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J.P. Duffy is joined by Jeff Zaino, vice president of the AAA-ICDR's Commercial Division, to discuss the AAA's upcoming centenary and its enduring reputation as a trusted choice for resolving commercial conflicts across industries. The conversation delves into the AAA's significant milestones and accomplishments, highlighting its commitment to innovation, including its approach to AI and the recent appointment of Bridget McCormack as president and CEO. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello and welcome to Arbitral Insights, a podcast series brought to you by our international arbitration practice lawyers here at Reed Smith. I'm Peter Rosher, Global Head of Reed Smith's International Arbitration Practice. I hope you enjoy the industry commentary, insights and anecdotes we share with you in the course of this series, wherever in the world you are. If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed, please do contact our speakers. And with that, let's get started.  J.P.: Welcome back to the next episode of Arbitral Insights, in which we'll discuss the American Arbitration Association with Jeff Zaino, who's the vice president of the AAA's commercial division. I'm J.P. Duffy. I'm an international arbitration partner based in New York that acts as both counsel and arbitrator in international arbitration seated around the world under a variety of governing laws and arbitral rules. I'm qualified in New York, England, and Wales in the DIFC courts in Dubai, where I previously lived and practiced. I routinely represent clients and arbitrations involving a range of issues and frequently sit as an arbitrator in commercial disputes as well. I also have the good fortune to be a member of the AAA's commercial division arbitrator roster, the ICDR panel, and I'm a member of the AAA-ICDR Life Sciences Steering Committee and a member of the ICDR Publications Committee as well. So I get to do a lot with the AAA, which is really a wonderful organization. As I mentioned, with me today is Jeff Zaino, who's the vice president of the commercial division of the AAA in New York. He oversees administration of the large, complex commercial caseload, user outreach, and panel of commercial neutrals in New York. He joined the association in 1990, and Mr. Zaino is dedicated to promoting ADR methods and services. He's also written and published extensively on the topics of electronic reform and ADR, including several podcasts with the ABA, talks on law, and corporate counsel business. And he's appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and Bloomberg to discuss national election reform efforts and the Help America Vote Act. He was deemed a 2018 Alternative Dispute Resolution Champion by the National Law Journal and received awards for his ADR work from the National Academy of Arbitrators, Region 2 and Long Island Labor and Employment Relations Association. In 2022, Jeff received the Alicott Lieber Younger Committee of the Year Award for the New York State Bar Association Commercial and Federal Litigation Section. And in 2023, the Chairman's Award, NYSBA Dispute Resolution Section. So as you can tell, Jeff is a highly experienced, highly lauded arbitration expert, but we're really lucky to have his valuable insights today. So before we begin with some of the substance, let me just give a little bit of background on the AAA and the commercial division so that those that are less familiar have a little bit of information about what we're going to discuss today. The AAA is a non-profit alternative dispute resolution service provider headquartered in New York that administers arbitrations, mediations, and other forms of dispute resolution, such as ombudsperson and dispute avoidance training. It was founded in 1926 to provide an alternative to civil court proceedings, and that makes the AAA one of the oldest arbitral institutions in the world, as well as one of the largest, having administered over 11,553 business-to-business cases in 2023 alone, with a total value of over $19.1 billion. So that should give you a pretty good idea of the scope of what the AAA does. Notably, the AAA has several divisions that offer users substantial subject matter expertise. For instance, the commercial division, which Jeff heads, specializes in business-to-business disputes of all sizes, but has a particular expertise with large complex cases across a variety of industries, including accounting, communications, energy, entertainment, financial services, franchise, hospitality, insurance and reinsurance, life sciences, sports, and technology. There are also separate AAA divisions that focus exclusively on construction issues, consumer disputes, employment matters, government issues, healthcare, and labor disputes. Lastly, as many of our listeners will know, the AAA has a well-known international division, the International Center for Dispute Resolution, or what's colloquially known as the ICDR, that focuses on disputes that have an international component. Before we get into some of our recent developments, Jeff, if you could tell us a bit about what makes the AAA different than other arbitral administrators, I'm sure our audience would love to hear that.  Jeff: Sure. Hey, thanks so much, J.P., for having me today, and thanks for the kind words at the beginning. It's great to be here today. Well, you mentioned it. The AAA is the largest and oldest ADR provider in the world. We have over 700 staff worldwide and 28 offices, including one in Singapore. And we have a huge panel, and you're on that panel. We have 6,000 arbitrators on our panel, and we consider them experts in the industry. And we're really proud of our panel. And like you mentioned, we're hitting our 100th anniversary in 2026. And since then, when I started, I started in the 90s, like you mentioned, 1990. From 1926, when we were founded, to 1990, we did a million cases, one million cases. And then, since then, from 1990 until now, 2024, we hit 8 million, 8 million cases. So it's growing. And I feel that's because of AAA, AAA-ICDR. Again, we've been around for almost 100 years, and we keep on growing. And I feel that we took the A out of ADR. I mean, everyone says alternative dispute resolution, but I really think now it's, and you'll probably agree with me, J.P., that it's dispute resolution. It's something in our toolbox and it's not alternative any longer. And then another thing about us, a huge difference about AAA-ICDR is we're not for profit. That makes us unique in this space. Profit-based companies are a little bit different than what we are. We're not criticizing them, but we're unique in the sense that we work directly for the parties, not for the arbitrators.  J.P.: That's a really interesting stat, Jeff. Let me unpack some of that because I think, first off, if I understood that correctly, you said up until 1990, there were 1 million cases administered. Is that right?  Jeff: That's correct. We did 1 million cases from our founding, 1926, a year after the Federal Arbitration Act in 1925. So we did 1 million when I came on board in 1990. And then from 1990 until now, we've done a total of 8 million. So we doubled that, or tripled it. It's been amazing how the growth that we've seen. And also during a pandemic, we saw a huge growth at AAA-ICDR.  J.P.: And Jeff, one thing that I think you're obviously very involved with the New York State Bar, and I've done quite a bit with the New York State Bar myself over the years. One thing that I noticed, and you just reminded me of this, was an uptick in submission agreements during the pandemic, by which I mean parties taking existing disputes for which there was no arbitration clause, drafting an arbitration clause for it to submit it and move it into arbitration. And I think some of that was a function of the recognition that disputes would founder if the courts were closed and that parties needed things done. Did you see that kind of growth during the pandemic of submission agreements as well?  Jeff: Absolutely. The courts were shut down, like you mentioned, for three to four months worldwide. And the ADR providers, like the AAA-ICDR, did not shut down. And we did have submissions, more submissions than we've ever seen. And usually it's only about, I would say, 2%, 3% of our caseload is submissions, but we saw the court systems. And I had, personally, I had over a billion dollar case, a bankruptcy case that came to us from Texas and it was mediated. We had two mediators, one in Connecticut and one in Texas. We had six parties, 40 people showed up on the Zoom, J.P., it was amazing. And that was a submission to AAA through the court system. The judge talked to the parties and said, listen, we're shut down. This is an important matter. Why don't you go to AAA? And so, yes, we did see submissions during the pandemic. I'm not sure if that's going to continue on. Most of our disputes are features of contract, as you know.  J.P.: Yeah. I mean, that's always going to be the case in arbitration, right? That the vast majority of cases will be subject to a pre-dispute arbitration clause. But I think it's really interesting when you see submission agreements like that, because I think it's a clear recognition that one, arbitration is a really valuable tool. And two, it's a real plus for the AAA and a real nod of confidence that those are submitted to AAA because that's parties taking something they know has to be figured out and saying, all right, AAA is the guy to do. I wanted to pick up, too, on that exponential growth of 8 million cases between 1990 and the present versus 1 million over the first, you know, what is that, 70-something years or 60-plus years?  Jeff: 60-plus years, absolutely, yeah. J.P.: Are there particular industries that you've seen significant growth in since the 1990 period that you were discussing, like between 1990 and the present? Are there particular industries that you are seeing more growth in or that you think there could be more growth in? Just be curious to get your views on that.  Jeff: Sure, sure. And my area of commercial, as you know, because you're on the commercial panel and the ICDR panel, is healthcare. And I know you're a big part of healthcare. Also, financial services. We've seen a huge growth in that in the last five years. We put together an advisory committee for financial services on insurance. And then also, as you probably know, consumer. We saw a big amount of consumer cases during the pandemic and even prior to the pandemic. And that's a big caseload. It's about 30% of our caseload at AAA-ICDR. But again, people criticize that sometimes and say, well, that's not fair to the consumer. They're forced into arbitration. But what I say, J.P., to law students and when I speak at events like this, I say, listen, we don't draft ourselves into contracts. AAA-ICDR does not do that. People draft us into contracts and we just try to make the process, we try to level the playing field. And we do a lot of consumer, but we do a lot of high-end commercial cases, as you know, a lot of international cases and things like that. But the two areas, I would say, a long way to answer to your question, J.P., is I would say healthcare and financial services, insurance, that's where we're seeing a lot of growth and also technology.  J.P.: The consumer aspect is one that is obviously very, very, very hot right now, given things like the mass arbitration rules and things like that. And we will probably touch on that in a bit, but it's a really valuable service to provide. And that's one thing that I think the AAA really does well. As you mentioned, it's a not-for-profit organization. It's not an organization that's out to make money off of consumer disputes. It's really there to help everybody resolve them. So something for everyone to keep in mind.  Jeff: The company bears the cost, not the consumer. And I hope people know that, that we're not out, like you said, we're not out to make a big buck on this. We're just trying to level a playing field and access to justice for these people.  J.P.: Yeah. And that's really what it is. At the end of the day, it's access to justice. And a lot of times the alternative is small claims court, which is not always a great choice. I've sat as an arbitrator in small claims court a few times, and I can tell you it's a great process when it works, but it can be a challenging process as well so  Jeff: Without a doubt.  J.P.: Always something to keep in mind. Yeah. Well, let's talk then about some of the recent developments because there have been quite a few. And as you mentioned, it's coming up on the centennial for the AAA-ICDR. And a lot has happened, obviously, in the 100 years of its existence, almost 100 years of its existence.  Jeff: Sure.  J.P.: And quite a few of those things are pretty monumental. And one of the biggest ones, I guess, is that in February 2023. Bridget McCormack took over as president and CEO of the AAA-ICDR from India Johnson, who was in that role for a lot of years. Bridget was previously the chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, if I'm correct, and was also a professor and associate dean at the prestigious University of Michigan Law School. So she brings a pretty extensive wealth of experience to the AAA. Now that she's been in that role for about a year and a half, how have things been different at the AAA-ICDR under Bridget's leadership?  Jeff: It's been wonderful. I mean, Bridget brings such life to the company right now. I mean, India Johnson was great. She put our house in order, our finances. but Bridget is now doing a wonderful job in getting out there. I'm not sure, J.P., have you met her yet?  J.P.: I have not had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but I'll sort of preview for our listeners that we are in the process of trying to get Bridget into our firm to talk to everyone about what the AAA-ICDR does and give sort of an insider's view for our partners.  Jeff: Oh, wonderful. She's such a dynamic speaker. If you go on YouTube, you'll see she speaks all the time. It's amazing. Whenever I ask her to speak at an event in New York, I feel bad about asking her because I know how busy she is, but she does agree. But I have to find a space in her calendar because if you see on LinkedIn, I know you're on LinkedIn too, J.P., and she is everywhere. It seems like every week she's speaking somewhere, very dynamic, and she embraces AI. And I know we're going to talk about AI a little bit, but also innovation. And she's been doing such a terrific job being the face of the AAA, and we needed that. India, again, did a wonderful job, but Bridget is out there and around the world doing international events, doing events here domestically. And it really, I think, is getting the word out there about ADR and about, well, I should say DR, sorry, dispute resolution, and also access to justice. Being a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Michigan, doing a terrific job. And really, the people in the company are very excited. We have 700 plus employees, and we're excited with our new president. It really has been a great time with her.  J.P.: You know it's funny. The one thing I've universally heard from anyone who works there when I ask about Bridget is everyone says great energy, great leadership, and really, really, really strong presence, which is really wonderful to hear because you seem to be echoing that pretty strongly as well.  Jeff: Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, when she works a room, when she talks at an event, and it's great. We're forward-looking right now, big time. The AAA now is looking, AAA-ICDR, looking towards the future with innovation, with ODR, and we're going to talk about that, and with access to justice, which I love. And she's doing a terrific job.  J.P.: Well, that's great to hear. And I think we are going to talk about odr.com in just a second. But before we do that, I'd just be curious, because they may well be the same thing. But what would you say Bridget's greatest accomplishment is so far?  Jeff: I would say being the face of the AAA and embracing new ideas. For years, we didn't really, we moved kind of slowly. We embraced new ideas, but we moved slowly like a battleship turning around or an aircraft carrier turning around. We moved slowly. We're not doing that any longer. Bridget wants to move on quickly, which is great, and embrace things that are going on. And I think we're ahead of the curve on a lot of things, with acquiring ODR, with our embracing AI, with her ideas about innovation, access to justice. We are, I think, really ahead of the curve with respect to these areas, ahead of law firms, ahead of some of our competitors. And I attribute that to Bridget.  J.P.: That's really great to hear. That's really great to hear. And it's really hard with a large organization to be nimble. Exactly. I know we do that pretty well at Reed Smith, I think, too, but it's a challenge, and it does require great leadership in order to get everybody on board with that. So it's wonderful to hear that's happening at the AAA-ICDR, and you see it.  Jeff: Oh, yeah, without a doubt. And also, we're almost 100-year-old organizations, so you would think that we wouldn't be thinking about these innovation things in the future, but we are, which is terrific. We're an old organization, but not really. We're ready for the future.  J.P.: Well, let's talk about that future a bit because it's clear that there's a strong focus on that. And one of the first things that I noticed is the odr.com resourceful internet solutions acquisition. So for those that don't know anything about that, maybe you could fill the audience in and give us a bit of background about that one and what it's done for the AAA-ICDR.  Jeff: Sure. We just recently, a few months ago, acquired odr.com. It's a company that's been around for approximately 25 years. Online dispute resolution that can be completely customized for your needs for online dispute resolution. And they've been doing a wonderful job for many years. Okay. obviously much smaller than the AAA-ICDR, but they've been working with us. I'm not sure if you know this, J.P., but they've helped us with our no-fault business in New York. They help us set up our system initially years ago. So we've had a relationship with them for probably two decades with ODR. So we recently acquired them and we're working with them. Their most important area is right now is mediation. They have mediate.com and we're looking at  our mediation.org and combining those two. Okay. And we want to expand our mediation business. And again, I mentioned it a couple of times, access to justice. We want high volume cases. Okay. We do obviously high-end cases, high dollar cases, but right now we're seeing with odr.com, we can spread the business, we can grow the business and we can expand our mediation business. And that's what we're trying to do because mediation is growing. As you know, J.P., it's it mediation has grown tremendously over the last couple of decades. But now with ODR online dispute resolution, I mean, it's going to really grow, I think. So that's what that's why we acquired it. And, you know, Colin Rule, I'm not sure, J.P., if you've ever met Colin Rule. The head of ODR.com.  