen Events, it's actually an American invention. It's something that came out of...in the early 1990s; there were a number of executives who were frustrated with the slow pace of lean implementation with other methods. So they came up with this format they called the Kaizen Blitz, that became the Kaizen events. It's also traced back to some Japanese consulting firms, which found this particular format as a convenient way to make good use of a trip from Japan to the U.S. They would organize one-week events at their clients because it was a good way to justify essentially the cost and the trouble of flying over. TROND: I'm going to go with your story here. So let's say these two are kind of examples for you of things diverting from the original content. Why don't we speak about what the original content then is for a minute? What is the core of the Toyota production method or of lean in its original form for you? MICHEL: Well, the Toyota Production System is something I'm very interested in and still studying. And it's not a static thing. It's something that, for example, the first publication about it was from the early 1970s, an internal document from Toyota with its suppliers. And then there have been many, many other publications about it through the decades. And it's changed in nature, and the concepts of manufacturing have evolved. By definition, the Toyota Production System is what Toyota does. They're very good at making cars. And so it's always important to try to keep up with what it is they're doing, knowing that there is a 5 to 10-year gap between the time they come up with new concepts and the time that the rest of the world gets to know about them. And so, in the early 1990s, there were essentially concepts of how to organize production lines, how to lay out production lines, how to design operator workstations. And there were concepts on how to regulate and manage the flow of materials and the flow of information between stations and lines and between suppliers and customers. And there was also an approach to the management of people and the whole human resource management aspect of hiring people for careers, having career plans for everybody, including shop floor operators, managing to improve the operations based on this infrastructure. So it's a very rich concept, and it encompasses every aspect of manufacturing, logistics, and production control, all the way to accountability. So it's compared with other things like the Theory of Constraints or TPM that are much more limited in scope. There is an approach to quality that Toyota has. The quality improvement is not all of the Toyota Production System. It's a complete system for making a product covering all the bases. TROND: Let me just pick up on one thing, so you're saying it's a complete system. So one thing you pointed out was the HR aspect, and hiring people for careers is one thing, but you also said the career plans for shop floor operators. So I took two things from that, and I was going to ask about this because this has been used as one example of why you cannot implement the Toyota Production System in the same way in different countries, namely because that is one aspect of society that a company doesn't fully control because it is regulated. So, for example, in Europe and in France, which you know, really well, and Germany, you know, employment is regulated in a different way. If a company was going to have the same HR policy in three different factories in three different countries, they would have to have, first of all, obviously, follow the national regulation. But then they would have to add things on top of that that would, you know, specific employee protections that are perhaps not part, for example, of U.S. work culture. So that's one thing I wanted to kind of point to. But the other thing is interesting. So you said career plans for shop floor operators meaning Toyota has a plan for even the basic level worker meaning the operators, the people who are on the floor. And that seems to me a little bit distinct. Because in the modern workplace, it is at least commonly thought that you spend more time both training and caring about people who are making career progression. And you don't always start at the bottom. You sort of hope that the smart people or whatever, the people who are doing the best job, are starting to advance, and then you invest in those people. But you're saying...is there something here in the Toyota Production System that cares about everybody? MICHEL: Yes. But let me be clear about something. The way Toyota manages HR is not something that there are a lot of publications about. There's probably a good reason for this is because they probably consider it to be their crown jewel, and they're not that keen to everybody knowing about it. A lot of the publications about it are quite old. But there's nothing in the regulations and labor laws of any country that prevent you from doing more for your employees than you're required to. TROND: That's a great point. That's a great point. MICHEL: So there are laws that forbid you from doing less than certain things, but they're not laws that prevent you from doing more. There is no rule that you have to offer career plans for production operators because there's nothing preventing you from doing it. In a completely different situation, a large company making personal products ranging from soap to frozen foods...I won't name what the company is, but they have a policy of not being committed to their workers. Essentially, if business is good, you hire people. If there's a downturn, you lay people off. They wanted to migrate from the situation where you have a lot of low-skilled employees that are essentially temps to a situation where they have higher level of qualification and fewer people. So the question is, how do you manage the transition? The way this company eventually did it in this particular plant was to define a new category of employee like, say, technical operator. And a technical operator will be recruited at higher a level of education than the general population of operators. They will be given more training in both hard skills and soft skills and the specific processes they're going to be running, and some additional training on how to manage the quality of these processes, that sort of thing. But at the level of a production operator, they will be put in charge of these processes. And this small group would be separate job categories than the others. And gradually, this evolves to a situation where you only hire into this group. You don't hire any more of the traditional operators. And then, you provide a transition path for the other operators to become members of that group so that over a period of time, gradually, the general population of less skilled, less stable operator shrinks. And you end up over a number of years with a situation where all of the operators that you have are these highly trained operators who are there for the duration. So that's one kind of pattern on how you can manage this kind of transition. TROND: Super interesting. Can I ask you a basic question? So you've been in this consulting part of this venture, you know, of this world for a long time. Where do you typically start? When do you get called, or when do you sign up to help a company, at what stage? What sort of challenge do they have? Do you visit them and tell them they do have a challenge? What is the typical problem a company might have that you can help with or that you choose to help with? MICHEL: There are a lot of different situations. One particular case was a company in defense electronics in the U.S. had a facility in Indiana, and they were migrating all this work to a new facility in Florida. What they told me...they called me in, and they told me that they wanted to take the opportunity of this move to change the way they were doing production. Generally, my answer to that would be, well, it's really difficult to combine a geographical change of facility with an improvement in the way you do the work. Normally, you improve first where you are. You don't try to combine transformation and migration. TROND: It's a funny thing, I would say. It seems like the opposite of what you should be doing to try to make one change at a time. MICHEL: But there were several circumstances that made it work. You can have general principles, and when you're in a real situation, it doesn't always apply. One is the circumstances under which they were doing this migration was such that the people in the old plant were in an environment where there was a labor shortage, so none of them had any problem finding jobs elsewhere if they didn't want to move to Florida. If they wanted to move to Florida, they could, if they didn't want to move to Florida, they had to leave the company, but there were plenty of other companies hiring around. And so there was not this kind of tension due to people losing their jobs and not having an alternative. And then, the transition was announced way ahead of time, so they had something like a 15-month period to plan for their transfer. And to my great surprise, the operators in the old plan were perfectly...were very helpful in figuring out the design for the new lines and contributed ideas. And there was no resentment of that situation. TROND: In this particular example and in other examples, to what extent is production, you know, process redesign a technology challenge, and to what extent is it a human workforce challenge? Or do you not separate the two? MICHEL: I try not to separate the two because you really have to consider them jointly. A technical solution that nobody wants to apply is not going to be helpful. And something everybody wants to apply but that doesn't work, is not going to be helpful either. So you have to consider both. And in this transition, by the way, between these two plants, most of the labor difficulties were in the new plant, not in the old one, because this plant became a section of the new plant. And none of the other lines in that new plant did anything similar, so it stood out as being very different from what all the other lines did. What all the other lines did is you had a structure that is common in electronics assembly where you have rows of benches at which people sat and did one operation, and then the parts were moved in batches between these rows of benches. And instead of that, we put cells where the parts moved one at a time between different operations. And it was also organized so that it could be expanded from the current volume of work to higher volume of work. And so a lot more went into the design. I was a consultant there, but I don't claim credit for the final design. It was the design of the people from the company. They actually got a prize within the company for having done something that was exceptionally good. And when I spoke with them a few years later, they had gone from having something like 20% of the space used for production in the new facility to having it completely full because they were able to expand this concept. MID-ROLL AD: In the new book from Wiley, Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations, serial startup founder Dr. Natan Linder and futurist podcaster Dr. Trond Arne Undheim deliver an urgent and incisive exploration of when, how, and why to augment your workforce with technology, and how to do it in a way that scales, maintains innovation, and allows the organization to thrive. The key thing is to prioritize humans over machines. Here's what Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, says about the book: "Augmented Lean is an important puzzle piece in the fourth industrial revolution." Find out more on www.augmentedlean.com, and pick up the book in a bookstore near you. TROND: Michel, I know that you have a consulting life and a consulting hat, but you also have a teaching hat and a teaching passion. Why did you write this recent textbook which is coming out on Routledge this fall, I believe, with Torbjø Netland from ETH? It's an Introduction to Manufacturing but with a very specific kind of industrial engineering perspective. You told me when we talked earlier that there's a really specific reason why you wrote this textbook, and you have some very, I guess, strong views or worries about how manufacturing education, but perhaps the way it's taught really needs to change. And you feel like some schools are drifting away from the core. What's happening there? MICHEL: Well, industrial engineering as a discipline is about 100 years old, take or leave a decade or two. It started out as...the way I describe it is the engineering of human work in the manufacturing environment. And it expanded to fields other than manufacturing, even at the time of pioneers like Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. For example, we know the way operating rooms in hospitals work with the surgeon being assisted by nurses who hand all the tools to the surgeon; that particular form of organization is due to Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, industrial engineers who looked at the way operating rooms worked and figured that you really don't want to leave a patient with his belly open on the table while the surgeon goes to fetch the tool. You got to have some people giving the tools to the surgeon so that the surgeon can keep operating on the patient. It sounds obvious now, but it wasn't obvious in 1910. And so they were immediately some applications outside of manufacturing, but the bulk of the work was on manufacturing. And the way it's evolved, especially in the past few decades, is that it's gotten away from that focus on human work. And when you look at the research interests of the academics in this field, you find that it's completely dominated by operations research and math. TROND: So we're back to the math. [chuckles] So I find it fascinating that...well, you obviously have a deep insight into it, so you are sensitized to the challenges of overfocusing on one technical discipline as kind of the mantra and the fodder, I guess, the research data for all kinds of processes. I mean, why is math such a big problem, and what do you mean by human work in industrial manufacturing? Because to many people, the advanced work right now is about digitization, digitalization, and it has to do with machines and computers, and one would assume with big data or at least with data. Are you arguing against that trend? MICHEL: No. I mean, if you ask the question of what is human work? The classical answer that I would give is what happens when the guy picks up the wrench. That's one answer. But what happens when the operator sees an alarm message on the control screen of a machine, that's a different answer, a more modern answer. So you had people with the torque wrench applying the right torque to a bolt manually, and then the torque wrench would tell him when the torque was achieved. That's one form of human work. But monitoring and looking after multiple machines that are connected and have a central control system is also human work. You also have people doing it. And they have to feed these machines. They have to make sure that the machines have the right kinds of tools and dyes available to them. They have to maintain these machines. They have to program these machines, and they have to monitor them during production. And one particular problem with automatic systems is micro stoppages. Are you familiar with that term? TROND: Well, explain it to all of us, micro stoppages. I mean stoppages, obviously, anything that stops the production line, whether it's a minor, major, I mean, that would be what I think you are saying. MICHEL: Well, if it's a big problem, the operator doesn't solve it. The operator calls maintenance, and maintenance sends somebody to solve it. Micro stoppage is a problem that's small enough for the operator to deal with. And so, in daily life or in any office life, one very common micro stoppage problem is the copier, right? You tell the copier to print 20 collated copies of a document, and you walk away expecting to find these 20 copies ready when you come back. It doesn't happen because there are some paper jams and so you have to clear the paper jam and restart. You have a lot of things like that in production where parts jam and shoots and stop coming down in automatic system. You have all sorts of issues like this which cause production lines to stop in a way that the operator can resolve in half a minute or a minute and restart. What these things cause is that you have to have an operator there. And so if you really want to have an automatic system that are fire and forget...when you press a button, you move away to do something else while the machine goes through an automatic cycle. When that automatic cycle is finished, you come back. Micro stoppages prevent you from doing that. And they're very difficult to avoid, but they're a major problem, even today. TROND: Michel, I wanted to keep talking about the educational part. But before that, I just wanted to benefit from your experience here and ask you a much more basic question which is so you're writing this textbook about the future or introducing prospective students to industrial engineering and manufacturing. My question is, historically, factories were a very, very big part of manufacturing. Nowadays, meaning in the last few years after the pandemic and other things, a lot of us start to spend a lot more time on an issue, which I'm assuming you have spent a lifetime working on as well, which is supply chain which goes far beyond the factory because it's not located in any one factory, if anything, it's a system of many factories, and it's obviously the supplies of material flows into the factory. And the reason I'm asking you about this is in thinking about the future, which I'll ask you about in a second, a lot of people are sort of factory of the future, this and that. And there are visions about how this is going to change. But it strikes me that manufacturing is and has always been so much more than the factory. What are the components that you really worry about? So, humans, you worry about humans. And you worry about materials. And then you obviously have to worry about the physical infrastructures that are regulating these things. What else goes into it on the macro level? What is this book about, I guess? MICHEL: We're talking about supply chains as well because, as you mentioned, they're a very important part of manufacturing. And when you design a manufacturing system to make a product, you have to make decisions about your products, about components of your product, and what you make in-house, and what you buy from the outside. And there's a major difference between supply chain issues relating to customers, on one hand, the suppliers on the other. It's not just suppliers; it's both sides, incoming supply chain and the outgoing as well. One major difference with what happens in the factory is that you don't control what other people decide, what other organizations decide. So when you manage a supply chain, you have to manage a network of organizations that are independent businesses. How do you get this network of independent businesses to work with you, to cooperate with you, to make your manufacturing successful? That is a big challenge in supply chain management. Inside a factory, that's an environment you control. It's your organization. What management says is supposed to go; it doesn't always, but it's supposed to go. And you have a lot more control over what happens inside than over what happens in the supply chain. And how much control you have over what happens in the supply chain depends greatly on your size. For example, if you're a small customer of a special kind of alloy that only has one manufacturer in the world, you're a very small customer to a very large manufacturer, a metals company. You're not in a position of strength to get that supplier to work with you. If you're a car company making 10 million cars a year and you're dealing with a company that is making forgings for engine parts, you have a lot of control. You have a lot of influence. You represent a large part of their business. They can't afford to lose you. You can't afford to lose them. You can replace them if they don't perform. They can't afford to lose you. They might go out of business if they did. So it's a very different kind of position to be in. And so when you deal with that sort of thing, you have to think through, what is my position with respect to suppliers and customers? Where is it? Where's the driving influence? And it's not always...power in a supply chain is not always resident with the company that does the final assembly of consumer products. In electronics, for example, semiconductor manufacturers are much more key than people who assemble computers. TROND: I wanted to ask you a little bit about the trends and how these things are evolving in the next decade and beyond that. And one example you gave me earlier when we talked was pilots and jetliners because manufacturing in...well, the aviation industry is an example of an industry that, yes, it has an enormous amount of high tech. It's a very advanced science-based development that has produced air travel. But yet these pilots...and I experienced it this summer, a pilot strike stops everything. So the role of people changes as we move into more advanced manufacturing. But people don't always disappear. What do you see as the biggest challenge of manufacturing and the role of manufacturing in the emerging society? What is going to happen here? MICHEL: What I think is going to happen is that in many countries, the manufacturing sector will remain a large part of the economy, but as economies advance, it will have a shrinking share of the labor market. So it's a distant future, maybe like that of agriculture, where 2% of the population does the work necessary to feed everybody else. And manufacturing is now about 10% of GDP in the U.S., 20% in Germany and Japan, about 10% in England, France, Italy. In China, we don't really know because they don't separate manufacturing from industry. And industry is a broader category that includes mining, and it includes road construction, et cetera. They don't separate out manufacturing, but really, it's a big sector of the economy. And so it can remain a big sector, that's not a problem. But you have to think through a transition where the number of people that you employ doing this kind of work goes down, their level of qualifications go up, and the nature of the work they do evolves towards telling machines what to do and maintaining machines. So telling machines what to do can be programming machines when you develop processes, or it can be scheduling what work the machines do. TROND: Is that incidentally why you have gone into teaching in a kind of an academic setting or at least influencing curriculum in an academic setting so much that you see a role here in the future? Beyond what's happening in factories today, you're quite concerned about what might happen in factories ten years from now, 20 years from now when these students become, I guess, managers, right? Because that's what happens if you get education in management at a good school, reading your hopefully great textbook. It takes a little time because you trickle down and become a manager and a leader in industry. So I guess my question then is, what is it that you want these people to know ten years from now when they become leaders? What sort of manufacturing processes should they foster? It is something where humans still matter for sure, and machines will have a bigger part of it. But there's things we need to do differently, you think? MICHEL: The airline pilot metaphor, you know, you have this $300 million piece of equipment. And how much money you make from operating it depends on these two people who are in the pilot's cabin. You have to pay attention to the work of people. And in most factories, the work of people today is an afterthought. So you put in machines. You put in production lines without thinking how will people get from the entrance of the building to where they actually work? TROND: I was going to say it's a fascinating example you had with the airline industry in the sense that, I mean, honestly, even in the old industrial revolution, these machines were expensive, but I guess even more so. I don't know if you've done any research on this, but the amount of dollars invested per worker presumably has to go up in this future you are talking about here where we're increasingly monitoring machines, even these perhaps in the past viewed as low-skilled jobs or operator jobs. I mean, you are operating, maybe not airplanes, but you're operating industrial 3D printers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars with presuming error rates that could be catastrophic, either for you, for the production line, or for the product you're making. MICHEL: Or photolithography machines that cost millions. TROND: Right. But then that begs the question for me, Michel, how on earth is it possible? If you are right about this that education has been somewhat neglected and skills has been neglected, how's that even explainable? If you are a responsible factory manager or executive of a large manufacturing firm, how could it have gotten...and I'm obviously paraphrasing here. I don't know if you think it's that bad. But how could it get this bad that you actually had to come out and say it's a massive problem? MICHEL: What happens is that you hear a lot about systems thinking, which, to me, it's pretty obvious there's more to a factory or more to a manufacturing system, to supply chain than the collection of its components; it's pretty obvious. And when you change the way a supplier delivers parts, it has an impact over what happens at the assembly workstations where these components are being used, for example. You have to think of the whole as a system. And you have to think about whenever you make any changes to it; you have to think through how these changes affect the whole. What's happening is that there has been a great deal of specialization of skills; I'm not talking about factory workers here. I'm talking about engineers and managers that have been put into silos where they run production control. They become production control manager in the factory. Their next career move is to become production control manager in the factory of a different company. TROND: So here's my open-ended question to you; you're sort of saying that industrial engineering, in one sense, needs to go back to its roots where it was. But the other side of the coin here is you're also talking about a world that's changing drastically. So my question is, the industrial engineer of the future, what kind of a person is this ideally, and what sort of skill sets and what sort of awareness does this person have? MICHEL: The skill sets that this person should have are both technical and managerial. It's management and technology considered together. So they may not be able to write code, or they may not be able to design how to cut a piece of metal, or how to tweak the electrical properties of a circuit, but they know the importance of these things. They've been exposed to them through their education and career. And they have an appreciation for what they are. So, for example, one particular task that has to be done in every manufacturing organization is technical data management. You have to manage the problem definition, the process definitions, which machines you use to do what, down to the process program that these machines run. All of this is data, technical data that has to be managed, put under revision control. And you'd expect someone with training in industrial engineering to understand the importance of revision control on this. If you change something to the cutting program of a milling machine, you may affect what happens elsewhere. You may affect the mechanical properties of the product and make it difficult to do a subsequent operation later. And that's why before you implement this change in production, you have to have a vetting process that results in revision management. So I would expect an industrial engineer to understand that. TROND: Well, you would expect an industrial engineer to understand that, but, I mean, some of the challenges that come from these observations that you're making here they impact all operators, not just engineers. And they certainly impact managers because they are about this whole system that you are explaining. So it sounds to me that you're mounting a pretty significant challenge to the future manufacturers, not just in skills development but in evolving the entire industrial system. Because if we're going to make this wonderful spacecraft, and solve the environmental crisis, and build these new, wonderful machines that everybody expects that are going to come churning out every decade, we certainly need an upskilled workforce, but we need a whole system that works differently, don't we? MICHEL: Yes. Can I give you a couple of examples? TROND: Yeah. MICHEL: One company outsourced the production of a particular component to a supplier then there were technical problems with actually producing this component with the supplier. So the customer company sent a couple of engineers to the supplier, and they found some problems with the drawing that had been provided to the supplier. And they made manual corrections to the drawings, the copies of the drawing in possession of the supplier. And it worked. It solved the immediate problem. But then, at the customer company, they didn't have the exact drawing. The only place with the exact drawings was at the suppliers. And a few years later, they wanted to terminate this supplier. TROND: Aha. MICHEL: You can see the situation. You want people to be able to understand that you just don't do that sort of thing. TROND: Right. So there are so many kinds of multiple dependencies that start to develop in a manufacturing production line, yeah. MICHEL: And then you find a company that's a subcontractor to the aircraft industry. And you find out they route parts through a process that has about 15 different operations. And the way they route these parts is they print a traveler that is 50 pages long, and it's on paper. And the measurements they make on the parts that they're required to make by their customer they actually record by hand on this paper. What's wrong with this picture? TROND: So yeah, multiple challenges here. MICHEL: Yes. TROND: Are you sensing that these things are fixable? Are you optimistic in terms of this awareness of all aspects of the systems changing both among managers and next-generation industrial engineers, and perhaps even among the operators themselves to realize they're getting a more and more central role in the production system? MICHEL: I won't try to prophesy what will happen to industry as a whole but what I'm confident about is that the companies that know how to address these problems will be dominant. Those are the sort of basic mistakes that really hurt you and hurt your competitive position. So there will be a selection over time that will eliminate people who do these kinds of mistakes. TROND: Michel, I don't want to put you on the spot here. And you have spent your career researching and tracking Toyota as an excellent, excellent manufacturer that has graciously taught other manufacturers a lot. And also, people have copied and tried to teach them Toyota methods, even if Toyota wasn't trying to teach everyone. Are there any other either individual companies or things that you would point to for the eager learner who is trying to stay on top of these things? I mean, so lean, obviously, and the Toyota Production System is still a reference point. But are there any other sources that in your career or as you're looking at the future where there is something to learn here? MICHEL: Oh yes. Toyota is a great source of information, but it's by far...it's not the only one. One of the key parts of Toyota's management system is Hoshin Planning. Hoshin Planning didn't come from Toyota; it came from Bridgestone tires. And so that's one case where a different company came up with a particular method. Honda is a remarkable company as well, so there are things to learn from Honda. HP was, under the leadership of its founders, a remarkable company. And they had their own way of doing things which they called The HP Way. Companies have recruited a lot of people...electronic companies have recruited a lot of people out of HP. And you feel when you meet the old timers who have experienced The HP Way, they feel nostalgia for it. And there were a lot of good things in The HP Way. They're worth learning about. So I also believe that it's worth learning about historical examples because history is still with us in a lot of ways. The Ford Model T plant of 100 years ago was a model for a lot of things at the time. It also had some pretty serious flaws, namely, its flexibility. And you still see people putting up the modern-day equivalent of a Model T plant with new products and new technology but without thinking about the need. That particular plant may have to be converted in the not-too-distant future into making a different product. So it's always worth looking at examples from 100 years ago, even today, not for the sake of history but because, in a lot of ways, history is still with us. TROND: Well, on that note, history is still with us; I thank you for this, Michel. And I shall remember to forget the right things, right? So history is still with us, but [laughs] you got to know what to remember and what to forget. Thank you so much. MICHEL: Culture is what remains once you've forgotten everything. TROND: [laughs] On that note, Michel, thank you so much for your time here and for sharing from your remarkable journey. Thank you. MICHEL: You're welcome. TROND: You have just listened to another episode of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Lean Manufacturing. Our guest was Michel Baudin, author, and owner of The Takt Times Group. In this conversation, we talked about how industrial engineering equals the engineering of human work and why manufacturing and industrial engineering education needs to change because it has drifted away from industrial work. And indeed, we are looking at a future where manufacturing is not going away. My takeaway is that lean manufacturing might mean many things, but industrial work has largely been a consistent practice over several hundred years, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Having said that, if we want to go about improving it, we might want to stay pretty close to the workforce and not sit in statistics labs far removed from it. Efficiency is tied to work practices, and they cannot be optimized beyond what the workforce can handle or want to deal with. As we attempt to be lean, whatever we mean by that, we need to remember that work is a thoroughly human endeavor. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 84 on The Evolution of Lean with Professor Torbjørn Netland from ETH Zürich. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes, and if so, do let us know by messaging us because we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented Podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operation platform connecting people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring, and you can find Tulip at tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy; we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube. Augmented — industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. Special Guest: Michel Baudin.

