Podcasts about internally

Recorded on November 15th 2021. Check out my YouTube & Twitch channel for live streams and other content.

We sit with Jest Sidloski from Peavey Industries to talk about how their company handled a massive acquisition and rebrand of another chain. As well as how they are approaching diversity, equity, and inclusion as a company. https://www.cavesocial.com/jest-sidloski/

Today's guest is marketing and leadership expert, Blair Primis. Before finding his way into the healthcare industry, Blair started his marketing career working with some of the world's biggest brands. Today, he is the senior vice president of marketing and talent management for OrthoCarolina – one of the country's largest orthopedic practices. During our conversation […]

Every company starts as an innovation. Thereafter, the unceasing challenge is to keep innovating because the market continues to change, technology continues to advance and, crucially, customer expectations continue to rise. Economics For Business speaks with Joe Matarese, Executive Chairman of Medicus Healthcare Solutions, about how to build the culture of continuous innovation and overcome the countervailing forces of the status quo. How to understand consumer expectations and build organizational culture that rewards continuous innovation: Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF. Key Takeaways And Actionable Insights Every company starts as an innovation. The challenge is to continue — and ideally accelerate — innovation without pause. As Joe Matarese puts it, innovation gets you into the game. It's how every company starts. There's the identification of a gap in the marketplace and the operationalizing of a new innovation to fill the gap, better than any other competitor or rival entrant. Innovation is seldom a great new invention or unprecedented leap. It's more often the day-to-day incremental changes and improvements in products and processes to meet customers' changing expectations. The great challenge is to continue or even accelerate innovation as the company grows and expands. Continuous innovation combines mindset, processes, technology, empathy, and organizational empowerment. The world is complex and ever-changing. Innovation is necessary for all businesses to keep up or even move ahead. Innovation is not simple, and it's not easy — in fact it's a continuous struggle against opposing forces. Joe Matarese has directed innovation from three vantage points: big corporate, startup, and large growth company. To achieve the goal of continuous innovation requires attention to multiple factors: Mindset: Innovation must be the commitment for everyone in the company. That means always asking the question, “How can we do better?” Such a mindset requires both tolerance of discomfort — since there's never any rest — and humility in the face of feedback. Innovative companies hire people with these characteristics and cultivate constant vigilance throughout the firm. Processes: Things get done through the implementation of processes. Innovative are always seeking to improve their processes — make them faster, lower cost, and more efficient in their use of inputs, especially the use of people's time. Innovation itself is a process, and process improvement is a form of innovation. Technology: Irrespective of how innovative any one company may be, technology is progressing at an increasing rate of change with potential to render all processes faster, lower cost, and capable of higher quality and fewer errors. One way to ensure continuous innovation is the rapid adoption and early implementation of new technologies as they become available. Empathy: Even more powerful than technology is the capacity to tap in to customers' expectations. This is the source of knowledge about future requirements. Customers are experiencing new technology, are absorbing innovation from other firms in the market (whether they are firms that are competitive to yours or simply adjacent), are experiencing change, and their expectations are changing and becoming more demanding by the moment. By sensing their changing expectations, the innovative firm is in position to be a first responder or an innovator before the expectation has even hardened or matured. Being ahead of expectations is a powerful place to be. Empowerment: People in front line sales and service functions are closest to customers and their expectations. Line operatives are closest to process implementation. Supply chain managers are closest to business partners and vendors. It is these front-line positions that are best placed to deliver information about expectations and what's changing. They are also best placed to sense dissatisfaction and unease, and to make real-time changes and adjustments. If they are empowered to make changes and to both suggest and implement improvements — even if what they try doesn't work — they will be more highly motivated and more likely to serve as an internal engine of innovation. Tools: Joe shares how his company, Medicus, has developed tools for innovation. Internally, all employees have access to communications tools that ensure the customer data they collect, and the ideas they generate as a result, are widely circulated and responded to. Externally, doctor whom Medicus reimburses for services have access to a tool to record their time that is administratively simple and generates fast payment, addressing two measures of unease. Our Econ4Business.com platform curates many tools for entrepreneurs. One example relevant to this episode is the "Continuous Customer Expectations Monitor" (see Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF2). It guides entrepreneurs through the continuous process of tracking and keeping up with changing customer expectations. There is a constant counterforce to innovation that the innovative company must recognize and overcome. There is an innate human resistance to innovation and change. Consider this from a leading brain scientist and psychologist: When information streams in through our sensory systems, it first stops off at our amygdalae, which are there to ask the question, “Am I safe?” We feel safe in the world when enough of the sensory stimulation coming in feels familiar. When something does not feel familiar, however, our amygdalae tend to label that unfamiliar thing as dangerous, and they respond by triggering our fight-flight-or-play-dead fear response. —Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., Whole Brain Living (Mises.org/E4B_144_Book) It's natural in humans to resist change. It may not be safe. It may threaten my job, or my comfortable routine, or generate unwanted uncertainty. Fear of change is real. The function that exercises the fear response in companies is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy exists to ensure compliance with existing rules, and their consistent and uniform implementation. Bureaucracy is anti-innovation. When a business leader commits to improving a product or process, he or she is undoing what someone else in the firm had championed and nurtured and maintained. It's a constant battle that must be waged between change and the maintenance of the status quo. The adoption of new technologies is an effective technique of innovation, but it can also trigger a fear response. Technology is the continuous innovator's weapon. It advances at its own pace, as a form of evolutionary advance. Every technological innovation spurs new applications in the marketplace. The adoption of these new technology applications is a catalyst for continuous innovation in the firm, supporting both product and service improvements and the incremental efficiency of processes — faster, leaner, lower cost. The fear mechanism exhibits itself as employees worrying about their jobs. Perhaps the application of technology will reduce the number of people supporting a particular process from 5 to 4 to 3 or 2 or even one or none. They fear that progress will punish them. They adopt a defensive mindset. The innovator's goal is to change the mindset to one of anticipation of rewards for progress. Basic economics tells us that resources which are no longer utilized in a process that is rendered more efficient are thereby released for higher and more productive uses. Innovation leaders can communicate that, and make sure employees know they will be rewarded for progress via new and better opportunities for them to contribute more through the higher productivity that innovation brings. The greatest resource for continuous innovation comes from customer intimacy and empathy that senses customers' escalating expectations. When we talk about a changing marketplace, we are really talking about customer expectations. Innovation elevates customer expectations and thereby triggers the next round of innovation in a never-ending cycle. For example, now that many people carry iPhones and other smartphones, they've become used to unprecedented levels of convenience, interconnection, functionality, and intuitiveness. Their expectations for every other piece of technology they encounter, and every interface they navigate, are raised to a new level. There's a marketplace of expectations and every new technology raises the bar. The way to keep pace, and to have any chance of anticipating and meeting the next level of raised expectations is to get as close to the customer as possible, to be with them when they're using your product or service or technology and listen and empathize when they express a wish (or expectation) that the experience could be easier, better, faster, less frustrating, more enabling. “I wish it were as easy as my iPhone” is the expression of an expectation that everything should be as easy as the iPhone. Innovating firms build in mechanisms that make continuous innovation not only possible but likely. There's a quote in the book Working Backward, about continuous innovation at amazon, to the effect that “Good intentions don't work, mechanisms do”. The intent to improve a process or product is not enough; people already had good intentions in the first place. Mechanisms turn intentions into actions and achievements. Some of the mechanisms Joe Matarese recommended are: Mechanisms for taking in data from and about customers: Customer intimacy has a mechanism, in the form of frictionless and unstructured data collection. Give front line employees and the technology they use the unfiltered capacity to gather customer information about their dissatisfactions and report it back. Let people experiment: The E4B technique of explore and expand applies to everyone in the organization. Elevate experimentation over compliance. That's the way learning happens. Eliminate bureaucracy that is not mission-supportive: Every company eventually builds bureaucracies in order to support consistent application of business rules. Innovators differentiate between bureaucracy that is mission-supportive and bureaucracy that is mission-obstructive. HR is often a department where bureaucracy grows. If HR is helping to recruit talented people who will contribute to innovation, then the bureaucracy is mission-supportive. If HR imposes rules that unnecessarily impede innovation, then that part of the bureaucracy should be shut down. The goal is to liberate the value-generating creativity of everyone in the organization, and not to impede it. Decentralization and entrepreneurial empowerment: Decentralization is a mechanism of innovation. The goal is for your organization to consist of hundreds of individuals thinking creatively and solving problems for customers. You want them all to think and to learn! They must know that the firm cheers them on for doing so. Additional Resources "Designing An Organization For Continuous Innovation" (PDF): Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF "Continuous Customer Expectations Monitor" (PDF): Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF2 Medicus Healthcare Solutions: MedicusHCS.com Econ4Business.com Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life by Jill Bolte Taylor: Mises.org/E4B_144_Book

Every company starts as an innovation. Thereafter, the unceasing challenge is to keep innovating because the market continues to change, technology continues to advance and, crucially, customer expectations continue to rise. Economics For Business speaks with Joe Matarese, Executive Chairman of Medicus Healthcare Solutions, about how to build the culture of continuous innovation and overcome the countervailing forces of the status quo. How to understand consumer expectations and build organizational culture that rewards continuous innovation: Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF. Key Takeaways And Actionable Insights Every company starts as an innovation. The challenge is to continue — and ideally accelerate — innovation without pause. As Joe Matarese puts it, innovation gets you into the game. It's how every company starts. There's the identification of a gap in the marketplace and the operationalizing of a new innovation to fill the gap, better than any other competitor or rival entrant. Innovation is seldom a great new invention or unprecedented leap. It's more often the day-to-day incremental changes and improvements in products and processes to meet customers' changing expectations. The great challenge is to continue or even accelerate innovation as the company grows and expands. Continuous innovation combines mindset, processes, technology, empathy, and organizational empowerment. The world is complex and ever-changing. Innovation is necessary for all businesses to keep up or even move ahead. Innovation is not simple, and it's not easy — in fact it's a continuous struggle against opposing forces. Joe Matarese has directed innovation from three vantage points: big corporate, startup, and large growth company. To achieve the goal of continuous innovation requires attention to multiple factors: Mindset: Innovation must be the commitment for everyone in the company. That means always asking the question, “How can we do better?” Such a mindset requires both tolerance of discomfort — since there's never any rest — and humility in the face of feedback. Innovative companies hire people with these characteristics and cultivate constant vigilance throughout the firm. Processes: Things get done through the implementation of processes. Innovative are always seeking to improve their processes — make them faster, lower cost, and more efficient in their use of inputs, especially the use of people's time. Innovation itself is a process, and process improvement is a form of innovation. Technology: Irrespective of how innovative any one company may be, technology is progressing at an increasing rate of change with potential to render all processes faster, lower cost, and capable of higher quality and fewer errors. One way to ensure continuous innovation is the rapid adoption and early implementation of new technologies as they become available. Empathy: Even more powerful than technology is the capacity to tap in to customers' expectations. This is the source of knowledge about future requirements. Customers are experiencing new technology, are absorbing innovation from other firms in the market (whether they are firms that are competitive to yours or simply adjacent), are experiencing change, and their expectations are changing and becoming more demanding by the moment. By sensing their changing expectations, the innovative firm is in position to be a first responder or an innovator before the expectation has even hardened or matured. Being ahead of expectations is a powerful place to be. Empowerment: People in front line sales and service functions are closest to customers and their expectations. Line operatives are closest to process implementation. Supply chain managers are closest to business partners and vendors. It is these front-line positions that are best placed to deliver information about expectations and what's changing. They are also best placed to sense dissatisfaction and unease, and to make real-time changes and adjustments. If they are empowered to make changes and to both suggest and implement improvements — even if what they try doesn't work — they will be more highly motivated and more likely to serve as an internal engine of innovation. Tools: Joe shares how his company, Medicus, has developed tools for innovation. Internally, all employees have access to communications tools that ensure the customer data they collect, and the ideas they generate as a result, are widely circulated and responded to. Externally, doctor whom Medicus reimburses for services have access to a tool to record their time that is administratively simple and generates fast payment, addressing two measures of unease. Our Econ4Business.com platform curates many tools for entrepreneurs. One example relevant to this episode is the "Continuous Customer Expectations Monitor" (see Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF2). It guides entrepreneurs through the continuous process of tracking and keeping up with changing customer expectations. There is a constant counterforce to innovation that the innovative company must recognize and overcome. There is an innate human resistance to innovation and change. Consider this from a leading brain scientist and psychologist: When information streams in through our sensory systems, it first stops off at our amygdalae, which are there to ask the question, “Am I safe?” We feel safe in the world when enough of the sensory stimulation coming in feels familiar. When something does not feel familiar, however, our amygdalae tend to label that unfamiliar thing as dangerous, and they respond by triggering our fight-flight-or-play-dead fear response. —Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., Whole Brain Living (Mises.org/E4B_144_Book) It's natural in humans to resist change. It may not be safe. It may threaten my job, or my comfortable routine, or generate unwanted uncertainty. Fear of change is real. The function that exercises the fear response in companies is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy exists to ensure compliance with existing rules, and their consistent and uniform implementation. Bureaucracy is anti-innovation. When a business leader commits to improving a product or process, he or she is undoing what someone else in the firm had championed and nurtured and maintained. It's a constant battle that must be waged between change and the maintenance of the status quo. The adoption of new technologies is an effective technique of innovation, but it can also trigger a fear response. Technology is the continuous innovator's weapon. It advances at its own pace, as a form of evolutionary advance. Every technological innovation spurs new applications in the marketplace. The adoption of these new technology applications is a catalyst for continuous innovation in the firm, supporting both product and service improvements and the incremental efficiency of processes — faster, leaner, lower cost. The fear mechanism exhibits itself as employees worrying about their jobs. Perhaps the application of technology will reduce the number of people supporting a particular process from 5 to 4 to 3 or 2 or even one or none. They fear that progress will punish them. They adopt a defensive mindset. The innovator's goal is to change the mindset to one of anticipation of rewards for progress. Basic economics tells us that resources which are no longer utilized in a process that is rendered more efficient are thereby released for higher and more productive uses. Innovation leaders can communicate that, and make sure employees know they will be rewarded for progress via new and better opportunities for them to contribute more through the higher productivity that innovation brings. The greatest resource for continuous innovation comes from customer intimacy and empathy that senses customers' escalating expectations. When we talk about a changing marketplace, we are really talking about customer expectations. Innovation elevates customer expectations and thereby triggers the next round of innovation in a never-ending cycle. For example, now that many people carry iPhones and other smartphones, they've become used to unprecedented levels of convenience, interconnection, functionality, and intuitiveness. Their expectations for every other piece of technology they encounter, and every interface they navigate, are raised to a new level. There's a marketplace of expectations and every new technology raises the bar. The way to keep pace, and to have any chance of anticipating and meeting the next level of raised expectations is to get as close to the customer as possible, to be with them when they're using your product or service or technology and listen and empathize when they express a wish (or expectation) that the experience could be easier, better, faster, less frustrating, more enabling. “I wish it were as easy as my iPhone” is the expression of an expectation that everything should be as easy as the iPhone. Innovating firms build in mechanisms that make continuous innovation not only possible but likely. There's a quote in the book Working Backward, about continuous innovation at amazon, to the effect that “Good intentions don't work, mechanisms do”. The intent to improve a process or product is not enough; people already had good intentions in the first place. Mechanisms turn intentions into actions and achievements. Some of the mechanisms Joe Matarese recommended are: Mechanisms for taking in data from and about customers: Customer intimacy has a mechanism, in the form of frictionless and unstructured data collection. Give front line employees and the technology they use the unfiltered capacity to gather customer information about their dissatisfactions and report it back. Let people experiment: The E4B technique of explore and expand applies to everyone in the organization. Elevate experimentation over compliance. That's the way learning happens. Eliminate bureaucracy that is not mission-supportive: Every company eventually builds bureaucracies in order to support consistent application of business rules. Innovators differentiate between bureaucracy that is mission-supportive and bureaucracy that is mission-obstructive. HR is often a department where bureaucracy grows. If HR is helping to recruit talented people who will contribute to innovation, then the bureaucracy is mission-supportive. If HR imposes rules that unnecessarily impede innovation, then that part of the bureaucracy should be shut down. The goal is to liberate the value-generating creativity of everyone in the organization, and not to impede it. Decentralization and entrepreneurial empowerment: Decentralization is a mechanism of innovation. The goal is for your organization to consist of hundreds of individuals thinking creatively and solving problems for customers. You want them all to think and to learn! They must know that the firm cheers them on for doing so. Additional Resources "Designing An Organization For Continuous Innovation" (PDF): Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF "Continuous Customer Expectations Monitor" (PDF): Mises.org/E4B_144_PDF2 Medicus Healthcare Solutions: MedicusHCS.com Econ4Business.com Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life by Jill Bolte Taylor: Mises.org/E4B_144_Book

Working internally over externally in Miscellaneous by Rabbi Daniel Kalish

Brian Geltzeiler of NBA TV and Sirius XM NBA joins Ethan Skolnick to provide the national perspective on the Miami Heat's "scary" good start to the season, as Victor Oladipo tweeted. Should anything scare Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Miami? Internally? In the East? In the West?  Sponsored by PrizePicks.com (five), www.TherapistPreferred.com (5RSN), and Quarterdeck restaurants. 

Working internally over externally in Mussar by Rabbi Daniel Kalish

Externally Different- Internally the Same in Mussar by Rabbi Daniel Kalish

(Gaia House) Meditation and Dharma Reflection in the Gaia House Online Dharma Hall

Ryan Deiss was recently featured on the Perpetual Traffic Podcast to talk about the future of marketing and conversion.   Marketing, at the end of the day, is the crafting and amplification of a message—and the crafting piece is more important today than it's ever been.   We've been receiving so much positive feedback about adding Ryan as a co-host on Business Lunch. We recently featured Ryan on another one of our podcasts, Perpetual Traffic, about the future of marketing and some cool things happening at Scalable. (One of those cool things is Scalable Impact LIVE. Get your ticket HERE.) It's a great episode to listen to as a leader and entrepreneur—and to have your marketing team listen to as well.    No one knows marketing like Ryan Deiss. Listen in as he chats with Perpetual Traffic hosts, Ralph Burns and Kasim Aslam, about what we can expect in the world of marketing in the weeks and months to come.   How Digital Marketing Has Changed in the Past Two Decades Ryan has been in the digital marketing game since he was 19, and he's almost 41. If you do the math, he's been at it longer than he hasn't. And he's seen a lot of changes. When he first started, obviously there was no Google or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok. Over the first decade of his career, he watched it move toward marketers' ability to target. There was this push when it was all about “right person, right time” (and the right message wasn't as important).   In the past few years, we've seen a shift away from that. Things got harder, more expensive. It's been fun with Facebook ads from 2007 to 2017. There was a new social channel coming out every other month. You could get in early, build your following. We watched influencers become celebrities.    But paid ads have straight up doubled in the past year. The average marketer has to spend more, and it's only going to get harder. We peaked, we crested, and now we're seeing a shift back toward digital marketer looking like mass media marketing. Our ability to get our message in front of the right person at the right time is slowly getting taken away from us—through competition, algorithmic shift, and being priced out.   With all this mass media, the message matters more now. It's the message that reigns. There's always going to be an edge if you're really a student of this stuff. It's really important as marketers that we own our message and become good copywriters again. Bad copy used to work if your timing was perfect. The message could be “want this thing?” People would be like, “I do!” And it was as easy as that.    Now? The sky isn't falling exactly, but you have to realize that the 2015 playbook isn't going to work in 2022. You have to build your own community, your own media brand. You need an email list, a podcast, a community of people invested in you and what you do.   The Best Message Wins Roy Williams, one of Ryan's mentors, is the author of The Wizard of Ads trilogy, which “everybody should read,” Ryan says. One of the fundamental themes is that the best message wins. Roy knows this because he's done primarily mass media marketing, and there's only so much targeting you can do through radio/TV. Roy always says, “The most valuable target is the untargeted target that you target through messaging.”   Why is this true? Because, the more targeting you bring into play, the higher the cost. The holy grail of marketing and advertising is the ability to craft a message, yell it out to the masses, and have people who didn't even know they were in the market have their ears perk up. That is the greatest skill that has ever existed and will always work in marketing.    Ryan says there's going to be an absolute bloodbath in the digital marketing space. You had so many agencies and consultants who had their trick. Ooh, I can juggle. In a world where everyone wants juggling, that's great. But now it's like juggling sucks. Nobody wants juggling. You're out of business. Because they weren't actually marketers. They weren't even really craftspeople or artists. They knew how to do one thing.    Marketing is all about crafting and amplifying a message. In recent years, all of the emphasis has been around amplification, traffic. Now it's going to be all about messaging. The folks who win will be those who see themselves as messengers and communicators first. Where the edge will be moving forward is on the messaging side. Most of these marketers have never learned how to craft a message. They've never learned how to dig in and figure out “what does this person really want?”   The Concentric Circles of Marketing It's easy to market to someone who already knows, likes, and trusts you and desperately wants what you have. Just show up. Then you go out to that next ring—people who are solution-aware and in the market and actively looking. But the biggest gains will come from the problem-aware market and the unaware market. That's where you've got to learn to speak to people about their unspoken need/desire—things they aren't even talking about.   Roy Williams once wrote a Rolex ad for Justice Jewelers, a regional jewelry company in the Midwest. When Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Everest, he got a Rolex. The whole point of the ad is that you, too, deserve a Rolex when you conquer your own Everest. This ad is for people who might never have even thought about wanting a Rolex. This is for someone who has conquered a mountain and they're looking for a way to celebrate. You're selling them identity reinforcement. That's what great marketers understand.    The New Marketing Playbook for CEOs A lot of CEOs are struggling with this new world—going from being their own CMO to having others do it for them. Ryan says the days of running the company and doing all the marketing are over. And he says this as the CEO of a company called DigitalMarketer. He doesn't market anymore. He's not even in the marketing meetings. His primary job is communicator-in-chief. He's good at messaging, and that's where he'll keep his focus.   Internally, they focus on messaging, and for all the mechanics of a given channel (Google, Facebook, YouTube), they work with external agencies and consultants. Everything has gotten so specialized. Let other people handle it.    Back in 2016, DigitalMarketer set a vision and mission for the next 5 years. They wanted to be all about doubling the size of 10k businesses. It was a cool mission, but they had no way to track it. This year they reset their mission. They're going to be all about serving and enabling marketers. They're going to simplify and systemize marketing so marketers can freaking win and do their best work.    See You at Scalable Impact LIVE That shift meant they were no longer speaking to the small business owner and entrepreneur. So they started another company for that at Scalable.Co. Ryan tells founders to get out of the dang marketing meetings. As the leader, you're not the person coming up with all the plans. You're communicator-in-chief and questioner-in-chief. He knows it's a hard one to hand off, but you've got to do it if you want to scale.    They didn't just launch a new company; they launched a new event. Scalable Impact Live is an annual event for the CEO and entrepreneur. It's not T&C; there's literally not a single marketing session. It's all about asking: what does it look like to scale your business to the next level? Growth is not enough.    It's single track, old-school, highly interactive, with just 500-600 people. Ryan and his business partners, Roland Frasier and Richard Lindner, will be teaching and walking through different workshops with special guests Marcus Lemonis from The Profit; the NFL's Emmitt Smith; and brilliant businesswoman, Kendra Scott.    Come confused and frustrated; leave with a scalable impact plan.    RESOURCES:   Scalable Impact Live (November 2-3, 2021) Wizard of Ads (trilogy by Roy Williams)   Justice Jewelers Rolex ad OUR PARTNERS: Scalable Impact Live (November 2-3, 2021) Get a free proposal from Conversion Fanatics Get 3% cash back on your ad spend with AdCard PodBean, your all-in-one podcasting solution

Contact Russ Porter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russporter42/Contact Margaret Michaels: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-michaels/IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants): https://www.imanet.org/IMA's Ethics Center: https://www.imanet.org/career-resources/ethics-centerMembers of IMA shall behave ethically. A commitment to ethical professional practice includes overarching principles that express our values and standards that guide member conduct. IMA's overarching ethical principles include: Honesty, Fairness, Objectivity, and Responsibility.  Members shall act in accordance with these principles and shall encourage others within their organizations to adhere to them. IMA members have a responsibility to comply with and uphold the standards of Competence, Confidentiality, Integrity, and Credibility. Failure to comply may result in disciplinary action FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back for episode 85 of Count Me In I'm your host, Adam Larson and today's conversation features IBM's Vice President of Finance and Global Business Services, Russell Porter. Russell has been with IBM for over 20 years, serving in roles spanning most financial disciplines in business units. He is a strong leader with a high aptitude for merging strategy and operations. In this episode, he really focuses his insights on how to lead and manage remote teams during these ongoing times of uncertainty. Russell explains IBM's current status and upcoming plans, as well as what he has done along the way to keep his team motivated and achieving. Keep listening, as we head over to this very timely and valuable conversation. Mitch: (00:55) Many leaders were faced with a task of quickly adapting their management strategies to remote work following the coronavirus pandemic. What were some of the strategies that you implemented in the beginning of this for the whole work from home environment, and how did you go about keeping your team together? Russell: (01:13) Mitch, in any situation, you know, one of the best things we can do is provide some clarity for our people. Discussing what we expect to happen, what we know, what we don't know and, and how we're going to make decisions as we all work through the issues that face us. In addition, one of the things we did was reinforced clarity around our organization's mission, and tried to make sure that each person continually understood their role in that overall mission. That helps people to stay connected and engaged, as we went through, you know, the, the vast uncertainty of those early days of the pandemic. We also noted that we needed a greater focus on empathy. You know, our team members all face different situations from those who are suddenly homeschooling their children to others who are concerned about aging parents and some who were cut off from the bulk of the social engagement that they had by not being able to go to work. You know, there's a saying that everyone's fighting a battle that we know nothing about, and we need to keep that in mind as leaders when we're working with our people, especially when we can't be physically with them, as much as we're used to.  That led us to realize we also had to be more flexible. You know, the work getting done is more important than exactly how it gets done. So at IBM we've got existing flex time programs that we just leveraged across the board. You know it allows people to attend to their daily needs while getting work done at what some would consider off shift hours. Now, not everything can happen that way, but to a great extent, our teams could modify their workdays to be early in the morning, late at night, or even split into pieces based upon all the other priorities they had to address. That took some creativity at times, and we had to change some structures like the workday times or some job design. And it was a great time actually to tap into our team's creativity, because they helped us develop some of those solutions to address the individual's responsibilities and the individual's requirements and the job environment. The biggest thing we did though was communication, communication, communication. We were fortunate in IBM, we we've implemented agile methodologies in a lot of our work within finance and operations. So one of those, one of those methods is a daily standup meeting, and that really provided us a great check-in opportunity for our leaders and our teams to share those experiences and their concerns, and to make sure that our teams remained engaged in the work, but also that we could talk to them about what was going on outside of the work environment. That regular communication has really helped us to communicate both vertically and laterally across the organization. So a regular checkpoint with the team is key. But also as, as I've seen lots of people talking about the one thing that's missing in this virtual environment is the impromptu run into the hallways connection. That time when you're just walking down the hall and you see somebody and you think, oh, I meant to talk to them about an idea. So reaching out and keeping up networking and your contacts within your organization and outside, and being able to communicate across the small teams that we work in, that was also a big thing. And that was enabled by the technology and tools that we had adopted already. We were already doing video conferencing with WebEx and instant messaging, which we adopted with Slack earlier this year. Cloud based file repositories. All of these went from being ancillary to becoming like the primary mode of communication around the, around the organization, and I think the fact that we are already progressed with those tools, or at least had started with them, helped us adopt and adapt very, very quickly to what became a full time virtual environment. Mitch: (05:14) That's great that you had so much prepared and were able to implement so quickly, you know, I'm sure during this rapid change, and it was certainly a lot of uncertainty for everybody, even with plans in place like this, there must've still been a lot of questions from the team members, right? So what were some of the main concerns that you were hearing from your team while all this was going on, and how did you as a leader, go about addressing them? Russell: (05:40) So I'll tell you the number one question I kept getting was when are we going back to back to the office? And here again, knowing individual circumstances, I've got extroverts and introverts on my team, and the extroverts, you know, when they heard that we are going to be working virtually for a while., they wanted to get back to the office as quickly as possible. And, and working from home, working from bedrooms or living rooms on their own was really driving them a little nuts. So a lot of people thought it was going to be a one or two week closure of the offices to get past a peak period. But as the days turned into weeks, that question of when are we going back to the office became more and more insistent. You know, again, the best we could do was provide the clarity that we didn't know. And, and I'm in the Northeast. So, you know, in the Connecticut, New York area, and we had to tell our people, we didn't know. It was dependent first firstly, upon state regulations, but then also upon, the company's way that they wanted to approach coming back to the office, given that we've never had a time when the virus wasn't somewhere in the IBM office offices, or in the environments, I should say the States where, IBM operates. So, number one question was when are we gonna get back to the office? And we gave as much clarity as we could. Number two, job was, well, how are we going to get our jobs done the way we're used to doing them? And the answer was, we're not. We're simply we needed to adapt to this new virtual environment there, wasn't going to be, you know, printing of documents, and, and there wasn't going to be the huddling in a physical conference room to go over charts, to go over analysis, to, to present ideas. Suddenly we all had to go virtual and that required a little bit of change, and the way we did things and the way we shared. It wasn't marking up and standing in front of a screen. It was, you know, trying to point at something with your, with your mouse and a little arrow on WebEx. but here again, it was adoption of the technology that helped us adapt and, and continue to be productive as a finance and operations organization. And what we actually found was within FNO, we really didn't skip a beat. We were able to modify the way we did things, everything from presentations and analysis to, you know, approvals, everything got, got swept up very quickly. And within, I would say 30 days, we were operating, like we'd been operating in this form forever. Mitch: (08:17) That's great, and that's a very, quick, you know, adaption to the new way of doing business, and, you know, you mentioned this was a couple months ago now, right? And within 30 days, things certainly picked up for you. I know here in the United States and many other places across the world, there are businesses that are opening up. So, you know, based on what you've shared already, can you please tell us, you know, how is IBM currently conducting their business? And is there anything that you have already planned, as far as a return to work policy and how you would support those who maybe are those introverts like you, or those who are hesitant to go back for whatever reason and are not comfortable in the office? Russell: (09:04) Now, I completely understand that hesitation, and right now there are so many discussions and debates going on around the country about opening offices and schools. No one wants to see the infection rates start to spike up again. So at IBM, we're still operating at well over 90% virtual capacity right now around the world. And we're engaging with our clients, our suppliers, our team members, all through only virtual means. And to a large part, we found it largely effective. That said there are some countries and some cultures around the world where in person meetings are really difficult to replace. Now, we've been really public about the fact that IBM is going to take a conservative approach in our return to our offices. And we're seeing lots of other companies that are saying the same thing, that this is going to be out of the office for an extended period of time. For us, we're going to have a multi wave plan in which our critical client facing and our teams where collaboration is absolutely critical. They're going to be the first back in the office, and they'll be observing a lot of new protocols to help ensure that they're doing so safely. Everything from lower space density usage, and daily checkpoints of health conditions. Minimization of use of conference rooms, and obviously masks and social distancing are going to be a big part of that. IBM's actually develops a new tools to facilitate that transition transition for us and for our clients called Watson Works, which is designed to help assess, help employee assess themselves before they come into the office and help manage the interior office space to make sure that we're not overcrowding or putting our people into a difficult situation. Now, after that initial re-introduction, we're going to gradually increase the percent of the population going back to the office slowly and deliberately over time. And we're going to put priority on those organizations where face to face interaction is pivotable. Now my organization in finance and operations, we're likely going to be in the later stages. We've been pretty effective in working virtually for, for a long period of time. So I'm expecting, we'll be working from home at least through the end of the year and probably beyond that. And I'm sure that, and this is true for everybody, I'm sure. We won't go back to our offices and same way we did before. Masks, social distancing, staggered scheduling, low density, that's going to be the norm for the foreseeable future. And from my perspective, it follows that if part of our team is always going to be off site, because I don't think my whole team will be onsite altogether again, for quite some time. Then our practices of engaging the remote teams through video conferencing and Slack and file sharing. All of that's going to continue for the foreseeable future as well. So the office may become less of a place, we go to work our nine to five, and more of a place where we go to have those critical in person meetings, but most of the work will continue to be conducted offsite, wherever possible with a digital connection to those who might be in the office, but really the majority who are going to be continuing to work from home. Mitch: (12:25) Well, it sounds like those are great solutions, and I know just in reading through the news and watching, you know, as you said, it sounds pretty standard for many businesses these days. but everything you just discussed really has a very positive spin on it, and that's something I really want to emphasize. I feel like we talk about this and it's always kind of the downside of what's going on, but how about some of the positives that you have realized? What have you seen over the last three, four months, however long it's been that has really enhanced your business, or some individuals productivity or engagement, you know, what's the positive side of everything going on right now? Russell: (13:03) So there are a lot of positives. There's always a, a silver lining around the cloud.  From IBM's perspective, first of all, we've got a global workforce, and within finance and operations, we've always had a number of people who work away from IBM's primary sites, whether it's in their home or in a satellite site, and as managers and leaders, we now have a greater appreciation for the challenges that those people have faced for a long time. Those people who are already working remote, they adapted like it was nothing because it was continuing to do what they've always done. So as managers and leaders, we understand a little bit more of that perspective. In addition, as, as our clients have gone through this transition, it has created opportunities for IBM to serve our clients in new and different ways, helping them get farther along in their own digital strategies. So, there are elements of our business that we've been able to leverage to help our clients adapt to these environments as well. Internally, we've also been able to help, adopt our collaboration tools like the ones I've mentioned before Slack and WebEx. A lot of these were on our plate, prior to the pandemic, but they've been far more readily adopted as a result of the pandemic than they would have been earlier. And I think that's going to have a permanent and beneficial change to the way that IBM can operate, and that's true of almost any organization. It's another tool in the toolbox to allow for collaboration, communication, leadership of our teams, wherever they may sit. And of course the one, the one benefit I hear a lot is a no commute. I work in an area where typically people are commuting 45 minutes to an hour each way every day, and people have, people have really used that extra time for a lot of beneficial reasons. They've, they've improved their home lives. They're more engaged, they're sleeping better, they're exercising more frequently, and the number of new dogs that have shown up on my WebEx is in the background, have been, has been one of the joys of seeing how people have expanded their families in a variety of different ways. Mitch: (15:25) That's great. I know we have very similar circumstances as well, and, situations that a little impromptu, a sigh of relief and nice smile. It's something that's certainly welcomed throughout the day. You know, just to wrap up this conversation, this has been great, and I appreciate all your insight. You know, a lot of people have adapted and are doing well, as you said, there are many positives, but you know, looking ahead, those who are going to continue to work remotely, in your opinion, how do you suggest maintaining motivation? What can you share with our listeners who are leading remote teams or are remote workers and are looking for some added incentive, what do you have to offer them? Russell: (16:06) So I always, I go back to the basics on this and I'm going to end where I started, I think. Number one, you know, keeping our teams productive means keeping them engaged, making sure they understand, you know, our mission as an organization, and again, they're part of it. People want to see the value of the work they do, and how it contributes to the team. And in order to really engage people, you need to be empathetic. You need to be able to understand the off-camera issues that your, our team members are facing, and discuss those issues with them, be creative, helping them find solutions, or even just to listen. Some of our team members are likely experiencing, you know, loneliness away from the office, spending time, just being with those people, and helping them to, you know, showing that you really care about them as people, not just as workers. It does help to keep them engaged and keep them productive. But I think it also just helps them deal better with the challenges that might be coming their way. eEven those that we don't see. And also a little bit of flexibility, creativity and fun. We've got a WebEx coffee hour or a happy hour every two weeks or so. One of the rules is we're not allowed to talk about work, we invariably do. But we try to spend time talking about what's going on in our families. What interesting things we've been doing for, you know, adventure, whether that's hiking or kayaking or, going out and running. And as I said, you know, we get to, we get introduced to new family members, you know, dogs, cats, a turtle in one case. And in one case recently, a new baby that joined the family. So, helping to keep it fun, keep it lighthearted, keep the teams engaged, that pays a lot of dividends in terms of people's willingness to put forward the extra effort when it's required, and these days to put forward the extra effort when it feels like at times, you know, they're on their own. Making the time to socialize, making the time to spend some quality time with our teams, that's really critical in, in helping all of our organizations achieve their end objectives and keeping our teams engaged, and, and dare I say, happy. Closing: (18:33) This has been Count Me In IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like, what you heard, and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.