J.P.: I have not had the pleasure.  Jeff: Yeah, he's he's phenomenal. know if anyone that's listening to this podcast, you just Google Colin Rule. He's been in this space for many, many years and he's a phenomenal person. And I'm really excited about this acquisition. And I think we're going to work so well together.  J.P.: Jeff, just for people like me that are a little bit less savvy with how some of these things work technologically and sort of mechanically, is odr.com and mediate.com is a function of that, right? Or a part of that?  Jeff: Yeah, it's a part of it. Yeah. And I believe they have arbitration.com, but now it's going to be merged in with the AAA. And the platform of odr.com is going to be used for our mediation services at AAA for online mediation services.  J.P.: Okay. That's what I was getting at. So this is like a platform where users or parties and the mediator all log in, communicate with each other. Exchange their positions, and do everything that way. So is it correct to say it's sort of a virtual mediation platform?  Jeff: Yeah, without a doubt. And now the timing is perfect, J.P., because we just came off the pandemic about a couple of years ago, and we were seeing, as you probably know, as an arbitrator at AAA, we were doing thousands of virtual hearings arbitration and also mediation, and it worked. It really worked.  J.P.: Yeah. And that's really one of the true benefits that came out of the pandemic, in my view. Prior to the pandemic, I had always done certain aspects of cases virtually. And there was video conferencing was something that you could suggest, but that parties and frankly, arbitrators were not always that willing to embrace. But I think the pandemic really showed everyone that you can do things virtually. Efficiently, cost-effectively, and in a way that you don't need an in-person hearing for, and that it can be really successful. So I'm sure the timing has been right for odr.com and that acquisition. In terms of integrating it, what's the full timeline for getting it fully integrated, if you don't mind my asking?  Jeff: Sure. I mean, right now we're focusing on mediation. Okay. That's going to be our focus for the next several months. And then I think we're going to try to see if we can move this into arbitration also, because we're still seeing a lot of arbitrations, not a lot. I mean, I would say that 30% of our arbitrations are still being done in the virtual world. We're starting to see, and JP you've been at my Midtown office in Midtown Manhattan on 42nd Street, and we're starting to see about 60 to 70% capacity as an in-person for arbitration. But there's still a segment that wants to do it in the virtual world. And this is where odr.com comes into play. And right now it's, but the focus right now is mediation and working with our mediation team at the AAA-ICDR.  J.P.: Got it. Well, you know, it's funny. I have an employment partner who told me the odds of them ever doing an employment mediation below a certain value in person again are slim to none.  Jeff: Interesting.  J.P.: Yeah. And I think you guys have really hit the nail on the head with this.  Jeff: Well, with labor similar to employment, we're seeing almost 80% of labor cases now in New York City, I'm talking, are being done virtual, maybe even a little bit more than that. They got so used to doing it in the virtual world for labor cases, union management. It's interesting to see where we're going with this. But commercial type disputes, the type that you handle, J.P., we're starting to see more people coming back into in-person. However, we're not seeing the days of a witness flying in from Paris for one hour because we have all the technology at the offices, our offices around the country, the voice activated camera. So we don't need to ship in people for one hour. It's a waste of money.  J.P.: Yeah. And that's, you know, that's really the great thing that this technology allows for, which is, you know, I just did a, to mention the hearing space, Jeff, I just did a pretty large week-long hearing earlier in the year at the AAA's offices on 42nd Street. And it was great, but there were, you know, and I do, you know, myself prefer in-person for certain things, but, you know, during that hearing, we had witnesses that were exactly what you're describing, I mean, really only required to confirm a few issues or give, you know, a short cross examination and they were located in pretty diverse regions. Absolutely no reason to incur the time or expense or frankly, just the headache of bringing those people in from around the world for scheduling purposes and everything else.  Jeff: Sure.  J.P.: We did those, you know, we did those witnesses virtually and that is a real, that's a real benefit. You know, you sort of do that hybrid approach and you can save, it's way more efficient, It's way more cost-effective, and it is just easier from a scheduling perspective. So this is a really great development.  Jeff: Yeah, and J.P., have you noticed, I mean, when you were probably at my office on 42nd Street, we have now the big monitors. And I've noticed that arbitrators like yourself and advocates like yourself are using more technology in the rooms. We have these cupboards in our hearing rooms where the binders used to go, the big binders for exhibits and things like that. No longer am I seeing that. Most arbitrators are now using our, we provide iPads, we have the big monitors, and it seems like people are going away from paper, which is great too.  J.P.: Yeah, it's funny. I'm sort of like probably the last of the Mohicans where people really had to do things like mini books. Like when I was a real junior associate, we would have hearing bundles that were in mini book form and they were, you'd have 55 volumes and everything would be in there. I mean, there's sort of those nightmare stories where parties would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just pulling together the paper for a hearing. And that, you know, that to me always seemed a little bit crazy. In this day and age, it is totally unnecessary. I would much prefer to have everything electronically. And that hearing space really allows for that. So really, really great to hear that parties are embracing that because it's such a cost savings and it's an efficiency. You know, it just doesn't need to be the way it was.  Jeff: Sure.  J.P.: Well, let's talk then a bit about some of the AI stuff that you were mentioning, because I think that is really, I have to confess, I don't understand it as well as I should. I think most people, if they were being honest, probably have an inkling of what it does, but don't really know. I'd love to hear what the AAA-ICDR is doing with AI, because it's a really, really, really groundbreaking development.  Jeff: Absolutely. Well, if you Google Bridget McCormack, our president, she speaks on AI quite frequently and it really has embraced it. And how have we embraced that AAA? Well, she encourages the staff to use it. And we have, she's even recommended certain programs that we should use. But with respect to how are we using it with respect to running our business? Well, we have ClauseBuilder and you know about ClauseBuilder. It's a tool that was developed in 2013 where people can go online and develop a clause for arbitration. Now we have ClauseBuilder AI, which as opposed to going through various modules with the original ClauseBuilder, you can just type in, I want an employment clause. I want three arbitrators. I want limited discovery. And the clause builder AI will build that clause for you. That's something we just rolled out. Also for arbitrators, scheduling orders. We have an AI program right now for arbitrators where a scheduling order usually takes an arbitrator, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, J.P., usually about an hour to two hours after you do the preliminary hearing. Well, now AI reduces that time to probably a couple of minutes for an arbitrator. So we rolled that out. And we obviously were having discussions about low dollar cases, high volume cases. Can AI be used? And we're looking into that. We haven't rolled that out yet. It's not going to eliminate you, J.P., but it's something that we're looking at right now. And we are embracing it. I use it for various things. I'll give you an example. I use it for if I'm doing an educational program, I'll type in, you know, I'm doing a program on arbitration and discovery. Can you give me a good title for this program? I've been doing this for years. I've used a lot of different titles for programs, and it's wonderful to use AI for those purposes and for editing things. So I like the fact that our company embraces it. Some companies do not. Some law firms, as you know, J.P., do not embrace AI. And we had that case last year where I think an attorney, it wasn't arbitration, it was litigation, where he cited cases through AI that never existed.  J.P.: Yeah, that's actually happened more than once since then. And it's been kind of amazing to me. Yeah, it's funny. We as a law firm at Reed Smith have definitely embraced AI. We've got a person who's sort of C-suite level that addresses that and that heads that function up. And I know we are trying to bring it in much more for things that are sort of routine, that don't require necessarily true attorney time. And it is a real game changer. I mean, you know, anybody who doesn't get on board with AI is going to get left behind at some point because it is truly, truly the wave of the future, in my view.  Jeff: Oh, absolutely. And the way I look at it, people say, well, it seems scary or whatever. But what about Google Maps and things that we've embraced years ago? I couldn't live, J.P., without Google Maps. So that's technology that it's going to help us. It's not going to take us over or whatever. It's going to help us enhance what we're doing.  J.P.: Yeah, I think the concerns about Skynet are a little bit, you know, Skynet and Terminator are a little bit far-fetched, but it is something that we all need to get on board with. It's a lot like the way that, you know, when I first started practicing the notion of uploading paper documents to be reviewed and then using search terms was really scary for a lot of people, but that, you know, that became commonplace and you couldn't function without it. This will do the same thing to the extent it's not the same. Now, Jeff, what's the overlap, if any, between that you see between some of the AI initiatives and odr.com?  Jeff: We're not really combining those yet, but I think we will. There's discussions about it, but right now we're focusing on mediation with odr.com and we're discussing rolling out AI with various things to help to assist our arbitrators, are mediators, but I think eventually, you know, there'll be a combination, I think, but right now there's not.  J.P.: Got it. Well, we'll stay tuned because I can't imagine those two things are going to stay in separate houses for too long. Well, we could talk all day about what's going on at the AAA-ICDR right now because it's just amazing. I mean, it's really incredibly, incredibly dynamic at the moment. But what I'd like to do is sort of shift ahead to looking ahead to the future. We talked a bit earlier about how the AAA is rapidly approaching its centennial anniversary, And that's kind of a natural reflection point for any organization. If you were to sort of sum things up and say, what accomplishments from its first century of existence that the AAA is most proud of, what do you think you would point to?  Jeff: Well, I would point to two things. First, how amazing the AAA-ICDR was and also other ADR providers. When pandemic hit, within a week, we were up with 700 employees doing thousands and thousands of cases. And I was worried about the arbitrators, not you, J.P., but other arbitrators with the technology. And our 6,000 arbitrators, it was flawless. It was amazing or seamless. It really went well. And that I'm very, very proud of because I had been with the AAA for a long time prior to that. And I was really concerned that the arbitrators weren't going to get it. We weren't going to be able to understand Microsoft Teams, Zoom, all that kind of stuff. So we did a great job during pandemic. We had some of our best years during pandemic with respect to helping society in arbitrating cases. But also some of the things that we've done for state and federal governments, you know, state and federal governments, Storm Sandy, Katrina. Those are the things I'm very proud of. I was a part of the Storm Sandy stuff where we administered 6,000 cases for homeowners and with insurance companies. And we were able to do that very quickly. And we're a not-for-profit. So the federal government and the state governments look at us and will hire us to do those kind of projects. And we can quickly mobilize because of our staff. So those two things really stand out in my career at AAA.  J.P.: That's a really, really interesting thing to point to because that truly embodies the best that the AAA can offer. It's an incredible service that really helped people with real-life issues during really challenging times. So wonderful to hear. What would you see for the next 100 years in the AAA? Like, you know, looking forward, I know it's going to be here for, it's going to be having its two, it's bicentennial at some point. It will absolutely occur. What would you see is, you know, if you were to fast forward yourself a hundred years and still be in the seat, because by then technology will have kept us all alive for the next hundred years, and you're Jeff Zaino 2.0, sitting around in 200 years, where would you see the AAA-ICDR at that point?  Jeff: Well, I'm on part of the committee for the 100-year anniversary. We have a committee already formed two years in advance to get ready for our 100th year anniversary, and we're talking about this stuff. And I think some of the themes that Bridget's talking about, access to justice, I think we're going to be, we saw from 1990 to now 8 million cases, we're going to see far more. We're going to see the public now embracing arbitration. When I was hired by the AAA in the 90s, I didn't even know what AAA stood for. I mean, with the name, American Arbitration Association. I didn't know what arbitration was. We are reaching out to law schools. We're doing collaboration with a lot of law schools in New York and throughout the country, throughout the world. And I think the word's going to get out there that arbitration is the way to go. Our mediation is too. And I'm excited about that. Also, we're going to see far more diversity at AAA and also in the community. And that's something that we really care about at the AAA. Right now, J.P., as you probably know, any list that goes out at the AAA is a minimum of 30% diverse. So we're going to see an increase in that area, but also access to justice for the public.  J.P.: Really, really great. And I think we will all watch with rapt attention to see what happens because it's only good things in the future for the AAA-ICDR, that's for sure. Well, Jeff, I just want to thank you. But before we wrap this up, I'm going to reserve my right to bring you back for another podcast because there's so much more we could talk about. So, but is there anything I missed that we should hit on now that would be great for the audience to hear? I know there's just so much going on.  Jeff: Well, I hope the audience when in 2026, when we have our 100th anniversary, I hope people participate in it because we're going to do things worldwide and we're going to be doing events everywhere. And that year we really are, we have a huge team of people that are working in our 100th year anniversary and not to just necessarily promote AAA-ICDR, but to promote arbitration and mediation. And that's what we're going to be doing in 2026, and I'm very excited about it.  J.P.: You heard it here first, folks. Arbitration is the future. And Jeff said it himself. So we will definitely watch closely. Well, good. And just to give a very quick preview on this one, too, because Jeff, you mentioned it. We are going to, in the future, have your colleagues from the ICDR side of the house come on, and we're going to bring some of the new folks from Singapore and a few other people. So more to come. And it's just incredible to see.  Jeff: We look forward to it. And J.P., I'd love to have another sit down with you. It's been great.  J.P.: Good. We absolutely will. So that then will conclude our discussion at the American Arbitration Association for now. And I want to thank our guest, Jeff Zaino of the AAA Commercial Division for his invaluable insights. And I want to thank you, the audience, for listening today. You should feel free to reach out to Reed Smith about today's podcast with any questions you might have. And you should absolutely as well feel free to reach out to Jeff. I know he's super responsive and he would love to chat with you directly if you have any questions. And we look forward to having you tune in for future episodes of the series, including future updates with Jeff and our podcast with the ICDR as well. So thank you everyone. And we will be back.  Outro: Arbitral Insights is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. For more information about Reed Smith's global international arbitration practice, email arbitralinsights@reedsmith.com. To learn about the Reed Smith Arbitration Pricing Calculator, a first-of-its-kind mobile app that forecasts the cost of arbitration around the world, search Arbitration Pricing Calculator on reedsmith.com or download for free through the Apple and Google Play app stores. You can find our podcast on podcast streaming platforms, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts at Reed Smith LLP.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.  All rights reserved.  Transcript is auto-generated.