Hey Wicked Hunters,  Welcome back to another episode of The Art of Photography Podcast. Today I am sharing a conversation I had with one of the best aurora chasers out there! Adrien Mauduit is a 33-year-old Science engineer, professional photographer, cinematographer as well as a science author. Born in France in 1989, he has always been passionate about nature, space, and the night sky. After completing his M. Sc. in Canada, he moved to Denmark to teach Science and Art. It is also where he encountered his first aurora.   Adrien found unconditional and unequivocal love for the mesmerizing phenomenon and bought his first camera to try and capture it. Since then, he's traveled to many countries within the auroral zone like Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland in search of the elusive Green Lady. Today, Adrien made his former hobby into a full-time job-based in Arctic Norway, where he permanently resides.   He now works relentlessly to produce innovative and educational media of our world under the night sky. Thanks to his scientific and artistic pedigree, Adrien always strives to bring the best quality into his work. His many years of experience chasing the aurora under harsh and inhospitable conditions allowed him to get worldwide recognition. Adrien's aurora and milky way still shots are particularly well known but his innovative Astro-timelapse sequences made him a pioneer in the nighttime documentary industry over recent years.    LINKS:    You can use my LinkTree where all my links are: https://linktr.ee/nightlightsfilms    LINKS (aurora):    - https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/  - https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/.html    Link to the photos that we discussed in the podcast: Photo of phoenix-shaped Aurora - https://www.instagram.com/p/CYZ-SvRMeb1/  Raindeer under the Aurora - https://www.instagram.com/p/CiixTHpsKdP/  Milky Way and Aurora in one frame - https://www.instagram.com/p/Cif33-DMvaF/  Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast: • Spotify - http://bit.ly/twhspotify   • Apple Podcast - https://bit.ly/Theartofphotography   • Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheArtOfPhotographyWithStanleyAr   • Website: https://podcast.thewickedhunt.com      • Tune In (Alexa) - https://bit.ly/TuneInTheArtOfPhotographyPodcastWithStanleyAr     For those of you who want to learn more about The Wicked Hunt Photography by Stanley Aryanto: • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewickedhunt/    • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewickedhunt/  • Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thewickedhunt/  • Photo prints: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ Don't forget to leave a review on the podcast if you enjoy this conversation. It would help us to get found and help to inspire other photographers.  ---------  Transcription: Adrien Mauduit  0:00   You know, it's like oh my gosh it's useless to start now. No it's not. And if it brings something for you other than making money then definitely do it because for me that brings photography nice guy brings joy for me being alone with the elements when there's no sound outside no winds you know, you have the perfect pristine sky with I don't know, I would imagine a nice lake or a nice you know, still see where you get the reflection of the moon or the reflection of stars. Oh my goodness, there's no feeling beating that I think Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:44   Hey, wicked hunters Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast, where we share artists journey and how they found hope, purpose and happiness through their passion in photography. And today, I have a very special guest. I came across his work back in clubhouse a thing and he is a legend. When it comes to capturing the night sky. You know, the Aurora is and the Milky Way's In fact, I think he was the very his work was the very first photo that I saw the two in one frame as just that just blew me away. So Adrian, how's it going? I think you're tuning in from Norway. Right? Are you staying in Lofoten? Adrien Mauduit  1:28   Hey, good morning for me. Yeah, so I am talking to you from Arctic Norway. And right now is 9am. So just waking up from from a short night after chase of Aurora and but I'm so delighted, you know, to wake up early and to be talking to you and connecting with you here. i We have we met through through clubhouse during the pandemic. And I think that was, you know, a great way to really connect with people that maybe you might have missed out on other platforms. And you know, whose work are just, oh my gosh, I mean, I mean, your work as well is just so tremendous. And I'm so happy I found you. And so that we connect, but yeah, so you talked about Milky Way and Aurora. And actually now is the good time to see those two phenomena together. It is really the the only time of year where you can get the two lined up like this. We can expand a bit more on that afterwards if you want. But, uh, yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Thank Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  2:37   you for having me. That's awesome. Yeah, we're just gonna write right away straight off the bat giving a cliffhanger. So if you stay till the end, you will learn how to capture the real QA and the Aurora. That's I love it. But yeah, man, like I come across your photo, I come across you first of course, it's you came to the clubhouse, go through your photos, and it's just insane. You know, I don't, I don't think I've ever seen anyone dedicated to shoot, you know, Aurora, as much as you do. And it's just absolutely incredible. And one of the my favourite photos was when there's the reindeer and Aurora on the background, but we'll talk a little bit more about that a little bit later. Before we get, you know, we get to the nice and interesting part. I'd like you to introduce yourself and you know, share, share to the audience who you are. And for those who haven't come across yet. Where is the passion of chasing this, you know, Aurora rose and the night sky came from because we all know people like their sleeps and their rest, right? And you just say, you know, you had a short night to be here, but you don't look tired at all. So, so yeah, let us know. Adrien Mauduit  3:59   Sorry, you need to zoom in and look at my eyes, if you can see right there ready to read. But yeah, so who am I? So I am a 33 year old photographer from France. So originally, I'm French. But I actually haven't lived in France in Well, between, I would say 10 and 15 years. So it's been quite a long time. You know, my family is back in France, but I've been travelling and and I actually lived in several other countries. I've lived in, in Canada, Denmark, and now living in Norway. So you know, I've done a lot of a lot of travelling in different different countries. And so I live off of my photography I've been living off of my photography for about I would, I would say since 2017. So it's still quite recent. If you if you say so before that time it was more of a hobby that I picked up when I was Living in Denmark, I was working as a teacher, because originally I'm not a photographer. Like I haven't really, you know, been educated as a photographer at university. I was originally in the science departments. And so I earned a master's degree in environmental sciences. Which master degree thesis I finished in Canada, in Alberta actually, were funny enough, you could see Aurora, but back then I was just, you know, not educated enough. I mean, I, I knew about Aurora and and, you know, that was kind of like this dream to see Aurora, but I never really got to realise this dream. And, you know, so I, I really got the first connection with Aurora and astrophotography. When I was in Denmark, believe it or not, this is what started my photography journey, actually. So I changed career because of this one experience that I had in, in, in Denmark. So let me go back to it just just very briefly. So I was working at a school in Denmark and like a boarding school, and one of the one of the teachers around the the teachers lounge table. We were talking about, you know, our biggest dreams and, you know, our bucket list items. And I mentioned that I wanted to see the aurora, you know, so bad. And, you know, in my head, I thought about going to Iceland, going to Canada, Alaska, you know, very far away. Polar locations. Not really like, you know, I wouldn't even even imagine you could even see the aurora from so far south. And yet that teacher, that colleague told me, Oh, yeah, you know, I spent my nights because he was the cadet teacher. So he's used to spend his nights on the hills. And he told me, yeah, every once in a while, we get a display of auroras, you know, dipping down to the lower latitudes. And I was like, No way. You must be, you must be kidding me right now. No, no, no. So. So after watching, you know, several alert websites and everything, there was one night where there was a possibility. So I went to the beach, waited maybe for like five hours. He had, you know, he had said, you know, keep a nice, clear view towards the north have clear skies, no moon, if possible. And then wait. So I did. And, you know, I waited for six hours in the cold, didn't see anything. And I was like, No, you know, he must have been kidding me. You know, it must have been a joke. And on my way back to the car, I was, I still had the clear view towards the north, but I was just facing away from the beach. And the tree line in front of me, you know, I was just getting to the carpark the tree line in front of me just lit up. And, you know, in my head was like, well, there could be several things here at like, I don't know, like the, you know, a boat from you know, there were there weren't any cars or any roads. I was like, couldn't be a car. Could be like a big boat. Could be the moon could be I don't know. But sure enough, you know, I turned back to to check what it was an end. Oh, my goodness, this was this was the very first peek at the Aurora. And even though it's not as bright and as colourful as what I get now in Northern Norway above head, oh, my goodness, that was so out of this world, like something you had never seen. And when, you know, I mean, I've been brought up in the city. But you know, I've been fortunate enough to have a summer house in the countryside. So I know what normal and polluted or at least not that much light polluted. nightscape looks like, you know, the amount of light coming from this phenomenon is something that is completely stranger to like, anything else, you know, it's just so, so powerful. I mean, it's just like these pillars that sit on the northern horizon and lighting up the whole landscape. Almost casting a shadow on the ground is something otherworldly and that it's undescribable if you've never seen it, and so ever since, you know, ever since that experience, that adrenaline kick that comes when your aura explodes and I'm sure you can relate. It's just yeah, it's just what what you know, starting to patch started what started the passion about the Aurora and ever since I actually picked up my first camera the next day because I just wanted to capture it. You know? I've already captured so bad, but I was, you know, didn't know anything about photography. So I learned myself through YouTube tutorials, you know, being the field trials and errors. And I actually switched jobs because this was just you know, chasing, you're chasing the night sky become became a passion basically. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  10:22   That yeah, like, it's really hard to explain that feeling right when you for when you see the aurora, whether it's the first time or you know, however many times but I'd like you to try. How does that feeling? You know, for the audience never feel you who never seen it? Before? How does it feel to be able to be in this pristine dark sky? Seeing the sky dancing? Adrien Mauduit  10:56   So, first, for the audience, I think, you know, it's good to have, that's why I mentioned the dark sky reference, you know, knowing what, sort of like a typical dark sky looks like, you know, not the sky of you know, of a city, but being just maybe just outside of a city already, you know, it's I know, it's probably a bit light polluted. But it just gives you an idea of the amount of light of natural light, I would say, that's coming from the nice guy, you know, it's, it's not a lot, but it's still a little bit. So you can sort of make out a few things in the landscape, you know, at least in black and white. So, it's good to have a reference. And once you do, you, I think you can appreciate even more, how much how much brightness and how much light comes from this phenomenon. I mean, it's just particles bombarding the atmosphere, causing it to, to light up basically to to really produce light dancing light, just like a just like a neon light. Now, about the experience, I think, is just life changing. It just, it's groundbreaking, like it is something that unravels or that just how to describe it, it changes your view, I think on a lot of things, because again, that's, that's unlike anything you've ever seen. And one, when you have this connection to the dark sky, when you know what a dark, normal dark sky looks like, you know, it's not usual, you know, it's something that is almost alien, you know? So, it's just, personally I didn't, I didn't cry, maybe I shed a little tear. At the beginning, I just can't remember. But I know, you know, now that I've seen so many people react on the Aurora, we all have a different, a different reaction to the euro, some people cry some people just, you know, lay down, you know, they feel the need to lay down because not necessarily because it's overhead, but more because they it's almost like they feel the weight of this natural phenomenon. And they you know, they have no choice but to sit down or lay down and just appreciate almost almost like a I wouldn't say fear reaction, but you know, like, almost like, like a child when it's being grounded and like sits down and it just does nothing. That's the sort of like yeah, you just you're at a loss for words and some of the people just dance around shoutings you know, we all have I tend to be like this or I used to be like this actually more often, but not I'm taking photography and I'm alone I just try to enjoy the show. And just I think I just let my cameras run the time lapses I do a bit of real time filming, but I just watch all the time it's very important to also enjoy the show for yourself 100% Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  14:07   And you know it's one of the reason why I got into time lapse is because then I could take photo at the same time I could enjoy the scenery it's really nice that way but um, yeah, like so you know looking at your Instagram which is nights Night Night Lights films, you know it's just filled with this night shot right whether it's Aurora whether it's a Milky Way or meteor shower, so how often do you go out there and you know, chase this the night skies Adrien Mauduit  14:43   Okay, so every time that I that is that we have clear skies because I shouldn't mention we're I'm in a part of the world. So I live full time in Arctic Norway. And who says gold says, you know, clouds and condensation and precipitation, obviously. And so, the the window, the windows of opportunity, I think, are quite short and small in Norway, because we're also close to the sea. And we, you know, we get the influence from the Gulf Stream and from the sea. And we have a lot of cloud entry and, and stuff like that. So whenever the sky is clear, I just go out even if the, the the award activity is, is quite low, because then I can do Milky Way Believe it or not, Aurora is a form of is a good form of light pollution, but it's still light pollution. So whenever you know you would have you would have to do anything deep sky or you know, just Milky Way, you need to make sure the award is at the lowest because otherwise it outshines everything that just how much light, you know, comes out of the Aurora. And funnily enough, last night, I was, you know, I started the evening shooting the Milky Way, but I needed to stop the time lapse, almost halfway through because the Aurora just suddenly got a bit brighter, and that's enough to burn the whole, the whole sky is just, you know, the highlights were just burnt in the Aurora to expose nicely for the Milky Way. So I need to reduce the shutter speed and start a new. So that's just the way it is you need to you can never know what your A does. And, and so yeah, but to come back to your question, basically. So I chased your aura, most likely you're up. I do a bit of milky way here in Norway, but it mostly Aurora, throughout the Aurora season, which here spans from anywhere from, I think late August to the start of April. And then the rest of the year, I do some other types of work. I usually travel the world to take some time lapses in real time sequences that I licence to production companies. So I do different type of work during the winter. And during the summer, which I like as well. Because there is a lot as opposed to, you know, being sitting in an office and and doing the same type, like repetitive work over and over again. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  17:12   sounds horrible job there. And I don't know, it's I know. Hopefully, you know, the listeners can hear the sarcasm in there. But yeah, like, yeah, man, that's awesome, right? It's just like, I think it's really good. One of the things that I love about travelling is that change. So I know exactly how, you know, giving that change can help your creativity and how much you you have to stay in love with what you do, right? Because I think it's important, otherwise, things just get stagnant. And yeah, so all of this Alright, do you mostly shoot them in Norway? Or do you go to other parts of the world to chase these orders as well? Adrien Mauduit  18:03   So, yes, so I'm, you know, I decided to, to come to Norway, and to emigrate in Norway, because, or I should say, Northern Norway, because Norway is quite a long country from from south to north. So, you know, it almost, I always like to name Norway, because in my head, it's like the way to the North, in a way, you know, it's like it begins in the south, away from most of the Aurora, and then just make your way up north, you know, more than 1000 kilometres. And then you're there, you're at the polar circle, the Arctic Circle. And that's where you see most of the aurora in this zone of the world. So I decided to immigrate there, because obviously, this is the home of the Aurora. And we get a show. If it's clear, we get a shot every night, we get to see the aurora every single night, of course, in varying intensity and varying activity, but we still see the aurora every night if it's clear. But that being said, sometimes the Aurora dips way for the South. So when we have periods of increased what we call increased geomagnetic activity. So that's the the activity that's being created by the disturbances of the solar wind, and how the planet reacts to those disturbances. So that the consequences one of the consequences, the creation of the euro, obviously, but there are other consequences. But anyways, when this activity is higher, the best of the world activity actually migrates towards the equator. And how far how far towards the equator is dictated by many factors. So you can never really predict per se when that the best activity will end up in terms of location but And sometimes, you know, in the span of an hour, it can literally, it can literally travel, I would say, you know, five, between 500 and 1000 kilometres south. So obviously you can, it's not like you can take orbit by plane ticket, and just and just you know, last minute just fly to wherever you want. But I also travelled to other locations and other countries, for example, very often now as we're getting into more rural activity during the solar cycle, because we're arriving at a very interesting part of the solar cycle now, which is called the solar maximum, where the the, your activity is supposed to be more frequent. And more towards the equator as well. I tend to travel last year, I travelled several times to Finland and Sweden, for example. But I've chased your rora in Iceland and chased it in Canada. Afterwards, when I you know, I wanted to go back and see that for myself as well in Canada. And yes, we didn't Norway, Finland. And that's about it, I think, maybe, you know, nevermind, I chest a bit in the US as well. So several locations, I still have a few locations that I'd like to see. And especially that includes the the Southern Lights, never seen the southern lights. So being able to see the what we call the conjugate Aurora, because it's basically almost the same Aurora that's happening at the same time in the north in the South. I want to see it in the South as well. So southern southern hemisphere, obviously. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  21:39   Yeah, I mean, like those, this the South, the southern light is actually quite interesting. And I'm wondering what makes you want to see the Southern Lights, because they're, they almost look about the same compared to Northern Light in most cases. Adrien Mauduit  21:58   So there, there are several things, it's actually a very interesting question. And I think we're getting a bit more into detail here with your aura. So like I said, you know, when we get those bursts of auras, or these bursts of activity, they're generally speaking, the overall I will look almost exactly the same in the South and in the north, because it's just the way the aura is created. The particles, you know, they just, they're just channelled towards the channel towards suppose, almost, you know, at the same time, quite actually add the same time. And with the same sort of properties, but there are still a few differences. It's not like a mirror, a perfect mirror, there are some differences. And actually, the what we call the world oval, which is it at any time, it's just all the war happening at one pole, it looks like a doughnut shape. And that is actually a bit more active in the South for some reason, it has to do with the way the, the magnetic field of the Earth is, is made. And so it's a bit stronger at the south. And so the southern oval is usually slightly more active, and you will see slightly, maybe more colourful or brighter or as for the same, you know, same global show. So that's one of the reasons and the second reason is, you know, you can see the award, the southern lights, you can see them in countries where, you know, have always been on my bucket list, like this mania and New Zealand, Australia, and maybe perhaps Antarctica as well, I know, you know, you'd have to travel quite far inland to see the Southern Lights in Antarctica. But still, it's just, I just want to see it for myself, you know, even if it's the same, that's the cool thing with your whare you know, you asked me I think at the beginning, we talked about change in our, our job. And the raw is the definition of change because it's never the same it just from one name to another, you know, changes from one even from one minute to another, it changes shape, colours and stuff like that, in this case. So that's what makes it so interesting. You know, not two times this is going to be the same and you never know what you're gonna get. So that's what's so exciting. About the Aurora. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  24:35   Yeah, no 100% I think, you know, like, when you shoot Aurora, even with the same exact composition, there's always there's always different right? But let's say for example, if you shoot the Milky Way, like you are chasing the composition, because you know, if you should at the same time, you know, or roughly about the same time at the same location. It looks exactly the same. So yeah, that's that's, it's really cool, but alright, that way, but um, Australia, I didn't think. I mean, I know when there is the storm is really high, you can kind of see it in Australia, but it's really, really hard to see in Australia and my right, like, I think Manaea would be the best chance, right? But in the mainland Australia, it's a little bit too far north to be able to be like pillars and stuff. Adrien Mauduit  25:24   You'd be surprised, actually, I think to think it's Victoria in in Australia, they see Aurora much more often than then one would think. Because even when it's, you know, Tasmania in the Southern New Zealand, it's actually not that far. It's quite towards support, it's a, it would be the equivalent of, of like the Well, it depends across the states, obviously. But like, I couldn't give you an equivalent because the deal was crude, the, the oval is crooked. So it doesn't correspond to geographic latitude, unfortunately. So I couldn't give you a reference. But Tasmania in New Zealand, they're actually quite far towards the Aurora. And on very good shows, you know, they could see the aurora above head in certain Tasmania. And Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  26:24   so you're saying? So by the way, what Adrian was saying, it's like the oval where the Aurora is happening is not dial up, it's not exactly circular to the north or the south pole. So there is like a little bit oval. That's why they call it that makes sense, though, it's not a circle. So So what you're saying is that as menu and New Zealand is closer to the active part of the oval, is that what you're saying? Adrien Mauduit  26:52   That's exactly what I'm saying. While you know, travelling to Australia does make a difference, you know, I mean, you were, you're getting further away from the oval. There, there, there is still like a, quite a large part in the southern, I think, eastern part southeast part of Australia, where it's, it's quite possible to see your whare you know, albeit on the horizon, but still, you know, quite quite often actually, they see the aura, and they don't need like a big, big storm to actually start seeing pillars on the horizon, believe it or not, so, it's, I think it's a it's been a misconception. You know, not being able to see the aurora or thinking you're could never have the natural attitude. But if you're, you know, if you get into liking the Aurora and trying to chase it and really trying to understand when it happens and why that happens. I think you'll understand why the Aurora happens way more often than you think and way closer to you than you think. So, you know, obviously the best shows are where you're under the Aurora, but if you're not under the Aurora, you might be surprised to know, the Aurora is not that far away from you, as you think well in Valley unfortunately. You need you need such a powerful story. But you know, so, you know, talking to some people in the world, they might not even know they could see the award at their place without having the need to travel so I think it's nice for them to know, Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:34   ya know, 100% I think most people the biggest the biggest problem or challenges that most people have is that the city lights right. You live in the city you can hardly see the stars to start with, let alone auroras you know, when it's when it's too far away from the from the source itself. But like, you know, like, I mean, I've seen some of your shots where it was full moon and you could see the aurora and you know, some of them are accompanied by a bright city lights and all that stuff. So yeah, like if you're really go far north, you could really see it even with you know, a light around your horizon. And so like man, like you take so many Aurora shots, right? And it's been just like crazy. You know, when I first met you and just like I do not know anyone who take more or photos than you do is just incredible. So Unknown Speaker  29:35   out of those, Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  29:36   what is your let's say, most memorable moment that you've captured a with the Aurora Adrien Mauduit  29:50   think you know when you when you take or photos when you take so much or photos and not I'm not saying that for? No I do. laughs so I don't know how just how many shots I've taken over my career so far. But I can tell you that a lot of shots and a lot of different sequences with a lot of different compositions and stuff like that. So I have a lot of favourite shots, per se, but I think the I think I'm hesitating right here, because you told me what you asked me the most memorable shot, correct? Yeah. So I think my most accomplished, accomplished shot was the reindeer that you, you mentioned. But to me, I mean, that's, that's a real accomplishment, because it's quite hard to take wildlife. If you're sharp wildlife, on, you know, in a night night photography altogether, regardless of whether there's a war or not, but it's very hard to take wildlife at night. But to me, I think the most memorable shot today should be I'm hesitating between two, actually, I think one is the Phoenix. It's, it's a picture that looks like a worthy war, it looks like a phoenix rising from the mountains. And that one was quite memorable, because that was one of those nights during the debt of what we call solar minimum, which is the lowest of solar activity. And for the audience, I remind the, I remind the audience that the sun is the source of the Aurora. So if you have low solar activity, you don't get a lot of auras. But at high latitudes, you still get, you know, the shows, even if the solar activity is, is low. And so that night, I remember that was a quite a warm night in November. Warm for me is about zero to five degrees Celsius, for the season, of course, but I think, for a lot of people, it's quite cold. And, you know, it was supposed to be cloudy, it was supposed to be it was supposed to be very low activity. And so I took my chances anyway, and I think it it's memorable for me, because, you know, it's like, all the elements are against you, you know, you go all against the odds, and you beat the odds going out in the field, you know, showing your persistence. Going anyways, you know, you know, you might not get anything, you might waste money, you might waste resources, time, you could have done something else you could have, I could have been more comfortable at home, you know, enjoying a meal. And yet, I said, No, I want to take my chances. And so I did, and I drove one hour to the fjords. And I hiked for about 30 minutes, the the, the, it was still cloudy, and they'll still be we're still super low in terms of activity. And then all of a sudden, everything cleared up magically. For some reason that I would, I could never, you know, I could never know, it, everything just lined up perfectly. And that's when, you know, the modal of photographers, you know, if you're not outside, you're not going to get anything, right, you need to be outside you need to be in the field to, to to get the shots otherwise, you know, you would never have known and that that that shot I think was represented that very, very well. And so everything cleared up. I set up my cameras and my my time lapses and actually that's that was one of those times where I actually set up the activity was so low that I shot at 20 sec next year, which it's you know a bit about photography, or night photography is the settings for you know, nice nice settings for Milky Way. Milky Way shots. And, yeah, that was one of those nights where, you know, we weren't supposed to be to get a lot of Aurora so I set up the milk for Milky Way. And again, when all of a sudden the Aurora just came out out of nowhere and very rapidly just brightened the whole the whole landscape and I had to reduce from 20 seconds to one second exposure to give you an idea of how bright that over that overall was. And so I pointed the camera towards whether you were I was getting super bright and was expanding over the sky and So, of course, a split second, this, this, the avora took the shape of a giant bird, or if I called it the Phoenix afterwards, because it just reminded me of, you know, the rise of the Phoenix. And that I think that was the most unique shape that I've ever gotten in terms of Aurora. And the whole story behind the shot, I think, is what makes it so memorable. Of course, I've, I've got so many stories throughout my career that shot was in 2018. So since then, you know, there are a lot of shots and a lot of stories. But I was at the very start of my overall chasing career all at the start, but I think, I guess in Norway, and so to me, that's something that, you know, I'm always talking about is, is this story because it just represents so well, you know, the hardship that you have to go through the also against yourself, because you know, you want to stay out inside, you're nice and comfy. And there is this, this passion inside still, that tells you no, I'm going out anyways, I want to see if I get something. And that's, you know, when when you know that I think you truly like something is that you don't it doesn't matter what what is what is outside of this fashion. You just go for it. So yeah, that's, that's I think that's my most memorable shot today. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  36:38   That's cool. Yeah. I mean, that story is so inspiring. You know, I think too many of us rely so much on the weather forecasts. And I feel like I don't know, if you agree I, you know, like, for the audience who listen as well, I don't know if you guys agree, and I'd like to actually get your take on this. But I feel like the Instagram culture or the social media culture, change that mindset, you know, we started photography, because we enjoy the journey going out there capturing, you know, a moment that we may or may not have, we may or may not going to experience, right. But along the way, this, this instant gratification, changed that whole mindset. And it's no longer about the journey, but the adventure, it's about the photo, right? Ah, I need to make sure that the cloud is, you know, burning, or I need to make sure that the sky is clear that the Aurora is blowing up, and you know, all this stuff just to get more likes. And I love hearing that story, right? Because that's what photography is all about, like, I don't know, anyone who started photography, because they want more likes on Instagram, like, you know, once people started photography, because they just want to capture and enjoy the moment. But along the way, we cannot forget that. And so yeah, like, thanks for sharing that man. Like, I, I know that feeling when you go against all the odds and the odds, just like, you know, beat itself and give you such an incredible what they call it. Like, reward right to remember by and it's not only it's not even about the photo, like you said, it's about that feeling of. So that's cool. Adrien Mauduit  38:35   I think it's, it's the whole package really, that comes with the photo. And funnily enough, I think you mentioned you just mentioned, you know, some people might start photography for because of Instagram and to get more likes, but I think they burn out quite easily and they get out of the this interest. Because they the purpose is quite shallow, you know, they do it as repetitive work or you know, as a job. And, you know, the minute it starts feeling like a job, like you have to go out to get content and, and to shoot for someone else. You don't shoot for yourself anymore. And I think that's where the passion disappears. And so, I think you mentioned it, it's probably one of the, the other pieces of advice I could give the audience's that. Try to avoid feeling like you have to post this photo you have to take this photo to post on social media. Take it for yourself first and keep it this way. Otherwise, yeah, the passion disappears and you don't, you don't want to, you know, you don't feel like you. You really want it comes from you, you know you there's this external desire to go outside and it's just not you. So keep that for yourself first. And then that's actually where the, the inspiration, you know, should come from because obviously we as photographers, we Do we compare to each other? Sorry, we compare ourselves to other photographers all the time. But the less you do that, the more it the more self oriented your photography journey is, I think the more self inspired it becomes. And I think that's where you start focusing on yourself first, and you start getting outside of the your comfort zone first. And then you start experimenting on new stuff that, you know, you haven't seen before, or stuff that would seem completely ridiculous to others, but then you try it, and then you post it. And I think a lot of people recognise that in my work is that I, yes, I, I have taken a few shots, you know, of famous places, and monuments and stuff like that even at night. But I'm more interested in interested in taking things that have never been done before. In all the like, whether it is a time lapse or single shot photography, I like to experiment a lot, taking, you know, out of focus, book a time lapse, which is very rarely done. And funnily enough, you know, a lot of the production companies love this kind of time lapses. And I think, you know, they, they saw the works first, and they contacted me to work with them because of this. So, and I think that, but I want to expand to take your time to expand a bit more on that afterwards. Because that was now I'm going towards a piece of advice I'm going to give at the end. So let's not get into that just yet. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  41:41   That's awesome. And thanks for mentioning that because I know exactly that feeling when you feel like you have to go out and shoot and actually had a burn out because of that. And that is also the reason where this podcast came from, you know, because I was like burning out and I want to hear what other people are going through. And most of the time, you know, it's not one year, it's not two year, it's usually more than that. Plus more of you know, get to where they are. So, you know, the overnight success that people see in the Instagram is never overnight, you know, they put all their heart and work behind it. Yeah, like that is an awesome, awesome advice. And I love that, you know, you kind of dive into that even deeper, to just share that insight. And I think that is really important. So I guess one of the thing that I'm interested in, and I'm sure that the audience will be would love to know as well is so used to be, you know, in a science kind of niche, and then your you had your master degree and all that stuff. You're a teacher, and suddenly, poof, you're a photographer, right? How does that? How does that thinking process as well as journey to transition over? Because you know, that one of the biggest preconception that most people say is that artists, you know, a starving artist. Mindset, right? So, so when you jump into the profession, people are gonna think you're crazy. You're an absolutely, you know, crazy to, to let go of your master's degree and all that stuff and jump into this starving industry. But how does that process go? And what makes if there? Is there any thing that makes all the difference that helps you to transition over? Adrien Mauduit  43:46   It's funny, you mentioned starving artists, because this is exactly where I was going. I think you you need to. Or at least that was the case for me. I I'm not sure if you need to so it's not isn't No, you know, no advice, but you need to make sacrifices, I think you need to, to be willing to be a starving artist for a while to start the journey, especially if you come from a background that, you know, I was a teacher, but I was at the beginning of my career. And I wanted to get into a PhD so I went to go further in my studies as well. So you know, it's like, you know, from one day to the other, you stop everything and you start something new and that's something that is that is quite scary. I'm not gonna lie to you. It's, you know, starting a new journey without having any mentor or any kind of support from anyone. Although some people didn't believe you know, and some people some some of members of my family pushed me and said, Yeah, you're quite talented. So you should probably do You should probably pursue it, you know, you don't have a lot of support from anything else, to be honest. It's just maybe, you know, you're lucky enough to have a grant you to search for grants. But basically, for me, I already own some cameras, which I was able to acquire during that, or thanks to the salary from my teaching position there in Denmark. But I realised, you know, if you are to start with a photography company, you need to buy everything from scratch, and you don't have any sort of support. And photography is expensive, as you know. And there's always this lens that you want, and is always this other piece of gear that you need. So that as quickly, too, you know, a lot of a lot of resources and time and money. So it's, it's difficult, and you need to be willing to make the sacrifice, you know, for a period of your time, dedicate yourself 100% at the expense of others, and at the expense of maybe love life and social life and stuff like that. I think that's a sacrifice that you need to be willing to make, at least nowadays, if you don't have already a name. And if you if you're really serious about this, this job, and you can see a few other stories in in, at least in the night, night, Sky photography, industry, you know, like ALAN WALLACE, or even even yourself, I mean, you said you were burning out, but I'm sure you've made a lot of sacrifices, when I see those pictures behind you here with the Milky Way. I know those are could be faraway locations, or I see also like a summit picture here. You need to be willing to also physically, you know, put yourself through danger and have like natural hazard to be able to take those unique shots and make a name of yourself in this oversaturated industry, let's, let's say the way it is, it's oversaturated. But it's not impossible. And that's another piece of advice, you know, that I have for the audience's that it might seem completely useless to stop now. Now that even you know, social media is getting crazy. Your Instagram is not working anymore. So, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, it's useless to start now. No, it's not. And if it brings something for you other than making money, then definitely do it. Because for me, that brings photography nice guy brings joy for me being alone with the elements when there's no sun outside, no winds, you know, you have the perfect pristine sky with I don't know, I would imagine a nice lake or a nice, you know, still see where you get the reflection of the moon or the refraction of stars. Oh, my goodness, there's no feeling beating that. I think Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  48:08   that is a great advice. And you know, like, I know that feeling 100% that just that really serene, pristine, you know, like, tranquil sort of feeling they just, ah, you know, like, it feels like nothing else matter, right? It's just like, you're in the moment. You're so in the moment that nothing else matters. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. So. So how, what are some of the things that you did in terms of earning money? And that you can? I suppose let me rephrase that. So how did you, you know, how did you earn from your photography? And how would you have done it differently? If an audience come to you and say, Hey, I'm thinking about, you know, doing this full time because I love it. I love the fulfilment, but I just don't know where you, you know where to start? What sort of direction or advice would you give them? Adrien Mauduit  49:09   So, I think having, you know, a sum that is dedicated, like, it's like a saving sum of money that is somewhere on an account. And that, of course, you don't touch for, I mean, you buy your gear, but you don't touch for anything else, then just like in case of emergency kind of package. That is advisable, because there's going to be a period where you're going to, you're going to and I think that's the same for a lot of deputing artists. There's a period of time at the beginning where you're going to put in way more efforts than you're going to get any return on investment, if that makes sense. So you're going to invest yourself much more than you're going to earn. And that that period of Time is frustrating because you don't see the product of your hard labour, right, you don't see the return on investment. And that's frustrating for a lot of people. And that might cause some people to stop at that stage. But that's exactly when, you know, everything looks, looks bleak. And like doom and gloom. That's exactly where you should actually double your efforts. Because you never know, what is, you know, in around the corner, I would say, that's exactly when I can actually share a little bit of how I ended up in Norway. So I started photography in 2016. Professionally, so I quit my job in Denmark, I had a bit of money on the side. And I wanted to sell prints first, because that's what everyone did. So I set up a Wix website, and I started making, you know, a little bit of money, really not much at all, not enough to live anyways. So I went back to France, I no shame in saying, I went back to my parents, and we've had my parents for about a year to help me, you know, in this journey, because rent was quite expensive. And, you know, I was I did, you know, some some job on the side as well, I, I was doing substituting teaching in at my dad's school, and, you know, during the night, I would go out. So it's like, this double life that you need to lead as well, you know, it's not like you're gonna earn, unless you're very smart, and, and smart enough, but I'm not that smart. So I didn't figure out a way to earn money completely from photography at first. And so I needed this side, income source or stream to help me survive the first years. And so after a year, I was like, you know, I was just about to give up, you know, it's like, Oh, I'm not seeing the return on investment. It's not worth my time, even though I love it. But so, I took this one last trip, I told myself, Okay, after a year, I don't make enough money, then I just continue my, my, into a PhD, right, or it was my teaching job. So I taking one last trip to Scandinavia to see the Orion maybe, hopefully to take some pictures, and some people will like it. I don't know. I didn't know what I was thinking. So went to a disco in Sweden, starting started shooting, shooting the Aurora. And that was a few days before the end of everything, basically, because after that trip, remember, I was gonna stop everything. And I was about to give up. And I received this email from Oh, sorry, this message on Facebook from the, the director of what is now the Aurora Borealis Observatory in, in Sydney island in Norway. And they said, Well, he said, I love your job, your your work I've been I've been watching your work for a while now. It's I think the quality is, it's awesome. You know, what, what would you how would you like to come and visit. So I did visit I did an extension of my trip did visit the observatory without any sort of saw, like second thoughts or without knowing what what they wanted. And so I visited the observatory, and long story short, he offered me a job, then, you know, based out of Norway, and perfect location for the war, I could do, I would earn money on the side enough to survive. And I could do photography as well on my start time. And to me, that was the perfect, perfect opportunity. And that's how I got started, I started making content. And from them, I was able to be visible on social media. And you know, that's the snowball effect afterwards, you know, you post and post and post and you start getting noticed. And then boom, you get, you know, collaborations, contracts and stuff like that. That's how your photography journey is. So if I have one piece of advice is when you think, you know, you're gonna, when you feel like you need to give up because you don't see any results. That's exactly when you should double down on your efforts. Because, you know, at least that that happened to me, but I know that happened to a lot of other people. That's exactly when, you know, for some reason, that's exactly when good things happen. So don't give up. And yes, you're the start of the journey is hard and full of hurdles and challenges. But you know, most most most people make it and if they presets and enough they make it for sure. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  55:02   That's awesome that I think that is a really cool thing. Real cool advice there. Because, you know, cuz you mentioned a couple of things right first, you know, like, you need to put on the sacrifice and to make it in this turfing industry. But actually, we need to make that sacrifice on all of that, right? It doesn't matter what Startup you try what company you want to build, it's actually the same thing. So I think there is no different that. And the second thing is, you know, like, it's saturated. Yes, it is saturated, but only saturated for people who doesn't want to go the extra mile. And I think you know, like, when you when you talk about you have to make sacrifice and making those you know, wonderful kind of content. And just keep putting yourself out there until one day, you know, somebody notice it all or you know, have that saving, and just keep going keep going and double down on the times that you feel like you want to give up. I think that is a really good advice, because that's exactly why this. That's exactly how you make it in this saturated industry when you're willing to go the extra miles. And keep going when everyone else quit. So that's, that's a really good advice, Adrian, thanks for sharing that. Now. I know we're kind of going over time here a little bit. It's been really nice talking to you. And before we can I close this down. Since you know, I'd love you, I love to get you to share how can people forecast the Aurora? When when they visit North or South? Like, you know, and don't worry about the crazy science behind it just like some of a few practical things that they can do to increase their chance seeing that or because unlike most people, what most people think it's, it's always there, there is no season for it. Yes, there are some times of the year that are better to say it. But at the same time, it's like a rain right? It really rely a lot on the forecast. So based on your experience, what are some of the practical steps that you can suggest to our audience to better or to get their chance to see the aurora? Adrien Mauduit  57:29   Yeah, so that's, that's the $100 question, isn't it? Like when? When are we getting Aurora? Yeah, so without getting into too much, or too many details. So to increase your chances to see the aurora, I would say, you know, you mentioned that's exactly like rain, you know, the Aurora here happens all the time. But the rain, it doesn't rain all the time, right, you have periods of sun and periods of clouds, and rain. So it happens sporadically, but it does happen all the time, so very frequently. To maximise your chances to see the aurora, you need to make sure, I think that's the first piece of advice I would give to people is make sure you call me and I know it's it's expensive, you know, a lot of the locations up north are expensive, because it's so far away from everything. If you have the resources, try to go as long as possible. So for as many days as possible, because sometimes just one day makes the difference between not seeing anything, for example, like a three, three day stay, you know, you could be clouded out for three days, and you wouldn't see anything, regardless of the location, right? It does happen, those long periods of completely cloudy skies in the north, that happens all the time. But imagine if you booked an extra day and the last on the last day, it clears up and you get even if you get you don't get the best overall ratio in the world, you get to see the aurora. So I always tend to stay book, you know, one to three extra days, if you can allow it money wise and time wise. That definitely helps. Because as you know that the we're getting better at terrestrial weather forecasting, right. I mean, we've we had hundreds of, of years of records and we need our models are starting to be really, really accurate. Whether we complain or not, you know, because they're some of them may not be accurate, but space weather and Aurora. It's such a new science that our models and our forecasts are actually in their infancy as opposed to terrestrial weather. And we don't have that very precise instruments or those very precise instruments that can allow us to predict with certitude you know, I Uh, in an hour range or within minutes when the award is going to happen. So I couldn't tell you, per se, you know, if there was going to happen in one minute in an hour, but there are a few things that you could look at, to sort of maximise your chance to see the aurora. And that is to follow the, the first thought follow the people that the scientists in the fields, they believe it or not, they are on social media. And they can, they can actually give you great advice. And they, they, some of them, produce forecasts. But otherwise, honestly, there are a few websites or resources that you can, you can look at. And that is the NOAA Space Weather Prediction centre. website. And there is another one space weather live, I think those two. So NOAA, and oh, a Space Weather Prediction centre. And then space weather live.com are the two main resources that I would think, you know, predict pretty much everything from the Sun to the Aurora on Earth. So they have, let's say they have I wouldn't say foot, but they have, you know, they predict all those steps that come in between. So and they're quite clear as well. So yeah, those are the two, I think the two advice that I can give to people to maximise their chances. Also, make sure you you get to a location that is dark enough. So not within a city or if you're within a city, you need to be able to have guided tours that go outside of the city or to rent a car. And then you know, a bit of Moon is is okay with your work, especially if it's overhead that it's not that much of a problem. But it's it comes down to your preference, a lot of mood so full moon will hinder or mask out the faint of Aurora, whilst the bright Aurora, it doesn't matter with the moon, it just, you know, you can you can see anyways, but some people prefer no mood. So if you don't want any moon to hinder your view, then try to look at the moon calendar and to try to look at the facts. Also, don't only look at the moon calendar, because here the moon, believe it or not, behaves very differently as it does at the equator. Even it says the moon is I don't know, like 50% for the moon might not even show up the whole night. And that's just what happens in the north because of the course of objects in the sky. So check some apps for the course of the moon if you want or the the weather as well. But make sure the lack of advice is make sure you've had a time where your location is dark enough. By dark enough means I mean, at least nautical twilight. So nautical twilight is the part of the Twilight, where you start seeing the few the first Aurora the first strong a walrus. That's where you start making out the start. And of course darker than that is okay. That's what they find the quote unquote Aurora season at your location, which is which differs from location to another. So yeah, that's, Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:03:42   that's that's a really good tip. Yeah, I guess I'll clarify a bit like when Adrian was saying nautical twilight is what he meant is that light after the blue hour, I think so after a sunset, you know, the sunset, it goes to blue hour and then some other light and then go to another two nautical twilight, and then it go fully dark. So that happened before sunrise and after sunset. So that's what he meant. And I think, you know, a lot of people also need to appreciate in a place like Norway, for example, in some, some time of the year, you don't get any nighttime at all, isn't it? You don't even get any Twilight or blue hour, isn't it? Adrien Mauduit  1:04:31   Nope. So we we do get because of the we're so high in in the latitude that we're subject to the tilt of the earth much more than at the equator. And we can see this change quite dramatically as you pointed out with the course of objects in the sky throughout the seasons, and especially the sun's because for two months of the year in the summer at the heart of the summer, the work oriented towards The sun all the time, right that we were tilting towards the sun all the time. So we get the midnight sun and we obviously so that means we get the sun at midnight, although it's low on the horizon, but it's still, you know, it's quite weird. Start at midnight. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:05:16   Say it never actually sets. Adrien Mauduit  1:05:19   Nope, it never set. So it just it grazes gently the horizon, the northern horizon at midnight, and then it goes up again, at one two in the morning. And it goes up, it never sets, but it goes up in the sky again. So it gets brighter. That's so you get? Yeah, so you get different lights, you get to see the landscape hit by the lights from, from an angle where you could never see at other locations. You know, it's like in Valley, for example, your favourite location, your favourite COVID, as you say, behind you, yeah, it looks like a nice Cove by the beach, let's say, you know, it's quite stable in Valley because throughout the year, the sun, the sun does the course or the sun doesn't change that much in the sky. Try to imagine the sun. Most of the year, it doesn't hit that Cove. But then in the winter for somebody else, or in the summer, for some reason, at midnight, boom, you get the golden light from the sun. From there hitting the cove. It's like you're getting for landscape photography is just perfect, because you get to see things that you could never see otherwise. So it's Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:06:30   Yeah, you get we get forever golden hour. How awesome is that? Right. It's cool. All right. Well, that's that's a really good advice. You know, I love that the two resources that you talk about? And I'll be sure to put it on the link as well. Yeah, they believe it or not, there are a lot of apps in the Apple Store. But don't trust them. Adrien Mauduit  1:06:56   Yeah, no, I, I think the app are quite misleading because they give you the raw data without I mean, some of them do explain what the raw data I mean, but they have it, a lot of the apps have it wrong, because they dumb it down so much, that they start making mistakes in their own explanation. And that's just not how the Aurora happens. It's very complicated. So, you know, you can you can download the app store free, most of them are free anyways. But don't really go with the app. And trust the people that are in the field, when you come to a location because they know the overall better. And they know how it behaves, which is probably not what the app says, say at the time anyway, so Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:07:41   yeah. 100% and I think you know, what Adrian? Say was because like when I first started, I used to look at the app and go like whoa, KP seven I'd be like heading out, it's like, this is not KP said the thing that the app or most people don't understand is there's so many different small factor that affect that. So even at the lower KP you have a beat you have is to have chance to sit and you know, at a higher KP you might not see that at all. So and that's why Adrienne say Go follow the scientists because they will actually put all of this data in context so that you can make a better judgement. But yeah, thanks thanks for sharing that. And you know, if you have maybe like a couple of scientists that you recommend to follow do let me know and I'll put it on the link so that the audience can jump in and follow them as well. But also at the same time follow Adrian because when like really guys just go through his his Instagram and I mean you're blown away but find the one with the reindeer it is my favourite shot actually there is there three shots that are really love from your shot. The one that like like crazy love it is the reindeer. The second one is the Milky Way and the Aurora one like left to right. And the other one was the clouds at the crazy rainbow on the clouds. That's just insane. Like, I was like, damn, I want to see that. One day One day. Yeah, those Adrien Mauduit  1:09:16   are the things you want. Yeah, when there you will see. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:09:19   All right, well, Adrian, thank you very much for sparing your time teaching us auroras as well as sure sharing your journey and giving the audience practical advice that they can do to either you know, chase their passion or even just see the auroras now for those of the people who want to, you know, find out more about your work or work with you or even just one appreciate your work even more, what is the best way for them to find find find you. Adrien Mauduit  1:09:53   So I do have a mandatory website where we all we all have website as dovers So it's three W that night lights, films. So lights and films are plural.com. But, you know, nowadays it's more I mean, we can find people more on social media. So I'm all on all major platforms. I'm also on YouTube. And I used to be on Vimeo, but I just deleted Vimeo. But I do I do, I do video as well. So a lot on, you know, Facebook watch or YouTube as well. But I'm on Twitter, YouTube, I've always under the same name, Night Lights, films or night lights. And, but if you type my name, you would also find me on Google, I'm sure that that's what comes first. That's so that's where people usually find me and they contact me any place, whether it's on Facebook or Instagram, we're, you know, via email or something like that. quite responsive. So Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:11:07   fantastic. Yeah. He's, he's a great photographer and a great human being. So do follow him, get in touch with him. And I only say that, because you know, you've been with us for about an hour, but you know, I'm just kidding. No, he is. Awesome human being. But yeah, thank you very much, Adrian for being here, sharing all that knowledge. And with that being said, well, we can't hunters, hopefully you find a lot of value and enjoy that talk. Make sure you go to Adrian page, I guarantee that you will be blown away. So you know, if there is anything you get from this, you know, go and follow Him. And yeah, it'll make your life better, I can guarantee you Well, with that being say, let us know in the comment below. Give us a little bit review of whether or not you know what you think and what are some of the things that you want to hear in the future if you have if you have any artists that you want to hear their journey or whatnot. But thank you for being here. Thank you for tuning in. And I'll see you guys next week. Adrien Mauduit  1:12:18   Thank you for having me. Transcribed by https://otter.ai  