Continuing from our last episode with Carl, Wes, & Ariel.... Topics discussed: Tales From the Trenches Addressing the Support case that seems to go nowhere How to get from engineer to domain architect Information sharing, Internally vs Externally Documentation Motivating a business to consider a move into Agile Methodology. Links mentioned in this episode: HTownVinny's Support Tweet Join ITR in Slack!

Inner Voice – a Heartfelt Chat with Dr. Foojan on KMET 1490 AM / ABC News Radio.  In this segment-Balancing internally & Externally - Dr. Foojan shares the Tip of the Week about how parents and teens can have better communication. Dr. Foojan chats with Heather Hutchison is the author of Holding On by Letting Go: A Memoir, and an award-winning singer/songwriter with three albums released to date. Blind since birth and having struggled with mental illness from a young age, she is passionate about educating people on disability and mental health through her music and writing. www.heather-hutchison.com Dr. Foojan shares with you how to stay balanced internally to handle your plans while an emergency shows up. Then She brings you Dr. Jon Kolkin is an internationally recognized artist with a lifetime of experience pursuing his passions while simultaneously maintaining a healthy balance between his personal and professional life. His unique strategies have allowed him to achieve a high level of success as a professional fine art photographer, physician, educator, global humanitarian, and international speaker. Kolkin's images have won numerous awards, are widely published. He has served on the faculty of the prestigious Maine Media Workshops and is a frequent guest lecturer at major universities and other venues worldwide. They will talk about his first book: INNER HARMONY. www.kolkinphotography.com. Check out my website: www.foojan.com

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo tasked states to think out of the box in raising their respective Internally Generated Revenues.He says by thinking differently there is a need for a sub-national to think like a sovereign State.He says there is a different mindset when they are sure of a monthly allocation of cash at least enough to pay salaries, whether they generate income or not.

We sat with Flywire CMO, Allison MacLeod, to talk about how marketing departments can be better positioned internally within their organizations. https://www.cavesocial.com/allison-macleod

This podcast episode is brought to by our host, Jack Moylan, and Tax & Consulting Shareholder, Jeff Synder. In this episode, you will learn about how to overcome challenges with clients/own your mistakes at work! The conversation helps answer the following questions: What does it mean to “own your mistakes?” What are ways that you have “owned your mistakes” in the client sense? Internally? How important is it to know who is at fault? What if you don't think a mistake was made? If you feel like you've made a mistake, what are your first steps to remedy the situation? Why is it important to own up to your mistakes at work? Can you give us an example of someone who didn't own their mistake and the outcome? Do you have any tips or resources to help (especially for new employees/younger staff)?

Emotional clarity arrives as steps forward are taken internally.

Recorded on 08/26/21 Cowen analyst Yaron Werber speaks with Sophie Kornowski, Partner at Gurnet Point Capital, and Doug Giordano, Managing Director, Perceptive Advisors, about the importance of taking risks, staying humble, and thinking through valuations when they headed transactions at Roche and Pfizer. They discuss the importance of building relationships, getting internal alignment and support for deals, and offer a behind-the-scenes look at how deals are done. For Disclosures, click here bit.ly/3cPHkNW