In this special episode of the Oracle University Podcast, Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Principal HCM Instructor Jeff Schuster, delve into the intersection of HCM and AI, exploring the practical applications and implications of this technology in human resources. Jeff shares his insights on bias and fairness, the importance of human involvement, and the need for explainability and transparency in AI systems. The discussion also covers the various AI features embedded in HCM and their impact on talent acquisition, performance management, and succession planning.  Oracle AI in Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/oracle-ai-in-fusion-cloud-human-capital-management-hcm/136722 Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM: Dynamic Skills: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-fusion-cloud-hcm-dynamic-skills/116654/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started!  00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs here at Oracle University, and with me, is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week's conversation was all about Oracle Database 23ai backup and recovery, where we dove into instance recovery and effective recovery strategies. Today's episode is a really special one, isn't it, Lois? 00:53 Lois: It is, indeed, Niki. Of course, all of our AI episodes are special. But today, we have our friend and colleague Jeff Schuster with us. I think our listeners are really going to enjoy what Jeff has to share with us. Nikita: Yeah definitely! Jeff is a Principal HCM Instructor at Oracle University. He recently put together this really fantastic course on MyLearn, all about the intersection of HCM and AI, and that's what we want to pick his brain about today. Hi Jeff! We're so excited to have you here.  01:22 Jeff: Hey Niki! Hi Lois! I feel special already. Thanks you guys so much for having me. Nikita: You've had a couple of busy months, haven't you?  01:29 Jeff: I have! It's been a busy couple of months with live classes. I try and do one on AI in HCM at least once a month or so so that we can keep up with the latest/greatest stuff in that area. And I also got to spend a few days at Cloud World teaching a few live classes (about artificial intelligence in HCM, as a matter of fact) and meeting our customers and partners. So yeah, absolutely great week. A good time was had by me.  01:55 Lois: I'm sure. Cloud World is such a great experience. And just to clarify, do you think our customers and partners also had a good time, Jeff? It wasn't just you, right? Jeff: Haha! I don't think it was just me, Lois. But, you know, HCM is always a big deal, and now with all the embedded AI functionality, it really wasn't hard to find people who wanted to spend a little extra time talking about AI in the context of our HCM apps. So, there are more than 30 separate AI-powered features in HCM. AI features for candidates to find the right jobs; for hiring managers to find the right candidates; skills, talent, performance management, succession planning— all of it is there and it really covers everything across the Attract/Grow/Keep buckets of the things that HR professionals do for a living. So, anyway, yeah, lots to talk about with a lot of people! There's the functional part that people want to know about—what are these features and how do they work? But obviously, AI carries with it all this cultural significance these days. There's so much uncertainty that comes from this pace of development in that area. So in fact, my Cloud World talk always starts with this really silly intro that we put in place just to knock down that anxiety and get to the more practical, functional stuff. 03:11 Nikita: Ok, we're going to need to discuss the functional stuff, but I feel like we're getting a raw deal if we don't also get that silly intro. Lois: She makes a really good point.  Jeff: Hahaha! Alright, fair enough. Ok, but you guys are gonna have to imagine I've got a microphone and a big room and a lot of echo. AI is everywhere. In your home. In your office. In your homie's home office. 03:39 Lois: I feel like I just watched the intro of a sci-fi movie. Jeff: Yeah. I'm not sure it's one I'd watch, but I think more importantly it's a good way to get into discussing some of the overarching things we need to know about AI and Oracle's approach before we dive into the specific features, so you know, those features will make more sense when we get there?  03:59  Nikita: What are these “overarching” things?  Jeff: Well, the things we work on anytime we're touching AI at Oracle. So, you know, it starts with things like Bias and Fairness. We usually end up in a pretty great conversation about things like how we avoid bias on the front end by making sure we don't ingest things like bias-generating content, which is to say data that doesn't necessarily represent bias by itself, but could be misused. And that pretty naturally leads us into a talk about guardrails. Nikita: Guardrails? Jeff:  Yeah, you can think of those as checkpoints. So, we've got rules about ingestion and bias. And if we check the output coming out of the LLM to ensure it complied with the bias and fairness rules, that's a guardrail. So, we do that. And we do it again on the apps side. And so that's to say, even though it's already been checked on the AI side, before we bring the output into the HCM app, it's checked again. So another guardrail.  04:58 Lois: How effective is that? The guardrails, and not taking in data that's flagged as bias-generating? Jeff: Well, I'll say this: It's both surprisingly good, and also nowhere near good enough.  Lois: Ok, that's as clear as mud. You want to elaborate on that?  Jeff: Haha! I think all it means is that approach does a great job, but our second point in the whole “standards” discussion is about the significance of having a human in the loop. Sometimes more than one, but the point here is that, particularly in HCM, where we're handling some really important and sensitive data, and we're introducing really powerful technology, the H in HCM gets even more important. So, throughout the HCM AI course, we talk about opportunities to have a human in the loop. And it's not just for reviewing things. It's about having the AI make suggestions, and not decisions, for example. And that's something we always have a human in the loop for all the time. In fact, when I started teaching AI for HCM, I always said that I like to think of it is as a great big brain, without any hands.  06:00 Nikita: So, we're not talking about replacing humans in HCM with AI.                                                                         Jeff: No, but we're definitely talking about changing what the humans do and why it's more important than ever what the humans do. So, think of it this way, we can have our embedded AI generate this amazing content, or create really useful predictions, whatever it is that we need. We can use whatever tools we want to get there, but we can still expect people to ask us, “Where did that come from?” or “Does this account for [whatever]?”. So we still have to be able to answer that. So that's another thing we talk about as kind of an overarching important concept: Explainability and Transparency. 06:41 Nikita: I'm assuming that's the part about showing our work, right? Explaining what's being considered, how it's being processed, and what it is that you're getting back. Jeff: That's exactly it. So we like to have that discussion up front, even before we get to things like Gen and Non-Gen AI, because it's great context to have in mind when you start thinking about the technology. Whenever we're looking at the tech or the features, we're always thinking about whether people are appropriately involved, and whether people can understand the AI product as well as they need to.  07:11 Lois: You mentioned Gen and Non-Gen AI. I've also heard people use the term “Classic AI.” And lately, a lot more about RAG and Agents. When you're teaching the course, does everybody manage to keep all the terminology straight? Jeff: Yeah, people usually do a great job with this. I think the trick is, you have to know that you need to know it, if that makes sense.  Lois: I think so, but why don't you spell it out for us. Jeff: Well, the temptation is sometimes to leave that stuff to the implementers or product developers, who we know need to have a deep understanding of all of that. But I think what we've learned is, especially because of all the functional implications, practitioners, product owners, everybody needs to know it too. If for no other reason so they can have more productive conversations with their implementers. You need to know that Classic or Non-Generative AI leverages machine learning, and that that's all you need in order to do some incredibly powerful things like predictions and matching. So in HCM, we're talking about things like predicting time to hire, identifying suggested candidates for job openings, finding candidates similar to ones you already like, suggesting career paths for employees, and finding recommended successors. All really powerful matching stuff. And all of that stuff uses machine learning and it's certainly AI, but none of that uses Generative AI to do that because it doesn't need to. 08:38 Nikita: So how does that fit in with all the hype we've been hearing for a long time now about Gen AI and how it's such a transformative technology that's going to be more impactful than anything else? Jeff: Yeah, and that can be true too. And this is what we really lean into when we do the AI in HCM course live. It's much more of a “right AI for the right job” kind of proposition. Lois: So, just like you wouldn't use a shovel to mix a cake. Use the right tool for the job. I think I've got it. So, the Classic AI is what's driving those kinds of features in HCM? The matching and recommendations?  Jeff: Exactly right. And where we need generative content, that's where we add on the large language model capability. With LLMs, we get the ability to do natural language processing. So it makes sense that that's the technology we'd use for tasks like “write me a job description” or “write me performance development tips for my employee”. 09:33 Nikita: Ok, so how does that fit in with what Lois was asking about RAG and Agents? Is that something people care about, or need to? Jeff: I think it's easiest to think about those as the “what's next” pieces, at least as it relates to the embedded AI. They kind of deal with the inherent limitations of Gen and Non-Gen components. So, RAG, for example - I know you guys know, but your listeners might not...so what's RAG stand for? Lois & Nikita: Retrieval. Augmented. Generation. Jeff: Hahaha! Exactly. Obviously. But I think everything an HCM person needs to know about that is in the name. So for me, it's easiest to read that one backwards. Retrieval Augmented Generation. Well, the Generation just means it's more generative AI. Augmented means it's supplementing the existing AI. And Retrieval just tells you that that's how it's doing it. It's going out and fetching something it didn't already have in order to complete the operation. 10:31 Lois: And this helps with those limitations you mentioned? Nikita: Yeah, and what are they anyway?  Jeff: I think an example most people are familiar with is that large language models are trained on this huge set of information. To a certain point. So that model is trained right up to the point where it stopped getting trained. So if you're talking about interacting with ChatGPT, as an example, it'll blow your doors off right up until you get to about October of 2023 and then, it just hasn't been trained on things after that. So, if you wanted to have a conversation about something that happened after that, it would need to go out and retrieve the information that it needed. For us in HCM, what that means is taking the large language model that you get with Oracle, and using retrieval to augment the AI generation for the things that the large language model wouldn't have had.  11:22 Nikita: So, things that happened after the model was trained? Company-specific data? What kind of augmenting are you talking about? Jeff: It's all of that. All those things happen and it's anything that might be useful, but it's outside the LLM's existing scope. So, let's do an example. Let's say you and Lois are in the market to hire someone. You're looking for a Junior Podcast Assistant. We'd like the AI in HCM to help, and in order to do that, it would be great if it could not just generate a generic job description for the posting, but it could really make it specific to Oracle. Even better, to Oracle University.  So, you'd need the AI to know a few more things in order to make that happen. If it knows the job level, and the department, and the organization—already the job posting description gets a lot better. So what other things do you think it might need to know? 12:13 Lois: Umm I'm thinking…does it need to account for our previous hiring decisions? Can it inform that at all? Jeff: Yes! That's actually a key one. If the AI is aware not only of all the vacancies and all of the transactional stuff that goes along with it (like you know who posted it, what's its metadata, what business group it was in, and all that stuff)...but it also knows who we hired, that's huge. So if we put all that together, we can start doing the really cool stuff—like suggesting candidates based not only on their apparent match on skills and qualifications, but also based on folks that we've hired for similar positions. We know how long it took to make those hires from requisition open to the employee's first start date. So we can also do things like predicting time to hire for each vacancy we have with a lot more accuracy. So now all of a sudden, we're not just doing recruiting, but we have a system that accounts for “how we do it around here,” if that makes any sense.  But the point is, it's the augmented data, it's that kind of training that we do throughout ingestion, going out to other sources for newer or better information, whatever it is we need. The ability to include it alongside everything that's already in the LLM, that's a huge deal.  13:31  Nikita: Ok, so I think the only one we didn't get to was Agents. Jeff: Yeah, so this one is maybe a little less relevant in HCM—for now anyway. But it's something to keep an eye on. Because remember earlier when I described our AI as having a great big brain but no hands?  Lois: Yeah... Jeff: Well, agents are a way of giving it hands. At least for a very well-defined, limited set of purposes. So routine and repetitive tasks. And for obvious reasons, in the HCM space, that causes some concerns. You don't want, for example, your AI moving people forward in the recruiting process or changing their status to “not considered” all by itself. So going forward, this is going to be a balancing act. When we ask the same thing of the AI over and over again, there comes a point where it makes sense to kind of “save” that ask. When, for example, we get the “compare a candidate profile to a job vacancy” results and we got it working just right, we can create an agent. And just that one AI call that specializes in getting that analysis right. It does the analysis, it hands it back to the LLM, and when the human has had what they need to make sure they get what they need to make a decision out of it, you've got automation on one hand and human hands on the other...hand. 14:56 Have you mastered the basics of AI? Are you ready to take your skills to the next level? Unlock the potential of advanced AI with our OCI Generative AI Professional course and certification that covers topics like large language models, the OCI Generative AI Service, and building Q&A chatbots for real-world applications. Head over to mylearn.oracle.com to find out more. 15:26 Nikita: Welcome back! Jeff, you've mentioned the “Time to Hire” feature a few times? Is that a favorite with people who take your classes? Jeff: The recruiting folks definitely seem to enjoy it, but I think it's just a great example for a couple of reasons. First, it's really powerful non-generative AI. So it helps emphasize the point around the right AI for the right job. And if we're talking about things in chronological order, it's something that shows up really early in the hire-to-retire cycle. And, you know, just between us learning nerds, I like to use Time to Hire as an early example because it gets folks in the habit of working through some use cases. You don't really know if a feature is going to get you what you need until you've done some of that. So, for example, if I tell you that Time to Hire produces an estimated number of days to your first hire. And you're still Lois, and you're still Niki, and you're hiring for a Junior Podcast Assistant. So why do you care about time to hire? And I'm asking you for real—What would you do with that prediction if you had it?  16:29 Nikita: I guess I'd know how long it is before I can expect help to arrive, and I could plan my work accordingly. Jeff: Absolutely. What else. What could you do with a prediction for Time to Hire? Lois: Think about coverage? Jeff: Yeah! Exactly the word I was looking for. Say more about that.  Lois: Well, if I know it's gonna be three months before our new assistant starts, I might be able to plan for some temporary coverage for that work. But if I had a prediction that said it's only going to be two weeks before a new hire could start, it probably wouldn't be worth arranging temporary coverage. Niki can hold things down for a couple of weeks. Jeff: See, I'm positive she could! That's absolutely perfect! And I think that's all you really need to have in terms of prerequisites to understand any of the AI features in HCM. When you know what you might want to do with it, like predicting the need for temp cover, and you've got everything we talked about in the foundation part of the course—the Gen and the Classic, all that stuff, you can look at a feature like Time to Hire and then you can probably pick that up in 30 seconds. 17:29 Nikita: Can we try it? Jeff: Sure! I mean, you know, we're not looking at screens for this conversation, but we can absolutely try it. You're a recruiter. If I tell you that Time to Hire is a feature that you run into on the job requisition and it shows you just a few editable fields, and then of course, the prediction of the number of days to hire—tell me how you think that feature is going to work when you get there. Lois: So, what are the fields? And does it matter? Jeff: Probably not really, but of course you can ask. So, let me tell you. Ready? The fields—they are these. Requisition Title, Location, and Education Level.  Nikita: Ok, well, I have to assume that as I change those things… like from a Junior Podcast Assistant to a Senior Podcast Assistant, or change the location from Redwood Shores to Detroit, or change the required education, the time to hire is going to change, right?  Jeff: 100%, exactly. And it does it in real time as you make those changes to those values. So when you pick a new location, you immediately get a new number of days, so it really is a useful tool. But how does it work? Well, we know it's using a few fields from the job requisition, but that's not enough. Besides those fields, what else would you need in order to make this prediction work? 18:43 Lois: The part where it translates to a number of days. So, this is based on our historic hiring data? How long it took us to hire a podcast assistant the last time? Jeff: Yep! And now you have everything you need. We call that “historic data from our company” bit “ingestion,” by the way. And there's always a really interesting discussion around that when it comes up in the course. But it's the process we use to bring in the HCM data to the AI so it can be considered or predictions exactly like this. Lois: So it's the HCM data making the AI smarter and more powerful. Nikita: And tailored. Jeff: Exactly, it's all of that. And obviously, the HCM is better because we've given it the AI. But the AI is also better because it has the HCM in it. But look, I was able to give you a quick description of Time to Hire, and you were able to tell me what it does, which data it uses, and how it works in just a few seconds. So, that's kind of the goal when we teach this stuff. It's getting everybody ready to be productive from moment #1 because what is it and how does it work stuff is already out of the way, you know?  19:52 Lois: I do know! Nikita: Can we try it with another one? Jeff: Sure! How about we do...Suggested Candidates. Lois: And you're going to tell us what we get on the screen, and we have to tell you how it works, right? Jeff: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Ok—Suggested Candidates. You're a recruiter or a hiring manager. You guys are still looking for your Junior Podcast Assistant. On the requisition, you've got a section called Suggested Candidates. And you see the candidate's name and some scores. Those scores are for profile match, skills match, experience match. And there's also an overall match score, and the highest rated people you notice are sorted to the top of the list. So, you with me so far?  Lois: Yes! Jeff: So you already know that it's suggesting candidates. But if you care about explainability and transparency like we talked about at the start, then you also care about where these suggested candidates came from. So let's see if we can make progress against that. Let's think about those match scores. What would you need in order to come up with match scores like that? 20:54 Nikita: Tell me if I'm oversimplifying this, but everything about the job on the requisition, and everything about the candidate? Their skills and experience? Jeff: Yeah, that's actually simplified pretty perfectly. So in HCM, the candidate profile has their skills and experience, and the req profile has the req requirements.  Lois: So we're comparing the elements of the job profile and the person/candidate profile. And they're weighted, I assume? Jeff: That's exactly how it works. See, 30 seconds and you guys are nailing these! In fairness, when we discuss these things in the course, we go into more detail. And I think it's helpful for HCM practitioners to know which data from the person and the job profiles is being considered (and sometimes just as important, which is not being considered). And don't forget we're also considering our ingested data. Our previously selected candidates. 21:45 Lois: Jeff, can I change the weighting? If I care more about skills than experience or education, can I adjust the weighting and have it re-sort the candidates? Jeff: Super important question. So let me give you the answer first, which is “no.” But because it's important, I want to tell you more. This is a discussion we have in the class around Oracle's Embedded vs. Custom AI. And they're both really important offerings. With Embedded, what we're talking about are the features that come in HCM like any other feature. They might have some enablement steps like profile options, and there's an activation panel. But essentially, that's it. There's no inspection panel for you to open up and start sticking your screwdriver in there and making changes. Believe it or not, that's a big advantage with Embedded AI, if you ask me anyway.  Nikita: It's an advantage to not be able to configure it? Jeff: In this context, I think you can say that it is. You know, we talk about the advantages about the baked-in, Embedded AI in this course, but one of the key things is that it's pre-built and pre-tested. And the big one: that it's ready to use on day one. But one little change in a prompt can have a pretty big butterfly effect across all of your results. So, Oracle provides the Embedded AI because we know it works because we've already tested it, and it's, therefore, ready on day one. And I think that story maybe changes a little bit when you open up the inspection panel and bust out that screwdriver. Now you're signing up to be a test pilot. And that's just fundamentally different than “pre-built and ready on day one.” Not that it's bad to want configuration. 23:24 Lois: That's what the Custom AI path and OCI are about though, right? For when customers have hyper-specific needs outside of Oracle's business processes within the apps, or for when that kind of tuning is really required. And your AI for HCM course—that focuses on the Embedded AI instead of Custom, yes? Jeff: That is exactly it, yes. Nikita: You said there are about 30 of these AI features across HCM. So, when you teach the course, do you go through all of them or are there favorites? Ones that people want to spend more time on so you focus on those? Jeff: The professional part of me wants to tell you that we do try to cover all of them, because that explainability and transparency business we talked about at the beginning. That's for real, so I want our customers to have that for the whole scope.  24:12  Nikita: The professional part? What's the other part?  Jeff: I guess that's the part that says sure, we need to hit all of them. But some of them are just inherently more fun to work on. So, it's usually the learners who drive that in the live classes when they get into something, that's where we spend the most time. So, I have my favorites too. The learners have their favorites. And we spend time where it's everybody's favorite. Lois: Like where? Jeff: Ok, so one is far from the most complex one, but I think it's really elegant in its simplicity. And it's the Celebrate feature, where we do employee recognition. There's an AI Assist available there. So when it's time to recognize a colleague, you just need to enter the headline or the title, and the AI takes it from there and just writes up the recognition. 