Lee chats internationally! This episodes guest is Nicholas Faribeau, originally from France but currently resident in Canada, who helps people discover their voice by matching their mindset so the two are in sync, clear and understandable. Often peoples voice, the way they present themselves, is confused because we don't understand how we say things rather than what we say. Nicholas aims to put this right to improve engagement and communication. KEY TAKEAWAYS How you speak as opposed to the words you say is important to psychologically engage with our audience. When we communicate we tend to speak quickly to transfer information. However, when you bear in mind that we only hear about 10% of what is said to us, the importance of how we speak and making our speech memorable becomes prevalent. Now we work from home and with modern telecommunications, voice only is often adopted, so clarity, tone and impression are even more important. The first word you speak, the first tone you take determines who you are. The initial ten seconds of communication is key. BEST MOMENTS ‘I've been on two stand up comedy courses. Not because I wanted to be a stand up comedian but I believe that comedians help people feel something emotionally far quicker than most other professions.' – Lee ‘For example for me it's more difficult for me to understand an English song because I'm French, buts it's easy to remember the melody of the music and the tone of the voice of the musician.' – Nicholas ‘They call me a voice designer because it's like design your voice, your communication, design your image. Voice designer, it's a nice word to express myself.' - Nicholas VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast          ABOUT THE HOST   For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD   You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jessie Inchauspé is on a mission to translate cutting-edge science into easy tips to help people improve their physical and mental health. She's the founder of the wildly popular Instagram account @GlucoseGoddess where she teaches tens of thousands of people about healthy food habits. Questions asked in the episode Why should we (the public) care about glucose? What are the tell-tale signs of consuming too much glucose? What strategies can we quickly use to combat spikes in glucose? https://180nutrition.com.au/   Stu (01:18): Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Jessie Inchauspe to the podcast. Jessie, how are you? Good morning. Jessie (01:26): Hi Stewart. I'm so good. How are you? Stu (01:29): Very good. Very good. Really, really excited to talk to you today. And as we were just talking off-camera, I mentioned that you've really added some bling, some pizazz to this world of glucose, which is fantastic because it's bringing it mainstream, more mainstream than I think it has ever been. But it opens up a whole realm of hacks tips, tricks, strategies for us to start to take control of our health, which I'm super excited about talking with you today. But first up, for all of our listeners that may not be familiar with you or your work, I'd love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, please. Jessie (02:10): Of course. I'm French, trained as a mathematician, then a biochemist, and I've been spending the past three years making the science of blood sugar or glucose accessible mainstream. And as you said, bling, I like thinking that I'm making the science stylish and accessible for people to use. I'm a scientific translator if you will. I take the latest scientific Studies and I turn them into very easy tips for everybody to apply. I started on Instagram. My Instagram is Glucose Goddess, and I just finished writing a book Glucose Revolution that is going to bring the stylish science to even more people, I hope. Stu (02:55): Fantastic. So clearly we've had the sugar message. Maybe there's some confusion there between people that are listening as well. So glucose, tell us about glucose. What is it? Why should we the public care about it?    