We have one of our favourite returning guests on the podcast today, entrepreneur and practicing MD Molly Maloof, who is back this time going straight to the heart of health and happiness; Love, sex, relationships, and the harmonious intersection of medicine and love. One of the many reasons we love the work of Dr. Molly is she's all about maximising potential and better function within the human body. Evolving in her practice and true to form with her ever-innovative mind, Dr. Molly's work has recently taken a more focused move into the space of relationships and how the quality of our close relationships significantly determines our long-term health. Healthy relationships help us cope better and defuse the external stresses of life; So why not focus on improving relationships? Inspired by years of experience and research in psychedelics, the neurobiology of love, and drug-assisted therapy, Dr. Molly is developing a company that aims to improve relationships and strengthen bonds through drug-assisted therapy. A complete paradigm shift in the way we view modern medicine and an upgrade to the human condition and relationships. As always with Mason and Dr. Molly, this episode is energised and thought-provoking. They explore the topics of psychedelic-assisted therapies, sexual dysfunction and the root causes of relationship problems, the history of MDMA and couples therapy, where modern medicine is falling short, and so much more. Tune in for good convo and sovereign health.   "I think technology is where we see these bonds decay. We're seeing people give up their marriages, we're seeing people walk away from long-term relationships, and we're seeing families and children affected. One of the most adverse childhood experiences a kid will have is a divorce. Why are we not looking at these fundamental facets of society and saying, gosh, why can't we do better?" And maybe there's a way we can do better that's ethical, honourable, that's scientifically sound, and will leave people better than we found them".   - Dr. Molly Maloof     Mason and Molly discuss:   Natural Aphrodisiacs. Entactogens (empathogens) The psychedelic movement. Psychedelic assisted therapy. Combatting stress through love. Relationships, community, and happiness. How relationships affect long-term health. Exploring root trauma and healing sexuality. Technology and the decay of relationships. Sexual dysfunction and relationship problems. Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Oxytocin, and Serotonin.   Who is Molly Maloof? Dr. Molly Maloof's goal is to maximise human potential by dramatically extending the human healthspan through medical technology, scientific wellness, and educational media. Her fascination with innovation has transformed her private medical practice, focused on providing health optimisation and personalised medicine to San Francisco & Silicon Valley investors, executives, and entrepreneurs. Molly's iterative programs take the quantified self to the extreme through comprehensive testing of clinical chemistry, metabolomics, microbiome, biometrics, and genomic markers.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Cordyceps Deer Antler Molly's Twitter   Molly's Linkedin  Molly's Website Molly's Facebook Molly's Instagram  Psychedelic News Hour with Dr Molly Maloof Maximising Your Human Potential with Dr. Molly Maloof (EP#47) Spiritual Awakening and Biohacking with Dr. Molly Maloof (EP#108)   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:03) Molly, how are you?   Molly Maloof: (00:05) I'm alive and well in the middle of a chaotic world. And somehow I feel like one of the more sane people in the room these days.   Mason: (00:14) You're the sane person. It's great because I like the fact that the sane person and one of the sane people on Instagram. I love your Instagram endlessly.   Molly Maloof: (00:23) Thanks.   Mason: (00:23) And I love you're the doctor whose drugs I want to take.   Molly Maloof: (00:28) Yeah, right. Like I kept on asking myself, "What if we made drugs that people wanted to take? What if we made drugs that actually improve the human condition?" What if we made drugs that actually improved resilience and improved our relationships? How come that's not medicine?   Mason: (00:46) Now, let me start with this little light question.   Molly Maloof: (00:48) Yeah.   Mason: (00:49) Where does the intersection of medicine and love begin and integrate?   Molly Maloof: (00:56) Yeah, right? Okay. Here's what occurred to me. And I haven't really even announced my company because I've been stalled, but I can talk about the big picture because I think it's really important. I spent my entire life trying to figure out how and ever since I was a child, and I was like, wanting to become a doctor at a young age, and then hit puberty in all sorts of hormonal disarray. And I was just like, "What is this happening to my body?" I remember thinking, someday I'm going to figure out my whole body, and I'm just going to understand all this weird shit that's happening to me. And so I spent a lot of my life trying and testing out things to see what would they would do. I would take supplements when I was in ninth grade. I was just constantly doing weird stuff to see what I could do to make my body function better.   Molly Maloof: (01:41) And then, left my residency, started my own medical practise, and really was like, "Fuck, I want to make a practise around optimising health, instead of just fixing sickness." So I want to understand health from first principles. So I spent all this time studying and practising . And fortunately, I had patients who would pay me a lot of money to like, be my lab rats. And they were willing, they were coming to me with experiments that they're like, "I want to do this, will you be help me?" And I'm like, "Sure." So I was one of those doctors that was just like, helping executives find greater performance. And then I had a bit of a come to Jesus moment.   Molly Maloof: (02:18) And I was just like, I did not go into medicine to be doctor just to rich people. That's not cool. And this is like been an interesting experiment. But I should probably be doing more with my life than just helping rich people stay healthy. So it really was that. That was really going through my head. I was at Esalen Institute, and I was just like, "Yeah. I'm pretty sure that there should be more to life than this."   Mason: (02:39) It's an elephant a lot of the time in the health sector.   Molly Maloof: (02:42) Yeah. But at the same time, I'm super grateful that I actually was able to do what I did because A, I could show I actually was part of like a massive trend movement, which was like, precision medicine for individuals was like, not a thing until, a few years after I started practising . So I've always been a bit ahead of the curve. But I've always also been one of those people who's just like, I can't settle for like surface level anything. So I have to get under the surface. So I got asked to teach at Stanford, a course. And she was like, "You seem to be this healthspan expert. So why don't you teach about it?" And I was like, well, of course, I got really insecure. And I was like, "Well, I know a lot. But I can't know enough to teach a second best school in the country." So I went and I started researching even deeper and started studying even more and started like coming up with this framework of what health was about.   Molly Maloof: (03:28) And in my process of studying everything, I was creating electron relationships. And I started figuring, I saw a couple TED Talks, and I started looking into the research of these two psychologists and this researcher from Stanford. And basically, the conclusion was that long term health and happiness is literally dependent on your relationships, like the number one factor in whether you're going to live long and healthy or not is your relationships. And why do you think that is? Well, usually they're the biggest source of stress or stress relief. And we know that stress is a huge source of disease, and yet everybody talks about stress, but nobody talks about what to do about it. Even like some of the best most famous doctors in America.   Molly Maloof: (04:11) Well, even doctors are on stress, like sit around talking about how they don't know what to do with stress. So I was like, "I wonder if we could actually create medicine, that improved relationships." And so I started figuring out through the psychedelic movement, that a lot of what entactogens do is they fundamentally reproduce the neurobiology of love. And so I started digging into the neurobiology of love and I was like, oh, so dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and serotonin are essentially like some of the bigger molecules involved with love and connection as well as hormones. So to me, it was like kind of a lightbulb moment happened when I was like, "Whoa, what if we actually were to create medicine that can reproduce the love that you had early in your relationship when you first got married, when you first started dating?" What would happen if you could actually reintroduce that feeling again, in your relationship, when you've been together for 10 years, and you're already annoyed by each other constantly. And there's all this resentment built up?   Molly Maloof: (05:17) And what if you could work on that resentment, work on your attachment issues, work on your relationship and your bond and strengthen that bond, through drug assisted therapy? And so that's kind of what I came up with as an idea. And so I'm in this process of investigating the possible ways to do this. But really, it's like a complete paradigm shift in modern medicine because A, it's not about individuals taking drugs, it's about two people taking a drug together. And B, it's not about doctors just handing people drugs, but it's drugs plus therapy. Drugs plus a therapeutic journey that you take, in order to achieve a certain outcome. So not only does medicine have to change in a few different ways, like A, we have to like see if the FDA will even let us give two people drugs. But B like, the payment system of medicine is about you go to a therapist, you go to a doctor, you get a drug, and the doctor is paid for that visit. And that psychologist is just paid for that visit.   Molly Maloof: (06:14) So I have friends that are in payments systems, and they're developing like bundled payment programmes because essentially you need to like create an entire outcome based experience that is paid for in a lump sum. And so there's a lot of things that need to change about in medicine. But I think that fundamentally the human bonds that we create, like are the hugest source of survival that we have. And a lot of people have overlooked this in this pandemic. We know now from isolation, that there's nothing healthy about people being by themselves in their homes, especially the elderly. Come on, and young people and children with families in one house, like we're meant to be in community, we're meant to be touching other people, we're meant to be around other people. And I think it's really a shame that we have ignored this factor for so long, and we're continuing to ignore it while people are killing themselves with alcohol and drugs and other substances.   Molly Maloof: (07:07) And it's just like, and even food, right? Like kids are gaining weight at record rates, people are gaining weight at record rates. And it's all because we're not supposed to be alone. We're not supposed to be indoors by ourselves isolated, like it's not productive, and it's the antithesis of health. So that's my shtick in my soapbox description. And I'm just going to say this, this is a really ambitious endeavour, there is a very good chance that it will not work because the government will stop me. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't be doing stuff like this because we actually need to change the way that people think about medicine. We actually need to change how medicine is delivered.   Mason: (07:42) You know what, like what brings up, I've been reading a lot of like management books because I'm at that stage by my business where I was like Peter Pan and I'm back in the real world a little bit where am I growing up and becoming a little bit adulty.   Molly Maloof: (07:56) We're both becoming adults, dude.   Mason: (07:57) We're both adulting the shit out of life right now.   Molly Maloof: (08:01) We're adulting the shit out of life.   Mason: (08:04) The one Tani got like the whole management team to raid was like a Patrick Lencioni one. I don't think that's how you pronounce his name, but he's got business fables, and it's the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and one of the dysfunctions, I can't remember if it's an exact dysfunction or just something I took out of the fable, but it's like you get an executive team and you go through all the different departments like what's our goalposts? Like what are we all agreeing on that we're looking at as like what we're all trying to get? Is it like customer acquisition? Is it customer happiness ratings? Is it revenue? It doesn't matter what the hell it is, we just focus on that and we go for it and then that unifies you. I think most people and including people that get into health and are entrepreneurs in the health same doctors what the thing that happens is they still they can't get over the hangover of getting dumped.   Mason: (08:53) The goalposts been put on you by a pretty old medical system that just like, just keep people alive. Just improve the condition somewhat. And I think why when you speak and when people listening, I know people like loving my team like listening to your last podcast in the community really excited is because the boldness that you have and it's screaming me, you're like, "No, I'm creating my own goalpost, not taking on that one, and I can see the bridge, and I'm going..." Like you actually can bridge it. It's not just, I'm defying you. It's like, "No," I'm just like, I can work with in that and I can see what you're focused on. And I'm very clear about what I'm focusing on. It's like relationship and then measure the markers to see that your relationships have improved and we know it because we have these markers. And that focus is really inspiring. It's really intimidating for people that have just allowed themselves to be handed what the goalpost is. So cheers you, I raise my hot chocolate to you.   Molly Maloof: (10:00) It's like I ask myself, "Okay, I've got this personal brand. If I like go and be Dr. Molly brand, Dr. Molly, how is that going to like..." Okay. So let's say there's Andrew Weil, there's Dr. Oz, there's all these, like leaders in the space. I could do that. And I can always fall back on that if this thing doesn't work, like I'll only be 40 by the time I fail at this, right? So I think I'm going to give myself like solid three years before I give up. Look, it's really hard to do this thing, but I'm going to give myself some significant time and commitment, like five to 10 years, then we'll see what happens. If I can get through past three years, I'll be fucking stoked. So point is, is like I can always fall back on like the Dr. Molly brand because it's like, that's cool. But that's just an evolution, right? That's just like, me becoming branded doctor 2.0. But the thing about this other thing is like, if we actually were to accomplish this, this just fundamentally changes medicine, and also could transform human relationships, which are falling apart.   Molly Maloof: (11:02) People are getting divorced after eight years, and kids are getting damaged by these relationships. Kids are missing their relationships with their parents, parents are not bonding, kids are feeling neglected. We've got to save the family unit and I think it starts with the primary relationship. And to me, this is something that is interesting to me that, I just don't think a lot of people work on their relationships, like I don't think it's something that a lot of people consider to be a thing that they should be doing every day. But it's actually so fundamental to survival, right? And yet, it's like when things are getting really bad, that's when they get to work. So we are looking at different indications. But fundamentally, the big picture, what I'm trying to do, it's kind of like bring what people have been doing underground above ground.   Molly Maloof: (11:49) The history of MDMA was like couples therapy, right? And Shulgin was giving it to psychologists to improve couples relationships. And it turns out, like underneath a lot of dysfunction, a lot of sexual dysfunction in men and women is relationship problems. So if you just keep on getting to the root cause of anything, it's like, "Oh, why don't we just like deal with the root cause? And go with that?" So it's pretty-   Mason: (12:15) I've definitely experienced with underground MDMA.   Molly Maloof: (12:17) Yeah.   Mason: (12:19) Therapy?   Molly Maloof: (12:19) Sure. Exactly.   Mason: (12:22) Yeah. With my wife. Can you just enlighten people about how you'd use it in like a clinical setting and why in particular it has been used there?   Molly Maloof: (12:37) So MDMA, we're not technically using MDMA, unless we can't use the substance we're going to work on toward developing which there's a lot of reasons why, like drug developments hard, right? But MDMA would be a good backup solution because of its history. MDMA is essentially an entactogen. So what it does is it means to touch with that it means to generate, it's also known as enpathogen. So it creates a deep sense of empathy and human connection. And that empathy reminds you of like, "Oh, there's this person next to me." And I can actually feel how they feel right now.I can actually, more noticeably understand their emotional experience. And I can be a part of that experience, rather than feeling so separate from someone else. And fundamentally, it also works on the neurobiology of love. So it's a love drug. So it creates a similar experience to what I call post coital bliss, which is kind of like right after you had sex, and you're feeling like really comfortable and really blissed out, it's like, that's kind of the MDMA experience.   Molly Maloof: (13:42) And the interesting thing is that through different types of combinations of different chemicals, we're going to be able to modulate consciousness in ways that we never thought we could do and it's fascinating, just this whole field of psychedelic medicine because it's just beginning like this whole revolution is just beginning. And it's like happening from a place of like deep interested in science and understanding the brain, but also from like a deep reference to the past. So like MDMA, for example, in the past was used in couples therapy. So two couples would come in and take the medicine with the therapist. And the therapist will help them work through their issues whether it be like attachment trauma, or deep seated resentment that's been carried or anger or betrayal or just trust issues. And therapist would use this medicine to help people come together again.   Molly Maloof: (14:32) And one of the rules interestingly, for couples therapy with when Ann Shulgin was doing it and was giving it to other therapists was no sex. So it's funny because I actually think that psychedelics go great with sex. And I think that like, you have to know what you're doing, you have to know the dose, but I do think that there will be a role in the future for psychedelic assisted therapy, and there should also be a role for psychedelic aphrodisiacs.   Mason: (15:00) Speak more about that.   Molly Maloof: (15:02) Well, okay, so I'm giving a talk at delic on this is actually quite kind of interesting. I'll give you a little preview of my talk. So it turns out that psychedelic aphrodisiacs have probably been used since like the beginning of human history.   Mason: (15:17) Cool thing. The two best things.   Molly Maloof: (15:21) Right? So people are fascinating, right? So turns out that there's like a whole bunch of categories of psychedelic aphrodisiacs. And they're so interesting. So there's the Acacia DMT, harmelin combo, there's an Alaska DMT harmelin combo, there's also the combination, that combo the drug. There's also MDMA, and MDA, which is the entactogen class of synthetic love drugs. There's LSD and psilocybin, which are the tryptamines. There's actually like a salamander that in Romania, they put into a vodka, and they use it as aphrodisiacs. There's also toads that people use as aphrodisiacs. There's Morning Glory, which is an LSD derivative, there's Hawaiian woodrose, there's all sorts of cool plants and animals that have been used since primitive times that are psychedelic, and that can turn you on.   Molly Maloof: (16:25) And there's also dangerous ones things like scopolamine, which is not technically a psychedelic, but it's a deliriant. And you don't really want to take like the tour up. But people in Brazil apparently, occasionally accidentally get dosed by like prostitutes, who are trying to take advantage of them. So there's actually a pretty good Vice episode on that. But turns out that it's not exactly a psychedelic, but you can't have psychosis and hallucinations. So I was like, "Wow, these are really interesting. There's all sorts of different mushrooms and fungi that people use, there's also like, what is it called? There's a type of fungus. Actually, let me look it up. I've got my computer right here. So why don't I come out and give you a little bit more detail on this because it's kind of getting good.   Molly Maloof: (17:14) So there's like this substance, there's actually a fruit in Southeast Asia called my Marula bean. And it has all sorts of weird ingredients in it, that can make you trippy. And then interestingly, alcohol has the effect of creating beta-carboline in the body, which I didn't know. So it's actually technically slightly psychedelic, which I never knew this. And then absinthe has wormwood which has thujone in it, which is mildly psychedelic as well. So it's essentially there's different doses of different ingredients that are kind of used for different reasons, right? And so there's basically like the medicinal dose, they said, which is the lowest dose, like the sort of the micro dose of medicine. And that's kind of like people taking things just for overall improvement of their health, mental health. And then there's the sort of aphrodisiac dose, which is a little bit higher than that. So it's enough to get you to start noticing a shift in your perception, but not so much to make the trip really hard.   Molly Maloof: (18:12) And then there's the shamanic dose, which is like what's being used in a lot of clinical studies, which is like people try to get to the root of really deep trauma. And oftentimes, getting to the root of trauma is actually what a woman or man needs to do in order to actually heal their sexuality. So I got particularly interested in this space because MDMA kind of accidentally helped heal my sexual dysfunction that I had in my 20s because of some trauma that I had in college, that I didn't even realise was causing sexual dysfunction because I didn't know I had sexual dysfunction. I just knew that I wasn't aroused. I was in pain every time I had sex, and it wasn't orgasming. And then I met a guy, we were using MDMA together and all these problems went away. And I was like, "What just happened"? And I had my first orgasm with a guy. I had orgasmed on my own, but never with a man before because of unfortunately, my history of sex was not positive.   Molly Maloof: (19:07) So I basically been trying to figure this out, "Wow, it seems like there's an opportunity for healing sexual dysfunction." Because a lot of the root causes of sexual dysfunction are relationship problems and trauma. And so then I started uncovering the whole trauma, Pandora's box, and I started discovering natural numbers on sexual trauma. And it became this whole holy shit moment, like fuck the world is so fucked up when it comes to sex. Talk about like, this Me Too movements, just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath all of it is like, clearly dysfunctional sexual upbringing that most people have because of our completely outdated religious culture, right? Basically really religiosity in a lot of ways really ruins sexuality for people because it makes it into this forbidden fruit and then in that you start wanting all sorts of things that are wrong because you're like, "Oh, I can't have it. So I want all these things that I can't have."   Mason: (20:05) Forbidden fruit. And the guys our snake tells us you want the fruit.   Molly Maloof: (20:09) Oh yeah, and women want it too, by the way. I was like, when I discovered masturbation was a sin in like fifth grade. I was like, "Oh, dear god, I've been masturbating my entire life." So funny, right? And there was just this moment I had growing up being like, really feeling like I went from like a really good Christian girl to like, a very bad child because I masturbated. And that's just not okay. So then I get into the history of psychedelics. And this talk and essentially, before Christianity, psychedelics were being used by medicine women and priestesses, and medicine men, and they were given to people as a tool for enhancing their virility and their fertility and their sexual function. And it was like, part of nature, sex was something beautiful, it was something acceptable, it is something that was part of life, right? It was celebrated. And then Christianity basically turned polytheism into this monotheistic culture, and basically started burning witches, and saying that these love potions are evil, and that anything related to sex was wrong.   Molly Maloof: (21:09) And now sex is the thing that you have to have in the bounds of marriage, which the church of course has to govern. And if you do anything outside of that, or let alone, you're homosexual, you're now a deeply evil person, and you deserve to be harmed. And you really think about this history. It's kind of epically fucked how much, no offence to men, but like patriarchy, took over religion, and basically made it all about men being in charge of the religious experience. Even though women were actually very much part of like polytheistic religious culture, and sexuality was part of that culture. And so it's like all this stuff is really went downhill from there.   Molly Maloof: (21:50) And now we live in this modern time where like, the Catholic Church has unending problems with brutalising children sexually. And we have not woken up to this reality that sex is not evil. It's part of life. It's a beautiful part of life. It's a part of life that is one of those magical mystical, if not psychedelic experiences. And it shouldn't be demonised, but I do think we need to return it back into a place of wholesomeness and respect and love and really treating people the way we would want to be treated and I don't think any woman or man wants to be raped.   Molly Maloof: (22:29) I don't think any woman or man wants to be assaulted, and I don't think if any child grows up thinking that, that's normal. And I don't know what changes in culture that makes it okay for kids and adults to like mistreat each other, but I really think that like part of my mission in life is actually to create a better culture around sex and love and really this company that I started called the Adamo Bioscience is basically a company that's dedicated to studying the science of love because I think that if we understood it better, we might be able to create more of it, and through multiple pathways and products and services. And yes, I have a commercial interest, but mostly because like it seems totally a better thing to be spending my life making money off of than anything else right now, which is like why not try to create more love in the world? I think there should be like 15 to 20 companies trying to do this.   Mason: (23:22) I think there will be once you show them the way. That's the that's the beautiful thing about being someone who's charging and leading the way. Something as a couple, I was just like thank you, epic download by the way and I saw... And I think it's nice openly talking about religion this way, we can see that it's gone far away from the natural and the original intentions. And I saw you like, I can just see you reshare the meme the other day. It tickled me the most of it was just like white Jesus cuddling someone going, "I'm sorry I made you a drug addict. Let me a book before I send you to hell." It just popped me in school I was like doing things that potentially was going down the way of being like condemned and told by teachers, "Well, your stepfather is going to go to hell because he believes in evolution."   Molly Maloof: (24:16) Oh my god, I remember being in sixth grade being like, "I think evolution is real and my school thinks I'm..." But they don't believe in it. Like, holy shit, that was our lives.   Mason: (24:28) Oh man, I got a few pop moments. I was like, "Hang on. So I'm going down this route. Where I'm sinning because I'm trying to think critically here and so now I'm going to go to hell, but you created me in your image and I'm doing? You set me off. You know all, you know I'm going to end up here. And then you're going to send me to hell?" I'm like, "You asshole. You sadist." Anyway, that was my pop.   Molly Maloof: (24:54) What got me to like what really challenged my beliefs when I was 18 was talking to a guy who went to Harvard and messenger, you're in messageboard you're talking to people smarter and older than you. And I remember talking to this guy and he asked me this question. He's like, "How can God be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent and how can there be a hell? If he's everywhere all the time all at once? How can it be ever a separation from God because hell is a separation from God?" And I was like, brain explode like oh that's impossible logical, total it felt like this doesn't work, right? Like does that work does not compute. And my brain just exploded I went into the bathroom and cried and cried in front of the mirror. I was like, "Oh my god, it means I'm all alone." I actually still believe in God now, but like my belief in God is much different than the patriarchal God that I grew up.   Molly Maloof: (25:50) I still pray to Jesus because I'm used to it's like a pattern, but I don't think Jesus is the only God. I think there's plenty of Gods you can pray to. But realistically I think that God is like infinite intelligence and beauty underneath everything that whether, and it's totally no gender or God can't have a gender.   Mason: (26:09) I'm going to send you my podcast with George Kavassilas. It's another mind blowing one. It's talking about the God matrix and the universe, the natural, the synthetic it's like really, really clear.   Molly Maloof: (26:25) Oh, cool.   Mason: (26:25) I'll send you because it's a very good one. And you know what, you were saying things that don't work and you know what I like that does work is aphrodisiac. So this is like telling before we move on from that point it's something that really jumped out at me that I really love and I might go a little bit of a tangent because I just wrote about it this kind of topic, this nuance. Yesterday we sent out a newsletter around lion's mane and I'm like I really love Lion's Mane because it's a bridge herb and for so often people are looking at, "I want a nootropic and so they go into a narrow," which is nice sometimes. It's nice to go reductionist. And you go, "I want something that's going to increase output and give me something now and I'm going to use this nootropic in order to get something. And then they eventually fall to Lion's Mane as like a nootropic and the word sits there very medical and very [inaudible 00:27:20], which is nice as well I use it.   Mason: (27:24) But then Lion's Mane is one if you get like a complete non grown on grain, you get one grown on wood, it's got elements of wild to it, all of a sudden you look past the textbook written black and white, in the tropic and you got the same intention here and then you look up at nature and you see, "Wow, my brain is so much more than what I thought it was and the output of my brain and the way the way that it operates in conjunction with my organs in my blood and my outlook in my life, it's connected to where I'm going to be. What I do now is connected to how I'm going to be when I'm 90 years old."   Molly Maloof: (27:59) Totally.   Mason: (28:00) it's not just take something get some output, it's like this pattern you can see the brain function connecting to the constant pattern of like, like the waves in never ending. Internally there are things that are like constantly happening that I can cultivate and work with and look at and ease into that are going to have my brain on the sea of marrow is the Daoists.   Molly Maloof: (28:21) I love that. The sea of marrow.   Mason: (28:26) And the aphrodisiacs are the same like that. And it's a fun one because people go, "Oh, aphrodisiacs great, it'll get your horny." And what you're talking about it's like a carrot that leads like you go and that's what I see. Like how I see Daoist aphrodisiacs as well, like deer antler in your pants.   Molly Maloof: (28:46) Yeah.   Mason: (28:48) Horny goat weed, like epimedium. These herbs cordycep, Eucommia, schisandra. People say the word aphrodisiac, and you go, "Great, okay, cool. I'm going to engage because I want to be horny." And you think there's more substance too, behind it. And then you get onto these aphrodisiacs and you start engaging with your sexuality, and all of a sudden it's an opportunity to connect to yourself and the word aphrodisiac falls away, and you start connecting to the sexuality. And I just heard it, then you're saying we're using aphrodisiacs to go and connect to the sexual trauma so we can connect to ourselves and our partner. And I think it's beautiful. I love it.   Molly Maloof: (29:32) Well, it's actually that the sexual trauma can damage your relationship to sex. So because it actually programmes your brain. There's this thing called the Garcia effect, and it's like when you eat something that makes you sick, you don't want it anymore because your brain associates that with feeling sick. Now not all women or men who have trauma end up with having sexual dysfunction, but a large percentage of women do that. In fact, like somewhere between 60 to 80% of women who had sexual trauma have some form of sexual dysfunction. And like in America, the numbers, which I think are underreported, are like one in five women are raped, one in four women are abused as children, one and three are assaulted in her lifetime. And so there's quite a lot of women who have sexual dysfunction because of the fact that their sexual experience was not pleasant. And it was, in fact, potentially scary and dangerous.   Molly Maloof: (30:26) So now their brain says, "Oh, that experience that's not good. I don't like that. And that's scary." And so it's kind of programmed as a traumatic memory. Now, only 30% of women with sexual trauma end up with PTSD, which is interesting. So there's actually more women with sexual dysfunction, than PTSD from sexual trauma, which is fascinating. So the theory is, is that with MDMA assisted therapy, that the medicine can actually help you revisit the trauma from a place of feeling safe and feeling okay and loved with a partner, preferably with a partner, if you're with someone that you feel safe with. And you can revisit that trauma, and then it gets reprogrammed in your brain, reconsolidated as, "Oh, this is not the worst thing in the world anymore." This is not something I need to like, fear or be afraid of anymore. That was just an event that happened. And in fact I think the real magic will come from when women can experience pleasure, again, through psychedelic medicine. As I did.   Mason: (31:32) How ironic that there's an aphrodisiac involved in that process.   Molly Maloof: (31:36) Well, you think, right? You think that like, that would make sense. It's just funny. I think we're just beginning to understand space. But I don't know if people even though this, but there's actually like three phases of neurobiology of love. The first is like the intense sex drive, which is like, our body is designed to get us to fuck a lot of people when you're young. Actually, the sex drive is like oestrogen and testosterone. And then like, you're horny, and you're young, and you want to have sex, and not everybody does. A lot of young people aren't these days, but the point is, is that it's designed to get you to be turned on and attracted to a lot of people. And then when you meet someone and you have sex with them, what happens is, is that you start activating other hormones. So dopamine starts getting released, oxytocin gets released after orgasm, and that can actually increase the attachment to this person.   Molly Maloof: (32:29) So especially in women particular. So then we start moving on to romantic love, which is actually an attachment device that's designed like we really evolved it in order to basically bond ourselves to someone, become obsessed and addicted to someone, so that we're more likely to have a baby with that person. And then keep that baby alive long enough that they will not die, right? And so the romantic love starts to switch over to pair bonding. And pair bonding is actually designed to keep that baby alive and family unit strong. Because pair bonding hormones are very similar to familial bonds. Like they think it's all mostly oxytocin vasopressin. So like, you actually look at the neurobiology of all this. It's highly adaptive, and it's a huge survival advantage to have love in your life, huge survival advantage to find someone to care about them. You're more likely to reproduce, you're more likely to make a child and a family and you're more likely to have a healthy family if there's healthy bonds.   Molly Maloof: (33:26) And so I think that we should be really looking at these things from the lens of science because a lot of what's happening in society today because I think technology is seeing these bonds decay, we're seeing people give up their marriages. We're seeing people walk away from long term relationships, and we're seeing families affected and children affected. And one of the main adverse childhood experiences a kid will have is divorce. So I'm just like, "Fuck, why are we not looking at these fundamental facets of society and saying, gosh, why can't we do better?" And maybe there's a way we can do better that's ethical, and that's honourable and that's scientifically sound and that will actually leave people better off and we found them. But again, this is like very much new territory. I don't think anybody has tried to do this or thought about doing this. And I'm actually giving you a lot of information that I like is going to keep kind of quiet but whatever you like might as well announce it to like your community first.   Mason: (34:20) Yeah. I think we're worth the drop. It's interesting, it's such a return to the natural. And I've been using that a lot because I feel like I'm saying for the matrix. I'm like nailing all over the bloody place at the moment like people.   Molly Maloof: (34:36) All the time.   Mason: (34:39) And it's so confronting for people which and I agree, as a system we haven't... What you're doing is going like, "Screw it, go to the core and think, multiple generations around leading to the core. Like, let's look at the divorce rates, let's look at the unhappiness and the lack of love in relationships and how that impacts ourselves and children." And I think about it a lot. And it gives me that raw, even talking about it now, there is tingling and there's a rawness and a raw excitement, when you know you're actually in the right place. But it's very confronting, looking at just how much healing there is to be done.   Molly Maloof: (35:18) Yeah. Well, someone told me when I was like, everyone was like, "No one's going to invest in this, and no one's going to do this. And this is crazy." I know, actually, I have a lead investor. So if investors are listening, I'm about to fundraise. So you should probably email me because it's going to be really good. It's going to be a really exciting time in the next few months because I'm actually going to be-   Mason: (35:37) I think I have like, probably $400 liquid at the moment.   Molly Maloof: (35:45) I'm not going to take your last $400. But maybe we could do something with-   Mason: (35:47) But that's not the last 400. We're being responsible in other areas.   Molly Maloof: (35:50) ... Lion's Mane. Yeah. No, but it's interesting. So like, I have a lot of people from biotech say, "This is absolutely never going to happen. It's impossible. Don't even try." And then I had a lot of people who are starting biotech companies say, "Fuck, if this problem is as big as you describe it is, then I'm pretty sure we should be throwing like a billion dollars at this." And I was like, "Fuck. Yeah, dude. Totally."   Mason: (36:16) Absolutely. Is there a market for this? If the people who would poohing it are probably the ones that just can't look in the mirror and be like, "I am the market." It's like, it's in your backyard. It's everywhere. Every time you go to a family reunion, every time you go to bed.   Molly Maloof: (36:40) I shouldn't say this out loud, but family members of mine-   Mason: (36:43) Just say it in a monologue.   Molly Maloof: (36:44) Yeah. I know my family story pretty well. I like deconstructed all of our problems at this point. I've plugged my computer in. And having deconstructed a lot of these problems, and really examined the people in my family who struggle with different problems. In my extended family, in particular, like my aunt and my grandmother, and just people I know. There's a lot to be said about early relationships, and about how important families are to the long term health of children. And when things go wrong in families, it can really, really hurt people long term. And I just looked at like, my great, great grandparents and their relationship with my grandmother. And I looked at my grandmother's relationship with her daughters, and I just looked at all this, and I was like, "Wow there's so many things that we don't realise that if we just fix that one thing, right, then it would have transformed the entire rest of a person's life."   Molly Maloof: (37:59) But there's a lot of things, we don't have solutions for. A lot of things we don't have pathways for, and a big one of those is healing trauma. And I recently did about 21 hours of deep, deep neuro somatic trauma healing from a friend of mine who's like a super gifted healer. And I can't explain in scientific terms what he did with me, but I do know one thing, and that's that we do not do a good job in our society, helping people who have trauma, heal, and express it immediately right over this happened. In fact, the medical system typically, when a girl has raped, she'll basically get a rape kit, and maybe sent to a psychologist. And if she's lucky, she'll get in, in a few months. And it's like, we don't actually have pathways for healing and caring for kids who've had major... I saw this, by the way, in health care system. I saw kids who were abused by their parents. And they go to social workers, and they kind of handed around the foster care system.   Molly Maloof: (39:00) And it's really crazy how much people experienced trauma in society. And there's really not a lot of good solutions besides talk therapy. And if talk therapy worked so well, we probably not be seeing so many problems. Like if talk therapy was like a really effective solution for all of our problems, we'd probably be seeing a lot of problems solved. Now I'm not saying talk therapy doesn't work.   Mason: (39:23) It doesn't pop the champagne. I think that's where I'm with you on that. I'm at the point in my journey where I'm like talk therapy with someone who's got a Jungian background is like perfect for me because I went so hard on psychedelics. And so I'm loving just the groundedness of it. But to get it going-   Molly Maloof: (39:36) Totally. I'm not saying it doesn't work. I think talk therapy is very much like working on your consciousness, right? Your conscious brain. Everyone actually need to talk therapy in order to fundamentally create sense, sense making around their life experience. Like that's the best thing it does. Is it creates a framework of understanding of like, "This happened to me, this happened to me, this happened to me and I understand why, and I understand how I dealt with it." And I'm trying to do a better job at it, right? But I think what's really more interesting about like, what's happening in psychedelic medicine is what's on a subconscious and the unconscious level, right? Like hypnotherapy does a pretty decent job at getting into the subconscious level.   Molly Maloof: (40:27) But what's fascinating is like all this stuff that's buried in the unconscious, right? That comes out in your dreams, that comes out in your... A lot of people have nightterors. That is most definitely a bunch of unconscious process trauma, like unprocessed trauma that needs to be like addressed. And I don't think people see it that way. They're just like, "Oh, it's a nightmare disorder." It's like, "No, you probably have like a major unresolved trauma from your childhood that you really should look at." And oftentimes, I know, multiple people who've taken psychedelics, and it just comes up to them. They're like, "Oh, my God, I was raped in high school by a few guys." And it just like comes up. Or they're like, "Oh, my God, I was sexually assaulted as a child." And this stuff comes up underneath because it's lifted out of the subconscious and unconscious.   Molly Maloof: (41:21) And that's what we don't talk enough about in like modern medicine. And even like psychology, I think, is this like, "Oh, wow," like everybody has deep trauma. But if you do have deep trauma, and it's like running in the background, it's like malware, it's just draining your energy. It's draining CPUs, it's actually playing a huge role in your behaviours and your triggers and how you interact with people. And if it's not looked at or addressed, and especially if they're things like internal family systems, like there's a lot of good forms of talk therapy that can really do a good job of bringing you back to your childhood or bringing you back these moments. And I don't even think drugs are completely necessary to get to these places. Meditation is also a phenomenal tool that a lot of people don't take advantage of. And there's a bunch of different types of meditation that are fairly obscure that can do a great job at helping people get underneath the surface of their pain.   Molly Maloof: (42:11) But a lot of this stuff is isn't mainstream. And it's a shame because a lot of people are still just like, "Where do I go to deal with all this stuff?" Most of the stuff that's worked really well for me has been very obscure stuff that I have had to find through word of mouth. And it's like not highly advertised experiences and therapies and meditation schools and it's like a lot more on the realm of like woo, but it works these things have worked. And it's like strange to me that they're not more well studied and in the mainstream.   Mason: (42:46) Yeah. We've got such a wide array of people with such a wide array of histories at different stages in their processes. And there's naturally going to be different therapies and different angles that are going to pierce the veil to whatever is sitting there behind the curtain in the subconscious and I definitely, like for me it was like personal development back in the day going like you know landmark forum was like one of the things to kind of like a bang. And I could see behind it and then okay that lost its relevance at some point. And then psychedelics became very relevant, got me probably went a little bit too hard into identifying with that community and the mannerisms around taking medicine and like that feeling like I finally belonged rather than doing the work. And then getting beautiful lessons and now it's like getting to the point where talk therapy for me 10 years ago just would have been like I think just sort of lapping up against a great wall.   Mason: (43:48) Whereas now I know how to scale that concrete wall, and I know what it looks like when I do connect to the subconscious. And I understand my processing bringing it out and what my process is, thanks to the work I did with psychedelics. I know how I'm going to bring that into awareness in my everyday and that's when personal practise comes in. That's where I know to the extent of like, with my exercise regime, I know keeping me strong enough and healthy enough to be able to handle staying in that space, where I can constantly acknowledge that part of me that wants to hide behind that veil and run everything. And I know someone like Tani she's like, there was a point where psychedelics were like, incredible. She goes, "I know I need that." And then she's like, "I don't need that anymore." And my meditation practise is exactly where I need to be and that's where I'm going to get the biggest bang.   Mason: (44:39) Not that it's about a bang, but she's going to get the rubber hitting the road. So I think that's like that integration because you see a lot of people in the psychedelic world, kind of pooh poohing therapy going like modern therapies like this domesticated little dog and psychedelics are this big dog in terms of what it can do. And it's like, true in one context, and in another context, if it's just integrated, you have an array of ways of approaching as you're talking about them. Then all of a sudden, the approach becomes multicoloured and multifaceted. And hopefully, it becomes more effective.   Molly Maloof: (45:16) I really think that we just maybe just need to marry them more. Even like MDMA assisted therapy today, is largely like, hands off. It's largely don't talk to the patient, let them do, they have their own experience, and let them do whatever they need to do to heal, it's not really guided at all. It's mostly kind of like, it's guided, but it's not really like lead. It's like, you're there. You're like going through this process, and you're having these experiences, but they're not actually trying to get you to go anywhere on your trip, they're trying to let you have your experience. Whereas like, I think that, in particular, it may be possible that like, we can give people medicine that gives them have the... I think that the idea is that you have the preparation. And then you have the creating the right set and setting. And then you take the medicine, and then you have this like deep integration experience. And that's typically what the experiences for psychedelic assisted therapy today. The question is, will the FDA let us give people drugs that turn them on unsupervised?   Molly Maloof: (46:26) Because you kind of need to be a little bit... You don't really want anyone watching you while you are with your partner. So I got a lot of questions, I need to figure out to make this thing, an actual proper model. But I think that it'll be really interesting to see how this thing evolves because I'm at the very beginning of this journey. I have an idea of what I think that this business model could look like. I have no idea what I think this therapy could be. But a lot of it is I'm like figuring it out, right? I'm like in this total creative mode of what will the future of medicine look like, if you could create it from scratch? And I've already done this once, and it turned out really great for me. And I could easily have just gone and scaled personalised medicine clinics for wealthy people. But now I'm like, "Let's see if we can create a democratised version of this medicine that actually is like it's going to start out expensive, but let's figure out how we can make this something that's eventually affordable for people." That's the goal.   Mason: (47:28) I think the other thing, that's why it feels like a safe bets. And interesting way to put it, but it makes sense, and has substance is because I think a lot of people approach this, and what we've always been taught how to do, lecture people on how they should be, and I'm going to create a product based on how I think you should act. Whereas what you're talking about, is going there's, let's say we're looking at, like morality around let's stay in our marriage, so that we don't destroy this family unit. There's a way that, that's been happened, we've been told what to do by the media. And therefore the part of us goes, if someone goes you have to stay on your marriage because it's the morally right thing to do. You're bad if you do that, there's no attraction there because it's an external like judgement , and we want to revolt against being told what to do, especially by society.   Mason: (48:31) It's why we get your rage against the machine, etc. And then, if you just understand the patterns that emerge when people do connect back to themselves, and do deal with their trauma within a relationship, what's natural for people and seems to be the pattern is people do naturally resonate with maintaining the relationship that they've chosen or maybe in some instance. Like a very conscientious uncoupling in a way that you're very connected and aware to the way that children are going to be affected by it and minimising that impact. Either way, there's an emergence of morality an emergence of ethics, rather than being told what to do.   Molly Maloof: (49:19) Yeah. There's emergence of just like, knowing what's right and wrong. Like, "Oh, yeah. We're not meant to be together. But we're also not meant to destroy each other's lives as we get divorced." I think if we were to be able to help people stay together, that would be ideal. But if we're also able to help people consciously uncouple in a way that doesn't destroy their lives. And I've heard this from multiple people, like one of my friends did MDMA with his ex wife when they were getting divorced and it completely transformed the divorce process because they were actually able to love each other through the process, and they're now really good friends. They're like super good friends. They just didn't want to be married. And it's like, that's appropriate, right? Like, it's also appropriate not to hate people for years. Just the number of people I know that have deep seated resentment for their exes. And it's like, that's not healthy for your nervous system, that's not healthy for your long term health. That's not going to keep you well.   Mason: (50:20) So we've both dived into exploring what health is, especially in the context of, and in this what we're talking about in this context of like synthetic morality, versus what emerges as right. I've just started in the last few months really feeling icky about the way I've used the word health and the way it's been used because it's natural, if you talk about healthy, then naturally, there's an opposition of unhealthy there. And so much of what's implied is basing yourself on, "I'm healthy because I'm not that." And so there's this intrinsic opposition, that... An opposition and kicking back against something in order to form identity around health. And we need the word because healthy, it's just a fun word that everyone knows. But kind of similar and synonymous with what we're talking about, and the emergence of morality and the emergence of ethics coming just through whether it's psychedelic therapy or whatever, how are you relating to health now?   Mason: (51:28) Because I definitely am finding, the more I move away from being wrapped in and around that world of being healthy versus unhealthy, and the more I kind of sit in that middle and see. What's emerging through the patterns of myself doing, I don't know, finding harmony for myself, delving into my shit, coming out the other side. Doing things that are maybe I've seen is unhealthy in one way, in one ideological circle. So I want to talk about dropping that coming back to what emerges within me. It makes the space, I don't know, I feel very roared and identified in terms of, even though we're leaders in the health space, I feel very, unidentified with anything that revolves around that word healthy. I'm curious as to where you're at, in your relationship to what is healthy.   Molly Maloof: (52:25) I used to think it was what the WHO said, which was like the complete absence of disease or infirmary. And then I was like, "No, it's not realistic." Health is actually a dynamic function of life. And to me, I have a very unique perspective on how I think, and it all stemmed from this other definition, that was the ability to adapt and self managed in the face of adversity. But I started digging under the surface, and I really started understanding things like biology, and fundamental human anatomy, and microbiology and physiology and molecular and cellular biology. And I was really thinking about it from like a mechanistic perspective as well. And I think that if you actually just look at any system, you can ask how healthy a system is based on its capacity. And whether it's able to perform its functions properly, basically, whether it's able to maintain its integrity of its structure. And that's usually a function of how much energy and how much work capacity is available.   Molly Maloof: (53:31) So, for example, the healthcare system, deeply unhealthy in America. Demands outspent capacity and it just completely started crumbling, right? Like just did not work, was not resilient, was not flexible, it was actually really struggling and breaking a lot and a lot of people have been broken through the experience of going to the healthcare system. So capacity and demands, if there's more capacity than demands, you're usually in a really good healthy state because you have enough energy to maintain the structure to do work. Now, when your demands are really high, and your capacity is really low, shit starts to break down. And so this is like the mitochondrial theory of ageing, which is fundamentally that when we lose about 50% of our functional capacity of organs, they start to malfunction, they actually start producing the ability to do the work functions that they had. And then we start to break down.   Molly Maloof: (54:27) And largely this is driven by metabolic dysfunction and stress. And like lack of exercise is really a big huge driver of disease because it's the number one signal for making more energy. So basically, I look at how we... If you actually think about like the biology of like metabolism, when we breathe air, we drink water, we eat food, it goes into our cells, it gets turned into substrates, those get put into the mitochondria, which are like little engines that could of our cells, and they have this called the electron transport chain which pulls off electrons kind of like power line. Like electrons are running through this electron transport chain. And they're powering this hydrogen turbine that creates an electrochemical gradient. And that gradient creates a battery and a capacitor. So a battery is like a differential charge between two, it's like a charge polarity. And then the capacitor is like a differential charge between two late membranes.   Molly Maloof: (55:22) And then so capacitors can deploy energy quickly. Batteries store energy as potential energy. So when you really look at it, like most people have broken their metabolisms in modern society, there's so many people with diabetes, so many people with heart disease, somebody with cancer, so many people with dementia. And those are really symptoms of broken metabolism, broken mitochondrial function. And it's funny because like, we look at all these things as separate diseases, but actually, they have the same root causes and like half of cancers are made up of metabolic in nature. So everyone's been kind of obsessed with this like, DNA and genetics theory of ageing. I'm just so unconvinced because it's kind of like, okay, that's like the architectural plans of the body. But in order to actually express those plans, you need energy. You actually need to make energy to take the plants and turn into a structure, which is proteins, right?   Molly Maloof: (56:15) So my perspective is that, like life is this interplay between energy matter and information. And essentially, like life itself, is negative entropy. So we're just constantly trying to fight against entropy, and the best way we know how to do that is like, maintain our functional capacity and be able to repair ourselves. And so this lack of being able to repair ourselves is often a function of the fact that a lot of people are just like, the biggest complaint in medicine is, "I'm tired," right? Being tired all the time is actually a reflection of energetic inefficient, insufficient energy production.   Mason: (56:56) Is that in particular with like the battery storage as you work-   Molly Maloof: (56:59) Yeah, exactly.   Mason: (57:00) Which is funnily used when you talk about, like his Yin and Yang.   Molly Maloof: (57:05) Yes. There you go. Right? We need time off to store energy. The most interesting thing about the Yin and Yang, is that there's this clear relationship between this toggling of switching between different states in biology to flourish. So you actually have to go from intense work to relaxation or rest. You have to go for ideally if you actually just look at all the best [inaudible 00:57:30] stressors, it's like, hyperoxia hypoxia breathwork. What is that? It's breathwork. Right? If you look at cold and heat, that's sauna and coal plant right? What are these things work so damn well, for making us feel healthy and feel good? Well, they're literally boosting mitochondrial biogenesis. And in some cases, like eating fasting is my toffee G, right? It's throwing-   Mason: (57:53) Being awake, being asleep.   Molly Maloof: (57:56) Being outside being indoors, like we actually need to spend way more time outdoors than we're doing. And like being in buildings and having your feet grounded into the earth, like being alone being with people, like life is this constant interplay, right? Yeah, there you go.   Mason: (58:14) That was earthing that I just mumbled.   Molly Maloof: (58:16) Yeah. So like today I've been experimenting with like different ways of movement throughout my day because I'm kind of sick of being in front of the computer constantly. And it makes me feel really unhappy. And there's this great meme you posted, feel dead inside, go outside. Fucking love that meme. And it's like, everybody loved that meme. I got it posted so many times. And it was like, actually, I spent two hours today on phone calls outside. And like, people get annoyed when you're not on a Zoom call. But I'm like, "Look, if I can walk, I will walk." And I got two separate workouts and that were like about 10 minutes each in the gym that were like broken up throughout the day. And it's like, holy shit, did I feel better today than I did for like many other previous days where I was just in front of a computer the whole time? Like, we're not meant to be in front of screens all day long. It's not healthy.   Molly Maloof: (59:06) It's not a healthy period. So the more that we can try to align our lives as much as possible with something with how we're actually like primitively programmed because our genes have not evolved since primitive times. We're the same genetically, there's been a few changes, but fundamentally, we're basically the same people as we were in hunting and gathering times. So it's no question that we've lost a lot of our health in the process of becoming more modern because we basically hijacked all of these different pathways that are actually ancient pathways of survival that are now being used to take advantage of people. Like the salt, sugar and fat in foods, the convenience of cars, right? Like humans are designed to conserve energy and to find food.   Molly Maloof: (59:53) So the society is now designed to like make everything ultra convenient, and eat too much. And it's like, okay. We don't move our bodies enough, we drive everywhere, we know what that's done to society. And so it's kind of like the real process of becoming a truly modern human is to actually try to like life according to your genetics, while also existing in a modern culture. It's a huge challenge.   Mason: (01:00:19) Can be a great thing. This is like the Daoist and the Yogi's would need to go outside of society to go and live in a cave so their life could revolve a

Internally, retaining talent requires you to invest in reskilling and upskilling with a culture of continuous learning in short and convenient increments. Externally, recruiting new talent requires you to partner with universities to train for the skills we need and making the industry even more attractive with digital transformation. In this episode, we have a conversation about building the next generation of industrial leaders with two fantastic guests: Paula O'Driscoll, Director of Engineering Strategic Technologies for The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson  Anthony Loy, VP, Smart and Sustainable Industrial Transformation in Schneider Electric  Check out the resources below for more information: Visit www.parsable.com/podcast to join our mailing list. Use Parsable risk-free for 30 days . Take a look at our Demo to learn more about Parsable. The World Economic Forum  Topics we covered: Evaluating the skills gap in light of the fourth Industrial Revolution Strategies for upskilling and reskilling the workforce How to adapt recruitment to bridge the skills gap Creating a culture of continuous learning Keep connected with Conquering Chaos at Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or our website . Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for [Conquering Chaos] in your favorite podcast player.

Michael speaks with Divorce Coach Michelle Fuller on her 2 divorces and dealing with co-parenting.Six years ago, I started to question every choice I had made in my life. I wanted to know why I had settled in life and love. I was nearly forty at the time, I was twice divorced with two kids, and I was in the middle of yet another dead-end relationship. I felt like a failure. I wasn't just unhappy, I was bitter and it showed up in my life everywhere. I complained to anyone that would listen. On repeat, nonstop. Outwardly, I had a solid career, great friends, and seemingly everything a woman could want. Internally, I felt defeated and lonely.I wanted so much more for my life, but I had no idea where to start. The desire for REAL change is a damn maze, but I was determined. My journey started with books, paid programs, and a regular social media feed of self-help influencers. While all of those were helpful, nothing changed until I hired kick-ass coaches to hold me accountable.Today, I am happily engaged to a man I adore. I have a manageable relationship with my ex-husband as we co-parent our daughter, despite a very messy history. I sold my house several years ago and moved to a city that I love just because I wanted to. I took control and up-leveled my life in every single way.☝ You are FULLY capable.☝ You CAN create the kind of life you want.☝ You CAN achieve any goal you desire.☝ You CAN let go and move on without regret or judgment.☝ You CAN attract the relationship you truly desire.It's all possible and it is waiting for you - right now.xoxo - Michelle (Life Coach, Divorce Coach)Find out more at https://www.instagram.com/therealmichellefuller/About the Crushing Your Fear PodcastBioMichael is an Entrepreneur who has started multiple revenue generating companies both in the US and Europe. He currently hosts two Podcasts (Crushing Your Fear and Craft Beer Storm) and has learned to conquer Fear through leaving the past behind, learning from it and adopting Gratitude and a Positive outlook for the future. On his Crushing Your Fear Podcast, Michael explains "We live in a Society of Fear. Everywhere we turn, fear is there. Most people we know are affected by fear in one form or another. We ourselves are consumed by fear - we can't move forward - we wont take chances - we "fear' what others may "think" of us - and on and on and on. Enough! There is another way. We explore different areas in society, flush out the manipulation and empower you to overcome fear. Our guests are experts and give you the insight and tools needed to identify and conquer fear. So join us and Crush Your Fear..."Michael BearaHostCrushing Your Fear Podcastmichael@crushingyourfear.comWebsite: http://www.crushingyourfear.com/Instagram: @crushingyourfearFacebook: @crushingyourfearTwitter: @crushingfearTik Tok: @crushingyourfearSubscribe to our Podcast!iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crushing-your-fear/id1465751659Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/craft-beer-storm/crushing-your-fear

Have you ever known your brand or client should be on a new channel or trying out a new feature, but their caution is hurting their performance? In this episode, Pollyanna explains exactly how you can absolve them of fear and meet your goals by going for a walk, a jog, and a sprint. Have a question or suggestion for the Social Minds podcast? Get in touch at social.minds@socialchain.com

RICH CELENZA talks about how a lot of us are always internally battling ourselves. We seem to be always arguing with ourselves on a certain decision that need to be made. Internally we have a voice telling us to go one way, while another side of us is telling us to do something different. Rich talks about a third voice telling both of them to shut up and go after what they truly want to go after. People need to also learn how to stop allowing all the noise in their head to distract them and block out all the noise and get focused.

In this episode we sit down with Samantha Lewis, a member of the doTERRA Product Marketing team, to discuss the benefits of using essential oils internally. She'll discuss why internal use is powerful, some of her favorite oils to use internally, and how to support different areas of your body with essential oils. We'll also talk about the history of Cypress.

Every account executive at the end of their sales demo has experienced the following, "I need to go speak to my team first." What do you do when the prospect says this? In this episode, I'll teach you exactly what to say in order to better be prepared. Questions? Connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know!

Success, money and pleasure.Makes for a good movie title, hey?But seriously.When these three things become the three main drivers for our self worth…It can get ugly.Especially when all the success & money dries up.This isn't a made-up story, it happened to my guest today, Joseph Warren.He's the host of Your First $100K podcast. And I was curious to chat with him about his journey.Because Joseph went from making millions in the early 20's.Lost it all.And had to find new motivation to build a new business outside of the pursuit of external things (like most people).It's a fascinating listen.Plus…We talk about some cool business-building stuff too.Well here's what we chat about today.**Why being a control freak sabotages any chance of scaling your business. If your monthly revenue has stalled for months, you'll want to hear this mistake.**How to avoid nightmare contractor hires that make you pull your hair out. Joseph's philosophy on hiring follow's an extremely, yet effective way to finally free up your time...and best of all use that time to focus on things that make you more money.**The one thing to focus on INTERNALLY to see a 400% increase in your business profits, happiness and life satisfaction.______________________________CONNECT WITH JOSEPH ON INSTAGRAMhttps://www.instagram.com/realjosephwarren/JOSEPH'S COACHING PROGRAMwww.Blowuprocks.com

Some South Sudan government workers say they have not received their pay for the last three months while President Salva Kiir's promises on the 10th anniversary of the country's independence that salaries will be paid on time; Internally displaced persons in South Sudan have mixed reactions to a decision by the UN World Food Program to cut food assistance.