24:56 Lois: What about that makes it a good example, Jeff? You said it's elegant. What do you mean?  Jeff: I think it's a few things. So, start with the prompt. It's just the one line—just the headline. And that's your one input. So, type in the headline, get the recognition below. It's a great demonstration of not just the simplicity, but the power we get out of that simplicity. I always ask it to recognize my employees for implementing AI features in Oracle HCM, just to see what it comes up with. When it tells the employee that they're helping the company by automating routine tasks, bringing efficiency to the HR department, and then launches into specific examples of how AI features help in HCM, it really is pretty incredible. So, it's a simple demo, but it explains a lot about how the Gen AI works. Lois: That's really cool. 25:45 Nikita: So this one is generative AI. It's using the large language model to create the recognition based on the prompt, which is basically just whatever you entered in the headline. But how does that help explain how Gen AI works in HCM? Jeff: Well, let's take our simple prompt for example. There's a lot happening behind the scenes. It's taking our prompt, it's doing its LLM thing, but before it's done, it's creating the results in a very specific way. An employee recognition reads really differently than a job description. So, I usually describe this as the hidden part of our prompt. The visible part is what we typed. But it needs to know things like our desired output format. Make sure to use the person's name, summarize the benefits, and be sure to thank them for their contribution, that kind of stuff. So, those things are essentially hard-coded into the page. And that's to say, this is another area where we don't get an inspection panel that lets us go in and tweak the prompt.  26:42 Nikita: And that's generally how generative AI works? Jeff: Pretty much. Wherever you see an AI Assist button in HCM, that's more or less what's going on. And so when you get to some of the other more complex features, it's helpful to know that that is what's going on.  Lois: Like where? Jeff: Well, it works that way for the About Me part of your employee profile, for goal creation in performance, and I think a really great example is in performance, where managers are providing the competency development tips. So the prompt there is a little more complex there because it involves the employee's proficiency rating instead of free text. But still, pretty straightforward. You're gonna click AI Assist and it's gonna generate all the development tips for any specific competency listed for that employee. Good development tips. Five of them. Nicely formatted with bullet points. And these aren't random words assembled by an AI. So they conform to best practices in the development of competencies. So, something is telling the LLM to give us results that are that good, in that particular way.  So, it's just another good example of the work AI is doing while protected behind the inspection panel that doesn't exist. So, the coding of that page, in combination with what the LLM generates and the agent that it uses, is what produces the result. That's generally the approach. In the class, we always have a good time digging into what must be going on behind that inspection panel. Generally speaking, the better feel we have for what's going on on these pages, the better we're able to get the results we want, even without having that screwdriver out. 28:21  Nikita: So it's time well-spent, looking at all the individual features? Jeff: I think so, especially if you're anticipating really using any of them. So, the good news is, once you learn a few of them and how they work, and what they're best at, you stop being surprised after a while. But there are always tips and tricks. And like we talked about at the top, explainability and transparency are absolutely key. So, as much as I'm not a fan of the phrase, I do think this is kind of a “knowledge is power” kind of situation. 28:51 Nikita: Sadly, we're just about out of time for this episode.  Lois: That's too bad, I was really enjoying this. Jeff, you were just talking about knowledge—where can we get more?  Jeff: Well, like you mentioned at the start, check out the AI in HCM course on MyLearn. It's about an hour and a half, but it really is time well spent. And we get into detail on everything the three of us discussed here today, and then we have demoscussions of every feature where we show them and how they work and which data they're using and a whole bunch more. So, there's that. Plus, I hear the instructor is excellent. Lois: I can vouch for that! Jeff: Well, then you should definitely look into Dynamic Skills. Different instructor. But we have another course, and again I think about an hour and a half, but when you're done with the AI course, I always feel like Dynamic Skills is where you really wanna go next to really flesh out all the Talent Management ideas that got stirred up while you were having a great time in the AI course.  And then finally, the live classes. It's always really fun to take live questions while we talk about AI in HCM.   29:54 Nikita: Thanks, Jeff! This has been really interesting.  Lois: Yeah, thanks for being here, Jeff. We've loved having you on. Jeff: Thank you guys so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.  Lois: If you want to learn more about what we discussed, go to the show notes for today's episode. You'll find links to the AI for Human Capital Management and Dynamic Skills courses that Jeff mentioned so you can check them out. You can also head over to mylearn.oracle.com to find the live sessions for MyLearn subscribers that Jeff conducts. Nikita: Join us next week as we kick off our “Best of 2024” season, where we'll be revisiting some of our most popular episodes of the year. Until then, this is Nikita Abraham…  Lois: And Lois Houston, signing off!   30:35 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

The teacher-student dynamic has been central for the unfolding story of humanity. Although universities began to emerge in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries, the modern education system only developed during the Industrial Revolution, in part for adults to be able to go to work in factories. Modern education focused on exterior knowledge of the physical world and was shaped by scientific orientation. It also included learning and development of skills. These were mostly physical and mental skills that would facilitate participation in the workforce and employability.What was largely left out of modern education was the interior and the character development journey. Modern education had no capacity to address this need. It was left for the priest, rabbi, lama, and the guru-teacher. The therapist was added later.Anyone aspiring to deeper self-insight and understanding and the pursuit of perennial wisdom, both in the East and the West, needed to find the teacher and often the community where the quest for truth and self-knowledge could be supported.Recent decades brought new realizations about the dynamic between a searching student and their spiritual teacher. In this conversation between Aviv Shahar and longtime Portals friend Jeff Vander Clute, author of Beyond Every Teaching, they trace the teacher's journey, the identification trap for both teacher and student, and the golden shadow phenomenon. They also are reflecting on the kinds of ethical evolutionary communities that are arising now to address these challenges.These ponders come at a critical time. We've explored on Portals the post-guru quest and the search for truth as new creative capacities come online with the activation of Homo Universalis, the universal human. We can integrate with the new incoming evolutionary impulse as self-authored and self-responsible — our own pathfinders with the help of others around us.Among their insights:If the teacher identifies with the students' love and admiration, or with their criticism, they begin to be more attuned to their students rather than the original purpose or the ineffable source.A pathology of communities that decide to do away with teachers is to bounce to the other side of the polarity and not adopt any form of internal structure.We are in the post-guru phase and the resolution of the story is that the collective — the mutualized ecology and distributed body of people that we are — can become the teaching agency.This is about us as human beings learning to handle power safely before we can become universalized, where the power levels intensify; we go through many tests in our life and experience.For as long as we are in the flesh, we will have unfinished business that needs tending to, whatever the degree of enlightenment, even of a teacher. Nobody is exonerated.This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel. TWEETABLE QUOTES “And I would say a great way to realize the confirmation, not just the knowing, which could be abstract, to imbibe life and the experiences that life brings through interactions with students through interactions with anyone on the street. And to bring oneself into contact with the world is perhaps the most powerful way, not only to be confirmed in what one knows, you can think of the world as the playground for one's spirituality, and more than that, the testing ground, but also to go deeper. And not only be in the cave from time to time, but to become the cave. So there's no longer a need to go off to the cave. That happens when the inner and the outer are reconciled, unified, and ultimately seamlessly integrated.” (Jeff)“It's well said and I'm seeing the value of the dysfunction in bringing attention and awareness to the higher potential for the teaching and for the teacher. And, as you said, if we start with the goal of empowering, enabling everyone to have their own source connection, source realization, it does flow more smoothly. And if there's dissonance, that's a great indication that maybe we could be, maybe it's time, maybe doing more of that, maybe it wasn't time before. So the dissonance is valuable.” (Jeff)“The trap is there already, it's always ever present, and unless we continually work with it we are captured by the ghostly behaviors, the ghostly patterns, of this trap. For as long as we are in the flesh, even when we feel that we have worked through all our disowned content, there will always be more patterns that with greater power, and with greater intensity, and with greater illumination will come to the surface.” (Aviv) “Now what I'm describing here, in some way, is a central feature of the human experience, even in the child-parent relationship. We each, as children, we had the first moment when we said, well, my father, my mother - hopefully a little later than earlier - and there was, okay, they are human beings, too. They're flawed in their way, they have their weaknesses. And many of us experienced it very early in childhood, for some of us it came later. So there is a disillusionment crisis the student now experiences in relation to the teacher.” (Aviv) RESOURCES MENTIONED Portals of Perception WebsiteAviv's LinkedIn Aviv's TwitterAviv's WebsiteThe Guru Trap and the Golden Shadow

Listen Up Home Buyers—Jeff Jackson With FIMAVictoria: Hi, I'm Victoria Ray Henderson, the host of the NABA podcast, Listen Up Homebuyers. So happy to have back for a second round of conversations, Jeff Jackson, the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Federal Insurance Directorate. He leads flood insurance operations for the National Flood Insurance Program at FEMA. And Jeff, I want to thank you so much for being a guest again on Listen Up Homebuyers.Jeff: Thanks. It's great to be back.Victoria: So glad to have you. I'd like to start with a very general question. What should every homebuyer know about flood insurance?Jeff: The most important thing to know is then that in all but the rarest of cases, flood risk is not insured through your homeowner's insurance policy. If you want to have coverage for water that comes from the outside and comes inside your house, so not stink backups, not toilet backups. Those kinds of things, but water coming in from the outside, it requires a separate flood insurance policy. You can either buy that from the National Flood Insurance Program, which is through FIMA, or there often are a number of private flood insurance policies that you can buy as well.Victoria: So if somebody lives in an area that isn't by the coast, isn't necessarily by a creek or a river, what do they need to know about flood insurance?Jeff: Well, it floods everywhere. There have been in the last little bit under 25 years, 99% of the counties in America have flooded. So, it's happening somewhere in your county. And what I would say is it's not always readily apparent just by looking around and seeing the distance to the nearest water source, although that's an extremely important factor. Changes in our built environment, the more we see paving, the more we see development of what was traditionally green space can raise our flood risk as well. And so there can be an illusion that you don't have flood risk when in actuality, you're at least perhaps moderately risky. And that certainly is an area when you get there, you would at least want to strongly only consider buying a flood insurance policy.Victoria: Okay. So as you know, I only work for people buying homes as an exclusive buyer broker. So the first thing that we typically do when they're going to be buying a home is see how well they're qualified to obtain a mortgage. At what point should a home buyer be looking at the risk that could be potentially there in a house of interest?Jeff: I would say it's when you get that listing from your broker and you see a list of houses, it's good to go look them up on the FIMA maps to see if it's a place where you would have to buy flood insurance. And we certainly went over this the last time I was here. But for the folks who are checking in for the first time, if you are in a high-risk area, what's called a special flood hazard area, and you have a federally backed mortgage, which is most mortgages, then you're required to buy. For everyone else, it's an option to buy, and for those where it's required, certainly as you go through the lending process, that will be made clear to you.But really, getting back to the heart of your question, it's when you walk through the door of the house for the first time. It's everything from knowing if it's in a high-risk area as you go and choose to look at the listing, as well as when you walk through the property, look around and look for what are there any signs of water in this house? Are there stomp pumps? Has clearly work been done because there's a drainage issue in a basement? Many places have that. So you don't have to be scared away that it's a matter of going in and learning as much as you can about the property so that you make a decision about whether or not to purchase it, and then if you do purchase it; First, do you have to buy, have flood insurance? And then second, should you choose to buy flood insurance?Victoria: Right, I always tell people that I'm working with that when we go into a house, the first thing I'm going to tell you is everything that's wrong with it. And I go straight to the basement because we both live in the greater Washington, D.C. area, and we have a lot of wet basements, a lot of issues, along the Potomac River. Just last week, I'm working with clients in Old Town, Alexandria, and they were interested in a condominium, and I checked the flood maps, and it's in an A.E. flood map. Walk me through what your advice would be for a homebuyer in that situation if they really wanted to put an offer in on a place like that.Jeff: The first thing I would do is reach out to your insurance agent and get a quote, not just for homeowners insurance, but also for flood insurance. If you're in that A.E. zone, that's one of the zones that is required to purchase if you have a federally backed mortgage. So I would go get a flood quote and factor that in, the cost of that in, when you're determining the affordability of the house, and as you're comparing it to other properties, perhaps where you might not have to buy a flood insurance policy and make that part of your buying decision, the more you can learn about a property, including from the cost perspective. But your number one trigger should be, have your insurance agent on speed dial. So, when you see that house, you know that Saturday is coming, you're getting excited about going and looking at all these properties, you know for that one, you would have to factor in cost.Victoria: When people are looking at properties and it's zoned X, but they aren't that far from a zone A.E., you had mentioned that typical flood insurance isn't covered in most homeowners insurance. Is that correct?Jeff: That's right.Victoria: Yeah. So, if you are anywhere near an A.E., would your advice be to go ahead and look into flood insurance?Jeff: I would go ahead and do it for a couple of reasons. The FIMA flood maps are really a regulatory product designed to decide when we as a country and particularly looking out for the mortgage holders' interest, when we're going to say, hey, we need you to go ahead and purchase this insurance because your high risk. If you're just outside of the high-risk area, you're not no risk, and that's the biggest myth that we have to bust here as we teach folks about flood risk in America. You're probably at medium risk. Medium to medium high is a good way of characterizing it.What we know over time is it only takes about an inch of water that can quickly get you up to around a $25,000 cost repairing your home. So, in that circumstance, I certainly would buy a policy. It really gives you peace of mind. It is an expense and I know with housing being so expensive and insurance costs are rising, it's not exciting to add an additional expense into the household budget to be sure. But we talk to people every year who do have the coverage and who do experience a loss. And they look at, let's say, a $50,000 or $60,000 flood loss, which is pretty common.Victoria: Okay.Jeff: Not average, but common, and so if you don't have the coverage, you're looking at covering that, putting things on a credit card, taking it out of your home equity. If you just bought the property, depending upon the size of your down payment, you may not have a lot of equity, and it really can set you back. People get set back decades and don't financially or don't financially recover at all. So particularly for the people in that situation that you described, it would be a great investment. Your home is your biggest investment for most of us, and this certainly will help you protect that investment.Victoria: Is it possible to give kind of an average, and we're not going to hold you to this, but an average cost for flood insurance? So people have some idea of what they'd be looking at.Jeff: Our average cost is a little bit over $800 right now.Victoria: Okay.Jeff: But it can range and particularly for those who are just outside of a high-risk area, it's going to be a little bit more than that probably. But the average cost right now is just a little bit over $800. The National Flood Insurance Program was created because we have an insurability problem in America, as well as an affordability problem. We haven't unfortunately solved the affordability problem in all these years, but the NFIP is here and we'll sell a policy to anyone in any of the 22,600 participating communities. So that availability problem that we see with, you know, we see insurers pulling out of places like California. We see people dropping people in Florida, insurers dropping people in Florida.With the NFIP that we're going to be there and we're going to continue to sell you the insurance. It is going to be at a risk-based price. That's the affordability piece of things, and it's one of the reasons why certainly for those who can afford to do so, we encourage you to buy, and for those that can't afford it, we continue to advocate to Congress to provide some type of assistance, and we're hopeful that one day that'll be in place as well.Victoria: On this podcast, we're going to include some links so that people can learn more, from the FIMA maps and regarding the flood insurance that you're talking about. Is there anything else that you would like consumers to know and specifically, again, people who are buying homes, anything that you could share with your expertise?Jeff: One is that the FIMA flood map is a snapshot in time. It may be some vintage and certainly has to be reevaluated to make sure it continues to represent the flood picture every five years, but a lot can happen in five years. Maps get updated on a priority order. And so, it's not uncommon to see a 10-year-old map that probably is pretty close to what the risk is. But if you're expecting fine line gradations and risk, that's not really what it's designed to do. It's designed to say it's tremendously helpful for the folks in your community who manage the floodplain, particularly at the county level. It's an important technical product for them. It's important for realtors and it certainly important to help you learn if you have to buy.What it's not great at is a nuanced view of risk, and so I caution against over-reliance on the flood maps, and I think the way you look at it is the right way to think about it, which is not just, am I in or am I out of the high risk zone? But how close am I to water sources? And then give some thought and have some conversation around what have been the changes to the built environment? Say, every map will have a date on it. What's the environment? What's happened since that map was put into place? That certainly is one thing.The second thing I would say is for many years, there's been a school of thought, which is that if you don't have to buy the insurance, you don't need it, you don't need to talk about it. I caution against anybody, gives you a very dismissive, oh, you don't need that, and so we don't need to bother to talk about it. I think that's a thinking that's a little bit behind the times and is certainly not where I would want to be as a consumer in terms of getting service from whoever would be giving me that advice. So I would counsel against you don't need it. I think there are a number of great agents. There are a number of great insurance agents who will help talk you through a nuanced conversation. I think somebody who's willing to get in a conversation with you is where I would want to be as a buyer.Victoria: Yeah, I think exclusive buyer brokers like myself, and we're all over the country, one of the first things we want to do is educate and inform, which is why I have you on this podcast, because people need to know what the risks are, and then they can make a decision based on that. I live in the Washington area, and every summer, I end up flocking to the beach, just like everybody does. Sometimes I drive along that strip, that little narrow strip of Ocean City and Lewis, Delaware, and then Dewey and Rehoboth and just think, this is a pretty risky area.Jeff: Yeah, it certainly is, there's been so much evolution in the science of catastrophe modeling and learning all the flooding events that potentially could happen. The more I talk to those experts, the more that I learn is that the amount of time we're in a home is infinitesimally small. It's just minute, and you'll hear owners of homes say, I've been here for 10 years, I've been here for 15 years, and it's never flooded. So, it's probably not likely to flood. And while previous flooding experience is important, it's just such a small amount of time. I mean, the way the water patterns work, 100 years is just beginning to get to the point where you really get a keen sense of how water is moving around and what the risk is in a particular area.And then that's on top of the fact that we change things so much. I mean, we're fortunate to live in these areas where things are getting torn down and things are getting rebuilt and we need additional parking. And so, there's got to be an extra lot. And so, there's all these things that sort of hopefully will move us away from maybe the people selling us the property had it for 15 years and it never flooded there. I wouldn't let that be the end of my inquiry.Victoria: No, definitely not. I mean, it's the biggest financial commitment you're going to make in your life until you, I guess, do it again. But you don't want to make a mistake like this.Jeff: We have a great website called FloodSmart.gov. It has all kinds of information about flood insurance policies, and that's important, but also just about flood risk in America. So, it's a great resource to go out and learn a little bit. Encourage your listeners to go check that out and we've got some videos on that as well. So, go check that out.Victoria: Great. Jeff Jackson is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Federal Insurance Directorate. He leads flood insurance operations for the National Flood Insurance Program at FIMA. Jeff, it is such a pleasure to talk to you again about flood insurance here on Listen Up Homebuyers.Jeff: It was great to be with you. Thanks.FEMA flood insurance Listen Up, Home Buyers! The podcast offering advice and tips from true buyer agents. Host and Producer, Victoria Ray Henderson is the owner and broker of HomeBuyer Brokerage in the Washington D.C. area. Victoria is and a member of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents.