What you'll learn in this episode: Why the beauty of ancient and antique jewelry may not be evident at first, and why that makes them all the more interesting to Marc How ancient jewelry has been passed through generations of collectors What streets to visit for the best jewelry shopping in Paris How Marc sources jewels from antiquity, and why provenance is of the utmost importance  Why Marc chose to list the prices of his pieces in his boutique window display About Marc Auclert The grandson of an antique dealer, Marc Auclert has had a passion for antique jewelry and objects of curiosity from a young age. Having spent over 20 years working for some of the most prestigious jewelry houses worldwide, including De Beers and Chanel, he opened Maison Auclert in 2011. The boutique specializes in mounting museum-worthy ancient jewels as pieces of contemporary jewelry.  The works of art selected to be mounted are sourced from a broad range of periods, cultures and geographical regions. Each object is chosen for its beauty and rarity; each elegant mounting is designed to showcase, and not overwhelm, the objects' preciousness, color, patina, shape or symbolism. Designed to celebrate and enhance the singularity of each Antique work of art, every piece in the Maison Auclert collection is unique, hand-made and embellished by the artisans of the best contemporary workshops in Paris. Additional Resources: Website Instagram Photos Available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Bague camée Julia et Saphirs Roman Cameo Ring  White and black two-layered onyx cameo representing the bust to the right of Julia Mamaea, mother of Emperor Severe Alexander, Roman Art  of the 3rd century AD,  mounted on an 18K red gold ring with a surrounding of sapphires (total 1.39 carat).    BO Impression 4 Intailles Impression Intaglio Earrings 18K gold long earrings, set with a Burmese ruby (1.05 carat), an emerald (0.56 carat), 6 diamonds (0.63 carat) and 4 “Grand Tour” intaglios (19th century) in  amethyst, chalcedony and carnelian, and their impressions in gold   Bague Profil Hélios Helios Ring Oxidized silver ring with a cut-out that reveals the effigy of the god Helios on a gold stater from Rhodes of the 5th century B.C.   Bracelet Cuff Agathe Miel Agate Cuff Large cuff bracelet in 18K brushed gold set with 5 rhomboid-shaped agate necklace beads, known as "Medicine Beads" for their prophylactic power, Indo-Tibetan art of the 1st Millennium B.C..    Collier Intaille Magique Magical Intaglio Necklace Pendant set with a lacunary hematite «  magical » or gnostic intaglio engraved with the right part of a gnostic lion-head deity, the sliced winged-head of the Gorgon in the left hand, two  scarabs, Greek letters (ΑΓΒΑ for the magical incantation Abraxas, ΙΑω for the jewish god Yahwe, etc.), Egyptian scarabs and stars in the field, Egypto-roman Art from the 1st-3rd century A.D., a modern extrapolation of the missing part hand-engraved in 18K gold, mounted on a black lacquered chain.      Transcript: Thanks to jewelry designer Marc Auclert, you can wear a piece of jewelry history around your neck. At his Paris boutique Maison Auclert, Marc transforms jewels from antiquity into contemporary pieces, all while preserving the soul of the original jewel. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why ancient jewelry carries more emotion than contemporary pieces; how he finds jewels dating back to BC; and why the time it takes to appreciate antique jewelry is well worth it. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Marc Auclert, owner of Maison Auclert. After stints at some of the world's most prestigious auction and fashion houses and having lived all over the world, he now combines museum-quality antiquities with contemporary settings and fashions them into unique and wearable jewelry. Welcome back. So, people may be walking along, looking at everything glittering in all the windows, but they see your window and say, “Oh, this is really interesting” and come in? Does it stop them? How does that work? Marc: You can see that it puzzles them. They look at it, and you can see there's a big question mark, like, “What is that? It looks old, but it's not antique. Yes, there are antiques in the middle, but the mountings are definitely modern. The volumes are large.” You can see they have to use a few minutes to understand what's going on. I have to make sure the store is very well-lit and you can see inside very well. They see that there are lots of other things to discover. You need to be a bit courageous to press on the buzzer to be let in, but these people—I've seen many, many things. They press on the buzzer. They walk in and say, “What's going on here?” and very quickly, in two or three sentences, I explain to them that we take genuine antiques that we mount on modern mountings. These are one of a kind.  The other thing I've done which you'll probably find interesting, Sharon, is on the outside display, I've put the prices. Lots of friends have said to me, “Oh, I've talked about you to my friend. She knew exactly who you were, but she didn't go in your store because she said it was expensive.” I heard that several times. Because the pieces are original, people thought they were very expensive, whereas in fact, I'm not expensive in terms of money. Prices here go from $3,000 to $50,000 if you want it. It's lots of money, I understand, but compared to Place Vendome, these are not huge amounts. I even had a person who's quite important, I saw them at a dinner party and they said, “But Marc, you have nothing less than 50,000 euros,” and I said, “No, I actually have nothing above 50,000 euros.” That's when I understood that I need to make people understand what type of price position we're talking about; hence, I put the prices outside with explanations so people would understand. People have walked in much more since. Sharon: I know that's a big step. I can see what you mean when you say it takes courage to press the buzzer, because you think, “Oh my god, this is just too exclusive a place.” But if you know there's something that's possible within a budget, that you're not going break the bank, you go in. Marc: Exactly. Think of the youngsters. You're 35 years old. You've got a budget of $3,000 to $5,000, which is a lot of money. Pressing on the button of a high-end jeweler is super difficult. Pressing the button of any jeweler takes a bit of guts. By putting the prices out, they can see, “Oh, this cute little necklace is $2,800. Let me go and check it closer.” Once the person is inside, you make them feel very comfortable. That's part of the shopping experience. Then they understand that for their budget, there's some choice and they can get a wonderful gift. Sharon: Do people bring you their antiquities and say, “Can you do something with this?” Marc: I try to avoid that for several reasons. First of all, sometimes these antiques are fragile, and you only discover it when you mount them. When you mount them and break them, then it's a bore because you have to explain to someone that you broke their piece. When I break my own pieces, that's fine; that's my problem. That's another issue.  Also, it's because working on a custom order is very difficult. You have to come up with the designs, show the designs to the client, then they come up with reactions. It's a long, heavy process that sometimes can be very boring because clients have their own idea and you have your own ideas, and only mine are good, let's face it. When it's for inventory, I know exactly what I want to do with it, and that's it. It's my issue. When you're interacting with a client, it can be a very cumbersome process.  One of my best clients is American; she's a New Yorker. She buys from me, and she came into the store about a year ago and said, “Look, I've got these two things. Please mount them for me.” Obviously to that lady, I can't say no; that's for sure. We do work together and, as I know her well, it was rather easy. She was super happy with the result, but you take a risk because if the person doesn't know jewelry very well, if she doesn't know how to look at a drawing and understand it and read it, it is very difficult. You and I, if I show you a drawing of a piece of jewelry, you will understand what it will look like in reality, but lots of people don't read that well. When you submit the end result to them, they go, “Ah, really?” or, “Can you alter this and do this?” No, too late. It's done. So, it's dangerous. To answer your question, I try to avoid it, and I only do it with people I know well. Sharon: Custom orders to me are nightmares. Marc: Exactly. Sharon: I'm sure you make them happy in the end, but it's hard to read somebody's mind. Marc: Exactly, and people don't always say what they think because they're not always in tune with what they think. Instead of saying, “Oh my god, I've always dreamt of having the same ring as my grandmother, a ring that was lost.” O.K., that's easy. Show me a picture and we'll do something around that. Instead, they'll beat around the bush because they're not in tune with their inner thoughts. This is psychoanalysis. Sharon: For the most part, the things in your shop are things you've sourced yourself. Marc: Exactly. To end what we were saying about sourcing, I must add something very important. Now that I'm 10 years old, I've got my own network of suppliers. I've become friends with lots of them, which is wonderful. They continuously offer me things. They'll say, “I know you're into luster and vibrant colors and this, this and that. I thought of you for this Hellenistic intaglio. It's garnet. The polish is right. The subject is wonderful. Would you like that to mount as a ring?” Yes, because they understood what I'm looking for after 10 years. They make offers to me spontaneously, which is great. You can imagine this is wonderful. Sharon: What did you during Covid? How did that affect you? Marc: Nothing much. First of all, for many months, it was compulsory in France to be closed. The French government was extremely generous with businesses like mine being closed. We got some allowances that helped me pay for everything during those closed months, so thank you very much, government. On the other hand, nothing happened in terms of sales because I'm probably not good enough on the internet side of things. Those who did well are those who had e-commerce platforms or were very active on the internet side of things. I'm not. The question is, is my business the type that could have good sales on the internet?  I'm always surprised by the Instagram accounts and the reaction I get on them. I do make one or two sales a month thanks to Instagram. So, the fact that these are oldies but goodies doesn't mean they can't be sold on the internet. It's just me being a mature purveyor that's not in tune with the most modern things. So, that's definitely something I'm thinking of, and that's a result of the Covid period.  Sharon: You have a couple of sales a month through Instagram, and you also buy things you see. Marc: Yes, only from people I know well for the buying, but for the selling, definitely. It's mostly American clients. I even sold a piece that was $35,000 thanks to Instagram. It was a wonderful piece posted on Instagram. I got a nice word, “May I have some more information?” I said, “Yes, of course. Here's my email,” and we started exchanging and the lady purchased it. I was a bit surprised because you know I'm French; I'm traditional, but for her, it was certainly normal. When she received it, I said to myself, “I hope she enjoys it as a much as she thinks she will,” and she was thrilled with the piece. Sharon: I don't know what we all would have done without Instagram during Covid. I think a lot of jewelers had to scramble to get online and get up and running. Your Instagram is nice and you have some very nice pictures, and the fact that you sold them through Instagram is great.  Marc: It just proves to you that this is a new world and you'd better adapt to it. I'm giving a good thought to visibility, communication, e-commerce, all of these things. I may be a traditional jeweler, but it doesn't prevent me from being savvy and in tune with this time. Sharon: To me, that sounds like you do have an e-commerce platform. Are you saying you're thinking about doing more with your website? What do you mean? Marc: Yes, exactly. No, I'm not doing enough. I'm actually a bit lazy on that side of things, and there's much more to be done. I think if you want to be successful, you have to tackle these subjects, absolutely.  Sharon: It's a learning curve and it takes time. I've seen more and more on Instagram. I'm thinking of jewels, but I'm also thinking of shoes, where the website had nothing, but it was the Instagram account that gave all the information.  Marc: My communication agent, David, says to me, “Don't waste your time on your website. Who cares? Spend time on your Instagram. How much are you posting?” “Well, I don't know, once or twice every week.” “No, I think you should post twice a day.” I said, “Well, I don't have two posts a day.” He says, “Find them. You will.” What's interesting and what corroborates what you just said is that he says, “Don't waste your time on your website. Spend time on Instagram.” Interesting. Sharon: I am certainly not a techie, but it seems like websites have become secondary, almost. Marc: Exactly. That's what my communications agent would say. That's what he says, loud and clear. Sharon: You said that ancient and antique jewelry has a soul. What does that mean to you? Marc: It's very difficult to explain. You either feel it or don't feel it. If you don't feel it, you're not a client of mine, obviously. I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in ghosts, and I don't believe in the power of crystals or whatever. I'm really down to earth. My great grandparents were peasants, and that's what I am deep down. But I do feel that when jewelry has been worn thousands of years ago, appreciated, changed hands to hands, has seen good moments, bad moments, tragic moments, wonderful moments, it seems that they get impregnated with something that's beyond the intrinsic material. It can be a building; it can be a picture; it can be a piece of jewelry. There is something about antiques that holds stories. Once again, I'm not superstitious, but there is something. When you hold an intaglio that's 1st century A.D. and you know it's been worn by a Roman lady or a Greek or Egypto-Greek gentleman, there is something different than if the intaglio were cut 20 years ago. That's for sure. How, I can't explain it further than that. It's a vivid impression. Sharon: It's seen a lot. It's definitely seen a lot. Marc: It went from hands to hands to hands to arrive to today, where it arrives in my hands, and then I will do something to put it in another one's hands. It's like a long chain, which I think is very beautiful and very assuring in terms of constancy. It's very mathematical. Sharon: Have you looked at antique pieces or antiquities where somebody said, “This is from this century,” but you've looked at it and it seemed dead to you, like you felt there was no life? Marc: In my place, it's more aesthetic. For instance, today I was shown a very important intaglio that depicts a house. It was Hellenistic, 3rd or 2nd century B.C. Usually intaglios of that period depict gods and goddesses, princes, etc. Very rarely do they depict architecture, so these are super rare, very valuable, museum quality, museum worthy. But when I held it in my hand, I was like, “It says nothing to me. It's just a house on an intaglio.” I guess it was more the aesthetics that did not speak to me.  Sharon: I may be naïve in asking this, but the people who bring you these things, where do they find things from the 1st and 3rd centuries? They're not lying around on the ground.  Marc: They're not lying on the ground anymore, but don't forget that since the Renaissance, the 16th, 17th century, definitely 18th century and 19th century, there's been lots of digging in Italy and Europe. These pieces have been collected since the Renaissance, so you find them in jewelry cabinets. They could be coins; they could be intaglios or cameos; they could be naturalia. They could be all of these things you find.  There is the notion, “wunderkammern,” which is this German word saying that anyone who had a culture in the Renaissance would have had their cabinets full of wonders, wonderful, natural or man-made wonders. If you were anyone of rank, you had to show that you had culture and taste, and you would be a collector. So, these little babies have been collected since the Renaissance, and that's where we find them today, in big collections. These collections can hit the market, and they have done so since the 19th century. If you take the Marlborough gem collection, for instance, it was sold at auction at the end of the 19th century. That's how it works. That's the mechanic of the collection: it is assumed, dissembled at auction, reassembled by certain people, etc.  Sharon: I envision that you have a box somewhere in your shop where you collect things you may not have time to do something with right now, but you said, “Oh, this is really interesting. I'm going to hold onto this.” Marc: Correct, I have two things in the store. I have things that I've bought that I haven't mounted yet. I know exactly what I want to do with them, but I haven't mounted them yet because I don't want too many pieces in the collection. I have 80 pieces. That's enough; I don't need 120.  Secondly, I have my own private collection. Sometimes I see a piece and say, “I have to buy this and keep it. I've never seen that before. It's wonderful.” It's my own private collection. I own lots of jewelry myself and I never wear any jewelry. I've got probably 12 super rings with glyptic on them. You will never see me wearing a ring because it doesn't suit me, but I have the rings. Sharon: Do you wear some of the ancient stuff you've made? Marc: No. Sharon: Nothing? Marc: No. I love jewelry, but not on me. It doesn't work on me. I don't have the right hands. I don't have the physique, and I'm of this generation where men don't wear jewelry. You just wear a band and that's it. When I see those youngsters and they're carrying jewelry very, very well, they're having fun because it's a wonderful world. In my case, I'm too traditional; I already told you. I can live with that.  Sharon: It sounds like the jewelry you have is beautiful. Marc, thank you so much for talking with us today.  Marc: No, thank you for inviting me. That was super sweet. When are you coming to Paris? Sharon: In the next six months, I hope to get there. It's been a while, but who's gone anywhere, at least from over here? But I will stop in and say hello. Thank you so much. Marc: No, you don't stop and say hello. You come. You make an appointment and I'll invite you for drinks. Sharon: Well, I'm going to end the recording and we can talk about where we're going to go. Hold on one second. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

Going to the theater in Paris. Being an audience member like anyone else. Though it's obvious when you go to Broadway or London. I'm sure this is not obvious when you plan a visit to France. Why? Because of the language barrier.  This episode starts with a few lines from L'Avare, one of Molière's famous plays.  Then, we'll speak French ! Nowadays's French. And I'm sure that at the end of this episode you will feel the urge to go to the theater in Paris.  https://www.theatreinparis.com/   My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

2022 is a special year for us in France, because we are going to choose a new President of France! How is the election held? How does it work? Who are the main candidates? This what you are going to discover in this episode.  And in today's notes there will be a special focus on dates and on the elections' vocabulary. My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

Last Saturday afternoon, we had a few things to do in Paris before Micaela's trip to Italy with her school. The first thing and maybe the most important was a Covid test. Heureusement, she was negative. We got the result as Micaela and I were about to go into the Bo&Mie, one of the very good bakeries in Paris.  In today's notes, there is a special focus on buying breads and viennoiseries at the bakery.    My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

In less than two weeks time, on the 7 and the 8 of February, Felica has to take an exam : a mock test of the Brevet des collèges. The Brevet des collèges is like the baccalauréat but for younger students. It ends the college time. She needs to revise the lessons done from September to now. The real exam will take place in June. But no worries, if you fail at the stage, you still can access the lycée.  With the transcript of this episode, you get photos, explanations and today a special focus on the learning vocabulary ! My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

Be prepared, today Cultivate Your French takes you to a journey into the past. My friend Claire is an historian. She works at the INJS, a school for deaf people. Well the first school in the word for deaf young people, created in the 17th century by l'abbé de l'Epée. Her job at the INJS school is archivist of the ancient library. Recently, one of her colleagues asked her to find the oldest book of the library. It appeared to be a book published in 1514. Claire was really curious about this book so she looked on the BNF catalogue (National Library of France)  and found a similar copy. She asked for an appointment and went to the BNF to have a look and compare the two copies, hers and the BNF one. They appeared to be the same. One detail though was different : the date of publication. The BNF copy had been published on March the 14th of 1500. This date means something. But what ? This is what you are going to discover in today's episode.  With the transcript of this episode, you get photos, explanations and today a special focus on the pronoun « en ».  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

This is a catch-up version of James O'Brien's Mystery Hour. To join the game call: 0345 60 60 973, Thursdays at 12PM

Bonne année à tous! Je vous souhaite une très belle et heureuse année 2022!  I wish you to keep that sparkle of French in your life and to live nice French moments in 2022.  On the 2nd of January, my friend Isabelle invited me to have a walk with her husband and her in Meudon. This is where we usually go with our nordic walk group.  Thierry had the idea to walk in a part of the forest where we don't usually go with our coach. It was a nice day. We took some nice pictures, we saw a young woman on a golden horse and we suddenly landed on a road.  In today's notes : special focus on indirect object pronouns.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

The week was rather calm for us because the girls had a lot of homework to do. Pietro was supposed to be on holidays, but he had to go to work because one of his colleague had a sprain.  But on Tuesday evening I found myself alone at home. What did I do? Something I haven't done for years!  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

I hope you are well and happy. Tonight, it's the réveillon de Noël, Christmas Eve Dinner. The day is very busy for us : there are many things to prepare for tonight and tomorrow.  You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast, ONE slow french episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

My friend Anne-Laure told me about the nice leather cover for notebooks that she had bought at Louise Carmen.When I saw it, I found it very nice, practical and above all well designed. It had all the details that notebooks lovers are looking for.  I contacted Nathalie Valmary, who created Louise Carmen, and she agreed to talk about her notebooks for the podcast.  This is a section of the interview. I've chosen specifically this part because Nathalie Valmary tells the story of her first leather cover. She had the idea during the trip around the world she did with her husband and their two daughters. It's important to know how to tell a story in French, it's part of the conversation.  You can imagine Anne-Laure and I on the first floor of the boutique located in one of the famous passages parisiens, le passage du Grand-Cerf, where time is slightly different and the atmosphere so unique.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast, ONE slow french episode every week. I hope you are well and happy. My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. All the information about the transcript, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com As many students, my three girls have homework to do during the holidays. Sometimes it's hard to find the motivation when there are so many things you wish to do. But what will they remember from these holidays? I hope it will be the good moments. 

We are on holidays in Jura. Last sunday, as you may know, it was Halloween. It's becoming popular in France. And, I think, this year, a lot of people were expecting the children to knock at their door. Our three daughters were invited to join the two children of our owners for the Halloween walk in the village at night. First, Micaela didn't want to go, but we convinced her to go : « Allez, Micaela, vas-y! ». I recorded the girls as they came back.  You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

The episode that you are going to hear today was written in September 2013. I read a few days ago, as I was searching for conjugation examples for the advanced French podcast One Thing In A French Day. I didn't remember that little adventure and found it funny. That day, I was searching for a big one litter bottle at Le vieux campeur. This is a famous shop for camping equipment. In Paris. It's also famous because, it's not one shop but a maybe 5 or 6 different shops in the same neighbor hood. Each shop has its speciality, backpack, tents, ustensils, etc.  Unfortunately, we lost the bottle last year.  You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

When we were travelling to Brittany, I heard on the radio Gaspard Koening. This philosopher was talking about his trip from Bordeaux to Rome with his horse Destinada. He followed the steps of a colleague from an other time : Michel de Montaigne.  As Montaigne did, he kept a travel diary then he published a book out of it.  Later that same day, we entered a nice bookshop in Paimpol where I found that very book « Notre vagabonde liberté ». I bought it and started to read it almost right away. I'm still reading it and as I was reading it, I met an acquaintance. Yes !     You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com A long time ago, I used to tell you about our Wednesdays. The girls didn't go to school on Wednesday mornings at that time. We used to go shopping at our local organic shop, La Biocoop. I remember Micaela walking and holding at the same time the double stroller in which Felicia and Lisa were sitting.  Our Wednesdays are very different now. They are more school and music related! 

Pietro and I went to Brittany last week-end. We were invited to one of my kung-fu friend's wedding, Ophélie. In the morning, there was the « mariage civil » at the mairie; Then, later in the afternoon we arrived at the party that was taken place in a typical breton manoir. It was a rainy day, the photos with the family and friends were often interrupted by the rain. Finally, Ophelie threw her bride's bouquet. Threw, well not exactly…   You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

A few weeks ago, during the summer, my friend Lorena and I went to Versailles. We were given the permission to record for the podcast in the gardens. Maybe one day, we will get it to record in the castle itself.  We went to Versailles by train, it's 30 minutes away from Gare Saint-Lazare.  Did Louis XIV make the most of the gardens? This is the question I asked Lorena.  You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

Have you heard about the Arc de triomphe being wrapped in silvery blue fabric?  It's a temporary artwork from the artists (now dead) Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  The Arc de triomphe as we usually see it disappeared under pleated fabric and red ropes. The artwork will be dismantled on October 3rd. On a sunny afternoon, I went there to have a look at this artwork. It's strange. I don't know yet what to think about it. The Arc de triomphe is a monument mainly related to wars, so maybe it's like a pause in its history and the chance to see it differently.  This episode is recorded on the spot! You can hear the furious traffic of this enormous roundabout that is La place Charles de Gaulle where is located the Arc de triomphe.  I also tell you about how the press reacted in France about this wrapping! My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. This week, I answer to the following question : how to work your French with Cultivate Your French podcast?  The podcast is not a class or a lesson, it's like an audio blog in French. I share with you a small slice of my Life in France. The aim is to keep up with your comprehension of the French language or to simply improve it. Cultivate Your French is half way through your textbook and France! But the podcast can also be a very good tool to work on your French. In this episode I share with you 5 tips to work on your French with the podcast.  This episode is longer than usual and is dense on the subject of learning. I will read the text to you slowly, one time. 