What if we could go beyond a fingerprint to establish behaviors, mannerisms, and motor movements that make you uniquely you? In this week's State of Identity podcast, host, Cameron D'Ambrosi is joined by Jonathan Nystrom, CEO of Intensity Analytics, to discuss the geospatial, multidimensional routines that comprise behavioral biometrics. Learn how machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques are being adopted as the next wave of frictionless authentication to compare previous behavior to current behavior, all to sufficiently identify that you're you.

Morgan Brown is the VP of Growth at Shopify and the author of the book “Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success”. Prior to Shopify, Morgan led the product team at Facebook and was the Chief Operating Officer for Inman News - the leading news source for real estate and technology. Given the size of the Shopify brand, they optimize metrics and data analytic processes from a “merchant-first” perspective. This helps guide them toward their mission of making online commerce easier and better for everyone. There's no value in a spiking lead conversion rate if they don't become customers. Shopify relies on its growth marketing team (which Morgan is the VP of) for user acquisition. They also have a growth product side that focuses on activation signup, activation trials, and success retention. Internally, growth goals are divided into “missions” and mission teams include channel experts, product leaders, data scientists, engineers, and other cross-functional roles. This decentralized split of marketing teams helps these growth pillars move forward without friction as self-contained units. Commerce is no longer a discrete point where you drive customers from point A to point B, but it's really about being where that action is going to take place. Shopify recently partnered with TikTok to take their merchants where their customers are and bring the tools of giants like Instagram closer to their merchants.

I have had experience with Eileen in her professional capacity at Waymaker therapy over the past year. My third son has pulled his hair out since he was 6 months old and we were at a loss of how we could help him. Eileen reached out on social media and I immediately connected with her gorgeous caring energy. Join us in this conversation as we discuss why therapy works, how therapy is not just for children and why creative practices are good for your soul. If you enjoyed this episode head over to my website www.alyharte.com, Instagram and Facebook page and my YouTube channel for much more. Thanks for watching and listening.

At Agency Management Institute, we have repeatedly found ourselves in the position of helping agency owners figure out their exit strategy. Ideally, we're talking about this many years before they're ready to execute on whichever outcome makes the most sense for them and their agency. The typical scenarios are: Just making a fantastic living off the agency until you're done and then closing up shop. Others want to sell to an outside buyer. But for many, the ideal scenario is to sell the agency internally to someone they've been grooming as a successor. This is often where we come in to assist. Any sale is complicated, and everyone wants it to go as smoothly as possible. Which is why we've identified some common mistakes and the best ways to avoid making them. They're all understandable and easy to make choices, but fortunately so are the fixes so you can just avoid them all together. Whether you're thinking of selling your agency in a year or it's much further down the road, knowing what to avoid now is the best first foot forward. A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: The problem with gifting employees shares The importance of hiring outside guidance The need to fully structure the deal The lack of an owner's transition plan The mistake of not being prepared emotionally

ON TODAYS SHOW!!    Thank you for joining me on todays video! Today we talk about what I believe holds the key to being the most important part of our relationship to ourselves, and as a result the relationship to others. Using the mirror method to shift out of our toxic relationship cycle. What is it that we are trying to free ourselves from when we end a toxic relationship and look to enter into a new healthy relationship.. We are typically looking to rid our reality and our lives from all of the lying, pain and manipulation that we experienced in the relationship we were in... So we leave and begin to do one of two things.. We either run from the old relationship ranting and raving about all of the flaws of the other person and how they did this, that and the other thing TO you... and you are so happy to be finally free!!!.. The other thing we can do is look inside at what part of us was responsible for this relationships characteristics .. What made it a toxic relationship... and why do I keep finding myself in this toxic relationship cycle of misery and sadness... Here is the beautiful thing... And it may be challenging to hear... You can not run.. or hide from this cycle... and the more you blame the other humans in your relationships for what is happening... the more you will unconsciously repeat it .. Going through a cycle of "thinking you are all good now".... and finding a new person to enter into a relationship with.. only to unknowingly fall victim to this Universal uncovering loop.. The challenges, insecurities, arguments and toxic nature of your relationships... ALL exist within you... Period .. Before the ego begins to shout that it's not possible... Pre overcome its objection by becoming aware of this... Yes... there will be absolute direct evidence in your world of the "OTHERS" doing this.. saying this.. or behaving like "this"... in ALL of your relationships... continuously making it easier to point the finger outside of yourself.. But KNOW... Internally and on a soul level.. KNOW.... That these certain behaviors and patters of toxicity would exist if you... Weren't insecure about yourself.. didn't have unresolved trauma that you were hiding or completely unconscious to, understood that reality is a mirror of you in every way.. your thoughts beliefs and concepts of reality itself.. They are mirrored back to you.. and relationships are the perfect example. If you go inside of yourself between relationships with honesty... You will uncover and heal much of this energy.. and not bring it into a new relationship that you manifest ... and if you do notice signs of old cycles in your newly manifested relationship .. You will have new boundaries in place to protect you from the pattern repeating itself again.. Thus... stopping the toxic relationship cycle before it builds energetic and physical momentum in your life again... It is always from within first .. and then it is witnessed without... in your reality. See you inside the video!!! If you found any value in todays post please feel free to Share, Subscribe or Follow :) It truly does help the show!! Much Love Pat SUBSCRIBE TO LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE EVOLUTION ON YOUTUBE!!! I release perspective shifting, conscious expanding videos every week to help you navigate your Spiritual Awakening and find more peace, inspiration and clarity in your life! See you there! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv2e...    

Nightfood Announces Successful Hotel Test, Engages iDEAL Hospitality to Scale High-Margin Hotel Vertical Management to Host Business Update Call Today at 4:30 PM Eastern Time Tarrytown, NY, Sept. 08, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Nightfood Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: NGTF), the category-pioneering company addressing America's $50 billion nighttime snacking problem, today announced the completion of a retail pilot test in the lobby shops of a leading international hotel chain. The test, first announced in March 2021, has been confirmed a success. As a result, the testing chain has confirmed the decision to fully launch Nightfood into their lobby shop freezers chain-wide with an expected start date in the fourth quarter of 2021 or the first quarter of 2022. “This is a massive step in establishing and growing the projected billion-dollar night snack category, while further securing our leadership position,” remarked Sean Folkson, Nightfood founder and CEO. “The test results indicate we can expect to sell as many pints per week in a single hotel location as we do in a single supermarket. So, adding hundreds or thousands of hotels is as impactful to the top line as adding the same number of supermarkets, and projects to be significantly more profitable and more cash-efficient.” To fully capitalize on the high-margin hotel opportunity, Nightfood has engaged iDEAL Hospitality Partners Group. Led by hospitality industry veteran Jill Dean Rigsbee, iDEAL focuses on introducing and scaling innovative hospitality-related products within the hotel/hospitality market. Rigsbee is the former long-time Director of Business Development for Avendra, North America's leading hospitality procurement service provider. iDEAL has been engaged to secure distribution partnerships with additional global hotel brands, oversee hospitality-related business development initiatives, and provide sales and support during the national Nightfood hotel rollout. “Nightfood's vision is to secure placement in all of the estimated 20,000 hotels in the United States which sell snacks in lobby retail shops,” commented Rigsbee, iDEAL CEO. “Internally, our goal is to have Nightfood's ice cream pints, and other Nightfood snack products, in more than 7,500 hotel locations by July 31, 2022.” iDEAL is presently engaged in Nightfood sales discussions with several major hotel chains as well as the largest Group Purchasing Organizations in hospitality, representing thousands of additional hotel properties. Rigsbee continued, “Over the years, hotels have curated high-sugar, high-fat, high-calorie snacks in their lobby shops. We now know such snacks are disruptive and harmful to sleep quality. This was certainly unintentional and is clearly undesirable. We expect hotel executives to quickly rectify this now that sleep-friendly night snacks are finally available to them. Hotels take their obligation to support better sleep for their guests seriously. These sleep-supporting efforts can now extend out of their guestrooms and into their lobby shops. As a result, we expect Nightfood snacks to rapidly attain significant national hotel distribution.” “Nightfood is growing an established and documented track record of strong sales velocities in the hotel environment, now confirmed by our international partner,” added Mr. Folkson. “Simultaneously, we continue to work on optimizing and growing our supermarket business. We expect to gain new supermarket distribution in the coming months for the spring resets.” “The supermarket is an extremely competitive and expensive place in which to launch and grow a new brand. An estimated 85% of products fail within the first two years, according to Nielsen data. We have received notification that Nightfood ice cream is expected to be rotated out of Harris Teeter supermarket locations in the coming weeks. We appreciate the opportunity to service their customers over the last two years and will work toward being reinstated in thei...

Meridith Grundei, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Coach, Actor, Director, and Improviser. This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.* URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset     As an award-winning theatre director, producer, and former Second City improv teacher, Meridith Grundei recognized the similarities between performing on stage every night and presenting to clients/colleagues every day, but the latter didn't have the right tools to bring their stories to life. So she decided to do something about it. Eleven years and some change later, Grundei Coaching has helped thousands of individuals and corporations around the world achieve career growth and success. Meridith specializes in presentation and public speaking consultation, individual training and development, and creative team solutions using applied improvisational theatre techniques to build trust, empathy, and out-of-the-box thinking. Connect with Meridith www.grundeicoaching.com and www.meridithgrundei.com Insta: https://www.instagram.com/thisimprovisedlife/ and https://www.instagram.com/meridithgrundeicoaching/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meridith/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrundeiCoaching Meridith Grundei Episode Transcript   [00:00:00] Meridith Grundei: First off. I was just want to say the collective whole is super important. I think in order for transformation to happen and to see the actual results. [00:00:14] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Hello and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. Izolda Trakhtenberg on the show. I interview peak performing innovators in the creative social impact and earth conservation spaces or working to change the world. This episode is brought to you by brain FM, brain FM combines the best of music and neuroscience to help you relax, focus, meditate, and even sleep. [00:00:35] I love it and have been using it to write, create and do some. Deepest work because you're a listener of the show. You can get a free trial head over to brain.fm/innovative mindset. To check it out. If you decide to subscribe, you can get 20% off with the coupon code, innovative mindset, all one word. And now let's get to the show. [00:00:58] Oh, my goodness. We've [00:01:00] just been laughing so hard. Hi, this is the Trakhtenberg with the innovative mindset podcast and I bid you welcome. I'm super excited about this week's guest. You can tell Meredith is already laughing. We're both cracking up, but you need to, you need to hear about Meredith grin, die, check it out. [00:01:18] And I did I say it right? Or as a guy I dug around di see, Brandise we've just had. Fabulous conversation about name changing when you are, when you have the opportunity to do so. And Gren di is, is the, is the name that is the right name and I'm going to say it correctly. So here we go. Meredith Grundei dog gone. [00:01:38] It I'm going to get it right. As eventually as an award winning theater director, producer, and former second city improv teacher Meredith recognize the similarities between performing on stage every night and presenting to clients and colleagues. But the latter didn't have the right tools to bring their stories to life. [00:01:56] So she decided to do something about it. You know, this is catnip [00:02:00] to me. If you're, if you're a longtime listener of this show, you know how much I love what this is and what Meredith does so 11 years and some change later. Growing dye coaching has helped thousands of individuals and corporations around the world achieve career growth and success. [00:02:15] Meredith specializes in presentation and public speaking consultation, individual training and development and creative team solutions using applied improv, improvisational theater techniques to build trust, empathy, and out of the box thing. Wow, this is, this is so exciting for me because we're going to get really deep into some of this. [00:02:34] I'm so thrilled to have you here. Meredith. Welcome. [00:02:37] Meridith Grundei: Thank you. I am so happy to be here. This is I make, so I'm just giddy on the inside about the conversation that is about to emerge. Certainly [00:02:46] Izolda Trakhtenberg: hope so, unless, unless my cat comes in like the, like he did the other day and jumps on the microphone and everything goes all over the place. [00:02:54] We'll improvise. There you go. You'll improvise. I took very few improv classes in theater. I'll I'll I'll [00:03:00] try and yes, yes, yes. And you as much as possible. I love it. So, so talk to me a little bit about that. What, how did you get from. Theater director, producer, improv, teacher, professor, all of these things too. [00:03:15] Now you help people and companies get their message out. How did that come about? [00:03:21] Meridith Grundei: That's a really great question. It's organically come about over time. I have always seen myself and as a multi-passionate human and I remember the very first time someone said to me, I believe it was in high school, you're a Jack of all trades, but she said it in kind of a negative way. [00:03:41] And you know, I'm, you know, that Jack of all trades master of none kind of way. And, and at first I thought, this is my handicap. I have all these passions because I was dancing. I was acting, but I loved organizing. I worked in the career center. I just have always [00:04:00] loved these things. My dad was an entrepreneur, so he, he was always, I was always inspired by him and always curious about exactly what he did. [00:04:07] He also had a job that I could never understand it, but he did these other things that. We're just exciting. I was like, wow, you're opening a dry cleaners. And now you're opening a virtual reality games place. And now you're so I was always just really an all of that. And then when I moved to San Francisco, when I graduated from college and I started performing with an improv group called ed nauseum, and I'd taken at that time, maybe one improv class in high school. [00:04:36] And I met these, this group of people through bats and I had taken a couple courses there and I just started to love, I just fell in love with it immediately, and then ended up in a sketch comedy group called old man McGinty. And we'd do this crazy, like very absurdist kind of sketch comedy. It was this really dynamic group. [00:04:59] [00:05:00] Performers that had these wonderful like dance ability writers and a lot of experimental theater, performers, clowns, so forth. And so we put this group together and one of our members was like, I'm moving to Chicago, I'm going to study in Providence. Like, Ooh, I want to go to Chicago. I want to study improv. [00:05:19] So I'm like, let's do it. And at that time I had just gotten married and we. Jet set it to Chicago. And I started interning my way through IO, improv, Olympic and the next thing I know, I am then teaching at the second city and I'm helping start their youth program there. And cause one of the core faculty members was co-teaching a class with me that was teaching kids how to create their own. [00:05:49] And so I started that. I started working at the second city and it was a wonderful experience for me. And I was always inspired by the people that I was working with. [00:06:00] And for, and I did a couple at that time, it was called Bisco gigs teaching to more corporate folk, if you will, and helping them. Find ways to work better and more efficiently as teams using improvisation as a tool to do that. [00:06:18] And then from there, this executive coach, Dennis Schroder pulled me in and was like, I want you to work with me and all the time. So I was like, okay. And I do the Birkman assessment, which is a psychological assessment, similar to disc and Myers-Briggs and he said, This is how I work as an executive coach with these teams. [00:06:36] And then I want you to come in and let's use applied improv as a way to show these personal things different personality types and how they can work together as an asset. And better communicate with each other as a team and trust and all of that. And so for several years, and I actually am still in touch with Dennis and do the occasional work with him. [00:06:57] I, I, I just ended up [00:07:00] doing that work and loving it because I saw the opportunities to help people not only engage with each other, but also find a safe and brave space to share story. I, it was astounding to me. How many organizations did not provide the space, whether that was conscious or unconscious for people to actually share what is like what's going on in their lives. [00:07:29] What's what, they're, what they don't feel that they can bring into the workspace, right? Because you leave, you leave your personal life at home. And I'll, I'll never forget this one experience where I was working with a team of manufacturing team up in upstate New York in Rochester, and I have this Augusta ball exercise and Augusta ball is a Brazilian practitioner who brought he's no longer with us, but he, he used improv and theater [00:08:00] as a tool to bring community together and people of different backgrounds and ethnicities and so forth. [00:08:06] And. This one exercise is called and it made me think. And so what you do is each person is given one minute to tell a story about something that's happened in their life and in relatively recent, right? A relatively recent timeframe. So in last week or last month, and you punctuate it, you tell your story and then you punctuate it with, and it made me think, and then you allow space to sit. [00:08:32] And so you allow that story to land on the listeners. And this one, gentlemen, we come to this one man in the circle and he shares his story about his son. Who's been going through chemotherapy. No one on that team knew no one. And that to me blew my mind like this poor man has been holding this. Painful thing and [00:09:00] expected to work and expected to show up and to do his job. [00:09:05] And that was. A moment for me where I went, I, this is important. This is what I am doing. This work, not, I, more people need to be doing this work. More people need to be going into organizations and using these tools of the theater and of improv to help open up the hearts and the minds of the individuals that are doing this work. [00:09:29] I just got the bug and I just kept doing it from there on, and I started doing it on my own with Meredith granddad coaching. And within that, I was also. Invited by Dennis I'll give him credit. He was like, I've got this CEO, please help him with his presentation. He has to give at this big conference, I've got this guy over here who needs to level up his executive presence. [00:09:49] I've got this person over here and I would yes. And things. And I think it's a Tina Fey quote, but she was like say yes and figure out the rest later, which is kind of what [00:10:00] I felt like I was doing. And it's led me to. This wonderfully PA this wonderful path that I'm on. And I haven't looked back and I don't think I will. [00:10:10] I mean, I, I, what was it? What am I trying to say here? That was a rough drafted thought. Anyway. That's, that's how I got here. [00:10:19] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's fantastic. And so much of what you said. To me, what I heard it it's I heard courage. It was, that was one of the things that, that I, it seems like you help people bring out, you know, have sort of pull themselves into themselves, but then have the courage to express to actually say what's on their mind or do what they want to do and be more of themselves, especially in corporate situations. [00:10:56] And the first thing that we started talking about that you mentioned was [00:11:00] improv. And I would love it because I have a whole list of questions based on what you just said. There's a ton. And what, what is improv? What, what is improvisational theater? What is improv? Because people's bandy the term around, but I'm not sure how many people, I actually know what it means, what it is and what it can do for you. [00:11:21] Meridith Grundei: That's a great question. So improv, I will start off with the one thing that people most commonly can relate to when I describe it in front of a group, which is, I always referenced, like, have you seen whose line is it anyway? And then people, I see a bunch of people nodding up and down and I'm nodding up and down as I'm sharing this story with you right now. [00:11:43] So that would be the first context to do it. Yeah. Whose line is it? Anyway, they have a structure, a game, if you will. And within that game. So the structure are the quote unquote and I'm doing air quotes are the rules, right? [00:12:00] And you make things up on the spot within that structure though. So the structure gives you some guidelines. [00:12:06] So that's what I do is I teach people. Games, these exercises, these activities. However you want to frame that that best fits for you. I give them these games that they work within so that they can see. The magic that happens afterwards. Right. And I give them other tools, like the foundation of improvisation is this idea of yes. [00:12:31] And so when we, yes, and somebody's idea, we can further the storyline. We can add to the idea we can. Find that moment of agreement. Right? And so with that tool and within these structures, these games that I give them, we're able to make discoveries about ourselves within the context of the game. So for example, to me, the applied improv piece is the [00:13:00] magic is in the debrief. [00:13:01] Right. So what did you notice come up for you when you were put in this situation? What feelings. We're in your body when this happened. What did you notice in your communication when this happened? What is it that you would do differently next time? If we were to do this exercise again, where you making eye contact were you breathing? [00:13:25] Oftentimes when we feel stressed out or anxiety, we hold our breath, right? Do these exercises up on our feet. So it's a full body experience off, we spend so much time sitting down that I think that physical engagement that sematic kinesthetic engagement is incredibly important as well. So that I hope answers the question, what is improv, and it's also an amazing opportunity to get people to just laugh together. [00:13:57] You're laughing together. You're getting amazing [00:14:00] insights on your own communication skills. You're building trust. And there are no real world consequences within the containers. So we're not going to like some multi-billion dollar organization is not going to implode because we're doing improv game. [00:14:16] Izolda Trakhtenberg: I certainly hope not. [00:14:18] That would be one heck of an improv game if you do that. [00:14:21] Meridith Grundei: Wow. Wow. [00:14:24] Izolda Trakhtenberg: And you rubbed your hands together right there. You did. I did [00:14:27] Meridith Grundei: put finger thing. [00:14:30] Izolda Trakhtenberg: So that's, that's a, that's a fabulous, that's a fabulous encapsulation of what improv is and something that, that sparked from you when you said that was the questions that you asked the debrief, as you put it. [00:14:42] If you're calling on people and correct me if I'm wrong here, it seems like you're calling on people to have a, a deeper awareness of self of who they are, of where they are of what's happening inside them. And often we don't, we don't, we tend to think outwardly, you know, we tend to [00:15:00] go, oh, this is, this is on my to-do list today. [00:15:03] This is, these are the things that I have to get done. This is the work that I have to do, but we don't tend to spend a lot of time. Internally and going, what about the work I'm doing on myself? So it sounds like there's an invitation inherent in what you're doing for people to work on themselves. And I'm wondering, how does, how does that work for you? [00:15:22] How do you, how do you employ that? And if you do specifically and what are the results that you get at the end of the process? [00:15:32] Meridith Grundei: Oh, that's a, that's a great question. Yeah. I think it's the way that I guide people through things that I give them the invitation to drop in and think in those ways. And I do always call it an invitation. [00:15:46] I don't try to force things upon people. I think it's important for people to make their own discoveries. And so I, I repeat myself a lot in the debrief. So touch in, you know, [00:16:00] I have an Allen Ginsburg quote that I like to use often, which is notice what you notice. And then I feel like the more that I can repeat back, the things that I'm inviting people to do, whether they make those discoveries in the room or on the zoom room, if you will, these days, but in the room with me. [00:16:19] Great. But they may not make those discoveries until a month later when they're sitting at their desk. And something happens that triggers a response or a strong emotion, and then they can reflect back to that exercise. So I think that there's time and space for integration with these things and the repetition can help with that. [00:16:41] I hope that answered the first part of your question. Can you repeat the second part of your question? Sure. [00:16:45] Izolda Trakhtenberg: The, the second part was actually really about. Like you said they might notice months later. I, I recently noticed something that I did in a theater class in college many, many years ago, and sort [00:17:00] of got an aha moment from that. [00:17:01] And I'm wondering when you go through the process in the moment, if you have any stories about those results so that you can see them. So that they're like the, the gentlemen whose whose son had, who was going through chemo. The people there were changed, right? The results were pretty immediate by hearing his story. [00:17:21] And I'm wondering, I guess I'm, I'm being a little bit, you know, I'm being a little shameless cause I'm like, tell me, tell me the results, Meredith good stuff, you know, but [00:17:30] Meridith Grundei: fair enough. You know, but, [00:17:32] Izolda Trakhtenberg: but it's, it's because I think we don't spend a lot of time in that space. Wow, this, this has changed me. And let me spend a little time figuring out how it has changed me. [00:17:44] So in those, in those spaces, when you're cause you're holding space for people to be themselves, which I love what, what are the profound results, small and large in those processes? [00:17:57] Meridith Grundei: Yeah, that's a really great question. I think there are [00:18:00] multiple ones. One is how you work collectively as a team. And that's why I think the work is important to do. [00:18:07] And I think that's why leadership needs to show up too, you know, because oftentimes I've noticed that leadership will set something up for their team management will and then management won't be there. So all of these people have learned their team has learned this like great news. Tools and then management isn't there. [00:18:25] So that first off I was just wanting to say the collective whole is super important. I think in order for a transformation to happen and to see the actual results For me, it's about, for example, seeing the results, how do you organize a meeting? Right. So because of some of the tools in the, in the debrief, we find out where some of the pain points are and how they can be solved through those exercises. [00:18:51] So if you're in an it, for example, in an ideation phase, or you're a part of an agile or scrum group or your, whatever the industry [00:19:00] might be, and you're in that first infant stages of creating. When everyone in the group has this idea of what yes. And is and how it can be applicable, it shifts things. [00:19:11] Let's get all the ideas up on the whiteboard or on the post-it notes. And let's see what emerges without saying no. There will be room for no later there will be room for, I see this. And can we do this later? Just get all the ideas out there because what that also does is it creates a room of inclusivity. [00:19:31] So all voices get to be heard. Nobody is being cut off. Nobody is being told. No all ideas are good ideas at that moment in time, because what happens is in ideation in brainstorming and creativity. We want to it's so often that we want to look at, what's not working first and I'm a big fan of looking at like, well, let's look at what is working and let's get it all out there because whatever, if, if this, if you have an [00:20:00] instant to a, no, that no actually might inspire the idea that does work. [00:20:05] Does that make sense? Absolutely. [00:20:07] Izolda Trakhtenberg: No, it absolutely. It does. And it's interesting because. As I'm listening to you, I'm going the people who are actually doing the work, nobody knows their job better than they do. You know, nobody knows what you do better than you do. So if you're going to ask for ideas and make the caveat that there are no bad ones, just throw them out. [00:20:30] Some of those people have never been heard from before. And it sounds like you're giving them the, the, the stage, if you will, the opportunity. And then they can. Present their own. I do something similar with some of the workshops I do giving space so that people who aren't often heard from can, can have their say. [00:20:50] And I love what you said about leadership being invited and almost mandatory show up folks, because that presents an opportunity for [00:21:00] them to, to see some of those ideas that they otherwise might not see. Right. [00:21:06] Meridith Grundei: Yeah, exactly. And they also get to see the dynamics of the. They get to see how people work together in these different situations that they may not be able to see in the day-to-day grind of the work. [00:21:20] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Yeah, absolutely. And that's so interesting. So talk to me about team dynamics. What is that? What is team dynamics? You mentioned it a couple of times and I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on exactly what it is and how we can use it specifically, because this is the innovative mindset podcast. How can we use it to innovate? [00:21:37] How can we use it to think. [00:21:40] Meridith Grundei: Yeah. Well, the first place that I go to is using each other's different sets of skills as an asset. Right. And so that we look at, so I'll just bring it back to like what Dennis works with with the different personality types. We all have different ways of seeing and approaching an idea or a problem [00:22:00] solving and finding a solution to something. [00:22:03] Right. My husband and I could not be more different in how we problem solve something, but it's how we choose to work together and communicate in order to solve that problem. And so what I really appreciate about using these, like I said before, they have no real world what's the word I'm looking for? [00:22:23] No consequences. Thank you. Ding, ding, ding. They have no real world consequences, right? But what it does is it really helps bring to the surface, these different personality types, and rather getting frustrated with that person who might be more on the execution thing and, or getting more, really uptight around that person. [00:22:42] The out of the box, creative thinker, it's like, how do you take those two different personality types and put them together so that they can actually work efficiently and effectively together and see each other's different types of personality types as an asset to the, to solving a problem. So when I talk about team [00:23:00] dynamics, I mean that, to me, it's about, yes, and-ing each other, seeing each other and ourselves. [00:23:05] Brilliance and how they can all fit together so that we can be effective and efficient with our day to day work and tasks and show each other mutual respect and honor each other's differences. [00:23:19] Izolda Trakhtenberg: I love that. You just said that last part because that's one of the things that I find happens is that. That can sometimes be missing that, that, that respecting that other people think differently and that not only is it okay, but it's to be celebrated because they can come at it from a perspective. [00:23:35] Yeah. You may not have seen. So let me ask you a strange question and maybe it's not a strange question. I imagine there are times when you're doing one of these workshops that you meet resistance from the people and all [00:23:51] Meridith Grundei: that die. Yeah. I, I, I [00:23:54] Izolda Trakhtenberg: I'm like, yeah, this is kind of a [00:23:55] Meridith Grundei: silly question. Not a strange question at all. [00:23:58] Izolda Trakhtenberg: And so, you know, [00:24:00] because some people given the room to play, maybe of playing, if you see what I mean. So I'm wondering what, when you meet resistance, how. What are the innovative ways that you encourage invite, inspire people to, to let go of the fear a little, or maybe to push through the fear? I'm not sure what, what, what your way is in order to actually get the best out of the expense. [00:24:29] Meridith Grundei: Yeah, I think it's a wonderful question. And I will say the most resistant resistance that I am met with is usually at the very beginning, I walk into the room and I oftentimes get the, who is this person what's happening? Why are we forced to do this? Like, you can just feel the energy in the room is palpable. [00:24:47] And and it's not all the time. I mean, sometimes you've got the one person in the room that's like, I love improv. Like, thank God for you being in the room. Right. And And so what happens is pretty [00:25:00] quickly, I have everyone gathered in a circle. I have them push their chairs back and, you know, if I can get into the room to arrange it the way that I would like it to, to be the best learning experience possible for everyone, I do that sometimes I can't do that. [00:25:13] So it's a little bit of a rearranging, right. And in that moment, I'm warming myself up. I'm introducing myself to people. I'm giving them eye contact. I'm making sure they know that I'm not as scary. I don't look scary to, to begin with. I'm like, Three and I weigh a hundred pounds, so they're scared of me. [00:25:28] That's a bigger issue. But so then I gather people do a circle and we S we do, you know, some gradual warmups and and I get to know who they are. They get to know me. And what happens is quite. It's beautiful. I will say it's just beautiful. Is that somehow within that timeframe within the first 30 minutes of being there, I have given them permission to play and it's as if no one else has given them that permission in a really long [00:26:00] time. [00:26:01] And I can't tell you it's the most wonderful, beautiful shift that I have ever experienced. Is with people who are non-performers, who have no idea what they're about to get into. And then all of a sudden they understand it and they're like, oh my God, I get to just play for three hours. Awesome. And so that is usually I will say That's most of my experiences, every so often you'll get the one person it's usually one person and I hate to say it, but it's usually a guy who has a lot of resistance. [00:26:37] And so I, there it's a fine balance, right? Because you don't want that person to take up air time for everybody else. You don't want to, so it's a delicate balance of agreement and saying, let's take a risk here and let's look at your own stuff. And oftentimes it, [00:27:00] it works out. Okay. Right. And I'm a big fan of doing, I touch back into and I, and I noticed these things and I feel. [00:27:07] I might send an email and do a check-in with that person later. Or I might check in with their management later because I do care and I want to know where the resistance is living in the body and, or in the mind and or with past experiences. Because even though the work is playful, even though we are having a good time with each other, it can still bring up stuff for people. [00:27:28] It just. Sure. We're humans. So with, with lots of layers and somehow within that layers of that onion, there was one that I really, I got out with some people, so putting care and love into it. [00:27:44] Izolda Trakhtenberg: I love again, I love that you said that I'm going to just say that after everything you say, and it's interesting what you were talking about. [00:27:52] Like every once in a while, the person with real resistance, I find that digging deeper means that they are. That they're a [00:28:00] frustrated performer or that they were told that they shouldn't speak or should, or, or don't have talent or skills in the very thing that they want to do, which is be out there with, with the bad cells. [00:28:11] And so there's this, there's this confidence piece and there's a, there's a vulnerability piece to that, to what I'm hearing you talk about that I would love to explore for a minute. What I know you've already mentioned that. Lots of vulnerability, even though we're playing. And even though we're having a good time, there's, there's a real vulnerability to, to stepping into the limelight. [00:28:34] Well, and when, when someone does, I'm sure that you've had lots of stories about that, but when they do that, how does, how do you handle it and how does the rest of the group. Transform because it's not just the individual person that transforms. I imagine the rest of the group transforms also when someone is really vulnerable. [00:28:58] Yeah. [00:29:00] [00:29:01] Meridith Grundei: That's a really good question. I'm trying to think. Well, I keep going back to that one story. There's a couple of stories that have popped into my head. I think. In those moments for me, I think each situation is different. So I do adapt according to each of the situations. And I might have, for example, a game that follows the exercise that we just did. And for me as the coach, as the facilitator, it's important to know what to let go of for the betterment of the whole. [00:29:32] And so there have been a couple times where I've had to let go of my agenda. So that I could best meet the group with where they're at. And and I'm not overly transparent about that. I just go with the flow and then we, we spend our attention in that place. And then there's an opportunity for further dialogue. [00:29:55] And I, I always do feel that it is the way that the rules of engagement that are set up before. Right. [00:30:00] Are helpful in facilitating this as well, because I come from a place of, I want to hear, I want to hear from you what feels true. I want to hear what's working. And then I want to hear where you have curiosities around this feeling or within this exercise that we just had that came up for you. [00:30:20] The feelings that you have are completely valid and they're yours. There nobody else's so let's all figure this out together and let's find a way to communicate this that feels safe. And so I, I hope that answered your question. Did it? [00:30:39] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Yes, it did. Good. Funny about the show is that the, a lot of the feedback that I get from the shows that wow, these conversations go so deep and we do so. [00:30:52] Yes, you answered. [00:30:54] Meridith Grundei: Well, you know, I had another story that popped in my head as it was a disaster story where we, it was a [00:31:00] huge organization and the person who organized it was going through a lot of stuff. And so it was not organized very, very well at all. And I ha I was met with serious resistance and then the, or the, I heard the client was not happy. [00:31:17] And so in that moment, I literally. Everything rallied the troops and was like, we, because there was six of us on this gig and I was responsible for having brought in like five of the six of us, all of us. I was responsible for bringing in these people. And I was like, we need to shift gears. And we had to do a whole, like, we changed the whole curriculum, the whole thing, everything because of what, what happened. [00:31:43] And I think that's. You know, I think that's something improv has taught me is to be adaptable, be in the moment, be a problem solver. If you dig in your heels, it's not because you had one thing planned and it's not working out the way that you think it's going to work out. Then [00:32:00] you're going to be in a lot of trees. [00:32:01] A lot. And so I have learned so often you just got to sometimes say, yep, you're right. This isn't working. And now we're going to figure out a new solution to this. And I am so grateful for that tool. [00:32:17] Izolda Trakhtenberg: And it's a great tool because if you are not adaptable, you're pushing up a really heavy Boulder [00:32:22] Meridith Grundei: up there. [00:32:23] Oh my God. It's some people think they're adaptable. And I got to say, you're not, I'm so sorry, but you're not being there with them all. Yeah. [00:32:30] Izolda Trakhtenberg: And that, that can be a tough, a tough nut to swallow. Right. So, so I, you know, it's interesting, we've been talking a lot about courage and talking about confidence and in its relationship to, to the teams that you work with within, within a presentation. [00:32:48] And I'm wondering if there's something you, you mentioned way earlier that you got drawn to helping people be themselves. In certain kinds of [00:33:00] situations in whether it's corporate or not, but you're, you, you said you were drawn to helping people and I'm wondering what, what draws you to helping people become better at not just the, oh, we're working well as a team, but at public speaking and presenting and being up in front of others and telling their own story, like what, what draws you about that and how do you do that? [00:33:25] Meridith Grundei: Hmm. Thank you. I have always just maybe it's I w I went to church camp a lot as a kid, and then I ended up becoming a camp counselor and all of these things. And I feel like I just, from a very young age, loved teaching and loved helping other people find their voices. And I feel like, you know, partly it's because, you know, In my childhood. [00:33:52] And when I was more, in my teenage years, I have a father who had PTSD and I found it tremendously difficult to have a [00:34:00] voice in my family to be heard. And so I think that I am very sensitive to other people who also struggle with being heard in the way they want to. And so I would say that would probably be the core of the root of it. [00:34:14] And I am a huge advocate of mentorship. I, I love. I just feel like it's so important, especially in this day and age too, to help lift the voices of others, to tell them that yes, they can achieve whatever they want to achieve, that they can, that they can they can overcome adversity. And that just feels, it just lights me up. [00:34:38] It just, it really does. I guess that's the best answer I have for you is I can't imagine myself doing anything else, but working with people I'm I am quite the empath, like some too, sometimes to a fault right. Where I'm like, I overthink things, [00:35:00] but I really, I do care about people. I really do care about their experiences and making sure that they have a voice in the room and in this world, [00:35:09] Izolda Trakhtenberg: And again, I love that. [00:35:11] See this, I've just kept saying that. And I, and I am not at all surprised that you're an empath and being able to do that, being so able to be sensitive to the place where other people are, what they're feeling, what they're, what they're perhaps thinking all of that. It changes how you relate to them. And if someone. [00:35:36] A real fear. Like I used to have a phobia, not, not that, not that you can tell now, since I'm all over the place, as far as speaking, but I used to have a real phobia of public speaking from learning English as a fourth language and being terrified. And I, I worked through it. I overcame it and now I'm out there presenting all the time and I'm actually grateful to that time. [00:35:59] It [00:36:00] helped me understand what other people are going through when they're afraid. And so when you're, when you're coaching someone to improve their skills at presenting, or if they have a presentation that they have to do, and they're terrified, what do you do to help them? [00:36:19] Meridith Grundei: Yes. Well, I, I first, I always start with where they're at and where they wanna go. And how they want to be seen. And. I am. My philosophy is to give as many tools as I possibly can, because I don't think it's a one size fits all for everybody. I think that with as many tools as I can possibly give them, they can find what works best for them. [00:36:45] Right? So the tools that I will provide science, our breathing exercises, physical exercises, because the mind body connection is incredibly important. The heart centered mind. The connection [00:37:00] is important. I give them different tools on how to prepare, right? How to practice. Cause there's more than one way to practice. [00:37:10] There is no set acronym. That's going to teach you how to become an amazing person pro you know rehearsal. Is that even a word? I'm sure it's true today. It is. And so. I just feel that what I have found over time is that people would tell me, this is how you do it. This is how it's done. And then I would go back like, as an actor, I would get all of these, this input on how I was supposed to practice or how I was supposed to memorize my lines or how I was supposed to, how I was supposed to do this, do this, do this. [00:37:41] And I'd noticed that no one ever gave me permission to sit back and try to figure out what worked for me. Right because everyone has an opinion, everyone's opinion is going to be different from the last person's opinion. That's just the way it is. So you really giving that permission for [00:38:00] people to find what works for them and giving them enough tools to be able to do that. [00:38:10] Izolda Trakhtenberg: I'm taking it in for a second. Sorry. I like. Take a second and really synthesize what I've just heard. [00:38:22] the thing, the key for me of what you just said is that it's a two-pronged approach. The, what is that you need to do. And then here are the tools to help you do it. Like what world, what will work for you may not work for anybody else. Right? What works for me may not work for anybody else, but giving permission. [00:38:44] And not just you giving them permission, but them giving themselves permission to explore, I think is so crucial. And how do you, how do you innovate that? How do you encourage people who might have a phobia? Like, like I used to, [00:39:00] to give themselves permission, not just to play, but to go deep and explore into who they are and. [00:39:08] What is it that they want to say what their messages? [00:39:12] Meridith Grundei: Yeah. I'll give you an exact example of one thing. So I have this group called confidently confidently speaking, which is a group coaching on mighty networks thing that I put together and it's only a month old and I do a Q and a, so it's it's four weeks or. [00:39:30] Every it's for me. Yes. Every month, each week I have a jeez Louise each week, I have a different focus. And on the fourth week of the month, I do a Q and a, and that feels important to me so that people can ask their questions and they can also provide me feedback so that I can better grow the community. [00:39:48] And what I heard from the last Q and a. Is, there was some struggle with feeling confidence around being in front of the camera and being in front of the camera in communicating your message and your brand is huge. And we're [00:40:00] getting more and more on video. I mean, I think things are going to turn more in that direction than ever before. [00:40:07] And so I heard all of that and I said, okay, Well, then we're going to do a 30 day video challenge. And if three of you sign up, I'm going to do it with you because it's important that you see that I'm going to go and do this alongside of you. And we're all going to learn together. And then we're going to come together at the end of this 30 day challenge. [00:40:28] And we're going to share what we learned when we started and where we're at, and we're going to share where we're at now. And I think. That gives people permission to go, wow, my coach is doing this alongside of me because I always have something to learn too. I'm not, I'm not like a master at all of these things. [00:40:49] You know, I mean, there are masters, but masters in something. Educating themselves and learning. And it also helps people feel like they're not alone in, in [00:41:00] this growth period in their life. And that's why I like the group coaching and that peer to peer support piece of it is because you can really quickly see I'm not the only one that feels this way, that there's still a lot of work to be done. [00:41:14] And and it's okay that I'm at where I'm at. Right. [00:41:19] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting. There's a, there's a wonderful book by Pema Chodron. I love him the children. Oh, yay. I love her work and I love the book title almost more than I love the book. It's start where you are. I just think that's so it's so simple and so profound at the same time that giving yourself permission to start where you are and not judging yourself for. [00:41:46] Not being further along than you are, you know? So, so have you done the full 30 days yet? How, how have the stories been about the people who have taken the challenge on. We [00:41:59] Meridith Grundei: [00:42:00] are on day two, we just started, we just started. It's pretty awesome. And there's a, there's a couple people that I was not expecting that totally jumped in and I am so excited. [00:42:14] I'm so excited that it just gets, I just, I am just thrilled to pieces when people take the risk and I've given them the platform to do so. Like we did A story exercise a couple of weeks ago. And a couple people chose to put their stories on video. I said, you know what? However you need to tell that story, tell it if it's typing it and sending it to us in a document. [00:42:38] If it's putting it on video, just tell your story. So I think again, it's giving them the permission to use it. There's no right. There's no one way to do something. [00:42:50] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, it's one of my, one of my favorite things on a circle you can get to the center [00:43:00] point from an infinite number of places. [00:43:02] And that is that to me is says so much and there is no. No, that's not true. I will say that there are wrong ways, like forgetting to turn your camera off yeah. On or off or whatever, you know? Sure. [00:43:15] Meridith Grundei: But at [00:43:15] Izolda Trakhtenberg: the same time, so yeah. Cause I've done that I've done, I've recorded entire podcast episodes without having turned on the recording equipment. [00:43:24] So, so that has happened and, and yet it's, it's a Mo it's a teaching and a learning opportunity for you. [00:43:32] Meridith Grundei: Yes, I was just going to ask, but what did you learn from that? Exactly. What did you do different next time? So yeah, now I have a [00:43:38] Izolda Trakhtenberg: checklist hanging over my desk. It says, these are the things you have to do. [00:43:41] And again, that that's, that to me is a really important piece of what you're doing is that you don't have to be perfect. You have to be where you are, you know, wherever you are and if you can stretch yourself. That's great. So, so within that, is there a place that someone can go to, to go? [00:44:00] I want to learn from. [00:44:02] Where should they go to do that? To find. [00:44:06] Meridith Grundei: Yeah, thank you for asking that question. I can be found in a few places. One is Grund di coaching.com and that's G R U N as in Nancy, D as in dog, E i.com. Meredith. Yeah, granddad coaching.com. And then. Confidently speaking.club, it's hosted on mighty networks. [00:44:28] So you could also look through mighty networks. And then I have my performance. I still am a performer on Meredith grand di.com. And my name is spelled with two eyes. It's M E R I D I T H grandad.com. And then of course, LinkedIn and all the socials. I'm not on Facebook though. I got off base. What's driving me batty. [00:44:48] Izolda Trakhtenberg: I hear you. That that is one of those things and there's, I could keep you here for the next six hours. I know. I love [00:44:57] Meridith Grundei: talking to you. It's so much fun. You ask me your [00:45:00] questions. I'm like, I love your question. And I'm like, did I answer it? I hope I answered it. You're [00:45:07] Izolda Trakhtenberg: fabulous. Yes, you absolutely have. [00:45:09] There's there's a couple more questions. If you have time. First of all, I was honored to be on your podcast recently. So much fun. So I'm really glad that you were able to come and join me here on, on, in an innovative mindset. So I'm, the podcast is called. Are you waiting for permission that you cohost with a wonderful gentleman named Joseph Bennett? [00:45:31] And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what the podcast is and what permission people might be waiting for? [00:45:41] Meridith Grundei: Yeah, the, so the podcast is. Inspired by Joseph on a Sunday. I think about four months ago, it's only four months old and the crazy wow. He said he woke up and he's like, I want to do a podcast with Meredith. [00:45:56] And so he called me and I said, sure, let's do a podcast. [00:46:00] And we came up with this title. Are you waiting for permission? Joseph, I think was reading a book and it was a line in a book and I said, perfect. This is that. Yes. And it is intended for creatives and artists who. Stopped waiting for permission. [00:46:17] And so they started giving themselves permission to live the life that they want and to create the work that they want and to follow their dreams. And we, our intention with the podcast is we really want our listeners. To see that there are multiple ways that they can to give themselves permission to follow their dreams. [00:46:41] And we even have one listener who quit her job. She said, I listened to your podcast. And that was it. I had this email sitting in the inbox for two years and I finally sent it and I quit my job that I was miserable at. Wow. And. That, that was really, and we, of course, we had to interview her on [00:47:00] our podcast and we did, and that will be released in the next few weeks. [00:47:03] But that is our, that is our hope with the podcast is to keep encouraging people, to take leaps of faith, to take risk and to give themselves permission. And through that, we give resources, we answer questions now for people on the podcast as well. And we invite. You know, guests like yourself who are dynamic humans that have also carved a path. [00:47:27] Izolda Trakhtenberg: And it's a fabulous podcast. If you're not listening, you should go super subscribe, just like right now. And that's that? No, it is. I enjoy it. I enjoy it because. It's like you called yourself a multi-passionate person, but also the guests tend to be multi-passionate and tend to want to explore different avenues. [00:47:50] And I am about, I am. Multi-passionate, doesn't begin to cover all of that, that I try to do. And I've [00:48:00] decided for myself that it's not do what you love for me. Love what you're doing while you're doing it. And that's, that's, that's, that's my solution to that whole conundrum. And so I'm, I'm really glad that you, that you both started this show because I find that I'm learning and I'm having a good time. [00:48:22] And often you, you get podcasts where you have one or the other maybe, but not both. And yours. Yours does both, which I think is great. And I think that's what you're doing with the work that you're doing is that people. Yes, you're, you're calling on them to be vulnerable and have, and have courage, and you're giving them a space to play and explore who they are. [00:48:45] And I think that's amazing. So thank you so much for doing the work that you're doing. I really it's necessary in this world, so I'm really glad you're out there doing. Yeah, no, [00:48:53] Meridith Grundei: thank you. [00:48:55] Izolda Trakhtenberg: So Meredith I have one last question and by the way, all of the, all of the. [00:49:00] Social media and all of the ways to contact you will be in the show notes as well, but people learn differently. [00:49:05] So I like to give both both ways of seeing or multiple ways of seeing the information or hearing the information. And I have one last question that I ask everybody who comes on the show and FIA, it's a silly question, but I find that it can yield some, some profound answers. So the question is this. [00:49:24] If you had an airplane that could sky write anything for the whole world to see. What would you say? [00:49:31] Meridith Grundei: Just [00:49:32] Izolda Trakhtenberg: breathe. [00:49:37] I love that. I love that. So that's a great what a great answer. Yes. So important. So important. I, I like to say that you can live. Three weeks without food, you can last three days without water, but you can only last three minutes without air. So is crucial, [00:49:54] Meridith Grundei: crucial. It is so crucial and we don't do it enough. [00:49:59] We hold our [00:50:00] breath so [00:50:01] Izolda Trakhtenberg: much. Yeah. And, and one of the things that's most interesting to me about the theater that I was an English drama major in college. And one of the things that was most interesting to me was when I first started really learning. How to use breath to perform, to, to play. I play violin. [00:50:22] So breathing is not, it's not a woodwind or brass instrument or whatever, but at the same time breathing as part of singing, breathing is part of doing anything, gives yourself space as well as being nourishing for your, for your body and your mind and your spirit. So I'm so grateful that you said that. [00:50:42] What a wonder. Way of looking at it. Meredith I'm super grateful that you took the time to be on the show. I thank you so much for being. [00:50:51] Meridith Grundei: Oh, thank you so much for having me as old. I have, I, this has been a wonderful conversation, so thank you. And I hope you'll come back. Oh, I will [00:51:00] hope you come back to our podcast too. [00:51:01] I'd be delighted. [00:51:03] Izolda Trakhtenberg: So we started the episode giggling and we're finishing again. [00:51:07] Meridith Grundei: Yes. I love it. Big fan. I love it. I love it. [00:51:11] Izolda Trakhtenberg: You have coming to the innovative mindset podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg. This has been a fabulous conversation with Meredith grandad, and I hope that you will check out both confidently speaking. [00:51:24] And are you waiting for permission and all the other incredible work that Meredith is doing? If you're enjoying these episodes, please do me a favor rate and review the show. I'd love to hear from you about what you're thinking about the show where it's going. Very soon on July. No, actually this, this air is way after we've already celebrated our 400th episode. [00:51:43] Can you believe a hundred episodes? Amazing. I'm super good. Yeah, it's exciting. So I hope that you're enjoying the show and I will remind you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot.[00:52:00] [00:52:02] Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Please subscribe to the podcast if you're new and if you like what you're hearing, please review it and rate it and let other people know. If you'd like to be a sponsor of the show. I'd love to meet you on patrion.com/innovative mindset. [00:52:20] I also have lots of exclusive goodies to share just with the show supporters. Today's episode was produced by Izolda Trakhtenberg and his copyright 2021 as always. Please remember, this is for educational and entertainment purposes. Only past performance does not guarantee future results, although we can always hope until next time, keep living in your innovative minds.   * I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I'll get a small commission. And please remember, I'll never recommend a product or service I don't absolutely love!  