Jeff Morris, VP of Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss Couchbase's new columnar data store functionality, specific use cases for columnar data stores, and why AI gets better when it communicates with a cleaner pool of data. Jeff shares how more responsive databases could allow businesses like Dominos and United Airlines to create hyper-personalized experiences for their customers by utilizing more responsive databases. Jeff dives into the linked future of AI and data, and Corey learns about Couchbase's plans for the re:Invent conference. If you're attending re:Invent, you can visit Couchbase at booth 1095.About JeffJeff Morris is VP Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase (NASDAQ: BASE), a cloud database platform company that 30% of the Fortune 100 depend on.Links Referenced:Couchbase: https://www.couchbase.com/TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode of Screaming in the Cloud is brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. Also brought to us by Couchbase is today's victim, for lack of a better term. Jeff Morris is their VP of Product and Solutions Marketing. Jeff, thank you for joining me.Jeff: Thanks for having me, Corey, even though I guess I paid for it.Corey: Exactly. It's always great to say thank you when people give you things. I learned this from a very early age, and the only people who didn't were rude children and turned into worse adults.Jeff: Exactly.Corey: So, you are effectively announcing something new today, and I always get worried when a database company says that because sometimes it's a license that is going to upset people, sometimes it's dyed so deep in the wool of generative AI that, “Oh, we're now supporting vectors or whatnot.” Well, most of us don't know what that means.Jeff: Right.Corey: Fortunately, I don't believe that's what you're doing today. What have you got for us?Jeff: So, you're right. It's—well, what I'm doing is, we're announcing new stuff inside of Couchbase and helping Couchbase expand its market footprint, but we're not really moving away from our sweet spot, either, right? We like building—or being the database platform underneath applications. So, push us on the operational side of the operational versus analytic, kind of, database divide. But we are announcing a columnar data store inside of the Couchbase platform so that we can build bigger, better, stronger analytic functionality to feed the applications that we're supporting with our customers.Corey: Now, I feel like I should ask a question around what a columnar data store is because my first encounter with the term was when I had a very early client for AWS bill optimization when I was doing this independently, and I was asking them the… polite question of, “Why do you have 283 billion objects in a single S3 bucket? That is atypical and kind of terrifying.” And their answer was, “Oh, we built our own columnar data store on top of S3. This might not have been the best approach.” It's like, “I'm going to stop you there. With no further information, I can almost guarantee you that it was not.” But what is a columnar data store?Jeff: Well, let's start with the, everybody loves more data and everybody loves to count more things, right, but a columnar data store allows you to expedite the kind of question that you ask of the data itself by not having to look at every single row of the data while you go through it. You can say, if you know you're only looking for data that's inside of California, you just look at the column value of find me everything in California and then I'll pick all of those records to analyze. So, it gives you a faster way to go through the data while you're trying to gather it up and perform aggregations against it.Corey: It seems like it's one of those, “Well, that doesn't sound hard,” type of things, when you're thinking about it the way that I do, in terms of a database being more or less a medium to large size Excel spreadsheet. But I have it on good faith from all the customer environments. I've worked with that no, no, there are data stores that span even larger than that, which is, you know, one of those sad realities of the world. And everything at scale begins to be a heck of a lot harder. I've seen some of the value that this stuff offers and I can definitely understand a few different workloads in which case that's going to be super handy. What are you targeting specifically? Or is this one of those areas where you're going to learn from your customers?Jeff: Well, we've had analytic functionality inside the platform. It just, at the size and scale customers actually wanted to roam through the data, we weren't supporting that that much. So, we'll expand that particular footprint, it'll give us better integration capabilities with external systems, or better access to things in your bucket. But the use case problem is, I think, going to be driven by what new modern application requirements are going to be. You're going to need, we call it hyper-personalization because we tend to cater to B2C-style applications, things with a lot of account profiles built into them.So, you look at account profile, and you're like, “Oh, well Jeff likes blue, so sell him blue stuff.” And that's a great current level personalization, but with a new analytic engine against this, you can maybe start aggregating all the inventory information that you might have of all the blue stuff that you want to sell me and do that in real-time, so I'm getting better recommendations, better offers as I'm shopping on your site or looking at my phone and, you know, looking for the next thing I want to buy.Corey: I'm sure there's massive amounts of work that goes into these hyper-personalization stories. The problem is that the only time they really rise to our notice is when they fail hilariously. Like, you just bought a TV, would you like to buy another? Now statistically, you are likelier to buy a second TV right after you buy one, but for someone who just, “Well, I'm replacing my living room TV after ten years,” it feels ridiculous. Or when you buy a whole bunch of nails and they don't suggest, “Would you like to also perhaps buy a hammer?”It's one of those areas where it just seems like a human putting thought into this could make some sense. But I've seen some of the stuff that can come out of systems like this and it can be incredible. I also personally tend to bias towards use cases that are less, here's how to convince you to buy more things and start aiming in a bunch of other different directions where it starts meeting emerging use cases or changing situations rapidly, more rapidly than a human can in some cases. The world has, for better or worse, gotten an awful lot faster over the last few decades.Jeff: Yeah. And think of it in terms of how responsive can I be at any given moment. And so, let's pick on one of the more recent interesting failures that has popped up. I'm a Giants fan, San Francisco Giants fan, so I'll pick on the Dodgers. The Dodgers during the baseball playoffs, Clayton Kershaw—three-time MVP, Cy Young Award winner, great, great pitcher—had a first-inning meltdown of colossal magnitude: gave up 11 runs in the first inning to the Diamondbacks.Well, my customer Domino's Pizza could end up—well, let's shift the focus of our marketing. We—you know, the Dodgers are the best team in baseball this year in the National League—let's focus our attention there, but with that meltdown, let's pivot to Arizona and focus on our market in Phoenix. And they could do that within minutes or seconds, even, with the kinds of capabilities that we're coming up with here so that they can make better offers to that new environment and also do the decision intelligence behind it. Like, do I have enough dough to make a bigger offer in that big market? Do I have enough drivers or do I have to go and spin out and get one of the other food delivery folks—UberEats, or something like that—to jump on board with me and partner up on this kind of system?It's that responsiveness in real, real-time, right, that's always been kind of the conundrum between applications and analytics. You get an analytic insight, but it takes you an hour or a day to incorporate that into what the application is doing. This is intended to make all of that stuff go faster. And of course, when we start to talk about things in AI, right, AI is going to expect real-time responsiveness as best you can make it.Corey: I figure we have to talk about AI. That is a technology that has absolutely sprung to the absolute peak of the hype curve over the past year. OpenAI released Chat-Gippity, either late last year or early this year and suddenly every company seems to be falling all over itself to rebrand itself as an AI company, where, “We've been working on this for decades,” they say, right before they announce something that very clearly was crash-developed in six months. And every company is trying to drape themselves in the mantle of AI. And I don't want to sound like I'm a doubter here. I'm like most fans; I see an awful lot of value here. But I am curious to get your take on what do you think is real and what do you think is not in the current hype environment.Jeff: So yeah, I love that. I think there's a number of things that are, you know, are real is, it's not going away. It is going to continue to evolve and get better and better and better. One of my analyst friends came up with the notion that the exercise of generative AI, it's imprecise, so it gives you similarity things, and that's actually an improvement, in many cases, over the precision of a database. Databases, a transaction either works or it doesn't. It has failover or it doesn't, when—Corey: It's ideally deterministic when you ask it a question—Jeff: Yes.Corey: —the same question a second time, assuming it's not time-bound—Jeff: Gives you the right answer.Corey: Yeah, the sa—or at least the same answer.Jeff: The same answer. And your gen AI may not. So, that's a part of the oddity of the hype. But then it also helps me kind of feed our storyline of if you're going to try and make Gen AI closer and more accurate, you need a clean pool of data that you're dealing with, even though you've got probably—your previous design was such that you would use a relational database for transactions, a document database for your user profiles, you'd probably attach your website to a caching database because you needed speed and a lot of concurrency. Well, now you got three different databases there that you're operating.And if you're feeding data from each of those databases back to AI, one of them might be wrong or one of them might confuse the AI, yet how are you going to know? The complexity level is going to become, like, exponential. So, our premise is, because we're a multi-modal database that incorporates in-memory speed and documents and search and transactions and the like, if you start with a cleaner pool of data, you'll have less complexity that you're offering to your AI system and therefore you can steer it into becoming more accurate in its response. And then, of course, all the data that we're dealing with is on mobile, right? Data is created there for, let's say, your account profile, and then it's also consumed there because that's what people are using as their application interface of choice.So, you also want to have mobile interactivity and synchronization and local storage, kind of, capabilities built in there. So, those are kind of, you know, a couple of the principles that we're looking at of, you know, JSON is going to be a great format for it regardless of what happens; complexity is kind of the enemy of AI, so you don't want to go there; and mobility is going to be an absolute requirement. And then related to this particular announcement, large-scale aggregation is going to be a requirement to help feed the application. There's always going to be some other bigger calculation that you're going to want to do relatively in real time and feed it back to your users or the AI system that's helping them out.Corey: I think that that is a much more nuanced use case than a lot of the stuff that's grabbing customer attentions where you effectively have the Chat-Gippity story of it being an incredible parrot. Where I have run into trouble with the generative story has been people putting the thing that the robot that's magic and from the future has come up with off the cuff and just hurling that out into the universe under their own name without any human review, and that's fine sometimes sure, but it does get it hilariously wrong at some points. And the idea of sending something out under my name that has not been at least reviewed by me if not actually authored by me, is abhorrent. I mean, I review even the transactional, “Yes, you have successfully subscribed,” or, “Sorry to see you go,” email confirmations on stuff because there's an implicit, “Hugs and puppies, love Corey,” at the end of everything that goes out under my name.Jeff: Right.Corey: But I've gotten a barrage of terrible sales emails and companies that are trying to put the cart before the horse where either the, “Support rep,” quote-unquote, that I'm speaking to in the chat is an AI system or else needs immediate medical attention because there's something going on that needs assistance.Jeff: Yeah, they just don't understand.Corey: Right. And most big enterprise stories that I've heard so far that have come to light have been around the form of, “We get to fire most of our customer service staff,” an outcome that basically no one sensible wants. That is less compelling than a lot of the individualized consumer use cases. I love asking it, “Here's a blog post I wrote. Give me ten title options.” And I'll usually take one of them—one of them is usually not half bad and then I can modify it slightly.Jeff: And you'll change four words in it. Yeah.Corey: Yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a different use case.Jeff: It's been an interesting—even as we've all become familiar—or at least junior prompt engineers, right—is, your information is only going to be as good as you feed the AI system—the return is only going to be as good—so you're going to want to refine that kind of conversation. Now, we're not trying to end up replacing the content that gets produced or the writing of all kinds of pros, other than we do have a code generator that works inside of our environment called Capella iQ that talks to ChatGPT, but we try and put guardrails on that too, right, as always make sure that it's talking in terms of the context of Couchbase rather than, “Where's Taylor Swift this week,” which I don't want it to answer because I don't want to spend GPT money to answer that question for you.Corey: And it might not know the right answer, but it might very well spit out something that sounds plausible.Jeff: Exactly. But I think the kinds of applications that we're steering ourselves toward can be helped along by the Gen AI systems, but I don't expect all my customers are going to be writing automatic blog post generation kinds of applications. I think what we're ultimately trying to do is facilitate interactions in a way that we haven't dreamt of yet, right? One of them might be if I've opted into to loyalty programs, like my United account and my American Express account—Corey: That feels very targeted at my lifestyle as well, so please, continue.Jeff: Exactly, right? And so, what I really want the system to do is for Amex to reward me when I hit 1k status on United while I'm on the flight and you know, have the flight attendant come up and be like, “Hey, you did it. Either, here's a free upgrade from American Express”—that would be hyper-personalization because you booked your plane ticket with it, but they also happen to know or they cross-consumed information that I've opted into.Corey: I've seen them congratulate people for hitting a million miles flown mid-flight, but that's clearly something that they've been tracking and happens a heck of a lot less frequently. This is how you start scaling that experience.Jeff: Yes. But that happened because American Airlines was always watching because that was an American Airlines ad ages ago, right, but the same principle holds true. But I think there's going to be a lot more of these: how much information am I actually allowing to be shared amongst the, call it loyalty programs, but the data sources that I've opted into. And my God, there's hundreds of them that I've personally opted into, whether I like it or not because everybody needs my email address, kind of like what you were describing earlier.Corey: A point that I have that I think agrees largely with your point is that few things to me are more frustrating than what I'm signing up, for example, oh, I don't know, an AWS even—gee, I can't imagine there's anything like that going on this week—and I have to fill out an entire form that always asked me the same questions: how big my company is, whether we have multiple workloads on, what industry we're in. And no matter what I put into that, first, it never remembers me for the next time, which is frustrating in its own right, but two, no matter what I put in to fill that thing out, the email I get does not change as a result. At one point, I said, all right—I'm picking randomly—“I am a venture capitalist based in Sweden,” and I got nothing that is differentiated from the other normal stuff I get tied to my account because I use a special email address for those things, sometimes just to see what happens. And no, if you're going to make me jump through the hoops to give you the data, at least use it to make my experience better. It feels like I'm asking for the moon here, but I shouldn't be.Jeff: Yes. [we need 00:16:19] to make your experience better and say, you know, “Here's four companies in Malmo that you ought to be talking to. And they happen to be here at the AWS event and you can go find them because their booth is here, here, and here.” That kind of immediate responsiveness could be facilitated, and to our point, ought to be facilitated. It's exactly like that kind of thing is, use the data in real-time.I was talking to somebody else today that was discussing that most data, right, becomes stale and unvaluable, like, 50% of the data, its value goes to zero after about a day. And some of it is stale after about an hour. So, if you can end up closing that responsiveness gap that we were describing—and this is kind of what this columnar service inside of Capella is going to be like—is react in real-time with real-time calculation and real-time look-up and real-time—find out how you might apply that new piece of information right now and then give it back to the consumer or the user right now.Corey: So, Couchbase takes a few different forms. I should probably, at least for those who are not steeped in the world of exotic forms of database, I always like making these conversations more accessible to folks who are not necessarily up to speed. Personally, I tend to misuse anything as a database, if I can hold it just the wrong way.Jeff: The wrong way. I've caught that about you.Corey: Yeah, it's—everything is a database if you hold it wrong. But you folks have a few different options: you have a self-managed commercial offering; you're an open-source project, so I can go ahead and run it on my own infrastructure however I want; and you have Capella, which is Couchbase as a service. And all of those are useful and have their points, and I'm sure I'm missing at least one or two along the way. But do you find that the columnar use case is going to disproportionately benefit folks using Capella in ways that the self-hosted version would not be as useful for, or is this functionality already available in other expressions of Couchbase?Jeff: It's not already available in other expressions, although there is analytic functionality in the self-managed version of Couchbase. But it's, as I've mentioned I think earlier, it's just not as scalable or as really real-time as far as we're thinking. So, it's going to—yes, it's going to benefit the database as a service deployments of Couchbase available on your favorite three clouds, and still interoperable with environments that you might self-manage and self-host. So, there could be even use cases where our development team or your development team builds in AWS using the cloud-oriented features, but is still ultimately deploying and hosting and managing a self-managed environment. You could still do all of that. So, there's still a great interplay and interoperability amongst our different deployment options.But the fun part, I think, about this is not only is it going to help the Capella user, there's a lot of other things inside Couchbase that help address the developers' penchant for trading zero-cost for degrees of complexity that you're willing to accept because you want everything to be free and open-source. And Couchbase is my fifth open-source company in my background, so I'm well, well versed in the nuances of what open-source developers are seeking. But what makes Couchbase—you know, its origin story really cool too, though, is it's the peanut butter and chocolate marriage of memcached and the people behind that and membase and CouchDB from [Couch One 00:19:54]. So, I can't think of that many—maybe Red Hat—project and companies that formed up by merging two complementary open-source projects. So, we took the scale and—Corey: You have OpenTelemetry, I think, that did that once, but that—you see occasional mergers, but it's very far from common.Jeff: But it's very, very infrequent. But what that made the Couchbase