Yes, this is La rentrée. My three girls are back to school, but as they are in lycée and collège their timetable changes from day to day. When they leave in the morning, they say « A tout à l'heure Maman! ». I have to quickly ask « A quelle heure? ». Sometimes it's one hour later, sometimes 3 hours later, etc.  Or they might not leave at all in the morning. For example, Lisa doesn't go to the collège on Monday mornings.  So, last Monday, she came with me to do some shopping at Monoprix. This is where we met La vieille dame qui faisait ses courses.  You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

Last week, I went to Nathalie Iris's bookshop in La Garenne-Colombes. This is close to where we live.  Nathalie also regularly presents books on TV in the show Télématin. She's also very active in her bookshop where there are often book signatures with famous authors. We met during the first confinement and since then, to our delight, she talks about books on the podcast One Thing In A French Day.  We met last week to talk about « la rentrée littéraire ». This is a big event in France and this is the subject of today's podcast.  I'm sure you are going to enjoy meeting with Nathalie in this episode. Don't you think that we can hear her smiling in her voice. You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

La Défense is a big business district located west of Paris. It's not far from where I live. It's only 4 minutes by train. And this is where I was on Monday afternoon. I had taken the girls to the cinema inside the enormous shopping centre. I had two hours to spare so I decided to record this episode right at the foot of the Grande Arche, the building that ends the « axe historique » of Paris. Then I walked and took photos of the different works of art that I had just mentioned in the episode. Including the statue of La Défense by Barrias which gave its name to the district. It  was erected in 1883 to the glory of the French soldiers of the 1870 war with Prussia.   You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

You are listening to Cultivate Your French podcast One Slow French episode every week.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com Last week-end, the weather was beautiful and I felt the urge to go to Dieppe's market to buy some good things to eat and spend a nice day by the sea. The five of us woke up early, took a quick breakfast and took our place into the car.  But before telling you more about this, here is the answer to the riddle.  We were looking for a person, someone who was very serious and dark, but with an intense expression. Probably a woman. Someone who I mentioned in a previous podcast who became owner of a place by the river Cher. Ah, the place could be the Château de Chenonceau. Then, Diane de Poitiers or Catherine de Medicis? Well, Catherine de Medicis painted by François Clouet in her dark clothes. The painting is taking you by surprise on a narrow wall when you turn to enter a small corridor in one the of the Carnavalet' rooms. No, she's not smilling, not even looking at us, but I think there is a kind of pride in her face. Don't you think?

My daughters, Micaela, Felicia and I are recording this episode in Paris. We are at the Musée Carnavalet for a visit. Have you ever heard of this Museum? It's the museum of the History of Paris. it belongs to the city of Paris and it's free to visit. It has a wonderful collection of paintings and objects from the very old times of Paris to nowadays.  It's located in the heart of the Marais in two hôtels particiuliers. One of them belonged to the famous writer of letters,  Madame de Sévigné.  I have been to this museum several times before its renovation. It reopened in May 2021, we are very happy to visit it today.  Today's text is a riddle. Yes, you have to find something that can be seen in the Musée de Carnavalet.  You can send me your answer to the riddle by Instagram, by email or by SpeakPipe. https://www.speakpipe.com/OneThingInAFrenchDay   My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have.  All the information about the transcript,notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

Last week,  on Thursday, the weather was perfect for a day trip to Les Rousses, the largest ski resort of the Jura. Have you ever heard of the Jura? This region is situated above the Alps, going North. It gave its name to the Jurassic period. It was a tropical region a long long time ago, with palm trees and warm seas. This is where we are spending our holidays. We love this region. Maybe have you heard of its famous cheeses : Comté, Morbier, bleu de Gex? Well, you might hear some cows in this episode!  As I did last week, I record this episode in the garden of the house we've rented for two weeks. I hope it won't rain.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

Since last week, we are on holidays and the podcast takes you with us. I'm recording this episode in the garden of our new home for two weeks.  Our holidays started in the Loire Valley where we had a walk in the the gardens of the castle of Chenonceau by night. This is what I told you last week. A few days later, we came back to Chenonceau to visit both the castle, where every room is outstanding, and the gardens .  Our week in the Loire Valley ended with the visit of the castle of Montpoupon. A Renaissance castle where the owners (since 300 years) are still living. We loved it because the rooms are largely decorated with many objects of everyday life from the 16th century to the early 20th century. By the end of the week, it was time to go to Felicia's concert in Pontlevoy where she was staying for a baroque music camp.    My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

We are on holidays! And I'm happy to share a few moments with you. I'm recording this episode in the garden of the house we've rented. This week we are in the Loire Valley region. I was dreaming to go back to Chenonceau, one the beautiful Loire Valley castles, since 2013. Chenonceau is a small Renaissance castle mainly built in the sixteenth century that the king Henri II offered to his very good friend Diane de Poitiers. When he died, his wife Catherine de Medicis took it back for herself and managed France from there. Mary Stuart was married to one of his son, Henri III and also lived in Chenonceau. This place is full of history! Micaela was surprised because she's reading La princesse de Clèves written in the 17th century by Madame de La Fayette. The story takes places at Henri II's court and Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medicis are part of the story. I've seen in the Castle shop that there is an English version of this book published by Penguin Books. Have you read it? My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

These few weeks in Paris before going back to school were very intense. I felt an urge to visit as many places as we could. We visited Le Louvre, we went to La Sainte-Chapelle as Claire told us that it was wonderful to see the light through the stained glass windows, we visited the Musée Bourdelle (a very nice place for a calm moment in Paris) and one morning I suggested that we could go to the Tour Eiffel. The girls were a little bit tired of this Paris craziness, but Alice, Lisa's friend who was we us for the day, was on my side. Be ready for an escape, today's episode takes you to the Tour Eiffel! My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

Last saturday, I went to Paris with Micaela. She was invited to her best friend's end of the year music exam, Anna. Anna was playing piano and singing. The audition took place in the cité internationale universitaire in the 14th arrondissement. The cité was built in the 1920s to accomodate foreign students. It's a lovely place with big buildings. I left Micaela, I went to Saint-Michel for a walk and came back home. The train I took was crouded because there are works on the line and fewer trains. Near to me, two young women were talking very loud. I couldn't do anything else than listen to them.  What were they talking about ? This what you are going to hear in this episode. I promise I will try not to talk as loud as them.    My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

Maybe you need a reason to go to Dehillerin and maybe you could find this reason in Hélène Luzin's latest book : 50 gâteaux de grands pâtissiers qu'il faut avoir goûté une fois dans sa vie. Nathalie Iris, the bookseller at La Garenne-Colombes, invited Hélène Luzin for a signing session. When I read the news, I went to buy a copy at the bookshop. The book is very clever. Each chef pâtissiers gives the recipe of it's best cake, but there is also an interview with the chef. This is the part that I find very interesting because it gives you the story of each pâtissier and of his recipe, it tells you about his personality and it's easy to read.  At the end of the book, there are two pages to collect the signature of each chef.  Nicolas Bernardé is a Meilleur Ouvrier de France and his shop is very close to Nathalie's bookshop. He is also in Hélène Luzin's book for his famous « Gâteau du samedi ». So the day Hélène Luzin was invited, he came to the bookshop and offered us some chocolates.  In this episode, you are going to hear Hélène Luzin talking about what she enjoyed when she wrote the book.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006. All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

One sunny morning of June, Claire, the viola da gamba player, and I headed to Paris and went to Dehillerin. She thought that it would be nice for you, listeners, to discover this very unique shop in Paris. The shop was founded two hundred years ago by Eugene Dehillerin and it provides cookware to professional cooks or to anyone who enjoys cooking. The shop is still in the family, Eric Dehillerin is now the manager and I had the opportunity to talk with him. The shop is in Les Halles neighbourhood because this is where, before 1970, that the restaurant owners would buy their fresh food at the central market, Les Halles, and their cookware . When the market of Les Halles moved to Rungis in the south of Paris, the Dehillerin family elected to stay in the centre of Paris. The shop has its own website, but they intonially kept the old style wood racks so you might be a little bit confused : have you time travelled?  In today's episode you are going to hear a section of the recording with Eric Dehillerin. And in the notes available with the transcript, I give you some useful sentences to use in a shop.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

Last week, I read you some useful sentences when you arrive in France or in Paris. Today, is a special episode about buying some bread at the boulangerie. It has been recorded in a parisian bakery Painâme, in the 11th arrondissement, rue Oberkampf with Camila and Pierre, the charming owners. A big merci to them for taking the time do record this dialogue.  In their bakery you will find very good bread of course, viennoiseries and some increadible sandwiches with home made mayonnaise, roasted mushrooms, caramelized onions and nicely baked bread. Do not hesitate to say hello if you come. Camila and Pierre will be very happy to take your order in French.  My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com  

My name is Laetitia, I'm French, I live just outside Paris and I share with you a small slice of my daily life here in France. I have also been running the podcast One Thing In A French Day since 2006 All the information about the transcripts, notes and photos is available at www.cultivateyourfrench.com You know that Cultivate Your French is the younger brother of One Thing In A French Day. Well, this older brother is celebrating this week 2000 episodes. The podcast will be a live podcast on Saturday June 12 th. There is a theme for this celebration, a listener gave me the idea to create a Survival French guide. Listeners sent me many suggestions of situations to develop in the podcast.  I thought that you might be interested too. So today's episode is a mini survival French guide. Do not hesitate to repeat the sentences aloud!  If you wish to attend the live podcast, you are warmly welcome. All the information is on the blog of the podcast at www.onethinginafrenchday.com Please, it would be very sympa if you could rate this podcast on your podcast app. Un grand merci. 

Hello. I'm French and American, born in the mid-seventies, in April. I was raised in the forest, and spent my childhood either running wild in the woods of Picardie or taking planes to JFK to visit my grandmother. I also played a lot of piano. At that time, I  wanted to be in a musical, but instead I studied political science at Sciences-Po and business at HEC, in Paris. And started a life-long addiction to collecting (and not always reading) books.This led me to work in the food industry, at Unilever. I got to eat ice cream every single day for 7 years. Finally, one day, in the middle of a green stairwell, I decided I was in a rut and needed to spice things up. I had always loved to write, so I became a freelance editor and writer. I soon hooked up with My Little Paris and contributed to unveiling rip-off lingerie. I took up singing and continued to cross the ocean.Along the way, I did a lot of reading and learning and listening to people and have enjoyed growing (up) tremendously.In the future, I'd love to produce a musical with Benjamin Millepied; or create an installation at the MOMA with people who are good at it, but for some reason would ask me to help them; or write a book just half as (sigh) as Just Kids. Or, you know, just to keep growing, loving (a bearded man) and creating would be ok too.http://www.catherinetaret.com/Book: "It's never too late to bloom": bit.ly/itsnevertoolatebookSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/join/Laviecreative)

David Azar is Founder and CEO of Outsmart Labs, a digital marketing agency focused on riding new trends and platforms to drive more traffic, more visibility, and more online conversions. His agency works with clients to build a 360 strategy to drive those conversions in sales, traffic, and newsletter signups. David says, “Digital marketing changes so fast that it's about whoever adapts faster and whoever finds the opportunities in the market.”  The agency provides traditional digital marketing services -- Google strategies, Facebook, traditional social media strategies – but likes the advantage of being an “early adopter” of the newest trends. Where to be now, according to David? TikTok – the place where kids dance. Or not. In this interview, David describes the phenomenal growth of TikTok. The number of U.S. users grew from 27 million in July 2019 to 40 million in January 2020, and then to 65 million at the beginning of April, with 85 million users by mid-June. About 1 in 4 people in this country use TikTok, many of whom are “very involved,” to wit, 34% of TikTok users actively produce content.  David explains that TikTok's paid ads platform can cost over $50,000 a month. On the self-serve side, the budget can start as low as $1. TikTok has specific rules about content, posting, and addressing the audience, along with a powerful editing app. Videos created for Instagram won't work on TikTok.  David says now is the time for smaller brands to gain TikTok followers and community. The cost on TikTok is one-tenth that of Instagram. Big brand demand for influencers is low, so the spend on these initiators will produce a better ROI than an equivalent spend on TikTok ads. This cost is only going to go up, David warns. Today's users will only pay a fraction of what they will have to pay in a year to “get the same audience and the same followers.” The current TikTok algorithm promotes good content and makes it extremely easy to go viral. That, David says, will probably change. TikTok usually starts with a challenge. Someone responds to that challenge. The greater the number of people who respond, the better the chance that challenge will reach the “For You page “where everyone's going to see it and participate in that challenge.” Outsmart Labs partners with initiators who have up to a million followers to create concepts for its client brands. It then develops a first activation, one that will attract a lot of followers and eventually take the brand to the For You Page and “very large exposure.” Outsmart Lab clients have seen great ROIs on TikTok activation campaigns over the past year. Other areas of opportunity David discusses in this interview are local SEO and programmatic advertising. In regards to local SEO, David has found that close to 96% of retail establishments don't do anything to develop local SEO. Yet, many customers will look for a company offering a specific product or service in their community. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has impacted this “local market opportunity” for many businesses. But the situation also presents an opportunity for companies to rethink their websites and their business models. Programmatic advertising tracks customers from their cell phone locations and pushes strategic advertisements to these phones based on their location. Covid-19 presents an opportunity for companies to rethink their websites and their business models.  David can be reached at his company's website at https://outsmartlabs.com/. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm excited to be joined today by David Azar, Founder and CEO at Outsmart Labs based in Miami, Florida. Welcome to the podcast, David. DAVID: Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you tell us about Outsmart Labs? Many firms have a superpower, so what is yours?  DAVID: That's a great question, great way to put it. I think our superpower is definitely our team. I think the team that we have together is what makes all of our campaigns very successful. At Outsmart Labs, we focus very highly on new trends and new platforms. First, to introduce what Outsmart Labs is, we help clients with having more traffic, more visibility, and more conversions online, and we really build a 360 strategy in order to drive those conversions, whether those are sales, whether that's traffic, newsletter signups. I think the team we have is a team that's very hungry. We are at the forefront of trends. We were actually one of Google's top agencies, rising agencies, which really allowed us to have access to a lot of data. We're not scared of trying new platforms. For example, right now, what we've been doing over the last year, which we've been seeing really great ROIs on, is TikTok. TikTok activation campaigns. I think what clients like is the mix of finding traditional marketing, whether it is Google strategies, Facebook, traditional social media strategies, and also inputting some newer platforms. At the end of the day, digital marketing changes so fast that it's about whoever adapts faster and whoever finds the opportunities in the market. I think our clients like that in us, understanding that some of the things might not work, some might work, but overall the strategy is going to be a very good strategy in order to scale. ROB: Excellent. It sounds like from your first introduction, you are very results-focused. How do you align a channel like TikTok – what do good results look like on that channel? Are you looking primarily at brand impressions, or is there a deeper level you can go to with a campaign there? DAVID: Great question. I think I mentioned what's really important now n digital marketing is not just doing one platform; it's really the 360 approach. Think of yourself whenever you're online and you're shopping for something. Most likely, if you see an ad for something you're interested in, you'll click it, but most likely you won't convert that first time. So over time, the more you're going to be seeing that ad, the more likely you'll say, “Okay, now I'll take the time to convert.” TikTok actually has a great opportunity at the moment. Even though it's been seeing humongous growth – and clients always tell me, whenever I offer them to go on TikTok and I go, “You guys should go on TikTok,” they tell me, “But I don't understand. TikTok is just kids that dance. I don't understand why that's my market.” This is when we tell them the growth of TikTok over the last year. They had 27 million users in July of last year, 40 million in January – and I'm talking in the U.S. – 65 million in the beginning of April, and on June 15th they had 85 million users. So, 85 million users means that now 1 person out of 4, almost, in the U.S. has a TikTok account, so pretty much anyone. It's all about finding the right way of – the way you're going to be marketing your product. It's not about just doing dance. It's about finding your core values and creating it in a creative way. At the moment, that we're at right now, it's a huge opportunity because the TikTok algorithm works a certain way where it's actually very “easy” to go viral on TikTok, and the algorithm really promotes good content. To answer your question of what a good ROI on TikTok looks like, it depends on what the client is. Depends on the number of activations they're going to be doing on TikTok. But I think that right now, what brands should really focus on is gaining followers and gaining a community on TikTok. As you know with Facebook, Instagram, and other different platforms, the organic reach goes lower and lower as time goes by and as more users are using the platform. We are at a time with TikTok where they haven't changed their algorithm yet, and so far, if you do a good video and you make it to the For You page, pretty much anyone with the right center of interest is going to see your video. The way we look at it is not only do we do organic content for clients, where we're going to be creating videos for the clients, but in order to have quicker results, it's about doing activations with influencers – what we call initiators for TikTok. I don't know how familiar you are with TikTok. I don't know if you wanted me to talk to you about how the trend works to get to the For You page. But usually you want to have a challenge, and then someone's going to do the challenge, and the more people do the challenge, the more likely your challenge will get to the For You page where everyone's going to see it and participate in that challenge. In order to ensure that the challenge is going to make it to the For You page where everyone is going to see your challenge and you're going to have a huge amount of exposure, we actually partner with large initiators and we come up with the concept of whatever the client wants. They tell me, for example, if it's a cosmetic company, “We want to promote our skincare line. We want to showcase it to as many people as possible.” So, we're going to come up with a creative concept. For example, there's a trend that works really well, which you've probably seen, which is people have all these cosmetic products and they act as if they're DJing, and the lights go on and off and you're pretending you're DJing with cosmetic products. Everyone was redoing it, and you can get a lot of followers and people exposed to your brand by doing that. So, we actually partner with initiators that have a million or up followers, and then we work with them in creating the concepts. We have a general idea, we work with them and say, “This is the hashtag challenge that we want to create.” They help us do it, and then they launch the activation with us. Because they have such a large following – and 34% of people on TikTok are active content creators, meaning people do actually want to create content on TikTok because it's kind of the whole goal of TikTok. So once those large initiators create this first activation, then as you see it, you want to participate, and little by little we ensure that brands go to the For You page and get a very large exposure. It's really a tenth of the price of Instagram. Budgets are significant for a small business, but for larger businesses, it's not that much – especially when you're looking at the reach you can have. A TikTok campaign right now, activation ranges between $10,000 and $20,000 for an activation, but you're going to be reaching around – depending on how well the campaign performs – 10 million to maybe 30 million views, people watching your content. This is incomparable to any other metrics. The reason I was saying – you were asking what the superpower of Outsmart Labs is; it's really seeing those opportunities in the moments they're there, because in 6 months from now, the algorithm is going to change. In 6 months, maybe 3 months, 4 months, we don't know when they're going to change it, but that opportunity, as great as TikTok is still going to be, it's probably not going to be as great as it is now. TikTok is going to have to change the algorithm, just like Facebook did before, just like Instagram did before, because they have to make sure the content they're showing is quality content. Because obviously, they make money by showcasing a large number of pages, and the more pages users watch, the more the platform makes money. So, they want to make sure people stay on the platform. That algorithm is for sure going to change. There hasn't been an announcement by TikTok; it's just knowing how digital works. But I think right now is really the time where brands need to go on TikTok. Also, a lot of large brands at the moment – we have a variety of clients, some very large international groups, and every time we pitch TikTok to them – it's changing now in the last month, but originally for the last year, it's always been, “We really like TikTok. We see what's going on on TikTok, but on a global level, we haven't decided how we feel about TikTok.” This is where I think a lot of smaller brands have such a big opportunity, because at the moment, TikTok isn't really crowded by the biggest brands. Except if you're the NBA or brands that are more talking to a Gen Z audience, which already got onto the trend. The other bigger ones haven't. So, if you're a smaller brand, it's really the time for you to take it upon yourself to go on the campaign. I actually have another example of showing how important it is to get on the platform early. We have this client – I can't name it, but it's a large high-end fashion brand. Family business. Not one of the largest ones you can think of, but fairly known in the world of fashion. I was talking to them, pitching them TikTok, and the person in charge of marketing is about 32 years old. I was telling him why he should get on TikTok now, before everyone gets on it, and he told me, “You're right, David. I definitely see that because as a brand, I was lucky that I was in the U.S. when Instagram launched, and I told our founder to create an Instagram account for our brand, and within one year we gained 500,000 followers.” In the last 10 years, they only gained 75,000 followers because the algorithm changed. At the beginning of Instagram, it was much easier to push your organic content. Same thing with TikTok. Whoever's going to be able to take advantage of TikTok now, they're going to pay a fraction of the cost they'll pay in a year to get the same audience and the same followers. I don't want to make the whole talk about TikTok and bore you with just TikTok, but it's definitely a fascinating platform. Digital is so fascinating anyway. Every month or two or three, there's something different where there are opportunities to be seen. It's just about finding a way to adapt your brand values and your message to that audience. ROB: Definitely. Even though it's been very focused on TikTok for a moment, I think it underpins even the name of the brand, Outsmart Labs. It seems like we're in this moment of this TikTok channel that you mentioned. Instagram's been through it, Facebook's been through it. Even Google, from a search engine optimization perspective, has been through it. I think two things were true. One is that the algorithm was at a point where there were true legitimate tips and tricks that work and help you rank that you can actually know and, to an extent, master or be very good at. The other one – I'm not entirely sure, but I think you may have implied – essentially, this is a really good organic marketing channel, whereas – I don't even know; are you doing paid on TikTok? Or is the opportunity on the organic side so immense that it's worth going deeper there? DAVID: It really depends what kind of brand you are. The TikTok paid ads platform is fairly expensive. Usually it's over $50,000 a month in spend, so it's not accessible to everyone. They opened the self-serve on TikTok, which you can start at $1 or whatever budget you want to put in, so we do use that as well. The thing is, usually clients want to have fast results. Because influencers right now are not as in demand by all the big brands and haven't had those large contracts, at the moment, spending $1,000 on TikTok ads versus $1,000 on getting more initiators, I think at the moment it's better to go with the initiators. But I think in 3 months it's going to be something different, and most likely you're going to see a big rise – and that's also why I'm sure the algorithm is going to change, because they can't let that happen because that's how they monetize and make a dollar on an initiator doing something on TikTok. So, it's a mix of both, but when you talk organic, you definitely should. Especially if you're a brand that's a little popular where you have a market that knows you. People are just looking for people on TikTok. I think the DJ Khaled example is a great example with what he did with Snapchat. I don't know if he was still very popular at the time – I don't know if you know what happened. He got lost on his jet ski in Miami and started saying, “I'm lost in Miami” on Snapchat when Snapchat just started. Everyone picked up on it and helped him to find his way. Then over the course of the year, he became the most popular person on Snapchat and now has the success and popularity that we know he has. So, it's about taking it at the moment and finding the right video. The organic does work really well, and people are looking for those brands. If you look at a lot of the brands that don't create any content at the moment, but they're a little famous, they have followers already on their account even though no one's really posting anything. So, I think doing some organic content is definitely great just because the algorithm works so well. If you do a good video – the thing is, you have to spend time in creating videos specifically for TikTok. Whatever you share on Instagram is just not going to make it to TikTok. TikTok has its rules, has its way of posting, its way of addressing the audience. The editing app is quite incredible in TikTok. So, you need to utilize all of that to make it work. It's a mix of everything. In order to have quick results, definitely activation with influencers is number one because you definitely see a switch right away. But obviously if you're going to be investing in the platform, you definitely want to think of also organic content and what you're going to be producing. A great tip I give clients that are scared and saying, “I don't know what I'm going to be posting if I do organic content” – first of all, that's what we do, so usually we take care of it. But other than that, the whole concept of TikTok is they suggest challenges and trends that they want people to do. Sometimes when you're a big brand or you're a little famous, if you just find a creative way to participate in a challenge, it gives you a chance of going viral. There's not that much creativity that goes into it because you know the trend and the kind of video that you need to create. ROB: Wow. It's very clear you are, as best I can tell, completely up-to-date on the now. Let's rewind a little bit, though, to the very beginning. What is the origin story of Outsmart Labs? What got you started in this business? DAVID: Actually, it started very early. I was 16 years old. Before even Outsmart Labs, just digital marketing and my love for digital marketing and the possibilities that it offers. When I was 16 years old, I was put on a project. We created the first professional sports team affiliate marketing website. It was for the team – I'm French; I'm from Paris, so it was the team of Paris. We had sponsors like Nike, a kayak company of France, large car companies. We went to the sponsors, they wanted more exposure, and we told them, “Why don't you give us discounts, and whenever a fan goes through our website and goes through to your page from our website, they'll get discounts from Nike, or on kayaks.” During that whole project, I was in love with how, as long as you think it, you can reproduce it. Then I fell in love with digital marketing, went to school at University of Miami, got very lucky that it was the beginning of Facebook and Twitter, so I got to see that grow. I started an event company when I was in school. All of our promotion was done through Facebook, and we had about 800 students come to our events every time, so I saw the power that Facebook had. Basically, a free tool was giving me the strength that a paid tool would give me. I always thought that was super interesting. If you think smartly, you technically don't necessarily need to spend a lot to get a lot. Doesn't mean you don't spend a lot of time, but in terms of actual dollars spent, it doesn't have to be that much. Then as time grew, I worked for a large firm called Amadeus, which is the reservation system of every plane ticket that you book. They didn't have a social media presence at the time or Facebook, so I did it for them. It was a fascinating project. I was like, “You know what? I'm doing this for all those different clients; why don't I just create my own agency and take it from there? I know there's a lot of people that don't know how even Facebook works or are new to the trends, so why don't I help them?” We started Outsmart Labs 9 years ago now, and it's been growing ever since. We have clients in a lot of different industries. What I really love – I personally love innovation. I personally love thinking big picture, thinking how to beat the system in ways like you were mentioning before, the secrets that are not really told, but that you guess from Google, but also applying the rules and putting it all together and making it work. So that's what we've been doing. We've been working with clients in hospitality, in travel, in luxury, even in mental health. I really love thinking about a lot of different industries. A lot of clients ask us, “But you've never worked in that industry. Is that a problem? I'd rather have an expert in whatever space,” and I tell them all the time, honestly, if someone is knowledgeable about digital marketing, there are so many tools out there that allow you to analyze all the competitors, analyze what they're buying, what they're doing, what kind of ads, what wording they're using, so it's almost not even that important. It's even almost better to use an agency that maybe doesn't have as much experience in the specific industry because in order to get to that level, they're going to have to do so much more research. Because it's changing so fast, that research is going to pay off into a smarter strategy than whoever did it a year from today. That's basically how Outsmart started and the logic and what I love personally about digital marketing, and I think everyone on the team is similar to that. ROB: That's really excellent. If you look out a little bit even beyond now – TikTok rose, it's working; there's probably some other platforms you've worked on – Instagram, there's probably some stuff you can do even on Facebook. But what are the next potential frontiers that you see coming? Are there maybe two or three new opportunities you see emerging that maybe it's just experimental budget for your clients now, or maybe it's already humming for a very select subset of them, but we might be thinking a little bit more about in 6-12 months? DAVID: One opportunity that I see that's a really big opportunity – unfortunately, because of the current situation of COVID and physical retail not being as open as it was prior, it might not be as big of an opportunity as it should be, but in a world where there's no COVID or in places where it's less affected by COVID and stores are open, local SEO is something that I see overperforming. It's something that not a lot of people put a lot of effort in. If you want a little definition of what local SEO is, it's how you get your retail business, your physical business, to show up on Google whenever someone makes a search query under which your business should show up. It's showing the closer local retails, whether retail or hospitals or mental health institutions or insurance companies or cosmetic stores or whatever that is. Local SEO is not necessarily very difficult to do in terms of what needs to be done; it's just very time-consuming. Because Google and all of those platforms create data, people tend to assume that because they're finding their business on Google or when they google their name, automatically they're registered within all the local directories within Google, within Facebook, within all of those platforms, which is actually not true. It's just a crawler doing it. So, actually spending a bit of time on local SEO – and about 96% of retail don't do anything on local SEO. I'm talking even the largest brands that we work with. Some of them tell me, “Everyone knows my brand. There's no point in me working on local SEO.” Sometimes if someone types in “cosmetic store near me,” you want that store to show up first versus a competitor. So, I think that's definitely a trend that I've been seeing. It's not necessarily a trend that's just now. It's been two years where no one's getting on that, and I really think it's working really well. Another thing that I would say – real-time bidding, programmatic advertising, definitely something we see also. Very efficient. Being able to target people based on their location, historical location or actual location, allows you to target and trigger a message very customized to each audience. Not necessarily something very new, and not necessarily something everyone's doing. It's also a little more expensive to do, so that's why maybe a lot of smaller businesses don't do it. But doing it smartly and using the tool for another purpose – which we do a lot for some of the clients that can't afford those budgets – you can really leverage programmatic advertising to your benefit to create a new audience, to track foot traffic in a location, to drive more foot traffic, to drive brand awareness. All of those are great things with programmatic. In terms of other opportunities, I think just being active in general. But that's not really an opportunity; that's just a truth. Those are the three that we're working on the most. Influencer marketing with TikTok mostly. We do YouTube, we do Instagram, but where we see the biggest growth is TikTok in that sense. ROB: For someone who's never dabbled in programmatic or real-time bidding or hasn't done so in a while, how has that ad inventory changed – the ad units, where they get displayed, how they're bought? I think it may not be what people used to think it was in terms of where the ads actually show up. Have they caught up to Facebook a good bit in terms of targeting? DAVID: What's interesting about programmatic is, first of all, not a lot of people know that this even exists. I think if more people knew how it worked, I don't think people would accept to share their location on their apps as often. Just to explain quickly how programmatic works, every time you download an app and you agree to share your location with the app, your device ID goes onto a stock market that anyone can buy. Along with that device ID, it gives your browser data saying you're using Chrome, Safari, your phone is in English, French, Spanish, and you were at this exact location. On average, someone shares their location between 25 to 40 times a day. With programmatic advertising, the great thing is we have a really great understanding of who every person is because it's not just what you search, it's not what you pretend to be on social media; it's actually who you are by where you live, what time you leave for work, what time you get to work, what time you leave from work, what type of restaurants you go to, do you run, do you not run, do you bike, do you not bike, and all those different things. Then how it works and where it's displayed – think of yourself whenever you play Candy Crush, whenever you read the New York Times or whenever you read CNN. There are ads on those platforms. Those ads are ad placements that can be bought by anyone and it can input your ad into that. This is how programmatic works. The beauty of programmatic from an advertiser standpoint is that as long as you can think it, you can do it. You can initially drive traffic – so you could have two competitors. Let's pick an example at random and say McDonald's and Burger King. That's actually a campaign we ran with one other restaurant. What we could do is geolocate every single Burger King, if you're McDonald's, for example, and say everyone that's waiting in line at a Burger King, I want to send an ad that says “Claim this $1 menu at McDonald's.” You see that ad on your phone, you can click “Add to your wallet.” It looks like the exact same thing as a plane ticket when you add it to your wallet, and then automatically it's claimed. Then you can trigger that alert once it's on the phone any way you want. You can say I want to look at the 10 closest McDonald's to this Burger King where the person redeemed this coupon, and any time the person comes within 100 feet of my McDonald's, I want a notification on his phone saying “Don't forget to claim your $1 menu at McDonald's.” Or you can say, people tend to go eat at 12:00; at 11:30, I want to send a notification to all those phones saying “Hey, don't forget to come eat your McDonald's.” And you can go back 90 days, so technically you can geofence every single one of your competitors' stores, go back 90 days, take all of the global data from all of those stores, and target those customers. The possibilities are endless with programmatic. ROB: There's absolutely a lot going on there. David, as we wrap up this conversation, what are some other things that we should know about either the journey of Outsmart Labs or what's next for you and the firm? DAVID: Two things we're excited about. The first thing is digital marketing has always been huge. Obviously, a lot of brands spend a lot of money on digital marketing. No one's really questioning the efficiency of digital marketing anymore. But still, for brands that are not ecommerce only, digital marketing came second to the retail business or their traditional marketing, and I think this whole situation of coronavirus has repurposed or made people reconsider the positioning of digital within their mix of marketing assets. A lot of companies have noticed that once they got all their stores closed, all they had left was their website. A lot of companies haven't even thought about where their in-store POS was not synced with the website POS, so all of a sudden they were left with nothing. So I think this whole coronavirus has gotten brands to rethink how to consider their digital strategies and understanding they should be relying a lot more on it because the chances of this going down is lower and people are shopping more online. To me, whenever I pitch a client, there's a lot of indication in terms of saying why it's necessary for them. I think the last 3-4 months in that way, we skipped through that. Now they know, “It's necessary, we need it; how do we do it?” I look very much forward to this because of the positioning of Outsmart. We tend to also pitch things that are not so traditional. As much as we do traditional, we always try to test things. You always need to pick your clients because not every client is willing to test things – and it makes sense; it's their money, and they want to maybe spend money just where they know the return on investment they're going to get. So that's what I'm really excited for. I think we're going to talk to a lot more clients. A lot more clients are going to be willing to be even more out of the box in terms of what they're going to try to do to differentiate themselves and basically have more real estate online. ROB: David Azar of Outsmart Labs, thank you so much for joining us today. I think you've given us a clinic on a bunch of very targeted and effective tactics in marketing. Congratulations to you and the firm on everything. DAVID: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to talk for the 30 minutes. ROB: All right, David. Be well. DAVID: Thank you. You too. Bye. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