Rob Monaci is an accomplished executive with extensive business experience across a broad range of industries and organisations. With more than 30 years of engineering and construction experience, he has built his career on a practical approach to project management and a strong customer focus.Rob Monaci joined Georgiou in 2015 as an Executive General Manager responsible for establishing and growing a presence for Georgiou in the civil engineering market in New South Wales. In July 2018, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer, replacing the inaugural CEO John Georgiou who held the position for 20 years.Georgiou has delivered profitable growth in the past three years whilst building a strong reputation for delivering quality construction to meet client expectations in a collaborative manner. Internally, Rob's focus has been on people, their career development and championing Georgiou's Indigenous and diversity strategies with a strong focus on equity not equality.Previously with John Holland Pty Ltd as the General Manager, Mr Monaci has also held senior leadership roles with Thiess and BIS Industrial Logistics.In this episode, you'll gain insight to:Doing the best by people, with your peopleSustainably growing businessBringing out the potential in othersGenerating high performance teamsLeadership lessons and advice to navigating turbulenceKey CEO operating principles and valuesAnd moreResourcesGood to Great - Jim CollinsIt's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by by Captain D. Michael AbrashoffShoe Dog - Phil KnightShow notes:If you enjoyed this episode, and you've learnt something or it inspired you in some way, I'd love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, and post it to your Instagram Stories, and tag me, @elinormoshe_ or Elinor Moshe on LinkedIn.Don't forget you can also join the Facebook community to be part of the growing family of constructors who chose exceptional futures.

Josy Amann is Co-founder at Media Matters Worldwide, an analytics-driven, brand-power-focused omnichannel media buying, and planning agency serving B2B and B2C clientele. In 2005, Josy and her co-founder left a large agency where they had been providing media buying and planning to start Media Matters – with no money and a two-pronged plan – to get their own clients and to freelance with other agencies. Their first client was a “gift” from their prior agency. Josy says referrals sustained the agency for the first ten years. In 2019, MMWW hired a leadership team to help scale the business, to be able to serve larger clients and to meet the variety of technological demands. Completely remote from day one, MMWW tripled its employees from 20 to 60 in two years – during Covid! Omnichannel marketing encompasses both traditional and digital advertising. Traditional advertising includes linear (scheduled broadcast) TV and radio, outdoor displays, direct mail, and print. Digital advertising may involve: Programmatic purchasing (using automated technology to buy advertising space) OTT (over-the-top) delivery (customized, precisely targeted content on online streaming channels, CTV [cable TV], digital radio), or  The utilization of banners, videos, and social media.  In this interview, Josy explains that digital outdoors has increased in importance because this adspace is:  More available than in the past,  More trackable, and  Can be purchased in dayparts as is done on TV . . . increasing efficiency and reducing costs by buying the time and location that reaches your target (commuting?) audience. Josy says buying advertising to promote brand power affects strategies, the types of media purchased, “and even sometimes the audiences.” Josie finds the need to adapt to constant technological change is both a challenge . . . and exciting . . . and notes, in particular some current issues that will affect her industry.  Internally, the MMWW media team leads the overall strategy of the business and provides thought leadership and communications planning by: Consulting with clients to define target audiences  Researching where the audience lives and how they consume media Determining what the client can afford and the most efficient way to use the client's budget Establishing a strategic messaging framework that seamlessly aligns audiences with the messages, types of media used through the consumer journey, KPIs, and client goals Traditional media (which requires relationships with channel representatives nationwide) and  Programmatic and social media (which requires experience on all the different platforms). Purchasing a client's strategic mix of:  Utilizing analytics and attribution reporting to ensure the interrelationships between the various media channels are supportive. Josy can be reached on LinkedIn or on her agency's website at: https://mediamattersww.com/. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Josy Amann, Co-founder at Media Matters Worldwide, headquartered in San Francisco, California. Welcome to the podcast Josy. JOSY: Hi, Rob. Thank you so much for having me. ROB: It's wonderful to have you here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us about Media Matters Worldwide and what your superpowers are as a firm? JOSY: Superpowers, I love that question. I always tell my kids, “Focus on your superpower, focus on your superpower!” [laughs] Media Matters Worldwide, we are a media buying and planning agency. We've been in business since 2005. We are buying omnichannel media across all different types of businesses. Half our clients are B2B, half are B2C. But we play in the media buying and planning space and the analytics. It's kind of the dorky side of the business. ROB: [laughs] Perhaps dorky, but very important to get right and also probably quite easy to do wrong. When you say omnichannel, right now in 2021, what channels are encompassed in “omnichannel”? What should people be thinking of? JOSY: The landscape is shifting very quickly, but omnichannel traditionally means traditional – how you think about linear TV and radio in your car and outdoor and direct mail and print – and then everything digital under the sun. It can be programmatic media, it can be OTT or CTV or digital radio or banners or video or social media, all of that. Omnichannel is truly everywhere where you can possibly consume media, we are buying it. ROB: I know even out of home is getting very digital these days. Is that increasingly in the mix, or is it static but different formats? How does that fit into the puzzle? JOSY: Digital outdoors is much more in the mix because it's (1) more available, (2) more trackable, and (3) you can serve up ads on digital the way you do on TV. So you can buy dayparts. If you just want to buy when people are going to work and coming home, you can buy that. It's little ways, a little bit more affordable and more targetable. ROB: That absolutely makes sense. You look at these digital billboards, and sometimes I wonder – I'll see a local restaurant advertising that they're hiring, and I don't even know how the economics of that work, but I suspect maybe there's a branding component to it as well beyond just the hiring. But it's a little crazy to think about a little seafood restaurant running a billboard ad to hire somebody for their kitchen. JOSY: Yeah. You asked about superpower, and brand performance I would say is our superpower. Thinking about, exactly to your point, a restaurant trying to hire someone, that's really lower funnel type of advertising. That's very pointed. It's not trying to say “We're the best restaurant in the world.” We're trying to get someone in the door to get hired. That's brand performance. Brand is a whole different world of types of media you buy, the strategies behind it, even, sometimes, the audiences. So linking those two and providing analytics, providing the thought leadership and the strategy behind that – that's our superpower. ROB: Someone's got to be a superpower. That sounds overwhelming. That sounds like a lot of different goals, a lot of different channels, a lot of different objectives to pull that together. How do you structure your team to be able to manage that range of channels, of thinking, of objectives, even just picking from the menu of options for a given campaign? JOSY: That's a good question because that has evolved so much over the last 16 years that we've been in business. Structure of the teams is that you have to have your media team as the overarching strategic group. Part of that media planning team is comms planning. They are setting up that framework. They're going to clients and saying, “Who do you think your audience is? Let's think about it in a media buying landscape. That might look a little bit differently because we have different targeting abilities and things like that. Let's set up that messaging framework that aligns the audience with the types of media, with the messaging, so that everything is aligned through the consumer journey.” We're thinking about how these people are consuming media. We're thinking about what messaging aligns with them, and that could look very different for the audience. So that comms planning team is really in charge of heading up that overall strategy. The media department as well leads overall strategy of the business; however, underneath that you have to have people that have traditional buying experience, that have the relationships with all of the different stations in the country. You have to have programmatic media buyers and social buyers that know all of the different platforms. So it's a really, really specialized skillset of people we had to hire along the way. Programmatic media is new to the scene – what, seven years ago now? To keep a media buying agency in-house and really have all the chops in-house takes very specialized people to hire. But you have to have that overarching media team that brings it all together. ROB: Talk about the relationship side a little bit, because that sounds almost counterintuitive. We're all used to just firing up our web browser, we go over to Facebook, we push some buttons, we have a campaign that lets us do the same thing. And then you're talking about TV, you're talking about radio – I'm sure you're even talking in some cases about print or detail newspaper – and needing a relationship to get that work done. What does the structure of that industry and those buys look like? It's a different animal, for sure. JOSY: Yeah. There's a lot of nuances to media planning, and a lot of it has to come down to budget and audience. Doing the research, getting back to that at the beginning part comes planning. To think about where your audience is living and how they're consuming media is Step #1. Step 2 is budget. What can you afford? You can't run nationally TV if you don't have budget north of $80 million. So you really have to start thinking about the most efficient way to spend your money, but also aligning with the audience's media consumption habits. That's the relationship that's really the most efficient. Then when you're talking about KPIs and goals and all of that, all of that has to align as well. ROB: That budget part I think brings us to an interesting intersection. It sounds like a lot of moving parts. It sounds like I have to have a big budget to play in this game. Maybe it helps, just for context, for us to understand and think through a particular client or two and what an overall campaign looks like for an example client. What kind of messages do you have, where, to facilitate that overall buyer journey? JOSY: A typical client could look like – I guess it would be pretty different for the budget ranges. We have some clients spending $10 million a year; we have some clients spending $100 million. That looks pretty different. The $100 million might have a lot of TV that's happening, linear TV. A lot of connected TV. A lot of video is great across all different audiences. Then you might have a layer of programmatic media, especially doing a lot of private marketplace deals or retargeting, and then 30% of the budget could be social, 20% could be search. It's broken up to support each other. There's a relationship between media that supports each other, and that comes through when you're doing analytics and attribution reporting, looking at the relationship. If you run a CTV campaign, you'd want to see your organic search and your paid search lift. Seeing that relationship between your paid channels is really, really important as well. ROB: That definitely helps us understand how you can keep eyes on it, because there's a lot at stake, and what a tremendous responsibility as well to be managing that sort of budget for a client. What is interesting to pull on here – you mentioned the relationships on that traditional media side. You've been doing this thing for a while. Take us back a little bit in time. What led you to start Media Matters in the first place, and what does that origin story look like? JOSY: It's always a funny one to me a little bit because I'd just moved to San Francisco from New York. I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't even have an interview yet. A girlfriend of mine from college called me and she said, “I have this agency that you should go interview for. The boss is great.” I said, “Okay, let me go do that.” Went to go interview at Lowe & Partners, big holding company, and I had no idea what I was even doing there. I thought I was getting a job in creative. I had no idea what media was. I got the job. Not sure how, but I got the job. [laughs] That was my entrance into media. From there, I worked at the big holding companies where it's a very different life. It's great in your twenties. You work an unbelievable amount of hours, and I learned a lot, fast. But then I realized, “I'm 29.” I'd gotten married a few years earlier. I wanted to have children, and I couldn't see how that was going to be possible in the big agencies. I had met my business partner; we'd worked together at an agency for four years. We had a really, really good balance of our backgrounds and also a balance of the way we think about the world. We both talked about it for years. “How are we going to start our own agency? What is that going to look like and how are we going to build an agency that we want to work at and can work at, having families and children and all of that?” That was really the biggest impetus. ROB: Wow. What did those first few years look like? I think all statutes of limitations are over on this. Did you have some clients that were ready to follow you away from the holding company world? How did you scrap together those clients that made it make sense to make a run in those early years? JOSY: We had a two-pronged approach. One was to get our own clients and the other was to become a kind of a super-duo of other agencies. We worked for a really large agency and did all of their media buying and planning. That was a great way to get involved and get billings up, because we came into the business with nothing. We didn't have any money. We didn't raise any money. We didn't have any money from family. [laughs] We just had the shirts on our backs and that was it. So that was one approach, and the other one was getting our own clients. Our boss that we had worked together with at that agency, Roger Becker, ended up giving us one of his clients that I had worked on. He said, “You guys are starting your own agency. Have this client. You guys would be a great fit for them.” That was really kind. Really, it was the kindness of him getting us our first client and then the freelancing option. ROB: That's wonderful, and I think that is one of the stories of, overall, the marketing and agency industry. There's not a lot of room, I don't think, for sharp elbows. It all comes back around. All the people flow through the industry and you end up being tag teams more than enemies. One of those transitions that a lot of agencies struggle with from the early stage is getting from – a lot of agencies will come up and do those sub-deals for other people. A lot of agencies will get an occasional referral. But at some point you have to sharpen the tools and go out and hunt the elephants yourself. What did the development of that capability look like for you all? JOSY: Definitely developed through the years. I'll tell you, referrals have been our best friend. Very, very lucky to have wonderful people surround us, our entire experience. Really early on, I guess I wouldn't say it was that hard, but it was a little bit hard being a woman in business, starting your own business, back then. We were very careful early on to have our website, and we didn't really want too many pictures of us on the website. We wanted the website to look a little masculine. Our logo looked masculine at the time. So we hid that until the last minute, till we could show off and actually go to a meeting and show them we know what we're talking about. That was tricky at the beginning. But then once we got clients and built those relationships and they saw, I think most of all, that we were authentic and we were not salespeople and we really cared about their business and cared about media, that took hold. So I think the referral side of the new business development is what sustained us for the first 10 years. But after then, I think you get to a certain size and you have a lot of people on payroll. We have over 60 people. Even five years ago, we were at 20 people. You have to start thinking a little bit differently. If you want the larger clients, business development starts to look different. ROB: Is that something you're still largely handling? It can be one of those challenges you see sometimes; for a services organization to scale that business development away from the founders can be challenging. How have you handled either scaling yourself or getting someone else up to speed? JOSY: We made a decision early 2019 to start hiring a leadership team. It was a huge investment in general and a big leap of faith that this type of model could work, because we were so used to being the Josy and Taji show. We did that. We hired a leadership team, and they are phenomenal. It was 100% the right thing to do, and they are responsible for the new business development. We still show up for the pitches. We still are I guess the face of the agency, but they are the substance and what really leads all the new business development now. It's just been a wonderful transition to have more of a team in place for that. ROB: Some things are easy to hand off. If someone else wants to build a deck or something like that, have a nice day. Some parts of that transition, though, are a little bit harder to get your hands off. What are the pieces that were the last to leave your hands and your calendar, if you will? JOSY: Hmm. I think it's managing the decks, managing the flow of conversation. We were so used to being so closely tied to that; that was really hard to let go of, that control. But once we did, everything became better. [laughs] Better than it was before. I was just so thankful. ROB: It sounds like a relief. It sounds like an opportunity. Goodness, even what you're saying about going from 20 to 60 people requires a leadership team, but it's even a little bit messy no matter who you've got on the train. How do you think about scaling the organization, scaling culture? How have you been able to triple the company without breaking everything? JOSY: Yeah, and that tripling has happened in two years. [laughs] It's been a wild, wild ride. I think the honest truth is always be looking at your architecture. We went from a place where our agency – and I know, Rob, you have a background in analytics – we would have a client that would have one or two analytics people on their account. They would basically do everything. They'd pull all the data, they'd help with the data viz, they'd do all of that. Now we need three people to do that job, one, because the technical side of the business has gotten a lot more fragmented and hard to manage, but two, working on bigger clients, you have to have a different architecture to support them. Again, I go back to our leadership team really taking a close look at their departments and how they're set up. And we've had to reengineer that, sometimes in six months' time because that growth was so fast. Having that strong structure is what I think makes you build for scale. And being flexible in that structure, because it might have to change pretty quickly. ROB: Absolutely. That makes sense. It sounds like it's still probably a whole lot to think about, but at least you're able to think about that structure and not as much about the decks anymore. JOSY: Yeah, that's true. [laughs] ROB: Josy, as you reflect back on the journey so far, what are some key lessons that you have learned in building Media Matters that you might tell yourself to do a little bit differently if you were starting over? JOSY: One of the key pillars of our agency – I don't know if it's really a lesson, but I think it's a lesson to other business owners and agencies – is that true transparency and honesty will keep your business alive. Over the last 16 years, there's been a lot of ups and downs in the market, in our company, in our lives, and to weather those storms, the honesty, the transparency, but also what we were just talking about with the team structure, the flexibility and being able to adapt and evolve – and we've learned that in the past two years with COVID – to scale a business during COVID… [laughs] It's like a double whammy. I don't know if I would've done anything differently, but that would be my biggest advice for people starting out. Remain flexible. Don't be tied too closely to things, and be honest and transparent with yourself, your clients, and your employees. ROB: Absolutely. You didn't really harp on it too much, but the mix of media that you have been handling has changed remarkably over the life of the company. If you're starting something early to mid-2000s and up until now, you didn't have social media. How people even used pay-per-click was remarkably different. The quality of what you can buy and display and how you buy and display has changed dramatically. If all you were doing was calling up TV stations and newspapers today, you'd be – somewhere else, is what I'll say. You wouldn't have 60 people. JOSY: Out of business. [laughs] It's remarkable. Our industry is so cool. The second you think you have a grasp on it, the second you're wrong. It's about learning and moving quickly. It's exciting. ROB: For sure. Something I think you bring to the table that's also interesting is a lot of us are kind of new to this working from home and building a company remote, but you have been distributed for a little while. What are some of the key tools and key cadences and ceremonies that you have found to be essential to building the kind of company you want to build, but not to meet everyone in an office? JOSY: It was built out of stubbornness. My business partner, Taji, and I live 40 minutes from each other. I was not going to commute to Marin; she was not going to commute to the city. So it was really out of stubbornness that we were going to figure out how to work from home, and that's how it started. Then everyone we hired after that point wanted to work from home, loved to work from home, loved the culture of working from home. So for us to grow organically since 2005 till now as 100% remote always, and we're hiring people across the country, we've always had the true culture of loving working remote. I think that's different because a lot of people are trying to get used to working remote, or companies are struggling with hybrid. You have the “us versus them” mentality, the people in the office and the people at home and how they're going to solve for that. When you have a culture that's always been remote, it's a whole different world. I think the advent of video and Slack and all the collaboration tools have really helped that throughout the years, but also, especially pre-COVID, getting together in person and really spending the time with each other, whether it be a new business presentation or a client QBR, whatever it is. Getting together in person whenever we can, it lasts forever. It really does. ROB: What does getting together look like for you? Has it been visiting people in different places? Has it been getting everybody together in one place? How does that work? JOSY: It's hard because a lot of our employees have families, so getting everyone together in the same place – we'd have to plan it years in advance. [laughs] I would love to do something like that. But it usually looks like either regional hub parties – we might have one in New York, we might have one in LA, Seattle, wherever it is – and then people will drive in for those hub parties, or it looks like “Hey, we have a client QBR or new business. Please fly in” and we all get together. It's a little bit more fragmented instead of having a whole company thing, but it works. ROB: It's interesting to hear what different people are doing. Maybe the good news of where we all are is that we're going to hear a few more people with ideas, best practices, trying things and all of that. I'll certainly say it's been strange adding people to our team that I've never met. But it keeps on happening, and you're probably used to it. JOSY: Yeah, we are. It is really strange, especially when you meet people in person for the first time after working with them for years and not seeing them, and then they're taller than you thought or whatever. [laughs] ROB: I think that popped up in my LinkedIn feed the other day, an article on “You look taller on Zoom” or something like that. We know what that's like. Josy, when you're thinking about what's next for Media Matters Worldwide and the areas of marketing that you touch, what's coming up that you're excited about? JOSY: I think the whole media world is changing yet again. Deprecation of cookies, how we're thinking about personalization with our audiences, and just even the media types in general – a new social platform will be invented in the next year or so. So really thinking about how to make authentic – and I always go back to transparency and honesty, but it's true for brands, too – how to be truly authentic with your customers. I think that is the biggest struggle for brands, and they're missing the mark, some of them. But some of them are doing an amazing job, and that's because they're getting to the root and doing the research about their audiences and really figuring out what makes them different and what makes them excited and thrive. To me, figuring that piece of the puzzle out, having the research tools, having the analytics that pull it all together, and the artificial intelligence that's involved in advertising now – that to me is all really exciting. ROB: There's a lot going on there. How do you keep those data people and data tools together? It's a lot to wrangle. It's a lot to bring into one place. What's in your toolkit? JOSY: It is. We have an amazing analytics department, and that's our toolkit: their knowledge, their understanding of the market. But also obviously all the technology that goes along with that. And it looks different for every client because a lot of clients come to you with their technology that you have to integrate with. There's a lot to unpack with new client relationships and how to integrate their technology into yours, and really how to make things as seamless as possible. That's the tricky part. ROB: That's right. When you're talking about the budgets, I'm sure there's many a data lake that you have to feed into, many an internal analytics team that you're accountable to as well. JOSY: Exactly right. I love that you know “data lakes.” [laughs] ROB: [laughs] The data lake where you put the data and nothing ever comes out, maybe. JOSY: Very murky. ROB: Makes absolute sense. I think it's very relevant what you said there, Josy, about that transparency. In services, we have technology, we have tools, we have things that we're buying, but a lot of times what they're buying is people. I congratulate you also for being able to scale having what I would perhaps strangely say is buyable people. You have people on your team that clients can buy into that are not just the founders. That's a real challenge to get past. JOSY: Yeah, it's something that happens organically, and only with the vision of hindsight can you say “That was a great idea.” [laughs] ROB: [laughs] Josy, when people want to connect with you and connect with Media Matters, where should they go to find you? JOSY: They can find me on LinkedIn, or go to mediamattersww.com. ROB: WW. Worldwide, right? JOSY: Worldwide. ROB: Excellent. Josy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's good to meet you in this remote way, like you talk to your team all the time. Someday we'll all get out of our houses again. We'll figure it out. JOSY: Yeah, I'd love to meet you. Thank you so much for having me today. ROB: Sounds good. Thank you so much, Josy. Bye. JOSY: Have a great day. Bye. ROB: 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.