people end up doing is make a platform that will scale, make a data design that you can auto partition anywhere, anytime, and then build independently scalable services on top of that, one for SQL++, the query language. Anyone who knows SQL will be able to write something in Couchbase immediately. And I've got this AI Automator, iQ, that makes it even easier; you just say, “Write me a SQL++ query that does this,” and it'll do that. But then we added full-text search, we added eventing so you can stream data, we added the analytics capability originally and now we're enhancing it, and use JSON as our kind of universal data format so that we can trade data with applications really easily.So, it's a cool design to start with, and then in the cloud, we're steering towards things like making your entry point and using our database as a service—Capella—really, really, really inexpensive so that you get that same robustness of functionality, as well as the easy cost of entry that today's developers want. And it's my analyst friends that keep telling me the cloud is where the markets going to go, so we're steering ourselves towards that hockey puck location.Corey: I frequently remark that the role of the DBA might not be vanishing, but it's definitely changing, especially since the last time I counted, if you hold them and use as directed, AWS has something on the order of 14 distinct managed database offerings. Some are general purpose, some are purpose-built, and if this trend keeps up, in a decade, the DBA role is going to be determining which of its 40 databases is going to be the right fit for a given workload. That seems to be the counter-approach to a general-purpose database that works across the board. Clearly you folks have opinions on this. Where do you land?Jeff: Oh, so absolutely. There's the product that is a suite of capabilities—or that are individual capabilities—and then there's ones that are, in my case, kind of multi-model and do lots of things at once. I think historically, you'll recognize—because this is—let's pick on your phone—the same holds true for, you know, your phone used to be a watch, used to be a Palm Pilot, used to be a StarTAC telephone, and your calendar application, your day planner all at the same time. Well, it's not anymore. Technology converges upon itself; it's kind of a historical truism.And the database technologies are going to end up doing that—or continue to do that, even right now. So, that notion that—it's a ten-year-old notion of use a purpose-built database for that particular workload. Maybe sometimes in extreme cases that is the appropriate thing, but in more cases than not right now, if you need transactions when you need them, that's fine, I can do that. You don't necessarily need Aurora or RDS or Postgres to do that. But when you need search and geolocation, I support that too, so you don't need Elastic. And then when you need caching and everything, you don't need ElastiCache; it's all built-in.So, that multi-model notion of operate on the same pool of data, it's a lot less complex for your developers, they can code faster and better and more cleanly, debugging is significantly easier. As I mentioned, SQL++ is our language. It's basically SQL syntax for JSON. We're a reference implementation of this language, along with—[AsteriskDB 00:23:42] is one of them, and actually, the original author of that language also wrote DynamoDB's PartiQL.So, it's a common language that you wouldn't necessarily imagine, but the ease of entry in all of this, I think, is still going to be a driving goal for people. The old people like me and you are running around worrying about, am I going to get a particular, really specific feature out of the full-text search environment, or the other one that I pick on now is, “Am I going to need a vector database, too?” And the answer to me is no, right? There's going—you know, the database vendors like ourselves—and like Mongo has announced and a whole bunch of other NoSQL vendors—we're going to support that. It's going to be just another mode, and you get better bang for your buck when you've got more modes than a single one at a time.Corey: The consensus opinion that's emerging is very much across the board that vector is a feature, not a database type.Jeff: Not a category, yeah. Me too. And yeah, we're well on board with that notion, as well. And then like I said earlier, the JSON as a vehicle to give you all of that versatility is great, right? You can have vector information inside a JSON document, you can have time series information in the document, you could have graph node locations and ID numbers in a JSON array, so you don't need index-free adjacency or some of the other cleverness that some of my former employers have done. It really is all converging upon itself and hopefully everybody starts to realize that you can clean up and simplify your architectures as you look ahead, so that you do—if you're going to build AI-powered applications—feed it clean data, right? You're going to be better off.Corey: So, this episode is being recorded in advance, thankfully, but it's going to release the first day of re:Invent. What are you folks doing at the show, for those who are either there and for some reason, listening to a podcast rather than going to getting marketed to by a variety of different pitches that all mention AI or might even be watching from home and trying to figure out what to make of it?Jeff: Right. So, of course we have a booth, and my notes don't have in front of me what our booth number is, but you'll see it on the signs in the airport. So, we'll have a presence there, we'll have an executive briefing room available, so we can schedule time with anyone who wants to come talk to us. We'll be showing not only the capabilities that we're offering here, we'll show off Capella iQ, our coding assistant, okay—so yeah, we're on the AI hype band—but we'll also be showing things like our mobile sync capability where my phone and your phone can synchronize data amongst themselves without having to actually have a live connection to the internet. So, long as we're on the same network locally within the Venetian's network, we have an app that we have people download from the Apple Store and then it's a color synchronization app or picture synchronization app.So, you tap it, and it changes on my screen and I tap it and it changes on your screen, and we'll have, I don't know, as many people who are around standing there, synchronizing, what, maybe 50 phones at a time. It's actually a pretty slick demonstration of why you might want a database that's not only in the cloud but operates around the cloud, operates mobile-ly, operates—you know, can connect and disconnect to your networks. It's a pretty neat scenario. So, we'll be showing a bunch of cool technical stuff as well as talking about the things that we're discussing right now.Corey: I will say you're putting an awful lot of faith in conductivity working at re:Invent, be it WiFi or the cellular network. I know that both of those have bitten me in various ways over the years. But I wish you the best on it. I think it's going to be an interesting show based upon everything I've heard in the run-up to it. I'm just glad it's here.Jeff: Now, this is the cool part about what I'm talking about, though. The cool part about what I'm talking about is we can set up our own wireless network in our booth, and we still—you'd have to go to the app store to get this application, but once there, I can have you switch over to my local network and play around on it and I can sync the stuff right there and have confidence that in my local network that's in my booth, the system's working. I think that's going to be ultimately our design there because oh my gosh, yes, I have a hundred stories about connectivity and someone blowing a demo because they're yanking on a cable behind the pulpit, right?Corey: I always build in a—and assuming there's no connectivity, how can I fake my demos, just because it's—I've only had to do it once, but you wind up planning in advance when you start doing a talk to a large enough or influential enough audience where you want things to go right.Jeff: There's a delightful acceptance right now of recorded videos and demonstrations that people sort of accept that way because of exactly all this. And I'm sure we'll be showing that in our booth there too.Corey: Given the non-deterministic nature of generative AI, I'm sort of surprised whenever someone hasn't mocked the demo in advance, just because yeah, gives the right answer in the rehearsal, but every once in a while, it gets completely unglued.Jeff: Yes, and we see it pretty regularly. So, the emergence of clever and good prompt engineering is going to be a big skill for people. And hopefully, you know, everybody's going to figure out how to pass it along to their peers.Corey: Excellent. We'll put links to all this in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing how well this works out for you. Best of luck at the show and thanks for speaking with me. I appreciate it.Jeff: Yeah, Corey. We appreciate the support, and I think the show is going to be very strong for us as well. And thanks for having me here.Corey: Always a pleasure. Jeff Morris, VP of Product and Solutions Marketing at Couchbase. This episode has been brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. And I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment, but if you want to remain happy, I wouldn't ask that podcast platform what database they're using. No one likes the answer to those things.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Jeff Geerling, Owner of Midwestern Mac, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the importance of storytelling, problem-solving, and community in the world of cloud. Jeff shares how and why he creates content that can appeal to anybody, rather than focusing solely on the technical qualifications of his audience, and how that strategy has paid off for him. Corey and Jeff also discuss the impact of leading with storytelling as opposed to features in product launches, and what's been going on in the Raspberry Pi space recently. Jeff also expresses the impact that community has on open-source companies, and reveals his take on the latest moves from Red Hat and Hashicorp. About JeffJeff is a father, author, developer, and maker. He is sometimes called "an inflammatory enigma".Links Referenced:Personal webpage: https://jeffgeerling.com/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. A bit off the beaten path of the usual cloud-focused content on this show, today I'm speaking with Jeff Geerling, YouTuber, author, content creator, enigma, and oh, so much more. Jeff, thanks for joining me.Jeff: Thanks for having me, Corey.Corey: So, it's hard to figure out where you start versus where you stop, but I do know that as I've been exploring a lot of building up my own home lab stuff, suddenly you are right at the top of every Google search that I wind up conducting. I was building my own Kubernete on top of a Turing Pi 2, and sure enough, your teardown was the first thing that I found that, to be direct, was well-documented, and made it understandable. And that's not the first time this year that that's happened to me. What do you do exactly?Jeff: I mean, I do everything. And I started off doing web design and then I figured that design is very, I don't know, once it started transitioning to everything being JavaScript, that was not my cup of tea. So, I got into back-end work, databases, and then I realized to make that stuff work well, you got to know the infrastructure. So, I got into that stuff. And then I realized, like, my home lab is a great place to experiment on this, so I got into Raspberry Pis, low-power computing efficiency, building your own home lab, all that kind of stuff.So, all along the way, with everything I do, I always, like, document everything like crazy. That's something my dad taught me. He's an engineer in radio. And he actually hired me for my first job, he had me write an IT operations manual for the Radio Group in St. Louis. And from that point forward, that's—I always start with documentation. So, I think that was probably what really triggered that whole series. It happens to me too; I search for something, I find my old articles or my own old projects on GitHub or blog posts because I just put everything out there.Corey: I was about to ask, years ago, I was advised by Scott Hanselman to—the third time I find myself explaining something, write a blog post about it because it's easier to refer people back to that thing than it is for me to try and reconstruct it on the fly, and I'll drop things here and there. And the trick is, of course, making sure it doesn't sound dismissive and like, “Oh, I wrote a thing. Go read.” Instead of having a conversation with people. But as a result, I'll be Googling how to do things from time to time and come up with my own content as a result.It's at least a half-step up from looking at forums and the rest, where I realized halfway through that I was the one asking the question. Like, “Oh, well, at least this is useful for someone.” And I, for better or worse, at least have a pattern of going back and answering how I solved a thing after I get there, just because otherwise, it's someone asked the question ten years ago and never returns, like, how did you solve it? What did you do? It's good to close that loop.Jeff: Yeah, and I think over 50% of what I do, I've done before. When you're setting up a Kubernetes cluster, there's certain parts of it that you're going to do every time. So, whatever's not automated or the tricky bits, I always document those things. Anything that is not in the readme, is not in the first few steps, because that will help me and will help others. I think that sometimes that's the best success I've found on YouTube is also just sharing an experience.And I think that's what separates some of the content that really drives growth on a YouTube channel or whatever, or for an organization doing it because you bring the experience, like, I'm a new person to this Home Assistant, for instance, which I use to automate things at my house. I had problems with it and I just shared those problems in my video, and that video has, you know, hundreds of thousands of views. Whereas these other people who know way more than I could ever know about Home Assistant, they're pulling in fewer views because they just get into a tutorial and don't have that perspective of a beginner or somebody that runs into an issue and how do you solve that issue.So, like I said, I mean, I just always share that stuff. Every time that I have an issue with anything technological, I put it on GitHub somewhere. And then eventually, if it's something that I can really formulate into an outline of what I did, I put a blog post up on my blog. I still, even though I write I don't know how many words per week that goes into my YouTube videos or into my books or anything, I still write two or three blog posts a week that are often pretty heavy into technical detail.Corey: One of the challenges I've always had is figuring out who exactly I'm storytelling for when I'm putting something out there. Because there's a plethora, at least in cloud, of beginner content of, here's how to think about cloud, here's what the service does, here's why you should use it et cetera, et cetera. And that's all well and good, but often the things that I'm focusing on presuppose a certain baseline level of knowledge that you should have going into this. If you're trying to figure out the best way to get some service configured, I probably shouldn't have to spend the first half of the article talking about what AWS is, as a for instance. And I think that inherently limits the size of the potential audience that would be interested in the content, but it's also the kind of stuff that I wish was out there.Jeff: Yeah. There's two sides to that, too. One is, you can make content that appeals to anybody, even if they have no clue what you're talking about, or you can make content that appeals to the narrow audience that knows the base level of understanding you need. So, a lot of times with—especially on my YouTube channel, I'll put things in that is just irrelevant to 99% of the population, but I get so many comments, like, “I have no clue what you said or what you're doing, but this looks really cool.” Like, “This is fun or interesting.” Just because, again, it's bringing that story into it.Because really, I think on a base level, a lot of programmers especially don't understand—and infrastructure engineers are off the deep end on this—they don't understand the interpersonal nature of what makes something good or not, what makes something relatable. And trying to bring that into technical documentation a lot of times is what differentiates a project. So, one of the products I love and use and recommend everywhere and have a book on—a best-selling book—is Ansible. And one of the things that brought me into it and has brought so many people is the documentation started—it's gotten a little bit more complex over the years—but it started out as, “Here's some problems. Here's how you solve them.”Here's, you know, things that we all run into, like how do you connect to 12 servers at the same time? How do you have groups of servers? Like, it showed you all these little examples. And then if you wanted to go deeper, there was more documentation linked out of that. But it was giving you real-world scenarios and doing it in a simple way. And it used some little easter eggs and fun things that made it more interesting, but I think that that's missing from a lot of technical discussion and a lot of technical documentation out there is that playfulness, that human side, the get from Point A to Point B and here's why and here's how, but here's a little interesting way to do it instead of just here's how it's done.Corey: In that same era, I was one of the very early developers behind SaltStack, and I think one of the reasons that Ansible won in the market was that when you started looking into SaltStack, it got wrapped around its own axle talking about how it uses ZeroMQ for a full mesh between all of the systems there, as long—sorry [unintelligible 00:07:39] mesh network that all routes—not really a mesh network at all—it talks through a single controller that then talks to all of its subordinate nodes. Great. That's awesome. How do I use this to install a web server, is the question that people had. And it was so in love with its own cleverness in some ways. Ansible was always much more approachable in that respect and I can't understate just how valuable that was for someone who just wants to get the problem solved.Jeff: Yeah. I also looked at something like NixOS. It's kind of like the arch of distributions of—Corey: You must be at least this smart to use it in some respects—Jeff: Yeah, it's—Corey: —has been the every documentation I've had with that.Jeff: [laugh]. There's, like, this level of pride in what it does, that doesn't get to ‘and it solves this problem.' You can get there, but you have to work through the barrier of, like, we're so much better, or—I don't know what—it's not that. Like, it's just it doesn't feel like, “You're new to this and here's how you can solve a problem today, right now.” It's more like, “We have this golden architecture and we want you to come up to it.” And it's like, well, but I'm not ready for that. I'm just this random developer trying to solve the problem.Corey: Right. Like, they should have someone hanging out in their IRC channel and just watch for a week of who comes in and what questions do they have when they're just getting started and address those. Oh, you want to wind up just building a Nix box EC2 for development? Great, here's how you do that, and here's how to think about your workflow as you go. Instead, I found that I had to piece it together from a bunch of different blog posts and the rest and each one supposed that I had different knowledge coming into it than the others. And I felt like I was getting tangled up very easily.Jeff: Yeah, and I think it's telling that a lot of people pick up new technology through blog posts and Substack and Medium and whatever [Tedium 00:09:19], all these different platforms because it's somebody that's solving a problem and relating that problem, and then you have the same problem. A lot of times in the documentation, they don't take that approach. They're more like, here's all our features and here's how to use each feature, but they don't take a problem-based approach. And again, I'm harping on Ansible here with how good the documentation was, but it took that approach is you have a bunch of servers, you want to manage them, you want to install stuff on them, and all the examples flowed from that. And then you could get deeper into the direct documentation of how things worked.As a polar opposite of that, in a community that I'm very much involved in still—well, not as much as I used to be—is Drupal. Their documentation was great for developers but not so great for beginners and that was always—it still is a difficulty in that community. And I think it's a difficulty in many, especially open-source communities where you're trying to build the community, get more people interested because that's where the great stuff comes from. It doesn't come from one corporation that controls it, it comes from the community of users who are passionate about it. And it's also tough because for something like Drupal, it gets more complex over time and the complexity kind of