In August, America marked 400 years since the arrival of the first Africans in 1619, which started the institution of slavery. In France, observers are questioning whether there are lessons to be learned for France's African community. In a brightly lit room of the American library in Paris, members of the public pour in for a conference exploring the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to the British colony of Virginia. The guest speaker, a civil rights expert and playwright, is yet to arrive. When she does, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, apologises profusely, blaming her lateness on her taxi driver who got lost and then wanted to overcharge her. Her humour dispels the mood of the topic she's come to discuss. But from the get go, she insists upon celebration and not defeat. “I want to thank my ancestors. Without their perseverance, I wouldn't be here,” she tells the audience. Ongoing struggle In August of 1619, some 20 indentured Africans arrived in the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, after being kidnapped from their villages in present-day Angola. “They arrive and they learn the economy, the language, culture, and they actually progress, and then once the law takes effect and they're enslaved, from there we have this fight, this ongoing fight for 400 years, so there's a lot to commemorate.” Browne-Marshall, a professor of constitutional law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, had just returned from a trip to Angola. “I went back to Angola. I wanted to know more about these first Africans, and I discovered Queen Nzinga. Not only did she rule but she went to battle and stood up to Portuguese slave traders,” she comments. Choose to fight By highlighting the brave achievements of the Angolan warrior queen and others like her, Browne-Marshall attempts to reclaim some of the dignity lost during the slavery era, which she has documented on extensively. “We all have choices. Are we going to go on with the programme even if it is oppressive to others, or are we going to stand our ground and fight? Queen Nzinga did, and that really inspired me.” Her research has also focused on recent battles for equal rights, including that of Mum Bett, the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. “Just as Mum Bett became Elizabeth Freeman by pushing against those that would oppress her, we have to continue pushing forward. We can't sit down and believe that the battle is over.” Same battle Yet the battle may be more difficult depending on what side of the Atlantic you're on. “I've been in the same company for over twenty years and have never been promoted,” a female engineer from Martinique tells the audience. “I think the US has enabled black people to have more opportunities than here in France,” she says. To which Browne-Marshall replies “Are you demanding the freedom and that you be treated fairly?” echoing the words of former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Another female member points out differences between slavery in the United States and France. If the enslavement of Africans began in 1619 in the US, it would not begin in France until 1642. Moreover, it would eventually be abolished here in 1848, after initially being reinstated in 1802, while America would follow suit in 1865. For Browne-Marshall, both countries have similar undertones. “In both, you see protests every day. People are protesting for higher wages, they are protesting for other things. Why aren't people of African descent protesting for full inclusion?” Identity conundrum Such identity politics hit a raw nerve in France where the notion of "Frenchness" is associated with a common set of values as opposed to colour or origin. Furthermore, critics point out that flagging up the differences between communities runs the risk of forging a common identity between them at the expense of a national identity, and thereby legitimising racial divisions that activists want to abolish. “Assimilation doesn't mean giving up your soul,” argues Browne-Marshall. “The French, of all people are the ones everyone knows will stand up for their culture. So, why can't people in the African diaspora stand up and say I am proud of my heritage as an African in this country, and I'm French?” The issue of French identity came to the fore during last year's World Cup, where some commentators joked that the tournament had been won by an African team, due to the fact that 19 of its 23 players were of African descent. Civil rights in France The debate is a complex one, but for Browne-Marshall it should not distract from the legacy of slavery, which still lingers in enduring inequities in opportunity for the children of migrants or whose family generation emigrated to France. "I think that France needs to have a civil rights movement,” she reckons, referring to the decades-long struggle for equal rights for African-Americans led by figures such as Martin Luther King. “Fighting for your freedom and not waiting for it to be handed down to you, is something so powerful for the spirit and so necessary,” she said. This is the third part of RFI's series on France's diasporas. Subscribe on iTunes or Google podcasts. To listen to this episode, hit the Play button above