The compensation gap is closing, albeit slowly and unevenly. In the effort to create balanced workplaces, LinkedIn occupies the position of potential catalyst. The Microsoft-owned business-centric social network not only provides a platform with tools through which hiring practices can be made more meritocratic but also offers an example of an equitable organization. It even has an executive charged with overseeing equity strategy. “I don't know that any companies have started to unify all their efforts around ... a single role and actually set up a team that's meant to focus on this,” said LinkedIn's head of equity strategy Imani Dunbar in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. LinkedIn's focus on equity spans inside and outside its own walls. Internally, LinkedIn has achieved a notable level of compensatory fairness among its employees. Employees of color in the U.S. earn $1 for every $1 earned by white employees, and female employees earn $0.998 for every $1 earned by male employees. But the work is far from finished. “We've been on our equity journey for a while. It's also our forever work. It's not something that's like a six-month or couple-year project,” Dunbar said.

Today we reference all kinds of things from our “lost” episode… making jokes that only we understand. So business as usual. Also, just like always we shit on each other, shit on each other's ideas & opinions, and someone may or may not have shit their pants… #podcastrumors #philledin #wipeyourclear #thisisboosheet #doubleeagle #classicmhgc #theworstpodcastThis shit talk is sponsored by GetaThreads! Use code “MHGC25” on www.getathreads.com for 25% off your order! 

On this episode of our How To Series, I share a new way of thinking about the columns work, and living in general, that can help you organize your experience between what I call the internal and external track. The key comes in recognizing that we are all taught to integrate everything into one way of operating, but this leaves us trying to deal with internal functions within the confines of the external environment. Instead of doing that, I recommend being able to think of yourself as being on two separate tracks: the internal and the external. On the external track, you will continue to strive to operate at the highest functioning level possible — doing good for others, behaving well, and even going for perfection as much as you want. You'll keep looking at nuances and taking the other perspective, etc. All good things to be doing! But, when it comes to your symptoms and your internal needs, you'll need another place to process these things. I present: the internal track! On the internal track, you deal with your emotional life almost entirely between you and yourself (occasionally, an external boundary is required if someone is crossing a line). Here is where all of those action steps of the mind I recommend can really take off: black and white thinking, for example, can be a place that is relatively permanent in your internal track, while you are only dipping into it on your external track. Putting the blame where it belongs can be the same, where you might put it there permanently internally, but make it not very relevant externally. Come check out this new way of organizing your thinking so that the columns become all that more effective.

Hour 3- Gresh and Keefe discuss Chris Sale's outing against the Orioles and break down Cam Newton's press conference where he discussed his Instagram post and if there has been a starter named internally. Keefe hits us with a mini madness about stealing a horse.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's episode, I'm joined by Loubna Zarrou who is an international best selling author, certified professional speaker and multi award-winning strategic dynamo to talk about how you can create a deeper understanding of your strengths and discover ways to align with your unique energy. INSIGHTS:Challenges that empowered Loubna to be where she is todayImportance of recognizing your value and discovering inner success and fullfilment Stop chasing validation and trying to meet others expectations How to discover your inner strengths and release the fear of failure Using personality tests to give you language to explore your personality and strengths but don't allow them to put your in a box If this episode resonates with you, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. Take a screenshot, share it with your friends on social media, tag me (@iamrandilee), and let me know what your biggest takeaway was from this episode.  I can't wait to connect with you.Connect and learn more about Loubna by heading on to her  Facebook,  Instagram and Website.Connect with Randi on Instagram and TikTok and learn how you can co-create magic together. Become a Chart Reading Master!  Learn how to build your soul-based business using Human Design and Gene Keys.   Enrollment closes 8/15/21Get on the waitlist for The Soul Alchemy Retreat in Hawaii on 1/22/22-1/26/22 to get $222 off enrollment and first access to the limited spots Support the show (http://paypal.me/islandrandi)

Watch the live stream: Watch on YouTube About the show Sponsored by us: Check out the courses over at Talk Python And Brian's book too! Special guest: Juan Pedro Araque Espinosa (Youtube Chanel: Commit that Line) Michael #1: State of the community (via Jet Brains) This report presents the combined results of the fifth annual Developer Ecosystem Survey conducted by JetBrains Not just Python, but all of us Python is more popular than Java in terms of overall usage, while Java is more popular than Python as a main language. The 5 fastest growing languages are Python, TypeScript, Kotlin, SQL, and Go. A majority of the respondents (71%) develop for web backend. Does fall into the trap of “Hi, I'm a CSS developer, nice to meet you” though Women are more likely than men to be involved in data analysis, machine learning, and UX/UI design or research. Women are less likely than men to be involved in infrastructure development and DevOps, system administration, or Deployment. Brian #2: Cornell - record & replay mock server Suggested by Yael Mintz (and it's her project) Introduction blog post “Cornell makes it dead simple, via its record and replay features to perform end-to-end testing in a fast and isolated testing environment. When your application integrates with multiple web-based services, end-to-end testing is crucial before deploying to production. Mocking is often a tedious task. It becomes even more tiresome when working with multiple APIs from multiple vendors. vcrpy is an awesome library that records and replays HTTP interactions for unit tests. Its output is saved to reusable "cassette" files. By wrapping vcrpy with Flask, Cornell provides a lightweight record and replay server that can be easily used during distributed system testing and simulate all HTTP traffic needed for your tests.” Juanpe #3: Factory boy (with Pydantic by chance) Factory_boy allows creating factories to generate objects that could be used as text fixtures Briefly mentioned in the past in episode 193 A factory takes a base object and allows to very easily and naturally define default values for each field of the object. One can have many factories for the same object that could be used define different types of fixtures of the same object It works with ORM objects (Django, Mongo, SQLAlchemy…) If you have a project that uses Pydantic to define your objects, factory boy also supports Pydantic although it is not documented and does it by a side effect Internally factory boy generates a parameters dictionary that that is unpacked when constructing the model at hands. This works perfectly with pydantic and can be used to generate pydantic objects on the fly with the full power of factory boy Michael #4: pyinstrument Call stack profiler for Python. Shows you why your code is slow! Instead of writing python script.py, type pyinstrument script.py Your script will run as normal, and at the end (or when you press ^C), Pyinstrument will output a colored summary showing where most of the time was spent. Async support! Pyinstrument now detects when an async task hits an await, and tracks time spent outside of the async context under this await. Pyinstrument also has a Python API. Just surround your code with Pyinstrument Nice middleware examples for Flask & Django Brian #5: Python 3.10 is now in Release Candidate phase. RC1 just released. RC2 planned for 2021-09-06 official release is planned for 2021-10-04 It is strongly encourage maintainers of third-party Python projects to prepare their projects for 3.10 compatibility during this phase Reminder of major changes: PEP 623 -- Deprecate and prepare for the removal of the wstr member in PyUnicodeObject. PEP 604 -- Allow writing union types as X | Y PEP 612 -- Parameter Specification Variables PEP 626 -- Precise line numbers for debugging and other tools. PEP 618 -- Add Optional Length-Checking To zip. bpo-12782: Parenthesized context managers are now officially allowed. PEP 632 -- Deprecate distutils module. PEP 613 -- Explicit Type Aliases PEP 634 -- Structural Pattern Matching: Specification PEP 635 -- Structural Pattern Matching: Motivation and Rationale PEP 636 -- Structural Pattern Matching: Tutorial PEP 644 -- Require OpenSSL 1.1.1 or newer PEP 624 -- Remove Py_UNICODE encoder APIs PEP 597 -- Add optional EncodingWarning Juanpe #6: time-machine Time-machine mock datetime and time related calls globally noticeably faster than other well known tools like freezgun. The mocking is achieved by replacing the c-level calls by whatever value we want which means the library does not need to mock individual imports. Mocking datetime cannot be done with patch.object and needs to be patched everywhere it is used which can turn mocking everything into a tedious (and/or slow) process. Datetime methods (now, today, utcnow…) can be mocked by setting a frozen time or by letting the time tick since the mock call is made. It provides a simple context manager to use it as well as pytest fixture that makes using it very simple from datetime import datetime import time_machine @time_machine.travel("2021-01-01 21:00") def test_in_the_past(): assert datetime.now() == datetime(2021, 1, 1, 21, 0) --------------------------------- # The time_machine fixture can also be used with pytest def test_in_the_past(time_machine): time_machine.move_to(datetime(2021, 1, 1, 21, 0)) assert datetime.now() == datetime(2021, 1, 1, 21, 0) Extras Michael Credit-card stealing malware found in official Python repository and Software downloaded 30,000 times from PyPI ransacked developers' machines (via Joe Riedly) Brian Flavors of TDD - Test & Code episode 162 Working on tox and CI chapter of 2nd edition of pytest book, hoping that to be released within the next week. Joke JavaScript Developer Bouncing from framework to framework