kills off the initial ability to think, like, wow, this is a great little thing and I can get into it and start using it.And a similar thing is happening with Ansible, I think. We were at when I got started, there were a couple hundred modules. Now there's, like, 4000 modules, or I don't know how many modules, and there's all these collections, and there's namespaces now, all these things that feel like Java overhead type things leaking into it. And that diminishes that ability for me to see, like, oh, this is my simple tool that solving these problems.Corey: I think that that is a lost art in the storytelling side of even cloud marketing, where they're so wrapped around how they do what they do that they forget, customers don't care. Customers care very much about their problem that they're trying to solve. If you have an answer for solving that problem, they're very interested. Otherwise, they do not care. That seems to be a missing gap.Jeff: I think, like, especially for AWS, Google, Azure cloud platforms, when they build their new services, sometimes you're, like, “And that's for who?” For some things, it's so specialized, like, Snowmobile from Amazon, like, there's only a couple customers on the planet in a given year that needs something like that. But it's a cool story, so it's great to put that into your presentation. But some other things, like, especially nowadays with AI, seems like everybody's throwing tons of AI stuff—spaghetti—at the wall, seeing what will stick and then that's how they're doing it. But that really muddies up everything.If you have a clear vision, like with Apple, they just had their presentation on the new iPhone and the new neural engine and stuff, they talk about, “We see your heart patterns and we tell you when your heart is having problems.” They don't talk about their AI features or anything. I think that leading with that story and saying, like, here's how we use this, here's how customers can build off of it, those stories are the ones that are impactful and make people remember, like, oh Apple is the company that saves people's lives by making watches that track their heart. People don't think that about Google, even though they might have the same feature. Google says we have all these 75 sensors in our thing and we have this great platform and Android and all that. But they don't lead with the story.And that's something where I think corporate Apple is better than some of the other organizations, no matter what the technology is. But I get that feeling a lot when I'm watching launches from Amazon and Google and all their big presentations. It seems like they're tech-heavy and they're driven by, like, “What could we do with this? What could you do with this new platform that we're building,” but not, “And this is what we did with this other platform,” kind of building up through that route.Corey: Something I've been meaning to ask someone who knows for a while, and you are very clearly one of those people, I spend a lot of time focusing on controlling cloud costs and I used to think that Managed NAT Gateways were very expensive. And then I saw the current going rates for Raspberries Pi. And that has been a whole new level of wild. I mean, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you use Home Assistant. I do too.But I was contrasting the price between a late model, Raspberry Pi 4—late model; it's three years old if this point of memory serves, maybe four—versus a used small form factor PC from HP, and the second was less expensive and far more capable. Yeah it drags a bit more power and it's a little bit larger on the shelf, but it was basically no contest. What has been going on in that space?Jeff: I think one of the big things is we're at a generational improvement with those small form-factor little, like, tiny-size almost [nook-sized 00:13:59] PCs that were used all over the place in corporate environments. I still—like every doctor's office you go to, every hospital, they have, like, a thousand of these things. So, every two or three or four years, however long it is on their contract, they just pop all those out the door and then you get an E-waste company that picks up a thousand of these boxes and they got to offload them. So, the nice thing is that it seems like a year or two ago, that really started accelerating to the point where the price was driven down below 100 bucks for a fully built-out little x86 Mini PC. Sure, it's, you know, like you said, a few generations old and it pulls a little bit more power, usually six to eight watts at least, versus a Raspberry Pi at two to three watts, but especially for those of us in the US, electricity is not that expensive so adding two or three watts to your budget for a home lab computer is not that bad.The other part of that is, for the past two-and-a-half years because of the global chip shortages and because of the decisions that Raspberry Pi made, there were so few Raspberry Pis available that their prices shot up through the roof if you wanted to get one in any timely fashion. So, that finally is clearing up, although I went to the Micro Center near me yesterday, and they said that they have not had stock of Raspberry Pi 4s for, like, two months now. So, they're coming, but they're not distributed evenly everywhere. And still, the best answer, especially if you're going to run a lot of things on it, is probably to buy one of those little mini PCs if you're starting out a home lab.Or there's some other content creators who build little Kubernetes clusters with multiple mini PCs. Three of those stack up pretty nicely and they're still super quiet. I think they're great for home labs. I have two of them over on my shelf that I'm using for testing and one of them is actually in my rack. And I have another one on my desk here that I'm trying to set up for a five gigabit home router since I finally got fiber internet after years with cable and I'm still stuck on my old gigabit router.Corey: Yeah, I wound up switching to a Protectli, I think is what it's called for—it's one of those things I've installed pfSense on. Which, I'm an old FreeBSD hand and I haven't kept up with it, but that's okay. It feels like going back in time ten years, in some respects—Jeff: [laugh].Corey: —so all right. And I have a few others here and there for various things that I want locally. But invariably, I've had the WiFi controller; I've migrated that off. That lives on an EC2 box in Ohio now. And I do wind up embracing cloud services when I don't want it to go down and be consistently available, but for small stuff locally, I mean, I have an antenna on the roof doing an ADS-B receiver dance that's plugged into a Pi Zero.I have some backlogged stuff on this, but they've gotten expensive as alternatives have dropped in price significantly. But what I'm finding as I'm getting more into 3D printing and a lot of hobbyist maker tools out there, everything is built with the Raspberry Pi in mind; it has the mindshare. And yeah, I can get something with similar specs that are equivalent, but then I've got to do a whole bunch of other stuff as soon as it gets into controlling hardware via GPIO pins or whatnot. And I have to think about it very differently.Jeff: Yeah, and that's the tough thing. And that's the reason why Raspberry Pis, even though they're three years old, even though they're hard to get, they still are fetching—on the used market—way more than the original MSRP. It's just crazy. But the reason for that is the Raspberry Pi organization. And there's two: there's the Raspberry Pi Foundation that's goals are to increase educational computing and accessibility for computers for kids and learning and all that, then there's the Raspberry Pi trading company that makes the Raspberry Pis.The Trading Company has engineers who sit there 24/7 working on the software, working on the kernel drivers, working on hardware bugs, listening to people on the forums and in GitHub and everywhere, and they're all English-speaking people there—they're over in the UK—and they manufacture their own boards. So, there's a lot of things on top of that, even though they're using some silicons of Broadcom chips that are a little bit locked down and not completely open-source like some other chips might be, they're a phone number you could call if you need the support or there's a forum that has activity that you can get help in and their software that's supported. And there's a newer Linux kernel and the kernel is updated all the time. So, all those advantages mean you get a little package that will work, it'll sip two watts of power, sitting 24/7. It's reliable hardware.There's so many people that use it that it's so well tested that almost any problem you could ever run into, someone else has and there's a blog post or a forum post talking about it. And even though the hardware is not super powerful—it's three years old—you can add on a Coral TPU and do face recognition and object recognition. And throw in Frigate for Home Assistant to get notifications on your phone when your mom walks up to the door. There's so many things you can do with them and they're so flexible that they're still so valuable. I think that they really knocked it out of the park with that model, the Raspberry Pi 4, and the compute module 4, which is still impossible to get. I have not been able to buy one for two years now. Luckily, I bought 12 two-and-a-half years ago [laugh] otherwise I would be running out for all my projects that I do.Corey: Yeah. I got two at the moment and two empty slots in the Turing Pi 2, which I'll care more about if I can actually get the thing up and booted. But it presupposes you have a Windows computer or otherwise, ehh, watch this space; more coming. Great. Like, do I build a virtual machine on top of something else? It leads down the path super quickly of places I thought I'd escaped from.Jeff: Yeah, you know, outside of the Pi realm, that's the state of the communities. It's a lot of, like, figuring out your own things. I did a project—I don't know if you've heard of Mr. Beast—but we did a project for him that involves a hundred single-board computers. We couldn't find Raspberry Pi's so we had to use a different single-board computer that was available.And so, I bought an older one thinking, oh, this is, like, three or four years old—it's older than the Pi 4—and there must be enough support now. But still, there's, like, little rough edges everywhere I went and we ended up making them work, but it took us probably an extra 30 to 40 hours of development work to get those things running the same way as a Raspberry Pi. And that's just the way of things. There's so much opportunity.If one of these Chinese manufacturers that makes most of these things, if one of them decided, you know what? We're going to throw tons of money into building support for these things, get some English-speaking members of these forums to build up the community, all that stuff, I think that they could have a shot at Raspberry Pi's giant portion of the market. But so far, I haven't really seen that happen. So far, they're spamming hardware. And it's like, the hardware is awesome. These chips are great if you know how to deal with them and how to get the software running and how to deal with Linux issues, but if you don't, then they're not great because you might not even get the thing to boot.Corey: I want to harken back to something you said a minute ago, where there's value in having a community around something, where you can see everyone else has already encountered a problem like this. I think that folks who weren't around for the rise of cloud have no real insight into how difficult it used to be just getting servers into racks and everything up, and okay, they're identical, and seven of them are working, but that eighth one isn't for some strange reason. And you spend four hours troubleshooting what turns out to be a bad cable or something not seated properly and it's awful. Cloud got away from a lot of that nonsense. But it's important—at least to me—to not be Captain Edgecase, where if you pick some new cloud provider and Google for how to set up a load balancer and no one's done it before you, that's not great. Whereas if I'm googling now in the AWS realm and no one has done, the thing I'm trying to do, that should be something of a cautionary flag of maybe this isn't how most people go about approaching production. Really think twice about this.Jeff: Yep. Yeah, we ran into that on a project I was working on was using Magento—which I don't know if anybody listening uses Magento, but it's not fun—and we ran into some things where it's like, “We're doing this, and it says that they do this on their official supported platform, but I don't know how they are because the code just doesn't exist here.” So, we ran into some weird edge cases on AWS with some massive infrastructure for the databases, and I ran into scaling issues. But even there, there were forum posts in AWS here and there that had little nuggets that helped us to figure out a way to get around it. And like you say, that is a massive advantage for AWS.And we ran into an issue with, we were one of the first customers trying out the new Lambda functions for RDS—or I don't remember exactly what it was called initially—but we ended up not using that. But we ran into some of these issues and figured out we were the first customer running into this weird scaling thing when we had a certain size of database trying to use it with these Lambda calls. And eventually, they got those things solved, but with AWS, they've seen so many things and some other cloud providers haven't seen these things. So, when you have certain types of applications that need to scale in certain ways, that is so valuable and the community of users, the ability to pull from that community when you need to hire somebody in an emergency, like, we need somebody to help us get this project done and we're having this issue, you can find somebody that is, like, okay, I know how to get you from Point A to Point B and get this project out the door. You can't do that on certain platforms.And open-source projects, too. We've always had that problem in Drupal. The amount of developers who are deep into Drupal to help with the hard problems is not vast, so the ones who can do that stuff, they're all hired off and paid a handsome sum. And if you have those kinds of problems you realize, I either going to need to pay a ton of money or we're just going to have to not do that thing that we wanted to do. And that's tough.Corey: What I've found, sort of across the board, has been that there's a lot of, I guess, open-source community ethos that has bled into a lot of this space and I wanted to make sure that we have time to talk about this because I was incensed a while back when Red Hat decided, “Oh, you know that whole ten-year commitment on CentOS? That project that we acquired and are now basically stabbing in the face?”—disclosure. I used to be part of the CentOS project years ago when I was on network staff for the Freenode IRC network—then it was, “Oh yeah, we're just going to basically undermine our commitments to you and now you can pay us if you want to get that support there.” And that really set me off. Was nice to see you were right there as well in almost lockstep with me, pointing out that this is terrible, just as far as breaking promises you've made to customers. Has your anger cooled any? Because mine hasn't.Jeff: It has not. My temper has cooled. My anger has not. I don't think that they get it. After all the backlash that they got after that, I don't think that the VP-level folks at Red Hat understand that this is already impacting them and will impact them much more in the future because people like me and you, people who help other people build infrastructure and people who recommend operating systems and people who recommend patterns and things, we're just going to drop off using CentOS because it doesn't exist. It does exist and some other people are saying, “Oh, it's actually better to use this new CentOS, you know, Stream. Stream is amazing.” It's not. It's not the same thing. It's different. And—Corey: I used to work at a bank. That was not an option. I mean, granted at the bank for the production systems it was always [REL 00:25:18], but being able to spin up a pre-production environment without having to pay license fees on every VM. Yeah.Jeff: Yeah. And not only that, they did this announcement and framed it a certain way, and the community immediately saw. You know, I think that they're just angry about something, and whether it was a NASA contract with Rocky Linux, or whether it was something Oracle did, who knows, but it seems petty in retrospect, especially in comparison to the amount of backlash that came out of it. And I really don't think that they understand the thing that they had with that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not a massive growth opportunity for Red Hat. It's, in some ways, a dying product in terms of compared to using cloud stuff, it doesn't matter.You could use CoreOS, you could use NixOS, and you could use anything, it doesn't really matter. For people like you and me, we just want to deploy our software. And if it's containers, it really doesn't matter. It's just the people in government or in certain organizations that have these roles that you have to use whatever FIPS and all that kind of stuff. So, it's not like it's a hyper-growth opportunity for them.CentOS was, like, the only reason why all the software, especially on the open-source side, was compatible with Red Hat because we could use CentOS and it was easy and simple. They took that—well, they tried to take that away and everybody's like, “That's—what are you doing?” Like, I posted my blog post and I think that sparked off quite a bit of consternation, to the point where there was a lot of personal stuff going on. I basically said, “I'm not supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux for any of my work anymore.” Like, “From this point forward, it's not supported.”I'll support OpenELA, I'll support Rocky Linux or Oracle Linux or whatever because I can get free versions that I don't have to sign into a portal and get a license and download the license and integrate it with my CI work. I'm an open-source developer. I'm not going to pay for stuff or use 16 free licenses. Or I was reached out to and they said, “We'll give you more licenses. We'll give you extra.” And it's like, that's not how this works. Like, I don't have to call Debian and Ubuntu and [laugh] I don't even have to call Oracle to get licenses. I can just download their software and run it.So, you know, I don't think they understood the fact that they had that. And the bigger problem for me was the two-layer approach to destroying all the trust that the community had. First was in, I think it was 2019 when they said—we're in the middle of CentOS 8's release cycle—they said, “We're dropping CentOS 8. It's going to be Stream now.” And everybody was up in arms.And then Rocky Linux and [unintelligible 00:27:52] climbed in and gave us what we wanted: basically, CentOS. So, we're all happy and we had a status quo, and Rocky Linux 9 and [unintelligible 00:28:00] Linux nine came out after Red Hat 9, and the world was a happy place. And then they just dumped this thing on us and it's like, two major release cycles in a row, they did it again. Like, I don't know what this guy's thinking, but in one of the interviews, one of the Red Hat representatives said, “Well, we wanted to do this early in Red Hat 9's release cycle because people haven't started migrating.” It's like, well, I already did all my automation upgrades for CI to get all my stuff working in Rocky Linux 9 which was compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. Am I not one of the people that's important to you?Like, who's important to you? Is it only the people who pay you money or is it also the people that empower your operating system to be a premier Enterprise Linux operating system? So, I don't know. You can tell. My anger has not died down. The amount of temper that I have about it has definitely diminished because I realize I'm talking at a wall a lot of times, when I'm having conversations on Twitter, private conversations and email, things like that.Corey: People come to argue; they don't come to actually have a discussion.Jeff: Yeah. I think that they just, they don't see the community aspect of it. They just see the business aspect. And the business aspect, if they want to figure out ways that they can get more people to pay them for their software, then maybe they should provide more value and not just cut off value streams. It doesn't make sense to me from a long-term business perspective.From a short term, maybe there were some clients who said, “Oh, shoot. We need this thing stable. We're going to pay for some more licenses.” But the engineers that those places are going to start making plans of, like, how do we make this not happen again. And the way to not make that happen, again is to use, maybe Ubuntu or maybe [unintelligible 00:29:38] or something. Who knows? But it's not going to be increasing our spend with Red Hat.Corey: That's what I think a lot of companies are missing when it comes to community as well, where it's not just a place to go to get support for whatever it is you're doing and it's not a place [where 00:29:57] these companies view prospective customers. There's more to it than that. There has to be a social undercurrent on this. I look at the communities I spend time in and in some of them dating back long