In April during our Unite coverage, I had dinner with Carson McComas, the owner of Shopify Plus agency Fuel Made, and we got to talking about our mutual love of marketing automation, and specifically Klaviyo. Now, if you're not using Klaviyo, that's okay. Don't tune out, hear me out. Carson mentioned to me that they were having great success with Klaviyo to the point where they were pushing the limits of ecommerce email marketing automation. I immediately knew I had to have the rest of the conversation on this show. So I emailed Carson, and here's what he said: “Would love have Lisa on with you. She's the bomb and knows email marketing and Klaviyo like a pro. She's generated some pretty incredible ROI for our clients like Beardbrand.” Lisa heads the email marketing department at Fuel Made, she specializes in Klaviyo Email Marketing, and she knows it like the back of her hand. She's looked through 100's of Klaviyo accounts, helping clients add tens of thousands of dollars in automated monthly revenue by setting up their triggered marketing. In this episode, LIsa Oberst is going to walk this through the very same Klaviyo email marketing automation campaigns she's used to add huge value to Shopify stores like BeardBrand. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via Email Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Work with Kurt — Learn how: Why and how to start with email marketing What to do before starting with email marketing The three typical lead magnet formats Lisa uses, and how to brainstorm Lead Magnets that capture emails The safe & polite way to offer your opt-in The 3-step approach to pop-ups The basic segmentations you must have The 4-step email cart abandonment email that converts The uncommon email that converts at 9% for BeardBrand Lisa's one-tip from Links Mentioned: Get Lisa's Email Marketing Checklist! Klaviyo - Get your free account FuelMade BeardBrand Leno's Garage HelloBar InkedGaming Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Transcript Kurt Elster: Recording from Ethercycle headquarters outside Chicago. This is the unofficial Shopify Podcast and I'm your host Kurt Elster. You heard our wonderful Shopify Unite coverage, which was very exciting. One of our best, our most listened two weeks ever; 7,000 downloads something crazy. We're going to crack a quarter million downloads. I'm really, really excited. I could not have done it without you guys. It's amazing. It's been a wild ride. Anyway continuing on that Unite coverage, I met with a lot of really interesting bright people there and that's where I have been picking up some wonderful guests, was from networking at Unite. One of the first things I did, was go to a VIP dinner there and the gentleman sitting to my left at this dinner was none other than Carson McComas your Shopify Plus Agency Fuel Made. We got to talking pretty quickly about our mutual love of marketing automation and specifically Klaviyo. Now, if you're not using Klaviyo, that's okay, don't turn out. Here me out here, because a lot of marketing automation principles will work across several different platforms and just that I like and endorse Klaviyo. Carson mentioned to me that they're having great success with Klaviyo to the point where they are pushing the limits of ecommerce email marketing automation. At which point, I heard the needle scratch in my head and I immediately knew I had to hear the rest of this conversation on the show so that you could benefit from it. Of course, I want to learn too. I do most of my learning through this podcast truthfully. It's great resource for me. I emailed Carson right away and I said, "Hey, come on the show. You're a great person, I want to hear this." He replied, and I am quoting. He said, “I'd love to have Lisa on with you. She's the bomb and those email marketing in Klaviyo like a pro, she's generated some incredible return on investment for clients like Beardbrand. I could not have wrote a better intro myself. Now I know Lisa has female marketing department at Fuel Made. I'm told she specializes in Klaviyo email marketing and she knows it like the back of her hand. I believe it. She has looked through hundreds of Klaviyo accounts helping clients at tens of thousands of dollars in automated monthly revenue by signing up their triggered marketing, so Lisa, thank you for joining us. Lisa Oberst: Thank you, Kurt, great intro. I appreciate that. Kurt Elster: My pleasure. Tell me, give me briefly, give me your Klaviyo background, how did you get into this? Lisa Oberst: Sure, so about two years ago, a little bit more, I moved to L.A. and joined a three-person team that was building an agency specialized in Klaviyo. That's really when I started my special connection to Klaviyo and since then I've been just needy in Klaviyo, so about a year ago, I joined Fuel Made and I've been developing our Klaviyo email marketing at Fuel Made. Kurt Elster: Very good. You've worked with some big brands including a well known Shopify rockstar who's been on the show once before the Beardbrand guys were very cool, tremendous business and probably them evangelizing their experience is really contributed to the explosion of beard oil products, which is crazy to think about. Aside from that, so certainly you have street cred, but let's dive into it. First, make the case for email marketing in general. I will play devil's advocate. People go, "Email marketing is dead. It's all about social media." Help me make the case for email marketing? Lisa Oberst: Sure, that shouldn't be too hard. A lot of stores that I start a conversation with don't have any email marketing in place. The most important thing, they don't even have a need capture in place. They have no way of even starting a conversation with leads who come through their store. I know, Kurt, you know about this. It is so important to capture all of this traffic that you're spending money on to get to your store and that is not going to convert. About 98% of visitors are not going to convert on a first purchase, because you need to have the opportunity to start up a conversation with these people before they leave your store. Kurt Elster: Yeah, as an example, let's say I got the most optimized store in the world. I have some clients with really optimized stores. They do 5% conversion rate, that's amazing. That means for every hundred people that go to that store 95 of them don't buy anything, they just show up and bounce. Whereas, email marketing lets you turn anonymous visitors are more or less useless to you. Email marketing is going to let you provide value to them. Start building a relationship with them. Stay top of mind and lots of other fun things we will learn about. If you think email marketing is dead compared to social media, well, A; they're not mutually exclusive. You could do both. You could certainly do both. Think about how many times a day you check your email. Unless you are unbelievably disciplined, you are probably checking it 10 times a day. That's just the nature of who we are as a culture now. Don't discount email marketing and love it. All right, now we've the case for it. I believe in it. What do you do first? How do we start this conversation? Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it's all about the conversations. You want to start by thinking of who you're talking to. As I said already, the first thing you want to do is having need capture in place. Before we even thinking about writing an email and sitting down to write content, you want to take a step back and think of who is your ideal customer. That's the way we do it and I definitely recommend doing it, is having a picture of your ideal customer in your head to think of what is the offer that is going to get them so excited that they will not even think twice about giving you their email address. That is step one. That's coming up with a great offer. Kurt Elster: Before we've even come up with, we've even touched email marketing, really, we're thinking about the lead magnet. I'd like to think of the lead magnet as like, all right before- Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: The email marketing at that point, if you think of it is like human to human is dating, by that point you have gotten the digits, you're now entering the beginning stages of dating here with this customer before even then, you need a good pick up line. That's your lead magnet. The first thing you think about is your lead magnet, but that something that make sense that is valuable to the customer, right? Lisa Oberst: Right, exactly. It's going to vary. It's going to vary a lot from one story to another. You mentioned Beardbrand for example. In Beardbrand's case we are giving away information. It's all education-based and it is working extremely well, but we were able to 4x; their lead capture rate by just giving away 10 tips on how to grow a beard. Kurt Elster: Is it like PDF or an email course? Lisa Oberst: It's an email. It actually just one email. Yeah, it's one email with 10 tips and then it's beginning of a Beardbrand bootcamp. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: Sorry, go ahead. Kurt Elster: No, so I love this idea. This is like the first chapter of my book Ecommerce Bootcamp we talk about … You could get the free sample for free if you guys want it, ecommerce-bootcamp.com. We talk about sales through education or for lack of a better term "saducation". That's actually what you just described. You're not giving away a coupon. You're not giving away free product or sample. You're just flat out providing people. You're giving away value by educating them. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. In some cases, giving away a discount, giving away a product is going to be the most relevant offer. In others, it isn't. It's all about thinking the person that you're starting the conversation with. In Beardbrand's case, we're talking to customers who are obsessed with their beard; they want to learn everything about it. It makes sense to grab them with this education-based marketing. We do that and then we feed them into a welcome sequence. This welcome sequence is the continuation of the conversation. We're gradually taking the new visitor through a journey of learning about their beard. We're telling them everything they're wondering about their beard already. At the same time, we're taking this so little opportunity to tell them about Beardbrand products, because, well, how to take good care of your beard, you might want to check this out as well. We're not making it all about the product. We're making it about value, about what the customer is interested in, does that make sense? Kurt Elster: No. Absolutely. Yeah. No one wants to be sold too. I don't want to listen to a sales pitch. I don't want to hear about your time share. I want value. I want you to give me a better life. As a man with a moderate/mild beard, if you give me some tips on, "What do I do with this thing so it doesn't like scraggly and gross?" Honest to god, it's a thing you have to learn. I found it like I did not figure out how to properly shape and shave my beard until this year when I saw a video from another beard Shopify store BEARD KING, sells a different product. Yeah, honest to god, it sounds silly, but when you think about it, now I learned that. Now almost every time I trim my beard I think about that piece of content and I think about BEARD KING. This connection has been made where I can't help but think about this Shopify store and their product every Sunday when I'm trimming my beard in the mirror. You're doing the same thing. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. We're also training customers to expect high value from these emails. They're going to start loving to open these emails, because they just know that it's going to be full of exactly what they want to learn about. The beauty about this journey, this welcome sequence bootcamp is that we're gradually taking them to a point where they're going to be dying to buy from Beardbrand. Kurt Elster: I like it. Lisa Oberst: If they haven't bought by the end of … it's a five-day bootcamp, and they haven't bought by the end, well, we're actually telling them, "Here's a free gift, because you deserve it. You have made it through the bootcamp. Get this gift to become part of the club officially." Yeah, there's all the psychology that goes into it, but we're honestly using a elements of scarcity. We're using customer reviews. Social- Kurt Elster: Social. Lisa Oberst: Exactly, social proof. All of that, packaged in a way that looks like it's all about the customer. Kurt Elster: Right, so as long as you're providing them more value than you're asking for, it no longer feels sleazy. It doesn't feel like a sales pitch. You could still slide in those elements that act as psychological triggers to sales like scarcity, urgency and social proof. You don't have to feel guilty about it. Ultimately, if you believe in your product, you shouldn't feel guilty about trying to sell it to people. I've seen that. If you're confident and if you believe in it, it's probably your duty to educate people about why they may want your product in their life. Okay, so some knee grade, basic tips here. How do I come up with a lead magnet idea? Implementing a lead magnet, not terribly tough technically, the hardest part is coming up with the idea. Do you have someone like go-to formats, ideas or methods for brainstorming these things? Lisa Oberst: Yes, there are three typical ways to go, either education-based or discount-based or product offered. Before even thinking about that, what I typically do is, again, I take a step back and I think of who I am speaking to. What is going to be the key offer that's going to get them to take? For example, I have another client where they were offering 10% off. Their audience are gamers. They sell custom gaming accessories. Their offer was 10% off. We switched that over to giving away a card, a token that is worth $1 in the store that probably cost about 10¢ to make, just about 10x to your capture rate. Exactly, much, much higher dollar value with the 10% off, but so much more exciting to think of the token. I like to go as much as possible to think of something tangible. Think of something in your store that's tangible either education or a product. Imagine, your customer see that and using it. Is that going to be exciting to them? That's really where I'd like to start when coming up with these offers. Kurt Elster: I like it. Lisa Oberst: The more tangible the better, typically. Again, if I have another client who is medical supply company and in their case 10% off was right on. You have to think of your audience. You have to think of what, where they're coming from. Kurt Elster: Even if you're like I really don't know. Also if you go, "I really don't know what they want." Just experiment, it is not hard to change these things and switch them up and try them. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Yeah, okay. Offering, probably like the most basic, the go-to. You don't have to think about it too hard. It's just, "Hey, here's a 10% off coupon for signing up, right? That one's easy. Lisa Oberst: Exactly, yeah. Kurt Elster: You don't even need marketing automation to do that one. You stick the coupon code in your welcome email or whatever it is regardless of platform. There you go. It's like these are all tips that work independently with Klaviyo. You can do them on Klaviyo, I wish you would, but you don't have to. What else? My gosh, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, I'm talking about the different lead magnets that work. Yeah, then from there, you know you could combine that with education. You could follow up with email course. I love email courses just because you're in their inbox everyday for a week or like in your case the Beardbrand bootcamp, which is a nice alliteration to it. It helps keep you top of mind. It gets you in the earn box every week. I love what you said, "Hey, you train them to expect value." That's how you keep those open rates up. As long as that first email delivers on the promise of the lead magnet and it better deliver on the promise of that opt-in form and then some. Then people go, “Okay, these are providing me value.” They're going to see them and they're going to be willing to keep opening them and that's what's going to help keep open rates up naturally with great tip. Then the other one, format we have recently seen work well is a regular giveaway, because like a monthly or weekly giveaway. We did it on Jay Leno's Store, lenosgarage.com. That one worked pretty well. We haven't tried anything else. There's no comparison. All right, so my next question on these lead magnets. We haven't even got in the marketing automation. Lisa Oberst: I know. Kurt Elster: Mostly, we're just talking about the opt-in form lead magnet and what you give them. Okay. We'll move on, one last question, how should I set up the opt-in form? I've seen them in the footer, I've seen them as exit-intent, as popup. At Leno store, we do it as a promo bar and a landing page. There's at least five different ways I could format a lead magnet. You can even do Facebook lead ads. What's the right way or is it all of them. What do I do? Lisa Oberst: Well, the same answer that goes for all of this. There is no one right way. Kurt Elster: Right, it depends, is the right answer. Lisa Oberst: It depends, right. For most cases, we like to go with an exit-intent popup. They're great because they don't interrupt the flow of your customer. If someone comes to your store, they intend to buy … you really do not want to be throwing a popup in their face. First of all, it's disrespectful. They are here. They're trying to get something done. Second of all, you're giving away margin. If you're giving away a discount and someone comes to your store with the intention to buy, you do not need to be sending them this discount code. That's why, I definitely lean on the side of exit-intent popups. Now in Beardbrand's case, we don't do that. Instead, we want to go even less aggressive and have a hello bar-type banner at the top. It depends. Beardbrand has a very specific way of communicating. If they did not want to do a popup, fine, a banner works fine as well. The conversion rates are similar. It's going to depend on how aggressive you want to go. If you want to go all out, then you could go for a Mat, a type of Sumo Mat. Kurt Elster: I hate those things. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, my problem with those is that they tend to trigger every single time you go to the store. They don't give you time to breathe. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but it does work wonders in some cases. Kurt Elster: I agree with you. I love the exit-intent. It's the safe, polite way to do it. Then if someone who's on the site to shop, you will never going to see your exit-intent popup form. If they're there, they browsed and then they're leaving. Okay, as a safety net, we have our last stage. Hey, let me give you something for free, please. All you're going to do is give me your email address, which is way harder than it sounds. People don't want to give up their email address, I don't blame them. You need to be finding something of value. Lisa Oberst: Okay. Exactly. Kurt Elster: Go ahead. Lisa Oberst: What's crazy with those exit-intent is that they're capturing customers who are leaving the store. We're still able with the welcome sequence to convert them at about eight to 10%, so that is huge. Kurt Elster: Yeah, you're right. In theory, you're capturing the least engaged segment of the audience and still converting one out of 10 of them which is just awesome. Okay, then my last question on exit-intent popups. The work on desktop, what do you do on mobile? There's no mouse. The exit-intent popup is just watching for the mouse to go toward the tab, right? Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Mobile, their touch devices, there's no- Lisa Oberst: It doesn't work. Yeah, so that's a problem. The way we go around it is we trigger the popup with scrolling. One way of knowing that someone is exiting the page on mobile is that they're scrolling quickly towards the top and so that's one way of knowing that they're leaving. Another alternative is just to turn it into a timed popup. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: Depending on the audience. Kurt Elster: Yeah, I typically done it as … I use OptiMonk and you can use OptiMonk just you know, whatever to do your popup forms or if you're fancy and you have a front-end developer, there's a free open source JavaScript called ouibounce, O-U-I bounce that I like. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Yeah, mobile I was just doing the timer. I did not know about the scrolling trick that's very clever. I have to explore that more. Lisa Oberst: Yes and we build our own custom popups just so we have all that flexibility. One last tip about popups, this is, again, something that we're able to do because we build them in-house, but I love building the popup in a three-step manner. This all comes back to value, value, value first. On our popups, we don't even show you the email field on the first screen. It's only a question. For example, when we're giving away those token cards, the first screen that's going to show up is which one of these two token cards would you like for free? There's nothing indicating that you're going to have to do anything. It's all value. Then once the reader has made that micro-commitment of picking one of the two cards the chances of them going forward with giving away their email address are increased. This is a psychologic triggers that we use in this set up. Kurt Elster: I love it. Lisa Oberst: Another little tip there. Kurt Elster: Yeah, it is rather than ask for, "Hey, buy my stuff, give me your credit card details." That's a huge ask. You go with a series of micro-commitments that helps you build that relationship and build trust. The simplest one is, “Hey, did you want this free thing?” “Okay, yeah, the answer is yes, I do.” Lisa Oberst: Okay. Kurt Elster: You step them through it. Lisa Oberst: Once they said that, then they're going to focus all through. Kurt Elster: Can you share with us the store that uses the coin thing, this three-step process? Lisa Oberst: Sure, instagaming. Kurt Elster: Got it. Lisa Oberst: We actually also use that on Beardbrand. Kurt Elster: Okay, cool. I'm going to include all of these in the show notes, so people could check it out. I'm sorry if your opt-in rates go up and your conversion rates go down. Lisa Oberst: Conversions. Kurt Elster: Sorry. Lisa Oberst: At least, we're aware. Kurt Elster: If you check these out, please go, just by something small so she has something to do with that. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, I was going to say it. These products are amazing. You're going to love them. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Okay. In this sense, you've got into one of the early, one of the nice tenets about email marketing automation. You're only showing the sequence to a particular kind person. You're not just blasting the same message to everyone all the time. This is segmentation. Talk to me about segmentation? Lisa Oberst: Yes, the basic segmentation that you must put in place is what we just talked about with welcome sequence. This is someone who comes to your store. If they're not buying, you put them to through this welcome sequence. Then on top of that, abandon carts, so this is someone who went as far as putting a product in their cart, but didn't buy, so that's another sequence. Then on top of that is the post-purchase sequence. Those are really the core foundation of automation; post-purchase, abandon car, welcome sequences. Kurt Elster: All right. Go ahead. Lisa Oberst: Go for it. No, go for it. Kurt Elster: All right, so I love the … the welcome sequence is clever and each segment, each sequence has a goal. The sequence is to take these very fairly cold prospects and turn them into customers through a longer effort in high touch engagement process that's fully automated, which is very cool. That's our first one. That's with our exit-intent popup. Cart abandonment, they added the cart and left the store so now we're going to follow up with them. I have a format I follow that I like, what is yours? I will share you mine, if you show me yours. Lisa Oberst: Okay, well, mine is typically built with four emails. I like to go with four emails to present about across five, six days, it depends. First, goes out two hours an abandoned cart you want to hit. The idea is not to be creepy and not to be too intrusive, but to still potential hit them with an email before they've left their computer. Kurt Elster: Strike while the iron is hot. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. This email is always, always customer support-centered. It's just being helpful, because most of these customers who place an item in their cart, then abandoned necessarily because they didn't want to buy. They abandoned maybe because they got distracted and maybe, I don't know, someone got home and they just forgot that they were in the middle of placing an order. The idea of this first email is just to remind them, also, at the same time, you're reminding them, but you're also discovering if they had an issue, if they had a question. You can discover some really interesting information about your cart by just asking the customer if, maybe, they weren't able to put their order through. That's signal number one. Kurt Elster: Right. Lisa Oberst: It gets a lot of answers, a lot of customers think that someone sat down and wrote that email specifically for them and they really appreciate it. Kurt Elster: This sounds like the first email will be very plain texted. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it is, a 100%. Kurt Elster: Okay. It's interesting that we separately discovered and came about the same approach. What I was doing was after four hours. Pretty similar, then I thought strike while the iron is hot, I would send them an email even if this was just basic Shopify cart abandonment an email or they only send one or it fits in something fancier like Klaviyo or Conversio. I would send them off an email. Its plain texted and says, "Hey, I'm the owner of whatever, and I saw you abandon your cart. I just want to make sure you didn't have any issues or if you have any questions just hit reply and let me know how I can help." It was just a way to find did they have a customer service issue, can we be proactive, can we find objections? Ultimately, most of the time, they got distracted, they forgot or they just said, "Yeah, not quite comfortable yet." Getting that personal touch email where it's proactive on customer service that's very positive. That's going to help increase trust. Okay, cool. We came up with the same thing separately. I like it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. One little thing I like to do with that email is it's plain text, but I like to add a head shot in the signature just to give it even more of an element of real human interaction. Kurt Elster: That's a good idea. I like it. Next? Lisa Oberst: Number two. Number two, definitely, you want to show the cart content. At that point, a primary goes out about a day later. You want to show the content to get them out and excited about the products they were looking at. Sometimes, you can include a discount already in that second email. I try to keep it for the third, fourth. It depends on the brand. It depends on how much they want to send out discount codes or not, but that's an option. Kurt Elster: I like it. Okay. Yeah, typically, my second one I just go, "Good things come to those who wait, here's 10% off your purchase and here's your cart." Something like that after 24 hours. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, yes. The next one can go out after 48 and then that's when you want to really start pushing, putting some discount code in. They definitely have an element of scarcity in saying, "Well, wait, we can't keep these items forever, maybe make it fun." Definitely, for example, in gaining, they have a lot of fun on their store that we can reuse, so we do that, which is make it entertaining. I find that making emails fun, entertaining, definitely have higher return. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Why not make it fun. Everything doesn't have to be super professional and serious. A great example of this that I always point to, super successful Shopify store Violent Little Machine Shop, violentlittle.com. All of their descriptions are like its all gallows humor. They're swearing same with their emails. It talks about like writing them drunk. The store does phenomenally well. It's just such a great business because their audience likes that. It's authentic and engaging and it's rough and tumble and it works for them. Be fun, be yourself. I think have an authentic voice. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: That helps a lot. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, if you can afford to be fun, maybe you can say someone is going to run off with your cart content or just come up with some entertaining way, excuses for being in their inbox. Kurt Elster: All right, the third segmentation then is the post-purchase sale. We finally, we went through these two. Lisa Oberst: Yes. Kurt Elster: In theory, people who've gotten these two email sequences. They've got them to purchase, they've got a lot of emails, they're really building a relationship here, but the really successful stores don't just stop there. Lisa Oberst: Nope. Kurt Elster: At this point, we have optimized the top of our funnel, we validate our business, but how do we extend customer lifetime value both ways and I'm sure you have ideas? Lisa Oberst: Yes, there's so much that you can do with post-purchase email. One first tip I want to point out, especially for Shopify Plus stores. It's sending your order confirmation through Klaviyo. This just heads up, it isn't just the one click setup. It's a little complicated because you have to deal with Klaviyo's tags and put the email together. It enables you to include a product feed. The product feed is huge. It's going to show the specific products that a customer has highest chance of it wanting. I like to do the order confirmation, because order confirmation emails have the highest open rates. They have about 70% open rate on average. If you can show more products in that email, I typically, actually for Beardbrand the order confirmation email is converting at .8%, .9%, that's sending to every single customer. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but customers are super excited after making an order and it's a really good time to be actually showing them more products. Kurt Elster: I have loved this feature in Conversio which was normally called Receiptful. That's like how they started, was just this one single idea in automation. Just, hey, show them upsell products in the email receipt. I had no idea you could make this work in Klaviyo. I am so excited. Lisa Oberst: I saw them. Yes. No. As I said, it is not a one click setup, but it will figure it out. Kurt Elster: I hope someone from Klaviyo is listening to this. This needs to be added in one of like the defaults of just inflows. My gosh, that's fantastic. Lisa Oberst: I will send them an email. Kurt Elster: Please do. One of the issues you run into here, when you do this one is there's no way to turn off the order confirmation email from Shopify itself. You got to replace it with something, what do you stick in there? Lisa Oberst: No, you can with Shopify Plus. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: You just have to reach out to them. Kurt Elster: Very good. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it's a little sneaky. Kurt Elster: Instead of Shopify, what we typically do is make that one just like a personal plain text thank you from the owners. It's like, "Hey, you placed for an order, thank you for your purchase. Your receipt's on its way in the second email is the way around it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, that's perfect. Kurt Elster: Cool. Lisa Oberst: That's perfect. After that, definitely, you want to send a thank you email and those, you might be surprised again, but those convert at the same rate about as the order confirmation email. Include another product feed, why not? Kurt Elster: I love the product feed, just tell me what that is in Klaviyo, they've got this drag and drop editor, it's very cool. You could drag product feed in and it gives you latest products, newest products, but most likely to buy. Something of that effect give you a couple of different feeds or you can make different feeds. Lisa Oberst: Make them, yeah. Kurt Elster: Yeah. The one you want is the one that people chose them products they're most likely to buy because it's got a JavaScript widget in your theme so it could track what people actually looked at. I always suspected what it's showing them. The intersection of bestsellers and products they looked at but didn't buy. Lisa Oberst: The way it works, if you set it up with the waiting. The way it works is it looks like what products the customer bought. If they bought A and B products and another customer ended up, pass about A and B and C, they're going show them C. Kurt Elster: Okay, so it's based on historical purchase data from other customers? Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Very clever, it's personalized recommendations. You don't have to do anything. It does it automatically, dynamically, super cool. Lisa Oberst: That's a main great feature. Thank you emails, big ones too. Now something that we do for Beardbrand, for example is for every single product in the store, we have a special, we have a particular email that goes out. Let's say someone buys beard oil. We're going to send them a post-purchase email that teaches them exactly how to use their beard oil. If they bought a balm, we're going to send them an email that shows them how to use their balm. That's taking it to another level. Kurt Elster: What you're doing, it's very clever. You're going to ensure, you're going to help keep the excited, because I'm assuming they get this between the time they purchased and before they get the product, right? Lisa Oberst: Yes. Kurt Elster: Okay. It shows up. It helps keep that excitement going, but you're also going to preempt like you already know what customers objections are, issues. It's going to preempt those things and really radically increase customer satisfaction, because when that product shows up, they already know, "Hey, this is how I apply beard oil." The first time I bought beard oil, it showed up and it occurred to me, “Wait a second, I don't know how you actually apply this or how much.” Lisa Oberst: What do I do with this? Kurt Elster: I had to go find a video that explained it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, exactly. If you know that your customers are going to be wondering, "Okay, well, what do I do with this when I receive it?" Send them the email with instructions. Very, very helpful. It helps establish that relationship to another level again, just increasing customer lifetime value, letting them know that you care enough to send them all that information. Kurt Elster: That one, that's huge. It may not seem obvious as to like, "This is going to sell them something. No, it doesn't need to; this is an investment in that relationship." You're going to have happier customers, you're going to have less customer support request and it's going to them more likely to buy and recommend your products. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. It's an excuse just to be in their inbox. Kurt Elster: Right. Lisa Oberst: Again, it's an excuse. Well, before sending them another sales email, you're sending them a lot of value. Next time they get an email they're going to open it again expecting value. Kurt Elster: What do I do? All right, we have now set them up where we know they're going to open up that next email. What is the next email? Lisa Oberst: That's when you want to study a bit of your customer lifetime value. You want to know; what is the typical journey of one of your customers, do they buy a second time after one month, after three months, what's normal? Let's take Beardbrand as an example; typically, a great customer will buy maybe every month. What we want to do after a month after their first order, we want us to be in their inbox. We want to show them, okay, well, you're probably running out of the product so here you can click this one click button and add the product again to your cart. That's one thing that we do. Kurt Elster: Swell. Lisa Oberst: It takes a little bit of coding, but it's possible to set this up so that you show them their past order. You have a "add to cart" button right next to the product so that all they have to do is click that button and refill. Kurt Elster: Very good. There's another way to do it, I forgot what it's called, but you could build a link that when clicked on sends everyone to the checkout process with a particular item or items already in their cart. This is a clever idea you have. In their case, they have a consumable good. We know they use it. It maybe takes 30 days to use it up since it's a consumable. Then you follow up with them, "Hey, are you running low, don't run out, order now, order again. Here you go." Just make it so branded easy, remove all the friction for them. It's clever. What else can we do? Lisa Oberst: What we do in some cases if they didn't buy after one month? Well, shoot them another email after three months. Maybe that they hadn't run out yet, maybe they just needed a bit more time before buying again. Send them another different email basically saying that same idea a little bit later. Then if they really haven't purchased in a while, you want to win them back. To do that, you can get creative, send win-back emails that, I don't know, a bit of emotion, be clever, be fun and give them a reason to come back. Maybe a discount, maybe a free product, those work pretty well in win-back emails. Kurt Elster: Let's say after, for most brands, it's going to be somewhere in between 50 and 80 days or if they don't make another purchase, we can really think of them as lost customer. They're a one time purchase, now they're gone. Maybe they'll be back, but maybe not. What we could do is send these win-back emails, where we try before they turn out, before they totally forget about us. Great, make another purchase, come back, we love you, that kind of thing. All right. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: All of those things. Those are three workflows or three colors for email marketing automation. Really tremendous, you've absolutely opened the kimono on this stuff. As someone who lives, eats, breathes Klaviyo, do have any Klaviyo pro-tips for working with the platform? Lisa Oberst: Actually, you've mentioned some of them already. Definitely using the product feed, I know you love it. I love it, it's amazing. Some other tips, so you definitely can setup. It takes a little bit of coding, but there's a way of setting it up your store, so that a customer who clicks through from your Klaviyo email has his discount code applied automatically to the store. Kurt Elster: I didn't know that. Lisa Oberst: Again, that does take a little bit of coding, but with Shopify Plus, Shopify also, that's possible. That really makes for a smooth process. Another thing that's possible by tweaking the Shopify Plus cart a little bit is trading a discount code that will automatically add the free gift to the cart. Kurt Elster: That one for just Shopify Plus only, right? Lisa Oberst: That is Shopify Plus only, yes. Kurt Elster: Yeah, we did that. Well, there's an app that will do it called like Secomapp Free Gifts, but it's not the same. It's not quite the same as the smooth frictionless version that you can get with a little bit of JavaScript plus Shopify scripts. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, exactly. Actually, big news, Klaviyo just announced that Shopify stores will be able to have custom coupons sent out through Klaviyo as of now, so that's really exciting. Kurt Elster: Yes. Lisa Oberst: It used to be only for Shopify Plus. Kurt Elster: Yeah, so what it would do is Klaviyo in Shopify Plus only could dynamically generate coupon codes. When you sense somewhat like, you get the abandoned cart email go say, "You get 10% off, order now!" Then the next you go, “It's going to expire.” Well, really like you were lying essentially, because everyone got the same coupon code. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Even if you limit to them with one email and then those end up on coupon code sites. It was like the good outweigh the bad, but it wasn't perfect. Versus now, if you are in Shopify Plus, Klaviyo could dynamically generate a one time use coupon code for each individual person, which was very cool. It worked well, I liked it. Now, as of yesterday, well, as of May 16th, we see that that works on all Shopify stores even Klaviyo, very cool. Last question, we're running- Lisa Oberst: Go for it. Kurt Elster: When you've gone long, because this has been tremendously valuable. Last question, what's your favorite part about what you do? Lisa Oberst: You might have noticed I have a bit of an accent. That's because I'm French, I'm American, I grew up in Belgium. I've traveled a lot. I have a lot of different experiences to pull from whenever I start working for a new client. I love that aspect of the job. I love diving into these new personalities that I have to embody to be able to rewrite the best copy for each client. One thing, I didn't mention, but every single time I write for one customer, I have someone that I think about. For example, the in gaming sales, game accessories, I'm not a gamer, but I do have friends who are and every time I sit down to write, I start the email, "Hello, Jeremy." I really, really dive into that personality. I think that that's amazing. I get to learn a ton. I have learned so much about growing a beard. I really wish I could grow a beard right now. Kurt Elster: I love that idea. Yeah, when I was trying to unlearn like the awful academic business pros that have beaten into me in school, I had to unlearn that stuff write natural sounding, authentic sounding emails. One of the early tricks that helped was picturing the one person that you're answering. Writing to a single individual and that's going to help you kind of do some code changing, some code switching and writing their email. I love that you're actually titling it when you right the first draft, of course is like, hey, and that person's name. That's going to help you keep you on track as opposed to writing those gross emails that are like, "hello newsletter." You keep in touch one-on-one. Lisa Oberst: Hello world. Exactly. Yeah. Kurt Elster: Very good. Lisa, where can people go to learn more about you? Lisa Oberst: They can go to fuelmade.com and we've actually put together a free checklist, email checklist that you can access at fuelmade.com/usp for unofficial Shopify podcast. This checklist, it gives a lot of tips on how to think through every aspect of your emails before sending them out. Lots of best practices and it's just a great way to make sure that you don't forget a key element of the email before sending it. Great value, definitely go get it. It's at fuelmade.com/usp. Kurt Elster: I will include the link to fuelmade.com/usp. Download the checklist; I'm sure it is greatly valuable. You're talking to a Klaviyo pro here. What was going to say? Lisa, thank you so much for doing this. I greatly appreciate it. Lisa Oberst: Thank you, Kurt. This was great. Kurt Elster: I have learned a lot. To our listeners, thanks for your time and attention, your wonderful reviews on iTunes, your kind words et cetera. However, you found this, find out more about it and get those show notes at unofficialshopifypodcast.com. If you don't want to miss another episode, you want to be notified, sign up for my newsletter, kurtelster.com. Shoot you an email whenever we post a new episode. Of course, if you like to work with me in your next project, you can apply at ethercycle.com. Thanks everybody and we'll be back next week.