It's not every day that you can hear a great conversation with the Head of Product of Excel. Brian Jones sits down with us and talks about the past, present, and very promising future of Excel. Rob and Brian go way back, and the stories and laughs abound!   Check out this cool World Orca Day Excel template for kids!   Episode Timeline: 4:00 - Brian's lofty title is Head of Product at Excel, The importance and magic of Excel, and people's a-ha moments with Excel 20:25 - The difficulty of not seeing your projects' impact on the world and how the heck does Bluetooth fit into the story?!, Rob and Brian reminisce with some funny conference stories 32:00 - The XML file format and some very neat XML tricks that everyone should know about 51:25 - The birth of the Excel Web App and Rob can't believe some of the things that Brian's team has done with Excel 1:05:00 - How to onboard the Excel, VLOOKUP, and Pivot crowd into data modeling and Power BI, and the future of Excel most certainly includes the Lambda function (maybe!) Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. Today's guest, Brian Jones, head of product for this thing you might've heard of called Microsoft Excel. Brian and I go back a long way. We were both youngsters at Microsoft at the same time, and we both worked on some early features of Office apps, and we're friends. Really, really have sincerely warm feelings about this guy, as you often do with people that you essentially grew up with. And that's what we did. When Brian and I first worked together, he was working on Word and I was working on Excel. But even though Brian was on Word at the time, he was already working on what we would today call citizen developer type of functionality in the Word application. So even though we were essentially on different sides of the aisle within the Office organization, we were already finding ourselves able to connect over this affinity for the citizen developer. Rob Collie (00:00:55): Now we have some laughs during this conversation about how in hindsight, the things he and I were working on at the time didn't turn out to be as significant as we thought they were in the moment. But those experiences were very valuable in shaping both of us for the initiatives that came later. Rob Collie (00:01:11): Like almost everyone at Microsoft, Brian has moved around a bit. He's worked on file formats for the entire Office suite, which ended up enabling Power Pivot version one to actually function the way that it should. He's worked on Office-wide extensibility and programmability, back to that citizen developer thing again. And in that light, it's only natural that Excel's gravity reeled him in. And in that light, it's only natural that someone like that, someone like Brian, found his way to Excel, and it really is a match made in heaven. And if you permit me the Excel joke, that turned out to be a great match. Rob Collie (00:01:50): We took the obligatory and entertaining, I hope, walk down memory lane. We spent a lot more time than I expected talking about file format. And the reason why is that file formats are actually a fascinating topic when you really get into it. Lot of history there, a lot of very interesting history and challenges we walked through. And of course, we do get around to talking about Excel, its current state, where it's headed, and also the amazing revelation for me that monthly releases actually mean a longer attention span for a product and how we ended up getting functionality now as a result of the monthly release cycle that would have never fit into the old multi-year release cycle. We were super grateful to have him on the show. And as usual, we learned things. I learned things. I have a different view of the world after having this conversation than I did before it, which is a huge gift. And I hope that you get the same sort of thing out of it. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:02:56): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:03:03): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your host Rob Collie and your cohost Thomas Larock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:03:26): Welcome to the show. Brian Jones, how are you, sir? Brian Jones (00:03:30): I am fantastic. Thank you for having me, Rob. I'm excited. Rob Collie (00:03:33): So let's start here today. Well, you and I go way back, but today, what's your job title and what are your responsibilities? Brian Jones (00:03:42): So today, my job is I'm the head of product for the Excel team. So I lead the team of product managers that are tasked with or given the honor of deciding the future of Excel, where we go with Excel, what are the set of things that we go and build Rob Collie (00:03:59): Head of product. That's a title that we didn't have back when I was still at Microsoft. We did at one point have something called a product unit manager. Is it similar to that? How does that relate? Brian Jones (00:04:11): That's a good question. So we're continuing to evolve the way that we use titles internally. So internally, we have titles that still for most folks externally don't make any sense, like program manager, group program manager, program manager manager, director of program manager. And so for externally, whenever I'm on LinkedIn or if I do PR interviews, things like that, I use the term head of product. Internally, we don't have the term head of product. Rob Collie (00:04:37): Okay. All right. So that's a translation for us. Brian Jones (00:04:40): Yes, exactly. Trying to translate the Microsoft internal org chart to something that makes more sense to folks. Rob Collie (00:04:49): Yeah. So things like, if we use the word orthogonal, what we're really saying is that's not relevant. Brian Jones (00:04:53): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:04:54): That kind of decoder ring. Brian Jones (00:04:57): I didn't realize orthogonal [inaudible 00:04:59] until you said it and I'm like, " Oh yeah, no. Of course, that is completely a ridiculous term to use." Rob Collie (00:05:03): Or I don't know if they still do this, but an old joke that Dave [Gayner 00:05:07] and I used to have, it was all his joke at the time. It was big bet. Do we still talk about big bet? We're going to place a big bet. Brian Jones (00:05:14): Yep. Big bet or big rocks. Big rocks. You know the- Rob Collie (00:05:17): Big rocks. Whoa. Brian Jones (00:05:18): Yeah. It's kind of an analogy. You've got a jar and you want to fill it with the big rocks first, and then you let the sand fill in the rest of the space. So what are the big rocks? Rob Collie (00:05:26): Okay. Yeah. But big bet was one that we used to always make fun of. Brian Jones (00:05:31): Especially when there'd be, "Here are the big bets," and there's 20 of them. Rob Collie (00:05:34): Yeah. The joke I think we used to make was we would call something a big bet when we really didn't have any good reason for doing what we were doing. Anyway, all right. So you're head of product for Excel. That is a pretty heady job. That's pretty awesome. Brian Jones (00:05:52): It's a pretty fun job. Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:05:54): I mean, you're not lacking for eyeballs in that business, are you? We're all friends here. We're all on the same side of this story. I mean, it is the lingua franca of business, Excel. It is the business programming tool. People don't necessarily think of it as programming, but formulas are a programming language. To be head of product for the platform, you could call it an application, but really it's probably more accurate to call it a platform that is, I think, is the single most critical platform to business in the world. That's pretty amazing. Brian Jones (00:06:30): Absolutely. And that's usually the way that we talk about it internally. It depends on who your audience is externally when you're talking about it. But yeah, Excel is a programming language. I remember even before, back when I was on the Word team, but I would go and meet with PJ, who ran program manager for Office all up. And he'd always referred to Excel more as an IDE. And that didn't totally resonate with me at the time because to me, Excel was just a list app, an app for just tracking things. I didn't totally understand what he meant by that, but I'd nod cause he was super important and smart. And it wasn't really until I started working on the team that I was like, "Oh, I totally understand all these things that PJ used to reference." Rob Collie (00:07:06): This one of the things I had been dying to ask you is when you and I first met, I was working on the Excel team, but still had... Gosh, this was year 2000 maybe, maybe 2001. And even though I was nominally part of the Excel team at that point, I still didn't really know Excel, and you were working on Word. So the thing we both had in common at that point is that we didn't know Excel. So I wanted to get your perspective. I know that you've done some things other than Word, but we were already sort of teasing this. So let's just get into it. What's it like to come from "outside" Excel and how's that transition? How do you view Excel differently today versus what you did before? We already started talking about that. The list keeper. That's very common way for people to view it. Brian Jones (00:07:53): When I first started, yeah, I was on Word, although I was working on more kind of end user developer type of pieces of Word. That's how you and I first interacted because we were talking about XML. The first feature I owned was a feature called easy data binding to Excel. And the whole idea was when you could easily bring content from Excel into Word, but then create a link back so that the content in Word would stay live. And a lot of this stuff that I did while I was on Word was all about trying to make Word a little bit more of a structured tool so that people could actually program against it because Word is completely unstructured. It's just free-flowing text. So trying to write a solution against that is almost impossible because you can't predict anything. So we did a lot of work to add structure, whereas Excel out of the gate has all that structure. So it's just much easier to go and program. Brian Jones (00:08:39): If I had gone straight from Word to Excel, it would have been a little bit more of a shock, but I actually had about eight years in between where I was running our extensibility team. So a lot of the work we would do was revving the add-in model and extensibility for Excel. So I got some exposure there. When we did all of the file format stuff and the whole file format campaign, That was a couple of years where I was working really closely with a bunch of folks in Excel, like Dan [Badigan 00:09:06] and folks like that. So I had a bit of exposure, but I'll tell you when I first joined, I had a similar job, but it was for the Access team and we were building up some new tech. Brian Jones (00:09:17): Some of it still is there today. Office Forms came out of some of the investments that we were doing in Access. But when I showed up into Excel, I was very much in that mode of, "Why don't the Excel folks, get it? Everything should be a table with column headings." And like, "That's the model. And why do they stick with this grid? Clearly word of it is eventually going to go away from the printed page as the key medium. Excel's got to go away from the grid. And they've got to understand that this should just be all tables that can be related." And thankfully, I was responsible when I joined and didn't try and act like I knew everything. So I took some time to go and learn. Brian Jones (00:09:52): And it didn't take me long. We have some crazy financial modeling experts on the team and stuff like that, where I'd say it was maybe six months in that it clicked for me where I understood those two key pieces. The grid and formulas are really the soul and the IP of Excel. The fact that you can lay out information really easily on a grid, you have formulas that are your logic, and you can do this step-by-step set of processes where each cell is almost like another little debug point for you. [Cal captain sub 00:10:20] second, and it's the easiest way to go and learn logic and how to build logic. Brian Jones (00:10:25): I didn't get any of that at that time, but you pick it up pretty quickly when you start to look at all the solutions that people are building. And now, obviously, I've been on the team now for five years, so I'm super sold around it. But I'd say it took me a little while and I'm still learning. It takes a while to learn the whole thing. Rob Collie (00:10:41): Yeah. It's funny. Like you said, Word's completely unstructured. You're looking in from the outside and you're like, "Well, Excel is completely structured." Then you get close to it. You're like, "Oh no. And it's not, really." Brian Jones (00:10:52): No. Not at all. Rob Collie (00:10:53): I mean, it's got the cells. Rows and columns. You can't avoid those. But within that landscape, is it kind of deliberately wild west? You can do whatever you need to. You're right. Okay. So tables, yes. Tables are still very important. But you've got these parameters and assumptions and inputs. And what do you do with those? I mean, they're not make a table for those. Brian Jones (00:11:19): Yep. Absolutely. I think that the thing that I started to get really quickly was the beauty of that. Like you said, it's unstructured. You have nice reference points. So if you're trying to build logic, formulas, you can reference things. But there's no rule about whether or not things go horizontally, vertically, diagonally, whatever. You can take whatever's in your mind that you're trying to make a decision around and use that flexible grid to lay it out. It's like a mind map. If you think about the beauty, the flexibility of a mind map, that's what the grid is. You can go and lay out all the information however it makes the most sense to you. Brian Jones (00:11:53): Really, that's what makes Excel still so relevant today. If you think about the way business is evolving, people are getting more and more data, change is just more constant, business processes are changing all the time. So there are certain processes where people can say, "This thing is always going to work the same way." And so you can go and get a vertical railed solution. That's why we use the term rail. That's kind of like if I always know I'm going to take this cargo from LA to San Francisco, I can go and build some rails, and I got a train, it'll always go there and do the same thing. But if business is constantly changing, those rails are quickly going to break and you're going to have to go off the rails. Excel is more like a car than a train. You can go anywhere with it. And so as the business processes change, the people who are using Excel are the same people who are the ones changing those business processes. Those are the business folks. And so they can go and evolve and adapt it and they don't have to go and find another ISV to go and build them another solution based on that new process that's probably going to change again in six months. Thomas Larock (00:12:52): So Brian's been in charge for five years of Excel, and he's sitting there telling us how there's still more to learn. And two weeks ago, we all got renewed as MVPs. And so I was on the MVP website, and I'm going through all the DLs I can join because that's all a manual process these days. I'm like, "Oh, there's the Excel MVP DL. I don't know why I haven't joined this yet." So I click. I'm immediately flooded with 100 emails a day. 100 emails a day. Now, I don't believe I am a novice when it comes to Excel. I don't. I know I'm not on you all's level at all when it comes to it. You build and work and live the product. But I know my way around enough that I can explain things to others when they say, "I'm trying to do this thing." "Oh, I think it's possible." Thomas Larock (00:13:40): But I read these passionate MVPs that you have and the stuff that they highlight, and it's not complex stuff. It's like, "Hey, this title bar seems to be wider in this." And I'm like, I might not even notice this stuff. And I see these features that aren't a complex feature, but I'm like, "I didn't even know that was there. I didn't even know you could do that. Oh, you can do that too." There's so much. And like you said, it's a programming language. It's an IDE. It's all these things. As [Sinopski 00:14:10] said, "It's the killer app for Windows." To have the head of product say that, there's just so much. He really means it. There is a lot to it. And it is something that is malleable and usable by hundreds of millions of people a day. Brian Jones (00:14:25): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:14:26): My old joke is, if you want to know how good someone is at Excel, just ask them, "How good are you at Excel?" And then take their answer and invert it. Brian Jones (00:14:37): That's absolutely true. Rob Collie (00:14:38): If someone says, "Yeah, I'm really good at it," You know they don't have any clue because they haven't glimpsed the depth of that particular mine shaft. And once someone has been to the show, they know better than to oversell their knowledge because they know they can't know everything. Rob Collie (00:14:54): You say you're good at Excel. And then the very next question is one that you're not going to be able to answer. So you got to be careful. [inaudible 00:15:00] person views Excel as Word with a grid. And that's not obviously what it is, but that's the oversimplification for... I don't know... maybe 80% of humanity. Brian Jones (00:15:10): Yeah. And the thing is, there's a lot more that we're doing in the app now to try and make it, one, more approachable, because there's a set of folks that just find it really intimidating, for sure. You open it up and it's this huge, dense grid. Like, "Hey, where do I start? What should I go and do? I've never even heard of this thing before." In the past, a lot of stuff that we would do, we never really thought about those first steps of using the app because we were always like, "Well, everybody knows our app. We're going to go and do the things for everybody that knows our app." And I think we're doing a better job now trying to think, "Well, there's a bunch of people who don't know about our app. Let's go and figure out what the experience should be like for them." Brian Jones (00:15:43): But we've done a lot with AI where we're trying to get a little bit better about... We look at your data. Recommend things to you. So we'll say, "If you've got a table of data, hey, here's a pivot table." You may not have even heard of the pivot table before. So really more like, "Hey, here's a summary of your data." You want to go and insert that. Brian Jones (00:16:00): In fact, those tests are always fun because then we get to work with people who've really haven't ever used a pivot table. So it's always fun to hear the words that they use to describe what a pivot table is. It's like, "Oh wow, you grouped my data for me." Or stuff like that like, "Wow. That's a nice name for it too." So we're trying to do more of that to expose people to really those higher-end things. But those things where for those of us that use it, once you discover that stuff, you're even more hooked on the product. You're like, man, that first experience of somebody built a pivot table for you and you realize, "Oh my God, I didn't know I could do this with my data. Look how much easier it is for me to see what's going on," and trying to get more people to experience that kind of magical moment. Thomas Larock (00:16:39): Now imagine being me and only knowing pivot through T-SQL and that magical day when you meet Rob and he's like, "You just pivot table [inaudible 00:16:49]." And you're like, "How many hours have I wasted? Why didn't someone tell me?" Brian Jones (00:16:56): Yeah. We get that a lot when we'll go and show stuff. Oftentimes, the reaction is more frustration. "I can't believe I didn't know about this for the past five years." Rob Collie (00:17:05): We get that all the time now with Power Pivot and Power Query and Power BI in general. The target audience for that stuff hasn't been really effectively addressed by Microsoft marketing. But even back, just regular pivot tables, such a powerful tool, and so poorly named. You weren't around on the Excel team, Brian, when I waged a six-month campaign to try to rename pivot table to summary table. Brian Jones (00:17:31): Oh really? Rob Collie (00:17:31): Yeah. Brian Jones (00:17:31): How long ago was that? Rob Collie (00:17:33): Oh, well, it was a long time ago. I mean [crosstalk 00:17:35]- Brian Jones (00:17:36): Pivot tables had already been out for quite a while. Rob Collie (00:17:37): Oh God. Yeah. I mean, they were long established. They were in the product. I didn't even know what they did. Believe it or not, I worked on the Excel team for probably about a year before I actually figured what pivot tables could do. People would just throw it around all the time on the team like, "Well, once you have the data, then you can chart it. You can pivot it," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I would fit in- Brian Jones (00:17:58): You would nod? Rob Collie (00:17:59): I would fit in... I would also author sentences like that, that had the word pivot in it. It was a pretty safe thing to do. There was no downside to it. But believe it or not, the time that I discovered what pivot tables are for... you'll love this... I was trying to figure out how to skill balance the four different fantasy football leagues that I had organized within the Excel and Access team. I wanted to spread it out. Levels of experience. I've got this table of data with the person's name and their level of experience and my tentative league assignment. And just this light bulb went on. I'm like, "Oh my God, I bet this is what pivot tables are for." Total expertise by league. Like, "Oh, look at that. It's totally it." That was a big change for me. That was during the release, Brian, where you and I were working together. Brian Jones (00:18:54): I think I played on one of those fantasy football leagues. Rob Collie (00:18:56): You might have. Brian Jones (00:18:57): I was one of the people with zero experience. I remember going into the draft not knowing... I knew football, but I didn't know anything about fantasy football. Rob Collie (00:19:03): That's right. We did loop you in. So let's do that way back machine for a moment. That release when you and I met was the first release on Excel. I was the lead at that point. It was my first time being a lead. It was the first time I was in charge of a feature set, and it was really my baby, this XML thing we were doing. And the reason for that was because no one was paying any attention. That was this weird release. For a whole release, Office went and tried to do cloud services without having any idea what that really was going to mean. And so we stripped all of the applications down to skeleton crews. And this is really the only reason why on the Excel side, some youngster like me was allowed to be a lead and come up with a feature, because no one cared. No one was paying any attention. There was no one minding the store. Rob Collie (00:19:48): I remember being so wild-eyed enthusiastic about how much this was going to change the world, this XML import export future. And I mean, you might as well just take it out. I can't imagine it's being used hardly at all today. I bet Power View is used more often than the XML import export feature. You all have done a pretty good job of hiding it. So kudos. But it was a good thing to cut my teeth on. I learned a lot of valuable lessons on that release. Rob Collie (00:20:24): How do you feel about the XML structure document work that you were doing in Word at the time? Do you kind of have the same feeling looking back at it that I do? Brian Jones (00:20:33): It was a similar thing. In fact, we did rip it out a couple of years later. I think that when you and I would talk about it, we would talk about these scenarios that were super righteous and great. And then we just start geeking out on tech. And then we would get way too excited about the tech and we kind of forget about those initial scenarios. We wouldn't stop and think, "Wait a minute. These users we're talking about, are they actually going to go and create XML files?" Because you need one of those to start with before any of this stuff makes sense. And no, of course, they're not. But for me, a lot of it started from that. Like I said, one of my first features was that easy data binding to Excel feature. And we thought, "Hey, maybe XML would be a good tech for us to use as a way of having Word and Excel talk to each other," because clearly they have different views on what formatting is and how to present information, but the underlying semantic information, that could be shared. Brian Jones (00:21:20): And so I could have a set of products show up in Excel as a table. And when they come into Word, they look more like a catalog of products. That totally makes sense. And we just did a lot of assumptions that people would make, do all the glue that was really necessary. And of course, they didn't. So I had the exact same experience. The other big thing that was different back then for us was we would plan something, meet with customers for six months, but then it'd take three years to go and build it. We had no way of validating that stuff with customers because we couldn't get them any of the builds. And then even after we shipped it, they weren't actually going to deploy it for another three-plus years. And so the reality is from when you had the idea to where you actually can see that it's actually not working and people aren't using it is probably about six years. So you've probably moved on to something else by then. Brian Jones (00:22:04): The only way you really as a PM got validation that your feature was great was whether or not leadership and maybe press got excited about your thing, but you didn't get a whole lot of signal from actual customers whether or not the thing was working, which is obviously completely different now, thank goodness. Rob Collie (00:22:18): Yeah. That Is true. It took some of the fun out of being done too, now looking back at it, like the day of the ship party, when we were done with the three-year release. "Okay, fine." We'd dunk each other in fountains and there'd be hijinks and stuff. But the world did not experience us being done. That was purely just us feeling done. And then it was like you take a week off maybe, and then the next week, you're right back to the grind at the very beginning. You never got the payoff. Even if you built something really good, by the time the world discovered it and it was actually really helping people at any significant scale, you're no longer even working on that product. Brian Jones (00:22:57): Yeah. You're doing something completely different. Rob Collie (00:22:59): You might be in a different division, both finding out the things in real time that Rob Collie (00:23:03): [inaudible 00:23:00] Both finding out the things, sort of in real time, that aren't working. That's the obvious advantage, right? But there's also this other emotional thing. Like you never got the satisfaction when you actually did succeed. Brian Jones (00:23:11): Right. You didn't see it actually get picked up, adopted. Millions and millions of people using it, which is what the team gets now. We no longer pick a project and say, "Okay, how many people and how long is this going to take?" You really just try and figure out what's critical mass for that project. And then you just let them run. And you'd be really clear around what are the goals and outcomes they're trying to drive. And they just keep going until they actually achieve that. Or we realized that we were wrong, right? And we say, "Hey, we thought people are going to be excited about this. It's not even an implementation thing. We were just wrong. We misread what people really were trying to do. Let's stop. Let's kind of figure out a way of moving off of that and go and figure out what the next thing is we should go and do." Rob Collie (00:23:50): That era that we're talking about right now. The 2003 release of Office. I was still very much a computer science graduate and amateur human. That's exactly backwards, it turns out, if you're trying to design a tool that's going to be used by humanity. Brian Jones (00:24:08): Well, it's what leads you to get really Excited about XML? Rob Collie (00:24:12): That's right. Yeah. That's right. Tech used to have such a power in my life. I'm exactly the opposite now. Every time I hear about some new tech, I'm like, "Yeah, prove it." I am not going to believe in this new radical thing until it actually changes the world around me. I'm not going to be trying to catch that wave. But XML did that to me. It was almost a threat. If we don't take this seriously, we're going to get outflanked. It got really egregious. Rob Collie (00:24:42): I had a coworker one time in that same release in the middle of one of my presentations asked me. This guy wasn't particularly, in the final analysis, looking back, not one of the stronger members of the team, but he had a lot of sibling rivalry essentially in his DNA. And he'd asked me in front of his crowded room, "Well, what are you going to do about Bluetooth?" And, we didn't know what Bluetooth was yet, right? It was like, unless I had an answer for what we were going to do about Bluetooth and Excel, right? Then I was not up on things. You know, the thing that we use to connect our headphones. At the time, Bluetooth was one of those things that might just disrupt everything. Brian Jones (00:25:29): It was funny. It was at that same time, I was asked to give a presentation to the Word team about Bluetooth. We were all assigned things to go and research as part of planning and that was one of the ones I was asked. And I gave a presentation that was just very factual. Here's what it is. And I was given really bad feedback that like, "Hey, I wasn't actually talking about it strategically and how it was going to affect Word. I was just being very factual." And I was like, "I don't understand. I don't understand what success looks like in this task." Right. Rob Collie (00:25:59): I remember going, a couple of years later, going into an offsite, those offsite big, I don't know if you all still do those things, big offsite, blue sky brainstorming sessions. There was this really senior development lead that was there with me. And he and I were kind of buddies. At one point, halfway through the day, he just leans over to me and says, "Hey, I'm going to the restroom and I'm not coming back." And I looked at him in horror, almost like "Thou dost dishonor the offsite!?" And he's like, "Yeah, you know, I've never really believed that much in this particular phase of the product cycle. It's never really meant anything to me. It's all just BS." It was just devastating. I just knew it was right. He was... Brian Jones (00:26:46): But you didn't want to, you didn't want to believe that. Rob Collie (00:26:52): I mean, I felt so special. I was invited to the offsite, the big wigs and everything. Brian Jones (00:26:57): They have nice catering too, Rob Collie (00:26:59): Yeah and he was totally right to leave. Brian Jones (00:27:04): I always remember getting super nervous to present stuff for those. Once it was actually, it was one of our XML ones where I was trying to convince, it was my attempt to get us to create an XML file format, which actually ended up, obviously, happening. But I got an engineer to go to work with and we had Word through an add-in, start to write to XML. And it was just a basic XML format. And then I built all of these... it was like asp.net tools that would go and then create an HTML version of the Word doc that was editable. And it also even created, I think it was called WHAP, I don't remember, like a tech for phones. It was back when you didn't have the rich feature phones, but these basic ones. Brian Jones (00:27:41): And so I created this thing that was almost like a SharePoint site. So you could take all your Word docs, go through this add-in, and then you could actually get an HTML view of them to edit it and a phone view of them to go and edit it. Brian Jones (00:27:51): I think it was probably 2002 or 2001, but I was so excited to go and show that at the offsite because I was like, "Okay, this is where I make it, man. Everybody's going to be so excited about me." But I don't know. I think everybody was excited about Bluetooth at that point or something. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:28:05): Oh yeah Bluetooth, WHAP was so 15 minutes ago. So there's a few, irresistibly funny or interesting things I want to zero in on from that era before we come back to present, and we're definitely going to come back to present, for sure. Rob Collie (00:28:21): First of all, we went to a conference like some W3C sponsor. I don't think it was necessarily W3C affiliated, but it was the XML conference. Brian Jones (00:28:31): The one in Baltimore? Rob Collie (00:28:32): Yes. Rob Collie (00:28:33): Okay. Now two very, very, very memorable things happened at that conference. I bet you already know one of them. But the other one was, and we're just going to make this all this anonymous person's fault. Okay. We're not going to abdicate any responsibility. And we're just going to talk about our one coworker from Eastern Europe who brought his wife and they had vodka in their hotel fridge, or freezer, or something like that. And every day I would wake up and say, "I am not going to get suckered into that again." Rob Collie (00:29:12): And then the next day I would wake up and say the same thing. That was a tough trip. Brian Jones (00:29:16): I definitely remember that. Rob Collie (00:29:18): Even on my young, relatively young, body at the time that... Trying to keep up with that, that was difficult. But the single most outstanding memory from that conference, and we will also leave this person anonymous. But there was an executive at Microsoft who was hotter on XML than either you or I, which is hard to believe, right. And we ended up with the sponsored after hours session at this conference. You remember this? You see... Brian Jones (00:29:45): I do. Rob Collie (00:29:46): You know where we're going. Okay. So this was a 30 minute sponsored by Dell or something. Right. It was a 30 minute session, at 5:00 PM, at the end of a conference day where everyone's trying to go back and get to the bars or whatever, right.? But, it's a Microsoft executive, it's Dell sponsored, we'll show up. And the plan was at the end of this 30 minute talk given by this executive, he was going to bring all of us up on the stage to show everyone the team that had done all of this, right? Great plan. Except it was the worst presentation in history. I remember it running for two hours. It was so bad that we started off with 200 people in the room and at the end of it, and I'm just like an agony the whole time cause like I'm associated with this, right? Rob Collie (00:30:31): At the end of these two hours, or what felt like two hours anyway, it was easily 90 minutes. There's five people left in this room of 200 and it's not like the presentation is adapted to the fact that it's a smaller audience. It's just continued to drone on exactly as if everyone was there, right? And I'm sitting here thinking, "Okay, he's not going to call us all up on this stage. There's been more people on the stage than in the audience. If he does this, he's clearly not going to do that." And then he did and we all had to parade up there and stand there like the biggest dodos. I've never been more professionally embarrassed I don't think, than that moment. Rob Collie (00:31:14): And we're all looking at each other as we get up out of our seats like, "Oh my god." Brian Jones (00:31:19): I definitely remember this. Rob Collie (00:31:22): I don't see how you could have forgotten. Brian Jones (00:31:23): Well, yeah. And the person that we're talking about is actually one of my favorite people on the planet. I totally... I love this guy. I view him as like a mentor and everything, but... Which makes me remember it even more. Brian Jones (00:31:34): I think it was just, there was so much excitement. There'd been so much build up to this and this was like a kind of crescendo right? Of bringing this stuff. We probably should have had it a little bit shorter. Rob Collie (00:31:46): I mean when it reaches the point where clueless, mid twenties, Rob Collie is going, "Oh no, this is not the emotional, this not the move." You don't do it. Brian Jones (00:31:58): I'm no longer excited about being called up. Rob Collie (00:32:04): So from my perspective, you kind of parlayed that experience of the XML and all that kind of stuff. I think you did a really fantastic job of everything you guys did on that product. Again, it was the relevance that ultimately fell flat for both of us right. I guess in the end, the excitement with XML wasn't really all that appreciably different from the excitement about Bluetooth. I mean, it's everywhere, right? XML is everywhere. Bluetooth is everywhere and neither one of them really changed things in terms of what Excel or Word should be doing. It seemed like you played that into this file format second act. And I think very, very, very effectively, actually there was a little bit of controversy. Rob Collie (00:32:43): Let's set the stage for people. This was the 2007 release of Office where all the file formats got radically overhauled. This is when the extra X appeared on the end of all the file names, right? Brian Jones (00:32:58): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:32:58): There was a controversy internally. Kind of starting with Bill actually. That we shouldn't make well-documented transparent file format specs, right. There was this belief that the opaque file formats of the previous decades was in some sense, some big moat against competition. And of course, a lot of our competitors agreed. Tailor out in the public saying, "Yes, this is a barrier to competition. It's a monopolistic, blah, blah, blah." We, Microsoft had just gotten its ass kicked in the Anna Truss case. So it was really interesting. I credit Brian, your crew, with really advocating this very effectively. That's a difficult ship to turn. First of all, you got all these teams to buy into all this extra work, which no one wants to do. But when it's not even clear whether you have top level executive support, in fact, you might actually have C-suite antagonism towards an idea. To get it done. That's a career making achievement. I'm sure you remember all of that. Right. But what are your reactions to that controversy? Do you remember being in the midst of that? Brian Jones (00:34:12): I do. It was definitely a long running project. It evolved over quite a number of years. The beginning of it was, in that previous release, the XML stuff you and I were talking about was more about what we called "Custom XML". Right? So people would go and create for themselves. But in that same release, we had Word, we outputted an XML format that was our definition, which we called "Word ML" and Excel did a similar thing. Words' we try to make full fidelity. So you could save any word document in the XML format. Excel's was kind of a tailored down, it was less about formatting, it was more, "Hey, here's like..." It's almost like, "Here's a better version of CSV, right. But we're going to do it as XML." And so we already had a little bit of that. Brian Jones (00:34:53): And the whole reason we were looking at that was, on the Word side, for instance, a lot of the customer issues that we'd get where people would have corrupt files, they were corrupt because they there'd be some add-in that they had running or some third party app that was reading and writing word files. The files were fairly brittle and complex. The binary format... The binary format was written back in the days of floppy disks, right? So the top priority was how quickly can you write to a floppy disk and read from a floppy disc, right? It wasn't about, how easy is this for other people to go and read and write? Not because it was on purpose, make it hard. It was just the primary bid is let's get this thing so it's really easy to read and write from floppy, right? Brian Jones (00:35:31): And so in Word, we were like, "Wow, I think that there's a bigger opportunity here for an ecosystem around Word if we make it easy for people to read and write Word docs and build solutions around them." And so then the next release, the Excel team was looking at doing some big changes around a lot of the limitations, like how many rows you could have in columns, right. Lengths of like formulas and things like that. Right. And so there was this thing where the Excel team was like, "We are going to need to create a new file format." And on the word side, we thought this XML thing was great. We want to move to that as our new format. Brian Jones (00:36:01): And so everything kind of came together and it was clear. Hey, this is going to be the release that we are going to go and rev our file format, which we hadn't done in a while. This is also the release of the ribbon. So there were two really big major changes in that product, right? It was the new file format and the ribbon. It's funny. I still refer to it as the new file format, even though it's 15 years old. Rob Collie (00:36:23): Yeah. It's the new file format it's still new, yeah. Brian Jones (00:36:25): I still call it that, which is kind of nuts. But I think that the controversies you were talking about was really more of a... Boy, this is a really big deal for the product. We had changed file formats before in the past and not necessarily gotten it right. And there were a lot of challenges around compatibility and stuff. And so there was just a lot of worry of let's make sure you all have your stuff together here, right? Like let's make sure that this doesn't in any way break, stop people from wanting to upgrade to the new version. But it went really well. The whole goal of it was let's get something that we think third parties can go and read and write, and this is going to help build an ecosystem. And a new ecosystem run Office. Office already had big ecosystem with VBA and COMM add-ons and stuff like that, right.? But we won't have this new ecosystem around our file formats as a thing. That's why we chose... There's a packaging layer, which is all zip based. So if people haven't played around with it that XLSX, you can just put a .zip at the end and double click it. And it's just a zip file. And you can see a whole bunch of stuff inside of it. Right? Rob Collie (00:37:23): Yeah. If you're listening, you haven't done that go right now, run don't walk, grab an Excel file or a Word file, whatever. Go and rename the XLSX or BPTX, go ahead and rename it so that it ends in .zip and then open it up and you'll be blown away. Thomas Larock (00:37:38): PowerPoint is my favorite when I have to find some unknown setting that I need and I can just search through the whole thing. Yep. Rob Collie (00:37:45): Or all the images. You want to get all the images out of the PowerPoint file. It's just a zip file that has a bunch of images in it. Right. Brian Jones (00:37:50): So I also did this for backpack. It's the same thing. You can crack open the backpack by renaming a zip file... Thomas Larock (00:37:58): An actual physical backpack? What are we... what are we talking about here? Brian Jones (00:38:03): Ah yeah. Rob Collie (00:38:03): This is the digital acetate that is over the top of the entire physical world that you aren't aware of. Thomas Larock (00:38:08): Digital acetate, that's it? That's it. That's where the podcast peaks. Right? Those two words. We're all going home now. Brian Jones (00:38:19): Yeah. No. A SQL server, there's DAC pack, which is just the, say database schema. Then there's a backpack which has the data and the schema combined. But you can, if you rename them . zip, you can crack them open to see the XML that makes up those forms. So it's not just office products. Rob Collie (00:38:37): We ended up standardizing the entire thing, but that packaging format, it was called OPC, Open Packaging Convention, or something like that. It was something that we did in partnership with a Windows team. It's part of the final ISO standard for our file format. And then there were a lot of other folks that went and used that exact same standard. Because it's a really easy way of you have a zip package. You can have a whole bunch of pieces inside of it, which are XML. And then there's this convention for how you can do relationships between the different pieces. So I can have a slide. That's an XML and it can declare relationships to all the images that it uses. And that way it's really quick, easy to know, okay, here's all the content I need to grab if I want to move pieces of it outside of the file. Rob Collie (00:39:16): So the single coolest thing I've ever done with, we'll just call it your file format Brian. We'll just pretend that it was only you working on that. Brian Jones (00:39:23): Just me yeah, I was pretty busy, but yeah. Rob Collie (00:39:27): So the very, very first version of Power Pivot, first of all, your file format, the new file format made Power Pivot possible. We needed to go and add this gigantic binary stream of compressed data and everything, everything about Power Pivot needed to be saved in the file. At the beginning of the project, everyone was saying, "Oh, no, we're going to save it as two separate files." And I'm like, "Are you guys kidding?" The Pivot cache, for instance, is saved in the same file. You can't throw a multi file solution at people and expect it to... This was actually like Manhattan project, just to get that stream saved into the same file. It was pretty crazy. However, when it was done, there was something really awesome I wasn't aware of until the very end, which was, first of all, you could open up a zip file and just tunnel down and you would find a file in there called item one.data. Rob Collie (00:40:21): Okay. That was the Power Pivot blob. That was everything about the Power Pivot thing. And it was by far the biggest thing in the file, like it was like 99% of the file size was what was there. However, as this backup, someone had decided, I had nothing to do with this, to save all of the instructions. I think it's called XML for analysis XMLA. All of the instructions that would be required to rebuild exactly that file, but without any of the actual binary data in it. So it was a very, very small amount of XML. Okay. So here's what we would do because there were no good automation, no interfaces, no APIs. If we needed to add like 500 formulas to a Power Pivot file, you could go through the UI and write those 500 formulas, type, click, type, click, type, click. Rob Collie (00:41:08): Okay. So what we would do, and my first job outside of Microsoft, is we would go in there and we would edit that XML backup and add all the formulas we wanted in it. And by the way, I would use Excel to write these formulas. I would use string concatenation and all of that kind of stuff to write these things. It was very, very, very sensitive, one character out of place in the whole thing fails. So you make those changes. You save the file, reopen it, nothing happens because it's just the backup. Okay. So then you've got to go and you've got to create a zero byte item one.data file on your desktop and you copy it into the zip file and overwrite the real item one.data, therefore deliberately corrupting the primary copy. So when you reopen the file it triggers the backup process and it rehydrates with all of your stuff, it was awesome. Rob Collie (00:41:57): And then a couple of releases of Power Pivot later, suddenly that didn't work anymore and I was really pissed. But it just really shows you, it opens up so many opportunities that you never would have expected. And even a hack like that, that's not the kind that you'd be really looking for, but the fact that something like that even happens as a result of this is really indicative of what a success it was. Brian Jones (00:42:19): Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of those things where, I love building platforms, like that's my favorite part of the job. It's all those things that you see people do that you never would have predicted. Right? That's just so exciting. PowerPoint had this huge group of folks that would go and build things like doc assembly stuff, right. Where they go and automatically build PowerPoint decks on demand, right? Based on who you're going to go and present to cause they've just shredded the thing. In fact, when we did the ISO standardization, it was a 6,000 page doc that we had to go. And we built and reviewed with a standards body and we did it over about a year. Which sounds nuts, a 6,000 page doc in about a year. And the way that we were able to do that is there was never really a 6,000 page doc. There's a database where there's a row for every single element and attribute in this, in the whole schema, that would then have the column which is the description, which would just be the word XML. Brian Jones (00:43:09): And so we could, on demand, at any point, generate whatever view or part of the doc we wanted. So we'd say, "Hey, we're going to go in now, review everything that has to do with formatting across Word, Excel and PowerPoint." And so we just click a couple buttons and the database would spit out a Word doc that was just that part. Everybody could go and edit it cause we were using the structured elements we'd added to Word, which is called content controls, which was the next version of that XML stuff that we had to deprecate. And then the process, as soon as you'd finish editing that Word doc, we just submit it back. The process would go back and shred that Word doc again and put it all back in the database. And so we really used the file format to bootstrap documenting the file format. Rob Collie (00:43:48): And then when you dump a 6,000 page document on someone, they have no choice. But to just say, yep, it looks good to us. Brian Jones (00:43:55): Well, there was a pretty, incredibly thorough review still. It was just pretty impressive. The final vote that we had in Geneva, the process leading up to that, the amount of feedback that we got. Cause basically the ISO, you can kind of think of it like the UN, you go and show up and every country has a seat, right? I mean, not everybody participates, but anybody that wants to can. And so yeah, we had to respond to thousands of comments around different pieces, things that people wanted to see changed. Rob Collie (00:44:22): Yeah. I can imagine, right. Think about it. You just said at the final vote in Geneva. That's a heavy moment man. Thomas Larock (00:44:29): Yeah. That threw me off for a second. I thought, for sure, you were talking Switzerland, but now thinking that was just a code name. Rob Collie (00:44:38): No, I think, I think he was actually in Switzerland. Brian Jones (00:44:40): In Switzerland. Rob Collie (00:44:41): Have you seen the chamber where they do these votes? It looks just like the Senate from episode one of Star Wars. It's just like that. It's pretty heavy. Brian Jones (00:44:51): The little levitating... Rob Collie (00:44:53): The floating lift. Yeah. I think they call that digital acetate. I think that's what they call that. By the way on the Excel team, the way I came to look at the new file format and the open architecture of it, again, this this will show you how quickly I had turned into the more cynic side of things. Well, okay. We're going to be changing file formats. And we're doing that for our benefit because we didn't have enough bits allocated in the 1980s version of the file format that was saved to floppy disc, as you pointed out, right. Who could ever imagine having more than 64,000 rows, it's just inconceivable or 250 columns or whatever, right.? Because we hadn't allocated that. We'd made an engineering mistake, essentially, we hadn't future-proofed. So we need to make a file format change for our benefit, right. To undo one of our mistakes. And the way I looked at it was, "Ooh, all this open file format stuff, that'll be like the 'Look, squirrel!'" To distract people and to sort of justify, while we went and did this other thing, which, ultimately it actually went pretty well. The transition for the customers actually wasn't nearly as bad, because we actually Took it seriously. Rob Collie (00:46:03): The transition for the customers actually wasn't nearly as bad because we actually took it seriously. We didn't cut any corners. We did all the right things. Brian Jones (00:46:07): Well, there were several benefits too. We were talking about all the kind of ecosystem development benefits, but the fact that the file was zipped and compressed right, it meant that the thing was smaller. And that was all of a sudden, it was no longer about floppy discs. People are sharing files on networks. And so actually being able to go and have a file that's easier to share, send over network because it's smaller was a thing. Brian Jones (00:46:26): There were a couple of things that we were able to go and highlight. There's also a pretty nice thing where it was actually more robust because it was XML, and we split it into multiple pieces of XML. It meant that even if you had bit rot, you would only lose one little piece of the file, whereas with old the binary format, you had some bit rot and the whole thing is impossible to open up.There are a couple of things that were in user benefits too, which helped. Rob Collie (00:46:50): And ultimately, on the Excel side, the user got a million row spreadsheet format and the ability to use a hell of a lot more than like 14 colors that could be used in a single spreadsheet or something. It was .like a power of two minus two, so many bizarre things. Like Excel had more colors than that, but you couldn't use more than a certain subset in a- Brian Jones (00:47:10): At a time, yeah. Rob Collie (00:47:10): -In a single file. So yeah, there were a lot of benefits. They just weren't- Brian Jones (00:47:15): It's not like it's an explicit choice. It's just that at the time somebody is implementing something, you're right in a way, assuming, "Oh, this is fine. This is enough. I'll never have to worry with this issue." Rob Collie (00:47:25): Why waste the whole byte on that? When you can cram four different settings into a single byte. If you read the old stories about Gates and Allen programming up at Harvard, they had these vicious head-to-head competitions to see who could write the compiler or the section of basic in the fewest bytes possible. This was still very much hanging over Microsoft, even the vestiges of it were still kind of hanging over us even when I arrived. But certainly in the '80s when the Excel file format was being designed for that rev, it was still very much like, "Why waste all those bits in a byte?" "Let's cap it at four bits". Thomas Larock (00:48:05): In that blog series from Sinofsky, he talks a lot about that at the early start. And I'm at a point now where he's talking a lot about the code reuse because the Excel team, the Word team, I guess PowerPoint, but all these other teams, were all dealing with, say, text. And they were all doing their own code for how that text would be displayed and shown. And Bill would be the one being like, " This is ridiculous". "We should be able to reuse the code between these products". And to me, that would just be common sense. But these groups, Microsoft just grew so rapidly so quickly, they were off on their own, and they have to ship. I ain't got time to wait around for this, for somebody to build an API, things like that. I'll just write it myself. Brian Jones (00:48:50): It's a general thing that you get as you get larger where the person in charge that can oversee everything is like, "Well, these are all my resources", and, "Wow, I don't want three groups all building the same thing". But then when you get down, there's also a reality of we're just going to have a very different view on text and text layout than Excel. And Excel is not going to say, "I want all of that code that Word uses to lay out all of their content to be running for every single cell". Right? That's just suboptimal. And so it's always this fun conversation back and forth around where do you have shared code and reuse and where do you say it's okay for this specific app to have this more optimized thing that might look the same, but in reality, it's not really the same. Rob Collie (00:49:33): Brian, do you remember the ... I'm sure you do, but I don't remember what company they were from. But at one point in this file format effort, these really high priced consultants showed up and went around and interviewed us a couple of times. Do you remember that phase? It was like- Brian Jones (00:49:51): Was that towards the end? There was a couple summary stories that were pulled together just to talk about the overall processes. It was actually after the standardization. Rob Collie (00:49:58): I remember this being at the point in time where it was still kind of a question. whether we should do it. Brian Jones (00:50:02): I don't remember that. Rob Collie (00:50:04): The thing I remember really vividly is a statement that Chris Pratley would make over and over again, this encapsulated it for me. I came around to seeing it his way, which was the file format isn't the thing. That's not the moat. The thing that makes Office unique is the behaviors of the application. It's not the noun of the file format. It's the verb of what happens in the app. It's instructed to think that even if you took exactly the Excel team today, every single person that's already worked on it, and said, "Hey, you have to go rebuild Excel exactly". There's no way that version of Excel would be compatible with the one we have now. It would drift so much. Rob Collie (00:50:43): You could even have access to all the same specs. We would even cheat and say, "Look, you can have access to every single spec ever written". So? It was clearly someone had thought it was time to bring in like a McKinsey. They were all well dressed. They were all attractive. They were all a little too young to be the ones sort of making these decisions. It was just really weird to have them show up, three people in your office. Like, "Okay, I'll tell you what's going on". Brian Jones (00:51:11): I can totally imagine. It's funny I don't remember that. There were several rounds of analysis on how we were doing it, what we're doing and making sure we were doing it the right way. But yeah, Chris is spot on. I mean, your point about rebuilding it, that's essentially what we've been going through for the past five plus years around our web app. It's a lot of work. Unfortunately, we can't let it drift. The expectation from everybody is, "Hey, I learned the Wind 32 version. When I go to the web, I want it to feel the same. I don't want to feel like I'm now using some different app." Rob Collie (00:51:44): What an amazing, again, like a Manhattan project type of thing, this notion of rewriting Excel to run on the web and be compatible. Brian Jones (00:51:55): Yeah, with 30 years of innovation. Rob Collie (00:51:56): Yeah. That started in the 2007 release. Excel services, the first release of Excel services was 2007. And this whole thing about shared code, like what features, what functions of Excel, what pieces of it were going to be rewritten to be quote unquote "shared code"? And shared code meant it was actually server safe, which none of regular desktop Excel written in the early '80s, still carrying around assembly in certain places, assembly code of all things, right? Excel was not server safe. It was about as far from server safe as you could get. And so to rewrite this so ambitious without breaking anything. Oh my God. What a massive ... This dates back, gosh, more than 15 years. Brian Jones (00:52:45): Yeah. I'd say like the first goals around it were a bit different, right? It wasn't a web version of Excel. It was like BI scenarios and how can we have dashboards and Excel playing a role in dashboards. But yeah, I'd say since I joined, it was probably maybe a half a year or a year into when I joined, we just made the decision to shift a huge chunk of our funding to the web app. It was just clear that we need to make even more rapid progress. If you go, we have a site where you can go and see all the features that are rolling out there. It's incredible. And it's just because of the depth of the product. "Wow that's so many features you've done. You must be almost done". But then you look at everything else that's still isn't done yet. Brian Jones (00:53:23): Now thankfully, we're getting to the point where we can look at telemetry and say, "Hey, we've got most people covered." Most users, when we look at what they do in Windows, they could use the web app and shouldn't notice a difference. But there still is a set of things that we're going to keep churning through. So that'll continue to be a huge, huge investment for us. But yeah, the shared code strategy, we have an iPhone version, an iPad version an Android version. We've got Excel across all platforms. And because of the shared code, when we add new features, the feature crew that's working on that, they need to have a plan for how they're going to roll out across all those platforms, clearly levered shared code. But they also need to think through user experience and stuff like that too. Clearly a feature on a phone is going to behave differently than it's going to behave on a desktop. Rob Collie (00:54:05): Part of me, just like, kind of wants to just say, "I don't even believe that you've pulled that off, there's no way". It's kind of like, I've never looked at the Android version, and until I look at the Android version, I'm just going to assume it's not real. This is why it's one of the hardest things imaginable to have a single code base with all these different user experience, just fundamental paradigms of difference between these platforms. Like really? Come on. Brian Jones (00:54:34): It was a massively ambitious project. Mac shifted over maybe three years ago. And that's when, all of a sudden, in addition to a bunch of just features that people have been asking for that we'd never been able to get to, the massive one there was we were able to roll out the co-authoring multiplayer mode for Excel. Rob Collie (00:54:50): Multiplayer. Brian Jones (00:54:52): That's the term I like for co-authoring. It's more fun. Rob Collie (00:54:55): Yeah. It's like MMO for spreadsheets. Brian Jones (00:54:57): Yes. We were able to get that for the Mac. I mean, all of our platforms. One of us can be on an iPad, an iPhone, the web app, and we'll all see what we're doing in real time, making edits and all of that stuff. That alone, if you want to talk about massive projects, 30 years of features and innovation, basically that means we had to go and teach Excel how to communicate to another version of Excel and be very specific about, "This is what I did." "Here's the action I took." And that is massive. There are thousands and thousands of things you can do in the product. So getting it so that all of those versions are in sync the entire time, and so we're all seeing the exact same results of calc and all of that. That itself was a huge, massive project. Rob Collie (00:55:37): Take this as the highest form of praise when I say I don't buy it. I can't believe it. Brian Jones (00:55:44): I hope everybody's okay that we just talked for like an hour on just like listening to somebody at a high school reunion, I think, or something. Is this like me talking about how great I played in that one game? And you're like, "Yeah, that was a great basket". Rob Collie (00:55:54): Yeah. "Man, my jumper was on". the thing that's hard to appreciate, I think, is that you got to come back to the fact that we're talking about the tools that everyone in the world uses every day, that we rely on. And I think being gone from Microsoft for the last 12 years, I'm able to better appreciate that sense of wonder. This isn't just you and I catching up, I don't think. People enjoy, for good reason I think, hearing the stories of how these things came to be. People don't know by default how hard it was to get to a million rows in the file format. If you're like a robot, you're like, "I don't care how I got here. I just care what it is", then you're not listening to this show. We call it data with a human element. Robots can exit stage left. I think you should feel zero guilt. This isn't just self-indulgence. Brian Jones (00:56:55): Well, on the off chance everybody else ... I've listened to a lot of Rob's other podcasts, and they're awesome. So if you're bored with this one, it's okay. Go check out some of the other ones. They'r