Kamran Bokhari and Jacob L. Shapiro discuss where IS came from, the history and politics of radical Islam, and what happens if IS is defeated in Raqqa. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here: hubs.ly/H06mXwR0 TRANSCRIPT: JS: Hello, my name is Jacob Shapiro, I'm broadcasting today from Avignon, in the south of France. I'm joined by Kamran Bokhari, who I believe is in Washington, D.C. Is that right Kamran? KB: Yes I am. JS: I'm joined by Kamran Bokhari who is our senior analyst and who focuses on the Middle East, and we're going to be talking a little bit about ISIS. Thanks for joining us Kamran. KB: Pleasure to be here. JS: So, Kamran, I thought instead of talking about every single battle and every single report that seems to indicate ISIS is imminently falling, we might take a broader look at the subject for our listeners. So, how about we just start with a rather broad question – tell me about how ISIS started. How did ISIS come to be in the middle of Syria and Iraq? KB: Well if you recall, Jacob, this happened in the wake of regime change, or regime collapse, in Iraq, when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, toppled the Saddam government and has since been unable to form a viable state. And it was not just the lack of a state, but it also brought to the fore forces that were until then very much contained under the autocratic leadership of the Baathist regime. And so what we had was the disenfranchisement of the Sunnis, the rise of the Shiites and of course the rise of the Kurds, in the form of regional autonomy. ISIS did not exist, in fact, there were hardly any Islamist groups of any shade in Iraq, but in war, especially when you have the sectarian problem in the Middle East where the Sunnis and the Shia are struggling with one another – yes, the Sunni government came down, but it's not like the Shiites were able to establish their own government. There was a window of opportunity in which the founders of ISIS, particularly Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded what used to be called al-Qaida in Iraq, laid the foundation for ISIS. And as the years rolled on, ISIS continued to gain strength from the conflict that was brewing. It was a complex conflict. There were Shiites fighting Shiites, Shiites fighting Sunnis, Sunnis fighting Kurds and Sunnis fighting the United States. So in that complex warlike scenario, that's where we find the birth of ISIS. JS: Yes, well, as usual in the Middle East, everybody is fighting everybody and it's all complicated. But so there's a lot there to unpack. So how about we start with this: You mentioned that the original name of ISIS was al-Qaida in Iraq and you also said that ISIS began, or really, its generation point came in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. How about we go back a little step further, and can you talk about the relationship between al-Qaida and between ISIS and what the relationship was and how it's developed? KB: If we go back to the aftermath of 9/11 and after the United States invaded Afghanistan and destroyed the infrastructure of al-Qaida, disrupted its operations, forcing al-Qaida, the original organization, to disperse and relocate largely in northwestern Pakistan. Al-Qaida had basically very little power projection capability at that point. I'm talking between 2001 and 2003. And at that point in time, it seemed like al-Qaida's purpose for staging the 9/11 attacks, which was to bait the United States into militarily acting in a very large way in the Middle East, in the heart of the Muslim world, that didn't succeed. The United States sent in a small force, largely special operations forces and intelligence operatives and later NATO forces came in, but originally it was Afghan forces on the ground who toppled the Taliban regime. That didn't produce the kind of effect that al-Qaida was hoping for. But then when the United States invaded Iraq, that was an opportunity. But al-Qaida didn't have any horses in this race. Al-Qaida could not reach Iraq. But Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who ran his own jihadist training camp in Afghanistan pre-9/11, was able to make his way from Afghanistan between 2001, and by the time the United States invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, he had set up his shop in the Sunni areas in northern Iraq. And he was able to take advantage of that vacuum that was created with the fall of the Saddam regime and he began an insurgency. But at that point in time his group used to be called something like Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and it wasn't even called al-Qaida. But this individual and this outfit were on the ground, al-Qaida was at a distance. Both needed each other. Zarqawi's outfit was not getting the kind of coverage or the kind of support, financially or otherwise, because it was an unknown quantity. Al-Qaida was a brand at the time and therefore it was a marriage of convenience. Bin Laden and Zawahiri and al-Qaida, the original organization, or what was left of it, did not have the ability to act in Iraq. These guys were acting, so they formed an alliance and Zarqawi became the leader of what became the al-Qaida branch in Iraq. And that's sort of where these guys started to work together. Operationally, Zarqawi was his own guy, he didn't have to report on a daily basis, he did what he thought was right and he was essentially following strategic guidance from Bin Laden and the top leadership, to the extent that he cared to do that. But it was an arrangement that worked for a while. But effectively, Zarqawi became more and more powerful and at one point, he didn't really need to report back. He never rebelled, in his lifetime, he was killed in 2006, and by that time his group was institutionalized to the point where his successors were able to take the group to the next level. And as the years rolled on, until the United States in 2007-2008 were able to get the Sunnis to turn against Zarqawi and his al-Qaida in Iraq, these guys had put down quite a bit of roots inside the country. And therefore, I think that's where the foundation was laid. Now, everything that's happened since is sort of building upon this foundation. JS: Well if I can – I'll stop you there and I'll just say, one of the interesting things that you're saying is that Zarqawi wasn't in Iraq. But you also said that one of al-Qaida's original goals was to draw the United States into the Middle East. Another of al-Qaida's goals was to try and demonstrate to much of the Islamic world, especially the Arab world, that all of these secular dictatorships, or dictatorships that had been propped up by the West, had no legitimacy. They thought if they could bring the United States in and if they could show the people of the Middle East that their regimes had no legitimacy that there would be some kind of popular revolt. So they didn't – they weren't able to bring the United States into the Middle East right away, but the fact that Zarqawi was able to get himself to Iraq and found there a very fertile ground for recruits indicates that perhaps Bin Laden, and al-Qaida in general, had a much better assessment of the level of discontent in that part of the world than anybody else. Would you agree with that characterization? KB: I would, but I would also say that this wasn't sort of – this was one of those things that they, al-Qaida, the original organization led by Bin Laden, intended to do, but had it not been for Zarqawi and his efforts and his ability to implant himself in Iraq at a time when the United States was going to war in that country, I don't think we would've come this far. So there's a bit of luck if you think from al-Qaida's point of view. Now obviously, ever since, al-Qaida has taken sort of the backseat, and now ISIS as we know it, or the Islamic State, it's essentially a different organization. It has its roots in al-Qaida, in many ways it took al-Qaida's original view and ideas and really operationalized them in a way that al-Qaida could not because of the lack of capability and the fact that Bin Laden and his top associates traded away day-to-day operational control for physical security of the leadership of the movement, they thought if the leadership was killed then al-Qaida would collapse, and therefore, the price was that you allow these groups to operate on their own. Now they didn't think that al-Qaida in Iraq would become not just an independent organization but one that would eclipse al-Qaida itself. JS: That's true, too, but you made another interesting point that I want to take you back to, which is that you mentioned that Zarqawi was the right man in the right place at the right time. That's an important point because when we're dealing with geopolitics and especially when we're dealing with state actors, the role of the individual, generally speaking, is not that important. We put less emphasis on the individual. Maybe with a sub-state actor it has a little bit of difference. But I guess the question I would pose to you then, is, was it really Zarqawi that was that special or was there going to be a Zarqawi anyway? And was the situation going to mushroom into that anyway, or did it really require someone who had that connection to al-Qaida, who had that experience, who had that training, who had that world view, who knew how to operationalize it, who knew how to put it together, to go to Iraq and to take advantage of the situation? Or would it have been, when the United States went in and when things started going wrong in Iraq, that this kind of movement would've sort of organically sprouted up anyway? KB: I think that this was bound to happen. If it was not Zarqawi it could've been someone else, because in reality, Zarqawi the personality could only do so much unless the ground realities allowed for it, and there were enabling factors, the disenfranchisement of the Sunnis, created a lot of leaders. Back in the day, I'm talking 2003 to 2005-6 I remember that Zarqawi was just one of many militia leaders, one of many factions. At the time, the group had yet to distinguish itself. So there were no shortage of outfits and organizations. I think probably what did make a bit of a difference was the fact that this individual had experience in running training camps, in running an organization going back to the late '90s and I think that experience came in handy. But it's not that Zarqawi was so important to all of this. Now, the insurgency may have taken a different route, but the fact that there is a Shiite-Sunni struggle going on at the time, that didn't require Zarqawi. That was going on independent of any personality per se. And so I think that the ground was fertile. It required an individual and an outfit that had the experience. If you fast-forward just a little bit to 2012, and when the Syrian uprising morphed into a full-scale civil war, again it was Zarqawi's outfit – because of its experience – that was able to take advantage of the vacuum that was created in eastern Syria and was able to take over places like Raqqa and Deir el-Zour and the oil fields. And it became the biggest militia and really eclipsed the rebels who started the war. So I think there's something to be said about institutionalization. I'm not a big fan of personalities, I think that there were many others, and the fact that Zarqawi only lived for three years as the leader and we are now in year 14 of this entity, says a lot. I mean, there are a lot of leaders who had come by and taken over the same group and really moved on, so you know, there's institutionalization and there are ground realities that sustain these type of entities. JS: I want to talk about the sectarian part of all this and I also want to fast forward to the present day, but before we do that I want to ask you one more question that goes back a little bit and sets the stage, which is that, so we have now identified that there was a fertile ground there for recruitment for Zarqawi and for these other heads of militias to recruit for al-Qaida, to recruit for the general mission and this may be an impossible question for you to answer, but we specialize in impossible questions, so when do you think this moment in the Muslim world started happening? When did the discontent get to such an extent that people were so upset that they would be open to this kind of ideology? When did it start to move away from secular nationalism or any of the other things that were peoples' identifying political ideology, particularly Arab nationalism too – when did it go from that to Islam being one of the major things, and this radical version of Islam being something that could be used as a tool to create these organizations? KB: I think if I had to put my finger on a date, I would say right after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, in which Egypt, Syria and Jordan suffered a major defeat at the hands of Israel. And I think that was sort of the turning point. But having said that, I will also point out that these are not, sort of, on-and-off switches. Things are taking shape in parallel. So a new movement is operating parallel to an older movement and at some point the new movement overtakes the pre-existing movement, in terms of its popular appeal. I think that the crisis essentially allowed, the devastating defeat of the Arab states really allowed for the Islamists to come out and say, what have the secularists given to this region, to the people of this region, to the Arabs, to the Muslims? And they were able to really craft a narrative, or take an existing narrative to the next level and say, it is because we have left the ideas that made us great in the past. We have abandoned that, that has led us to this kind of lull, and if we were to go back to Islam, then this region can regain its lost glory. I think that's the really turning point, but groups, if you were to measure Islamism in the form of groups, I would say that by the mid-'70s, these groups had started to come out, and I think by the end of the 1970s, Islamism had exploded onto the scene. We had the revolution in Iran, albeit a Shiite Islamist regime took over from the monarchy of the shah, but nonetheless, it had a real impact, a psychological impact on the majority Sunni Islamists. There was also the taking over of the Kaaba in 1979 in November by radical Salafis trying to overthrow the Saudi regime, and then I think that really the incubator that really took Islamism to the next level, was the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan that allowed for different Islamists from different parts of the Arab Muslim world to come together and have a shared experience for a decade and really become battle hardened and not just ideologically advance themselves, but acquire capabilities that make political change a bit more, if you will, realizable. JS: Would you say that though – I mean, yes, so Afghanistan was that ground where they all met, but I'm struck by the fact that most of the examples you use are Arab. Would you describe radical Islam and this particular strain of jihadism as an Arab phenomenon or a Muslim phenomenon? KB: I would say it's an Arab phenomenon. One of the things to note is that Egypt is the cradle of all ideologies that have spread across the Arab Muslim world. Secularism in the Arab world began in Egypt. Islamism, in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, began in Egypt. Jihadism, what later was made transnational by al-Qaida and more recently by ISIS, has its roots in Egypt. So definitely it is – and then of course the Salafism of Saudi Arabia and its input into the making of this broader phenomenon. So yes, there is no doubt that it is an Arab ideology at its core, at its root. That doesn't mean that it doesn't take other shapes, though the Chechens have Islamism in a different direction and have emerged as leaders, for lack of a better term, in the Caucasus region. We have Central Asian jihadists, Southeast Asia has their own jihadists. But really, jihadism and the entire Islamist project is very much Arab at its core. JS: It also seems to be very Sunni. So you brought up Iran a little earlier, but I guess we could talk about Hezbollah and I guess we could talk about some of these groups, but how do you account for the fact that the majority of these groups are Sunni? Is there something within Sunni Islam or within their particular interpretation of Sunni Islam that leads to this kind of ideology? Is it really just that the political and geographic circumstances in countries that were Sunni and were Arab were bad enough and were the right mix of things that it really wasn't anything embedded within Sunni Islam itself? It was just that there was a situation in those countries and Sunni Islam was the religion that they practiced and therefore that was how it got manifested? So how do you – and I know we're going to talk about sectarianism a little more because it's so important, especially for the rise of ISIS, particularly in Iraq, but how do you account for the fact that most of these groups when we talk about them are all Sunni? KB: So I think that the easy way to understand this is simply that Sunnis have always been the majority sect in Islam. And the overwhelming majority. Even today, there aren't real good, if you will, we don't have a reliable census that we can say – OK, you know what, this is how many percentage of Shiites and Sunnis per country. But it's fair to say, I would say, that a good 80 percent of the Arab Muslim world is Sunni. Therefore, you know, the ideology of jihadism or any other ideology that came before, has always been dominated by the Sunnis. And so it's demography, it's sectarian demography, but it's also geography. If you look at the history of the expansion of Islam, and how over time, it gets factionalized and geography imposes its limits, and creates problems and leads to the rise of new regimes and new ideas, it becomes very clear that it's not something inherent in Sunni Islam, necessarily. Yes, there is this crisis of what does it mean to be a Muslim in the here and now in a collective sense. And the Muslim world has not seen, has not really come far beyond the old imperial age, that for the rest of the world, is now a good – you know it's in its second century, that was 200 years ago that the rest of the world, or the Western world in particular, really left the imperial form of governance for a modern nation-state based on a secular order and a commitment to self-determination and democracy. I think that evolution has not occurred in the Muslim world and therefore there is this crisis. But I don't think it's necessarily something in Sunni Islam. If Shiites had been the majority, in a counterfactual reality, I think we'd be facing the same problems. JS: I think I agree with you, but I'll play devil's advocate for a second, which is to say that I think you're right generally and this is not so much a Muslim issue especially in the Middle East, but it goes beyond the Middle East. But Iran is the Islamic Republic, right? You talked about the Iranian Revolution and Iran is really the center of Shiite Islam in the world. And we could say that there is a much more mature political, or at least a much more mature idea, about what the relationship is supposed to be between politics and between religion in Iran. It's not necessarily all settled. There are obviously large disagreements within Iran itself, but we might say that Turkey is another example that is fighting through this right now. It's not stable, but there's a much, much more mature sense of what that relationship is between politics and religion. So how do you account for a country like Iran, which went through its own turmoil and it has its own pressure, or a country like Turkey, which is currently doing it right now, how do you account for those countries developing the way they're developing versus the Arab world, which is essentially cannibalizing itself right now? KB: So there are a number of factors with it. The first one is that Sunni Islam has been preoccupied for, you know, over a millennia with orthodoxy. Orthodoxy has been its obsession. What are the boundaries of justifiable behavior and thought? That's what Sunni Islam – and I think that there is a certain logic here, that if you are the majority, you're not worried about existential issues. You're worried about the, you know, legitimacy, authenticity in terms of religious ideas. And so I think that is something that the Sunnis have been preoccupied for a very long time. And, therefore, they were not open to experimentation, for a lack of a better term, or to, you know, what the noted Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush will call “extra-religious ideas,” in other words moving beyond the religious text and borrowing from other civilizations. Not to say that that did not happen, but I think that by and large, that kind of borrowing or attempt to borrow from other civilizations and advance your social and political discourse, that's something that the Shiites were much more open to from the very beginning. I mean, for them, it wasn't the orthodoxy. It was much more about the sect itself. Being a minority, you know, issues of survival, that force you to innovate and force you to look beyond, if you will, your own belief. And so I think that the Shiites have had a head start in social, political and economic development. And keep in mind, it's not just Shiites. It's the idea that, we have to keep in mind that there is Iran. Persian nationalism is also at play here. So it's the interplay between the Persian ethno-linguistic civilization that flourished for a very long time, predating Islam. So, I think that when we look at Iran, its Islamism – the Islamic Republic – is a blend of a lot of ideas that are not necessarily Islamic in origin. So I think that's why you have Iran looking very different and far more healthy than the Arab world. And jumping over to Turkey, I think Turkey – although a Sunni power – does not come from the orthodox core, i.e. Arab core of Islam. I mean, the Turks came from Central Asia. And they went from Central Asia to Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and they set up shop over there. And before they did that, I'd like to add, they were in Europe (in Eastern Europe) and they were a European power well before they became a Middle Eastern power. And the Islam that is practiced over in Turkey is very different, or at least was very different. There has been a lot of blending and spillover of Salafism and these jihadi ideas and Islamic ideas, even in Turkey. But by and large, Turkey has had a different trajectory. And then, of course, secularism. And here I don't mean just Atatürk – Mustafa Kemal – the founder of the modern Republic. He didn't come out of nowhere. What he instituted, the Westernization of Turkey, the Europeanization of the Ottoman Empire and the building of the Turkish Republic along European lines, that didn't happen all of a sudden. It was built on the reforms that Sultan Mahmud II, (the Ottoman Emperor in the early 19th century), something he began and borrowed from Europe. So, you have very different trajectories here. And, of course, the geography of this region – I mean anybody who controls the Anatolian plateau, and anybody who is headquartered in Persia, is very secure. It's a strategic location from which you can build civilizations. The Arab world, if you go back to history, the Arabs really lost power and leadership of Islam, I would say, by the late 800s, mid-800s. They had lost the leadership of Islam because Turkic and Persianate dominions began to emerge and challenge the Arabs for leadership over Islam. And I'm not talking Shiite Islam, I'm talking Sunni Islam. JS: This is all interesting, and we're going a little bit over time, but I think it's worth it because this is an interesting conversation. I'd also just like to point out to our listeners that we didn't exactly plan this little divergence in the conversation. You can already see one of the reasons we appreciate Kamran, because he's a veritable encyclopedia for everything that has happened in the Muslim world ever. But one thing I want to ask you that is based on that, I want to take it a little away from what we were talking about before and then come back to ISIS to finish it of, is that I'm currently in southern France for some meetings, and for some conferences and for some other things, and obviously one of the main issues here and throughout most of Europe is the migration issue. You have, I wouldn't say a large number, it's a large enough number that the European Union is not able to organize itself to bring them in, in absolute terms it's not a huge number. But there are Muslim immigrants to Europe who are looking to find a place to live and to start a new life. And one of the concerns, especially here, especially in other places in Europe, is that they won't be able to assimilate, that they'll want to have their own culture, their own sense of law, and what is right and wrong, and that this presents a major challenge for the nation-states of Europe. Because how do they integrate them in? They don't want to just turn them away, but they don't want to lose the basic facts of their national identity. So you're talking about especially Sunni Islam and about the concern with orthodoxy and all these other things. I know that for instance in Jewish religion there is a rule in the religious text that is the law of the land is the law. It's supposed to supersede religious law. So, I've thrown a bunch of different issues at you off the cuff when I bring all those things up, what do you think about the migration crisis in general, and what do the things that we've talked about relating to Islam here say about the ability of Muslims who are coming to Europe or who are coming to the United States to assimilate? Do you think that Islam presents a major optical for them, or do you view those Muslims as any other group that has emigrated from one place to another and has to go through certain growing pains but will eventually assimilate? KB: I think it's a bit of the latter. But there are concerns, and I do have concerns that there are issues. And it's not because of Islam. Islam is what you make of it, if we are to borrow from Reza Aslan, the prominent author of the book on Jesus recently, and he now has a show on CNN. But really, I do think that Islam inherently is not something that prevents assimilation. I mean, we've seen this before, and I've just talked about how Persians and Turkic peoples and others, Chechens, took Islam in their own direction. I think that that's very much possible. But the question is, what is the geopolitics that we're dealing with when we talk about migration from the Middle East, particularly Syria, to Europe? In places like France, particularly, where there is sort of this if you will pre-existing strong, secular tendency and this desire by French people to have those who come to their country embrace that secularism with the same fervor. I think that's going to create some problems, and then of course, economic issues. So, there will be a lot of Syrian refugees for whom these issues are not really important. Because for them the first thing is, how do I get my family to safety? How can I escape war, get to a place where we're not going to be killed, and then of course, we have opportunities of livelihood. But I think that while they do that, a good chunk of them are still concerned about losing their religion in the process. And when that happens, and then you have this overarching, if you will, dynamic of ISIS and political Islam that these people can't ignore, then you're looking at a real recipe for conflict in these countries. And therefore, I think that the European states are justified in their fear. I don't buy the idea that this has something to do with religion, but I think that it's the geopolitical expression of religion that is the problem, and how immigrants are going to be welcomed or not, and how they see secularism. We say that there has to be moderation on the part of those who come from these areas, there has to be Islamist moderation. But I think at the same time that that's only possible if the European states also have a role to play in this. If they expect that these people will just say, oh you know what, I'm French now, and that's the way to go, I don't think that's going to happen. So there has to be a bit of give and take on both sides. And that give and take in the current geopolitical climate is really not possible where you're having terrorist attacks, there's the ISIS threat that's not going away, and economies are not doing well, there's not enough money to go around, and people are worried about losing their jobs to immigrants. And so in this atmosphere I think we're looking more at conflict rather than the ability to assimilate. JS: I'm afraid I agree with all of that. But to get us out of here, the question, and I'll take us back, we started all of this by talking about ISIS, and we sort of wandered around the Islamic world, even stepped our foot a little bit into Europe. I think one of the points we wanted to make in this podcast was that there's a lot of talk about the Islamic State is about to collapse. People have been saying the Islamic State is about to collapse for well over a year, a year and a half now. It's true that the Islamic State is facing a lot of pressure, a lot more pressure than it has previously on a lot of its borders. But I think the issue that you're really driving at here is that this isn't about one group, and it isn't just about a group in a particular state. It's really about a broader phenomenon, and it's a game of Whack-a-Mole. Sure, you might be able to hit the Islamic State and you might even be able to dislodge them out of Raqqa. It'll take a lot of casualties, but maybe you'll be able to get rid of the caliphate in that way. But the general ground, the fertile ground that Zarqawi came to after 2001 and was able to build this group into what it is today, I think what you're saying is that the ground is still fertile. The basic problems that we're talking about have not been resolved and perhaps have even been exacerbated because there's even less opportunity than there was before. Is that an accurate characterization of what you think? KB: Absolutely. I totally agree with you Jacob. I think that what we have to keep in mind is that we've been here before. So the predecessor organizations of ISIS, or IS, they were defeated at one point in time. But then they came back. And I'll give you a very clear example. In 2008, a large segment of Iraqi Sunnis had turned their guns away from fighting U.S. soldiers to fighting al-Qaida in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIS. And that group had been weakened. It wasn't completely uprooted, but it had been sufficiently weakened, and we saw respite. If you go back to between 2008 and 2011, the frequency of bombings had dropped, and things were looking better. But this group came out of the woodwork in 2011 when the United States left Iraq and the Shiite-dominated government basically double-crossed the Sunnis. They did not want to share power with the Sunnis fearing that the Sunnis had decades of experience, and if we let our guard down, it'll only be a matter of time before this Shiite-dominated republic falls, even before it's taking root. And so, that allowed for ISIS to come out. And then, on top of that, you had the Syrian civil war emerge and that created far more time and space for ISIS. And so, I think moving forward, if ISIS at the time, the predecessor of ISIS, which was muck weaker, much smaller, was able to revive itself in very difficult circumstances, I think that now they have far more opportunity to revive themselves, because that war that was confined to Iraq is now expanded. It's in Yemen, it's spilling over into Turkey, we see it playing out in Egypt and North Africa, and Syria is a mess. So, I think that maybe ISIS will be decimated as we know it today. Maybe the remnants of ISIS will form a new group that will eclipse ISIS of today, some other organization. We mustn't forget that al-Qaida is still there in Syria. And it's changed a few names, it used to be Jabhat al-Nusra, then Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and now they have a new coalition in Idlib. There are plenty of forces to take this caliphate project and take it to the next level, because the underlying political problems are still there, Shiite-Sunni conflict is still there, both in Syria and Iraq and the wider region, Iran and Saudi Arabia are at each other's throats, and there is no viable political-economic model that we're seeing in the Arab world. So, this hollowing out of the Arab world that you've written about, I mean that is not going away. And I suspect that the problem that we're dealing with, which we today call ISIS, will be with us, but with a different name in the years to come. JS: Well, thanks Kamran, and thanks for staying overtime a little bit with us to talk about this issue. I know it's a complicated one, and it's a really important one. So, I'm glad we were able to talk about it in some depth. Once again, I'm Jacob Shapiro, I'm the director of analysis for Geopolitical Futures. I was just talking with Kamran Bokhari, he is a senior analyst at Geopolitical Futures. We'll be doing another podcast next week. Please feel free to send us feedback on these podcasts by emailing us at comments@geopoliticalfutures.com, and for analysis on how ISIS is going to develop, and how all the things we have talked about are going to develop over time, you can check out our analysis in GeopoliticalFutures.com. Thanks.