This week we're joined by Matt Skaff!  Matt is a 10th Planet black belt who specializes in the anaconda choke.  The anaconda is powerful because it's not just a choke: it's a powerful positional system with a lot of submission options.Matt's key advice for the anaconda:Don't squeeze too early!Don't go deep too early: you don't want them to control your elbow.Use your lat for power: pinch your elbows to your core.Grab your tricep, not your bicep.  Internally rotate your thumb down.Before you gator roll, pull them back and sprawl at 45°.Listen to Matt's Skaff on The Grappling Discourse:https://anchor.fm/matt-skaffVideos referenced in this episode:Rafael Mendes vs. André Galvãohttps://youtu.be/7-F9PksNNIoRafael Mendes anaconda chokehttps://youtu.be/Nw2xfELw4wcMental models discussed in this episode:Single vs. Double Lever Controlhttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/single-vs-double-lever-control/Committed Techniqueshttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/committed-techniques/Position Over Submissionhttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/position-over-submission/Predictable Responseshttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/predictable-responses/Technique Chaininghttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/technique-chaining/Kinetic Chainshttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/kinetic-chains/3 Joint Rulehttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/3-joint-rule/Myopiahttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/myopia/Overwhelming Forcehttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/overwhelming-force/Don't forget to check out BJJ Mental Models Premium!If you love the podcast, you'll definitely love our premium membership offerings. The podcast is truly just the tip of the iceberg – the next steps on your journey are joining our community, downloading our strategy courseware, and working with us to optimize your game.  We do all this through memberships that come in at a fraction of the cost of a single private.Sign up here for a free trial:https://premium.bjjmentalmodels.com/Need more BJJ Mental Models?Get tips, tricks, and breakthrough insights from our newsletter:https://bjjmentalmodels.com/newsletter/Get nitty-gritty details on our mental models from the full database:https://bjjmentalmodels.com/database/Let them know you're an educated grappler with our merch:https://bjjmentalmodels.com/store/Follow us on social:https://facebook.com/bjjmentalmodels/https://instagram.com/bjjmentalmodels/Music by Enterprize:https://enterprize.bandcamp.com/

Dr. Anna Cabeca visits the Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine center to talk with Dr. Allyson Shrikande and Dr. Rucha Kapadia about pelvic pain. Find out why it's so hard for pelvic pain to be diagnosed properly, especially after childbirth, what you can do to help relieve pelvic pain during intercourse, and how pelvic floor exercises and therapy can prevent a lifetime of discomfort and pain. Women often deal with pelvic pain after giving birth, post-surgery, and for a number of other reasons. Shrikande started the Pelvic Rehabilitation Center out of necessity for herself. During the final year of her residency, she was experiencing classic pelvic floor pain symptoms and was having trouble getting a diagnosis and treatment. Since the condition doesn't show up on traditional tests like imaging or bloodwork, it's a challenge to get a diagnosis and help beyond pain medication. It wasn't until Dr. Shrikande found an amazing pelvic floor physical therapist did she find a solution. She became fascinated by the whole field of pelvic floor health. As a non-operative physician, she focuses on the nerves and the myofascial system. Cabeca experienced pubic symphysis pain, which led her to learn more about the pelvic system and seek a solution. The pubic bones have connective tissue that joins the pubic bones together, and that tissue can get inflamed during pregnancy. During childbirth, even if there wasn't a tear or cut exteriorly, there can be a tear on the interior, and depending on how that heals it can cause scarring and pain without being seen. After childbirth, muscle nerve dysfunction can cause pain with intercourse. The muscles can either be tight or loose and either condition can lead to compressed nerves and soreness before and after intercourse. The goal of the Pelvic Rehabilitation center is to release the inflammation of the nerves and see how the patients do. A lot of patients feel like they just have to live with the pain, but there are physical therapies that can help, especially when it comes to your sexual health. We can't get an answer if we're not asking the question and patients need to advocate for themselves. If you are experiencing something, keep digging for an answer. Cabeca and Dr. Shrikande go over a treatment protocol for a patient experiencing pain while sitting and explain how the treatment will solve the issue. The most challenging patients are the ones experiencing chronic pain for several years. The issue there is the pain becomes imprinted on your nervous system and it becomes your new normal. It can take more time to reset the nervous system but it is possible. With any pain issue, it's important to start an anti-inflammatory diet. The Keto Green diet is a great option for kickstarting your anti-inflammatory program. 80% of people will experience incontinence over their lifetime and it's also the #1 reason a caregiver will put someone into a nursing home. This is why pelvic floor exercises and pelvic floor health is so important. Starting your pelvic floor exercises when you are young have cumulative positive effects throughout your life. Start young and your post-menopausal life will be better as well. It's important to lubricate and moisturize your skin, and that includes the skin within the pelvis. When it comes to vaginismus, a yoga program or a dilator can be effective in holding progress, along with pelvic floor relaxation techniques. It's also important for you to have an open, honest relationship with your partner so they can help. A lot of pelvic floor issues are lateral within the pelvis. The wand is used to go into the canals of the bony pelvis and increase blood flow. Kapadia spent the majority of her career dealing with neuromuscular medicine for the entire body, but after experiencing pelvic floor pain herself she came across pelvic rehab medicine and has been helping patients with chronic pelvic pain since. Chronic pelvic pain is something that many people don't want to talk about because it can come with a lot of shame. If you are currently pregnant, preparing your perineum and pelvis is important for preventing pelvic pain after childbirth. Pelvic floor exercises and massage, as well as yoga, can change the game. At Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine, the two biggest issues they see postpartum are tailbone pain and pain during intercourse. Pain during intercourse is not something you have to live with after childbirth, but that's a common belief. Pelvic therapy involves both internal and external exercises. Externally, it's about working on the hips, back, and spine, as well as the pubic areas that shift during pregnancy. Internally, the goal is to mobilize the muscles and provide blood flow back to the area that has been compromised during pregnancy. You don't have to have an episiotomy or a C-section to suffer from scarring internally from childbirth. The pelvis is abundant in blood supply, but that decreases with age and nerve damage. We have to take steps to keep the blood supply active because that's how you build healthy muscles. Tight, spastic muscles can lead to less oxygen and blood flow in that area, which leads to less healing. Increasing mobility in those muscles with finger therapy and dilator therapy decreases pain and increases pleasure. Without adequate blood flow, orgasms can become painful, which is where neuro-muscular reeducation occurs. If you're experiencing pain during intercourse or urination, your next step is to follow up with your gynecologist and advocate for yourself to refer you to a pelvic floor therapist. In France, pelvic floor therapy is required for up to six months after giving birth. Physical pelvic floor therapy is the first step to reducing pain. Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine has opened clinics throughout the country. There are centers in Dallas, Houston, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and more. We can do more in this country and it starts with advocating for ourselves. If you're having pain with intercourse or bladder/bowel issues, you need to advocate for your health.     Mentioned in this Episode: pelvicrehabilitation.com youtube.com/thegirlfrienddoctor dranna.com/show     Always seek the advice of your own physician or qualified health professional before starting any treatment or plans. Information found here and results are provided for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified healthcare professional and are not intended as medical advice.

This week we discuss Netflix getting into games and review the latest State of DevOps Report. Plus, what do you call a domicile in Amsterdam? Rundown Why Netflix is getting into games (https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/7/20/22586084/netflix-gaming-strategy-earnings-explained) State of DevOps Report 2021 (https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report/) Relevant to your interests Twitter Is Shutting Down Fleets, Its Vanishing-Post Format, After Less Than a Year (https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/twitter-fleets-shutting-down-1235019174/) Morgan Stanley‘s CIO survey shows a significant moderation in expectations for the migration of workloads to the public cloud. (https://twitter.com/Atreidesmgmt/status/1414945521026875393) Say hi to Microsoft's own Linux: CBL-Mariner (https://www.zdnet.com/article/say-hi-to-microsofts-own-linux-cbl-mariner/) Austin sees pay-off from pandemic-era tech reshuffling (https://www.axios.com/austin-pandemic-reshuffling-tech-entrepreneurs-investors-11669cb1-edf5-4d00-8043-036c49215fe6.html) Report: Spyware used to target journalists, activists and world leaders (https://www.axios.com/pegasus-spyware-journalists-activists-report-5af14a4f-dce1-454d-b0e2-dc2b043b2b0e.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onhrs) IBM Insight — Can IBM Deliver? (https://blog.newagealpha.com/can-ibm-deliver) The end of open source? (https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/18/the-end-of-open-source/) DevRev: Former Nutanix execs look to lure in dev startups with new Business Infrastructure-as-a-Service firm – Blocks and Files (https://blocksandfiles.com/2021/07/16/devrev-genius-nutanix-pair-envisage-massive-new-saas-opportunity/) Where on Gartner's Hype Cycle is Gartner's Hype Cycle? (https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/19/gartner_hype_cycle/) Rapid7 + IntSights: Own Your Entire Attack Surface, Internally and Externally (https://www.rapid7.com/rapid7-acquires-intsights/) Apple to delay office returns to October - Bloomberg News (https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-delay-office-returns-october-bloomberg-news-2021-07-20/) Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure (https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgx5bw/amazon-aws-shuts-down-nso-group-infrastructure) Apple's AirPods did ~$16B in 2020 (https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1417500092395753472?s=21) You're not imagining it. Amazon and AWS want to hire all your friends, enemies, and everyone in between (https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/21/amazon_aws_recruitment/) Briton arrested over high-profile Twitter account hacks (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/21/briton-arrested-over-high-profile-twitter-account-hacks) Report: Spyware used to target journalists, activists and world leaders (https://www.axios.com/pegasus-spyware-journalists-activists-report-5af14a4f-dce1-454d-b0e2-dc2b043b2b0e.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onhrs) IBM Insight — Can IBM Deliver? (https://blog.newagealpha.com/can-ibm-deliver) IBM shows strongest revenue growth in three years (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/19/ibm-earnings-q2-2021.html) What Ever Happened to IBM's Watson? (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/technology/what-happened-ibm-watson.html) Why Zoom bought Five9 for $14.7 billion: Enterprise wallet share and a big customer engagement play (https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-zoom-bought-five9-for-14-7-billion-enterprise-wallet-share-and-a-big-customer-engagement-play/) Zoom is buying cloud contact center provider Five9 for $14.7 billion (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/19/zoom-is-buying-cloud-contact-center-provider-five9-for-14point7-billion.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=Main&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1626659760) Zoom acquires an AI company building real-time translation (https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/29/22556500/zoom-kites-acquisition-machine-translation-real-time-captions) Zoom will now let you add third-party apps to your calls (https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/21/22585980/zoom-apps-events-launch-onzoom) (https://twitter.com/Atreidesmgmt/status/1414945521026875393)## Nonsense Well, now it is. It's Pregnancy Test Doom! (https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1302820468819288066) Noise cancellation neither helps productivity nor perceived performance (https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/1416764559159742469) World's First 3-D-Printed Steel Bridge Debuts in Amsterdam (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-first-3-d-printed-steel-bridge-debuts-amsterdam-180978228/) Sponsors strongDM — Manage and audit remote access to infrastructure. Start your free 14-day trial today at strongdm.com/SDT (http://strongdm.com/SDT) CBT Nuggets — Training available for IT Pros anytime, anywhere. Start your 7-day Free Trial today at cbtnuggets.com/sdt (https://cbtnuggets.com/sdt) Listener Feedback Sent stickers to Craig in Fort Worth. Craig bought the Doc Martin's recommended in episode 82. See the pictures. (https://www.instagram.com/p/CRnMmSGL6m5/) Conferences THAT Conference, (https://that.us/activities/call-for-counselors/wi/2021) July 26-29 SpringOne (https://springone.io), Sep 1-2 DevOps Loop | October 4, 2021 (https://devopsloop.io/?utm_campaign=Global_P6_TS_Q322_Event_DevOpsLoop_at_VMworld&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social) SDT news & hype Join us in Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/). Brandon built the Quick Concall iPhone App (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quick-concall/id1399948033?mt=8) and he wants you to buy it for $0.99. Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Digital WTF (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt), so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads)! Recommendations Brandon: Dark Sky (https://darksky.net/app) Matt: BOM Weather (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.bom.metview) Coté: 8ball newsletter (https://www.8ball.report); Buienradar (https://www.buienradar.nl/) in the Netherlands. Image Credit (https://unsplash.com/photos/M_eB1UjE0do) Image Credit (https://unsplash.com/photos/By-tZImt0Ms)

This week on the podcast, hosts Stephanie Wong and Bukola Ayodele speak with Nikhil Kaul and Victor Szalvay about security in the software supply chain. Cloud OnAir will be offering a virtual event on supply chain software security on July 29th, and our guests start the show by telling us more about it. The recent cyber attacks on US companies have brought to light the importance of cyber security. A new set of guidelines for securing these components and software as a whole will be released soon, impacting not just software developers but the users as well. The Cloud OnAir event will breakdown these new guidelines and educate attendees on steps to take to ensure more secure software and software components. Internally, Google has been optimizing their software supply chain security for years with solutions like BeyondCorp and internally developed solutions that Google has since adapted for their clients. These solutions will be discussed in detail in the Cloud OnAir event. Victor goes on to explain the three areas of supply chain security and how they fit into the overall security of online platforms. Software projects are often built using many small pieces of software sourced from third parties, which can create vulnerabilities. The new guidelines will help ensure quality and security at all levels of development for software and its pieces, thus strengthening security at every level of the supply chain. Nikhil and Victor talk about issues that contribute to supply chain security, including the risks that a microservices architecture can introduce and the use of open source software and their dependencies. We hear about Google’s contributions to the supply chain security effort, like OpenSSF that strives to bring the open source community together toward the goal of cyber security. Our guests give listeners tips on starting the supply chain security journey. Join the Cloud OnAir talk to learn more! Nikhil Kaul Nikhil leads a team of product marketers focused on driving and building messaging, positioning, and go-to-market strategy for Google Cloud’s DevOps portfolio. Victor Szalvay Victor is an Outbound Product Manager with Google Cloud focused on helping customers get the most from the cloud. Previously he has been a tech entrepreneur and leader, with a concentration on DevOps and app dev team productivity. Cool things of the week Helping you pick the greenest region for your Google Cloud resources blog Optimizing your Google Cloud spend with BigQuery and Looker blog Interview Container Security: Building trust in your software supply chain site OpenSSF site Deps site SLSA site Cloud Build site BeyondCorp site Binary Authorization for Borg docs GKE Autopilot docs GCP Podcast Episode 251: BeyondCorp with Kiran Nair and Ameet Jani podcast What’s something cool you’re working on? Bukola is working on the new season of Security Command Center set to be released next month!

Episode 333   Link to join the Open House Café RE Chat this Saturday, July 10th, at 10:00 AM PST/1:00 PM EST https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87017557542?pwd=RFRZNGZ6SXpRS0NtdTRaNFhuZzJFQT09 Meeting ID: 870 1755 7542 Passcode: recovery   Help people create a life so good for themselves, they would never want to go back.  What lies beyond recovery for you, what is the next chapter?  I didn't get sober so I could just settle.    Tamar is from Ontario, Canada and took her last drink on June 17, 2012.  This is her journey of living alcohol free (AF).      Today's show is sponsored by Better Help.    You might be an alcoholic if... you report your car stolen, only for it to be found at the house you were drinking at the night before. This is from Miguel Reyes, the host of the Staying Fit ODAAT podcast.   Today is July 5th, you can still sign up for our Intensive Dry July course. You've still got 11/13 sessions left.  Go to Recovery Elevator.com/restore. We've got a KILLER group from all over the globe, and It's been a lot of fun so far.   RE now has merch! In fact, I'm wearing an RE hoodie now. Thank you, Stephanie Smale, for all the hard work. RE.comm/merch for your AF threads.     Okay, let's get started -   Today, I was going to talk about something else. More specifically that “all emotions are created equal.” A topic, that I still plan on covering, but as I opened my computer and begin writing this intro, I recognized that this is episode 333. Now apart from loving Dan Brown's Da Vinci code, I was never really into numbers, symbols, shapes, nor the placement of stars and planets at the time of my birth… But as my journey progresses, I've become more curious, interested and more importantly open, to all this stuff. So, let's move forward with an open mind, as we are dipping a toe in the spirituality and higher power waters of recovery… which can be somewhat divisive but also fascinating because I've learned there's a part in all of us, that wants to know, what's really going on behind the scenes… And spoiler alert, I won't be answering what's the purpose of life, but do hope to tie some mathematics and mysticism into living an alcohol-free life.   Let's talk about the number 3, first, then 333.   With mystics, mathematicians and physicists, the number 3 is considered the perfect number, the number of harmonies, wisdom and understanding. ... It was also the number of times – past, present, future; birth, life, death; beginning, middle, end – it was the number of the divine. Some guy was resurrected three days after his death, forget his name, but I know it's significant to many.   The ancient Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, postulated that the meaning behind numbers was deeply significant. ... In his eyes the number 3 was considered as the perfect number, the number of harmonies, wisdom and understanding.   “If you only knew the significance of 3,6,9, multiples of 3, then you have the key to the universe.” Nikola Tesla.   The frequencies of the 7 energy centers or chakras are all divisible by three. For example, the heart area has a frequency of 639 HZ, which means the wave form goes up and down 639 times in one second. This number, along with all the other energy centers, is divisible by three. The earth, which vibrates at 432 HZ, which is also the key of almost all NEW AGE music, is also divisible by three.     Number 3 is the foundational number of trinities, the triangle, with three sides. Mind, body, and spirit. Having it tripled, 333, is like saying trenta when ordering a coffee at Starbucks. It's supercharged.   The three-sided triangle - Is the symbol of AA.   The unifying language of the universe is math and 3 is the root of many and this special number governs much of the physical world at the quantum level.   What does it mean to see 333?   We've all heard of guardian angles. So, angels, can't speak to you directly to you, at least in my experience, but apparently, they send messages using the number 3, and when you have triple that, as in 333, it's time to listen up. So maybe this episode, is a message to YOU, from your guardian angel.   333 means that it's time to focus on acknowledging your inner truths, and head out into the world with more purpose. Inner truth (if you're listening to this podcast),  means it's probably time to ditch the booze or stick with that decision. There's a voice inside, that's been saying, Yo, we don't need this. Internally there's a beautiful “tipping point” that is going to take place if not already. That's when the voice, or energy around your alcohol-free life, overpowers, or is greater than the voice representing the addiction. This doesn't necessarily mean you'll never drink again, but it's a good indicator that A -  alcohol has been ruined for you and will never work in the same capacity and B. You're shedding an old skin.   333 also signifies a period of intense growth. If you're on this journey of learning how to live life without alcohol, then yes, you're in the “trenta” range when it comes to growth. This growth is intense. It's the most profound type of inner growth we can go through in this human life.  Keep in mind that all growth takes place outside your comfort zone, so if you feel catapulted outside your comfort zone at this moment, that's okay. After all bouts of chaos, order follows. This is the way the universe works. Be patient, things will settle.   333 is a symbol of maturity, or maturation. I've heard, and there is some truth to this, that you stop emotionally growing when alcohol dependency locks in.  The flip side of this, is through an addiction you learn a whole different set of invaluable life lessons… Seriously, don't forget that. I firmly believe this. When you reintegrate into society, you'll notice you're equipped with a set of skills that most people don't have. They are superpowers. Qualities of intense resilience come to mind.   333 is a symbol that it's time to eliminate things in your life that no longer bring you pleasure of happiness, The key in this sentence is no longer.  Alcohol, for most of us was a great life companion. There was a time when it did bring us pleasure and happiness. Those times, like high school, are over. This can also apply to people, places, and things. As you grow, evolve, some people, places, and things.  As you grow and evolve, some things will no longer be a match for you, making it increasingly uncomfortable to be around these incoherencies.   It's rumored that seeing the number 333 means that what you've been asking for, is on the way. The first thing that comes to mind here is to “Be clear on what you're asking for when you put that out into the universe.  Internally, for most of us, there's a part of us that wants to quit drinking and a part of us that doesn't want to quit drinking.  Try to catch those inner messages of dissonance as you become aware of them.    What you've been asking for is on the way or may be already here.  The next part is for you to walk through the door, to do your part, to do the work. I've been asking for a Top Gun sequel for 30 years. The new release date is November 19th, 2021. Come on lucky 333, I need this.   Whether you believe in 333 or not, that doesn't really matter.   333 means the ascended masters are near you.   Ascended masters? What the hell does that mean? Well, we're not going to figure that out here, nor is this podcast really about that, but it's important to be open to the idea that someone, something out there, is rooting for us. An entity, or spirit has our best interest in mind, even though the remake of Top Gun has been postponed 5 times. Regardless, humanity needs help now, and if a number, replicated 3 times, signifies this, then I'll take it.   Before we conclude, I do want to mention the odds, of us chatting about existence, quitting drinking and you being you, are quite low. In fact, the odds, of you being you, in this moment, are about 1 in 400 trillion.   According to astro-physicists, the odds of planet earth, sustaining life, and you being here are the same as flipping a coin and having it land on heads, 10 quintillion times in a row. As Laura McKowan, would say, “we are the luckiest.” Simply being here, means we've already won the greatest lottery of all time. . And we didn't come here for life to perpetually suck.  We've got your back guys.   Mental health matters, and as we continue to live through this pandemic and slowly go back to resuming activities such as going back to work or attending some social gatherings, it's important to have someone that can help us process all our emotions and life stressors. Betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. Betterhelp provides a broad range of expertise available which may not be locally available in many areas. The platform is super easy to navigate - you can login into your account at any time and interact with your counselor by sending them a message. You'll get timely and thoughtful responses, plus you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions. Betterhelp is more affordable than the traditional offline counseling and financial aid is available.   Visit betterhelp.com/ELEVATOR and join the over 500,000 people talking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. Recovery Elevator listeners get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/ELEVATOR.    [11:35] Odette introduces Tamar   Tamar took her last drink on June 17, 2012.       [12:02] How do you feel?   It's amazing.  I remember when I first came into recovery, I thought, I can't drink forever?  If you had asked me nine years ago if I'd be here, I'd tell you you're insane!   [12:40] Give us a little background on you.   Tamar is a podcast host, performance consultant, life coach, best-selling author, and a champion for people in recovery.  Her passion is to help people in recovery create a life so good for themselves that they never want to go back to their old way of living.   She lives east of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  She has no kids but has a niece and nephew  who she loves to get hopped up on sugar and send them home to their parents.  She is married and her husband is in recovery as well.  She loves being outside, hiking, snowboarding, and golfing.    [14:56] Tell us about your relationship with alcohol   Tamar said she had a great upbringing.  Her family moved around quite a bit and as a result, she was very shy.  She was always looking to get a gold star from her dad.  She began seeking external sources of love.  When she got drunk for the first time, her life went from black and white to color.  She felt she could be in control, funny and more secure.  It was the solution for the good and bad times.  She barely graduated from high school because she wanted to drink all the time.  In college, her school was next to a pub, and she would skip class and go to the pub, so she was put on academic probation.  She was a black out drunk, nearly every time.  When she was introduced to other drugs, she wasn't afraid.  She hoped the drugs would amplify her drinking.    Her dream careers were to continue being the beer girl at the golf club or work for a brewery.     [18:59] Did you connect the dots that you experience was related to alcohol?   Tamar said, she thought this is how life is.  She surrounded herself with people who drank like she did.    She started using drugs, losing jobs and became a chronic yo-yo dieter.  She slipped into a depression but couldn't see the problem with alcohol.  She was blaming the world.  Her Dad tried to intervene and point out her challenges, but she wasn't ready to hear it.   [21:19] What happened afterwards?   Tamar said, she started to feel shame.  She was in a toxic relationship.  For two months, she drank and used for two months straight.  She focused on society's expectations (get married, have children).  She met her future husband who was also an alcoholic.  She stopped using hard drugs, but her drinking escalated.  They worked together and only got along when they were drinking.  Meeting society's expectations made her miserable.  She hit bottom, she was severely depressed, unhappily married, and overweight.  She had a moment of clarity and wanted to give it another chance.  She decided to make a change and stop digging.   [25:37]  How did that catapult you into action?   Tamar said it was right before New Year's, so she resolved to get a gym membership.  She was working out by herself, then decided to hire a personal trainer.  It never occurred to her to investigate how to love yourself.  She knew the personal trainer from high school, and they became close friends.  She rigidly logged all her food, and, on the weekends, she only had nine beers.  She would drink NyQuil so she would pass out,  she reported to her trainer, “I only had nine beers”.  Her trainer took her bungee jumping and shared she (the trainer) was in recovery.  She went to dinner with her husband and brought a bottle of wine.  That one bottle turned into a case of wine, a case of beer and a $200 bar tab and she didn't remember the rest of the weekend.  She texted her friend, saying she needed help.  Her friend introduced her to the world of recovery.   [30:17] When you reached out to your friend, what were the next steps?   Tamar said, she stopped that weekend.  Her friend brought her to an AA meeting, and she said she wasn't like them, she was classy.  Her friend encouraged her to look for the similarities vs. the differences.  With a new attitude, she was shocked at how much she could relate.  She went to someone's four-year celebration and was impressed with how good his life became.  She is happy to be alive, particularly knowing how self-destructive she was.   [33:51] What happened afterwards?   Tamar said going through the 12-steps really helped her.  She learned her life was her fault.  She cried more in her first year in recovery than she had ever in her life.  She had used alcohol to mask everything, so her first step was to learn how to manage her emotions.  She learned it was ok to not be okay.   She started cleaning up her life.  It was about building a foundation.   Now there isn't one part of her that wants to have a drink.  Early on, she was frustrated with people who questioned her decisions, but she thinks that tough love saved her life.    She surrounded herself with people who would be honest with her.  The first year was hardest, she lost 75 pounds, but she acknowledged you can get lazy and fall back into not doing the work.    [37:37]  What tools did you use to help you get through the days?   Tamar said she changed everything.  She stayed away from bars for the first six months.   She stayed away from anything that triggered her.  She didn't connect with friends because they were drinking buddies.  She tested the water by bringing diet coke to parties and had an emotional hangover.  Learning what to do and what not to do became her top priority until she was strong enough and her foundation was built.  She developed a healthy routine.  Today it doesn't bother her to be around people who are drinking.   [41:14] How did your depression and eating issues evolve as you got sober?   Tamar said food is still a challenge for her – she loves food.  She listened to a podcast and the host, an MD, pointed out the similarity between the carbs/sugar and alcohol. After losing 75 pounds, she felt like she had graduated.  She still slips into anxiety and depression.  She finds herself going back to old behaviors.   Now she eats clean, and her body responds well.   She is good 80% of the time and 20% of the time she allows herself fries.  She is very co-dependent and began working on her personal development.  She wanted to grow.  She investigated her food issues.  She learned what foods she could eat, what foods worked, etc.  She hired a food code.  She started a podcast so she could be accountable.  She hired a coach who helped her with different strategies around food.  She has learned to give herself grace.  Sobriety helps you to look at other aspects of your life.  You can apply the same tools to other addictions.    [47:13] What has been an unexpected perk or joy about this journey?   Tamar said she realized her past was a gift.  When complacent, she stopped taking action.  Surrounding herself with people who had what she wanted encouraged her to move forward.  She is now coaching.  She is a performance consultant.  She didn't get sober so she could just settle.  Even when the days are dark, she can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.    [50:25] Rapid Fire Round   If you could talk to your younger self, what would you say. Keep being open minded and willing to learn.  Don't shut yourself off for new experiences and don't wait until you are ready. If something aligns with your purpose, take action and do it.   What are you excited about right now? She is excited to wake up every single morning at 4:30 AM so she can do what she loves each day.    What is your favorite NA beverage? Diet Coke.   What are some of your favorite resources on this journey? Podcasts, books (self-help and biographies).   What parting piece of guidance do you have for listeners? Find people who have what you want.  She is grateful she found those people in early recovery.  It's never too late to stop.  Ask for help.  Connect.  It's okay to not be okay.    You may have to say Adios to booze if … You keep thinking about booze and justifying your reasons for not drinking.       Odette's Summary   Odette spoke about the Disney movie, Luca.  The movie reminded her that we need to silence the voice that doesn't want us to do the hard thing(s).  We are not our thoughts.  We have the power to detach and tell it to be quiet.  Seeing our thoughts for what they are is healthy, just don't let them drive the car.  Remember you are not alone and together is always better.  This isn't a no to alcohol, it's a YES to a better life.    Upcoming events, retreats, and courses: Bozeman 2021 (August 18-22, 2021) registration opens March 1! This is our flagship annual retreat held in the pristine forests of Big Sky Country, 10 miles south of Bozeman, Montana. During this 5-day event, you'll discover how to expand the boundaries of your comfort zone. You can find more information about our events    Affiliate Link for Endourage: For 10% off your first CBD order with Endourage visit this link and use the promo code elevator at checkout.    Affiliate Link for Amazon: Shop via Amazon using this link.   The book, Alcohol is SH!T, is out. Pick up your paperback copy on Amazon here! You can get the Audible version here!     Resources:  Connect with Cafe RE - Use the promo code OPPORTUNITY to waive the set-up fee. Recovery Elevator YouTube - Subscribe here! Sobriety Tracker iTunes      “Recovery Elevator – Without the darkness you would never know the light - I love you guys”