enough, I've made lifelong significant friendships out of those places, just through talking about our lives, in addition to whatever the community is built around. You have to make space for that, and companies don't seem to fully understand that.Jeff: Yeah, I think that there's this thing that a community has to provide value and monetizable value, but I don't think that you get open-source if you think that that's what it is. I think some people in corporate open-source think that corporate open-source is a value stream opportunity. It's a funnel, it's something that is going to bring you more customers—like you say—but they don't realize that it's a community. It's like a group of people. It's friends, it's people who want to make the world a better place, it's people who want to support your company by wearing your t-shirt to conferences, people want to put on your red fedora because it's cool. Like, it's all of that. And when you lose some of that, you lose what makes your product differentiated from all the other ones on the market.Corey: That's what gets missed. I think that there's a goodwill aspect of it. People who have used the technology and understand its pitfalls are likelier to adopt it. I mean, if you tell me to get a website up and running, I am going to build an architecture that resembles what I've run before on providers that I've run on before because I know what the failure modes look like; I know how to get things up and running. If I'm in a hurry, trying to get something out the door, I'm going to choose the devil that I know, on some level.Don't piss me off as a community member and incentivize me to change that estimation the next time I've got something to build. Well, that doesn't show up on this quarter's numbers. Well, we have so little visibility into how decisions get made many companies that you'll never know that you have a detractor who's still salty about something you did five years ago and that's the reason the bank decided not to because that person called in their political favors to torpedo that deal and have a sweetheart offer from your competitor, et cetera and so on and so forth. It's hard to calculate the actual cost of alienating goodwill. But—Jeff: Yeah.Corey: I wish companies had a longer memory for these things.Jeff: Yeah. I mean, and thinking about that, like, there was also the HashiCorp incident where they kind of torpedoed all developer goodwill with their Terraform and other—Terraform especially, but also other products. Like, I probably, through my book and through my blog posts and my GitHub examples have brought in a lot of people into the HashiCorp ecosystem through Vagrant use, and through Packer and things like that. At this point, because of the way that they treated the open-source community with the license change, a guy like me is not going to be enthusiastic about it anymore and I'm going to—I already had started looking at alternatives for Vagrant because it doesn't mesh with modern infrastructure practices for local development as much, but now it's like that enthusiasm is completely gone. Like I had that goodwill, like you said earlier, and now I don't have that goodwill and I'm not going to spread that, I'm not going to advocate for them, I'm not going to wear their t-shirt [laugh], you know when I go out and about because it just doesn't feel as clean and cool and awesome to me as it did a month ago.And I don't know what the deal is. It's partly the economy, money's drying up, things like that, but I don't understand how the people at the top can't see these things. Maybe it's just their organization isn't set up to show the benefits from the engineers underneath, who I know some of these engineers are, like, “Yeah, I'm sorry. This was dumb. I still work here because I get a paycheck, but you know, I can't say anything on social media, but thank you for saying what you did on Twitter.” Or X.Corey: Yeah. It's nice being independent where you don't really have to fear the, well if I say this thing online, people might get mad at me and stop doing business with me or fire me. It's well, yeah, I mean, I would have to say something pretty controversial to drive away every client and every sponsor I've got at this point. And I don't generally have that type of failure mode when I get it wrong. I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Jeff: Old school, my personal website, jeffgeerling.com. I link to everything from there, I have an About page with a link to every profile I've ever had, so check that out. It links to my books, my YouTube, all that kind of stuff.Corey: There's something to be said for picking a place to contact you that will last the rest of your career as opposed to, back in the olden days, my first email address was the one that my ISP gave me 25 years ago. I don't use that one anymore.Jeff: Yep.Corey: And having to tell everyone I corresponded with that it was changing was a pain in the butt. We'll definitely put a link to that one in the [show notes 00:34:44]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.Jeff: Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for having me.Corey: Jeff Geerling, YouTuber, author, content creator, and oh so very much more. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment that we will, of course, read [in action 00:35:13], just as soon as your payment of compute modules for Raspberries Pi show up in a small unmarked bag.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

What you'll learn in this episode:   How to know when to walk away from a purchase, and how to trust your intuition when buying Why you should always ask for a detailed receipt, even if it feels awkward Commonly misunderstood phrases dealers may use to confuse buyers How Jeff does due diligence before making a purchase How to navigate the many platforms where you can purchase jewelry today   About Jeff Russak Jeff Russak is principal of Lawrence Jeffrey Estate Jewelers. Jeff's expertise in antique and 20th century jewelry combined with an uncompromising attitude toward quality, condition, and style directs the acquisition process. His proficiency in signed pieces and hallmarks is especially useful in identifying and dating each piece. In demand as a speaker on antique jewelry at museums and shows, he also volunteers as a guest appraiser for charity.   Additional Resources: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter   Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com   Transcript:   When it comes to buying jewelry, nothing is more important than trust. That's why Jeff Russak, principal at Lawrence Jeffrey Estate Jewelers, won't hesitate to leave a purchase behind if his inner voice tells him something is wrong. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how he vets his purchases and the dealers he works with; what red flags buyers should watch out for; and why a receipt is more powerful than you might think. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week.    Today, my guest is Jeff Russak, one of the principals of Lawrence Jeffrey. They are estate dealers located in Litchfield, Connecticut. Jeff has had decades of experience buying and selling. He's also extremely knowledgeable about estate jewelry. Along the way, he has learned about what a good dealer should be doing and what you should know in order not to be taken advantage of. There are lots that dealers know about good dealers that the ordinary buyer doesn't know. He will fill us in on some of that today. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.    Jeff: Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.   Sharon: I'm so glad to have you. This is the second time you've been on. I'm glad you decided to come back.    I bought a diamond tennis bracelet several years ago—well, a long time ago—that I was told was Art Deco. Then, when I showed it to somebody else, they said, “That cut wasn't done until the 80s.” I still like the bracelet, but how could I have avoided that without knowing everything there is to know about diamonds?   Jeff: That's a really great question, and it's actually kind of a complicated one. The person who looked at it did something which is very basic. They looked at the cut of the diamonds. That's one of the things I do when I'm determining the age of any piece. We look at the stones. We have a good general idea of when different cuts, for diamonds or otherwise, were established.    The short answer is I think the only way you could have avoided that would have been to have a better handle on whether this dealer is expert enough to make that determination or not. That can be a hard thing to do. We've talked about how to buy, and a lot of how to buy is all about who you decide to trust. I think for the average buyer, figuring out who you trust and who you feel comfortable with is really the bottom line.   I'll tell a story about one of our better clients. We didn't know this for years, but they're people who have become friends. They started buying from us when we were very new to the business. They didn't buy just jewelry, but they bought decorative arts. We didn't know it, but every single piece they bought from us was going to one of the top appraisal firms in New York and being appraised and verified. After quite a number of years, they told us this. That that was one of the reasons why they kept coming back, because everything was O.K. We passed the test for authentication and for value. Perhaps that's a bit extreme for most people, but it's certainly one way.    I would say it's listening to that little voice in your head. I think today a lot of what I'd like to talk about is how I buy, because the way I buy is no different from the way I recommend that everybody buys. Of course, there are things I know that an average buyer is not going to know, but a lot of what I do is simply being a good detective and listening to that voice in my head. When the voice in my head says, “Don't buy something,” even a little bit, I just don't buy, or when the voice in my head says, “I don't know if this relationship is for me.” Maybe I think the person is a lot smarter than I am. That happens. So, how am I going to know I'm making the right connection, buying for the right price so I can present pieces to my clients for the right price? A lot of it is your instincts. Trust your instincts. It's so tempting to buy something that looks great or you've been told is great or you've been told is a good deal, but if you don't have that sense, that feeling you should, then you shouldn't.   Sharon: Is that how you buy all the time or most of the time?   Jeff: That is definitely part of what I do. It's a big part. We tend to make relationships, and we buy a lot from individual relationships. Some buyers are like bees who are busy pollinating every flower in the field. I think that's really funny. If that's your style, I think you should do it and you should enjoy it. That's a different risk level and a different set of rules. If find people who I really trust, people who are open and transparent with me, who answer my questions in a very forthright way, then those are the folks I go back to again and again. I have the same advice for anyone.   Sharon: Are they here or are they in Europe? Are they everywhere?   Jeff: They are everywhere. I have great contacts in the U.S., and I mean contacts from dealers that I might see in a flea market. I have a couple of local folks who run estate sales. One of them is the finest generalist I know. He is so incredibly smart and knowledgeable. I totally trust him. If I ask a question, he tells me what he knows and what he doesn't know.   Sharon: If he or one of these people that you trust called you up and said, “I have a piece I think you'll really like. I don't know anything about it, but I think you'll really like it,” and maybe they're far away or you don't want to go, will you buy it sight unseen?   Jeff: This goes back to what you and I discussed briefly. I think it's all about the return policy. Yes, I will agree to buy something, but I don't think it's sight unseen anymore. They're naturally going to send me a picture using smartphones. That technology is great, but the pictures don't always tell the whole story. Someone who's really honest doesn't have any fear of taking something back if it doesn't work for the client. I don't think there's anyone I deal with who won't take a piece back if it's not quite right for me.   Sharon: It's interesting you say that. It's probably true, but I hadn't thought about it. There probably isn't anything that's sight unseen anymore with the internet and everything.    We talked a little bit about receipts. Should we make sure we have the receipt?   Jeff: The rules for everyone are the same. There are a lot of laws in place, mostly federal laws. Some of them are laws that relate specifically to jewelry. There are several pages of regulations, and also there are laws that simply are contract law. Your receipt is your contract. You need to ask that every piece of information is included on the receipt.    Let's say you're buying a diamond ring and it's supposed to be by Cartier. You want to know that it's 18-karat gold. You want to know what the diamond grade is. You want to know about the color and clarity. I want to be clear that I'm not trying to create an environment that's very hidebound. We all understand that people do their best to approximate, but they need to be close, let's say. So, you're going to want the diamond colors and clarities, and then you're going to want it to say, “authentic Cartier” or “this ring is by Cartier.” Here's a little trick: if they say, “This ring is signed Cartier,” that doesn't mean it has to be made by Cartier.   Sharon: Who is it made by?   Jeff: It could be made by you and me and we got someone to engrave the word “Cartier” on it. Signed Cartier does not mean it is Cartier. It means they are guaranteeing that the word “Cartier” is on the piece. “Authentic” Cartier or “by Cartier” means that it is Cartier. There are quite a number of situations, especially online, where you do often see the phrasing “signed Tiffany,” “signed Cartier,” “signed Van Cleef & Arpels.” Now, they may fully mean that it is, but I've seen quite a number of situations where it was clear it wasn't.    Sharon: You're asking for a lot; maybe a lot that people don't put on the receipt normally. Have you had any push back? Were people getting annoyed with you?   Jeff: No, I think this is really simple. At my shop and at shows, I have definitely been asked to include all the information on my tag, which is all the information I've mentioned and more. People have said, “I would really like that on the receipt. Could you make sure it's on there?” I think if you get pushback, then I would decline to buy the piece no matter what. If they're someone who can't write that information on a receipt, for me, suddenly, there are alarm bells. Something is wrong. Now, maybe it's just a person who doesn't like doing that. That's possible, and they're a totally honest person, but if they don't want to put the information regarding the piece on the receipt, that's a problem. You have no recourse because your receipt does not state the proper information.    Here's the deal: that contract is forever. People will tell you you can't return things. People will tell you, “Oh, that was two years ago. That's expired.” If it says 10 carats of diamonds and it's only five carats, you can return it. You can return it tomorrow. You can return it in five years. Your grandchildren can return it in a hundred years. That's a contract that has to be accurate. It doesn't matter. It could be tractor parts.   Sharon: It's easier for you. If I see a piece and I have fallen in love with it—if you want it, you overlook a lot, whereas you can say no to a lot and pick out one where you think the person is trustworthy. Is it easier for you?   Jeff: I think you're making a good point. I made some notes before we started. Here's what I wrote about this: this is how I buy, but there are various rules. Let's just say we've discussed them. If I think I should start spouting the law, I remind myself to zip it and just move on. There's lots and lots to buy. It's not my job to tell people what the law is. It's not my job, except on this podcast.    The thing I'm not comfortable with is when someone skirts the law and won't make a proper contract. If you were buying a house and they refused to get a survey, I would say, “Hey, something's up.” I think it's reasonable to ask for a proper receipt, always, and it doesn't matter whether it's Walmart or Sotheby's or any number of famous dealers I can name all over the country. It's perfectly fine, and anyone who is selling things in an honest way won't have any problem with that. If it is what they say it is, why not write it? This shouldn't be any issue. I understand it's uncomfortable.   Sharon: I'd rather somebody tell me, “I don't know,” than guess and say, “I don't know what it is. I don't what it's made of,” that sort of thing.   Jeff: That's a great point. I would much rather people tell me, “I don't know.” But here's the thing: the “I don't know” price should be half of the “I think it's a sapphire” price, or maybe a quarter. “I don't know” means the price should be falling, falling, falling. If you say, “Oh, this is a beautiful turquoise necklace,” is it natural turquoise or is it reconstituted? Now, by law, they're required to tell you. If they say, “I don't know,” the law then requires you to insist they find out.    Once again, it's uncomfortable. If they say, “I don't know,” chances are you really should just walk away. Let's say this gorgeous turquoise necklace is gold. It's got all of these stones, and it's $12,000. Well, $12,000 is a lot in my world. Maybe it's not that much money to other people, but “I don't know” doesn't go together for me.   Sharon: That's interesting. I'm coming from the items I bought when I started getting into jewelry. Now I know a little bit more. For instance, there are people who seem to have a natural affinity for detail I don't have. They can tell. I'm thinking of a girlfriend who once said, “That's not an Art Deco. That's an Edwardian piece.” It was, and I thought it was Art Deco. I thought she was ridiculous.   Jeff: I think it's amazing when people know. There are lots of people who are so good at that. I think as a buyer, you should—I'll go back to what I said in the beginning. You find someone who you trust and who's going to explain to you what you're buying, and who will rely that on the receipt and who wants to have an ongoing relationship with you. If you have a problem, they will sort that problem out. Look, Jeff Russak at Lawrence Jeffrey is not made of sold gold. He does not have a brain the size of a Volkswagen. We make mistakes. When we make mistakes, we have to fix them. That's the way it is.    Sharon: I've heard the phrase, “Somebody has a dealer's eye.” Do you think there's such a thing as a dealer's eye?   Jeff: I think there is. I think what that refers to is someone who just knows when something is a good deal. I have a customer. When I get a piece I know is a good deal, that we bought well and the retail price is a great price, I tease her and say, “You're like a hound. You can smell the jewelry, that there's a deal.” I think that's totally true, absolutely.    Sharon: That's interesting. Well, I certainly don't have that. If a display case says that all the gems or stones inside are certified, what does that mean?   Jeff: That actually doesn't mean anything at all. It's meaningless. This is where we need to start being detectives. The question is certified by whom?   Sharon: Well, who can certify them?   Jeff: People often think it's a government agency, or they think, for instance, that it's a lab like the GIA, or they think the dealer is certifying. A dealer who's smart, who's on the up and up, isn't going to certify anything. Certifying means you agree that the information is true. Most appraisals, for instance, are very careful to have at the end something that says, “We've done our best job to approximate, to use our knowledge to establish what things are,” and then when they say, “I duly sign,” or “I hereby certify,” all they're certifying is that the signature is theirs. They're not certifying the information. They're saying, “We've done our best job.” They probably have, and the information is probably correct, but certifying is different.   Like at the GIA, when you study to become a gemologist, they wrap your knuckles with a ruler if you say certificate or certify. They don't certify things. They produce laboratory reports. It's a report, not a certificate. It doesn't certify anything. It is a laboratory process they have performed to the best of their abilities, which is pretty darn good.   Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.

Is Universal Income good or bad? https://twitter.com/PMadridShow/status/1693983751708328349 Bill - I am looking into joining the Catholic Church. What is all included in the Profession of Faith that I must believe? Mike - Universal income: People who received checks from the government didn't need the money and they spent it on frivolous things. Maria - Universal income: I work for the Chicago Fire Department as a medic. We do get more people who Overdose on drugs on the first of the month when their checks come in. Jeff - It seems like we are trying to create the intellect of angels with AI. Peter - Universal Basic Income: there are some people who would cultivate talents that don't necessarily provide money value. It could also help people pray more. Betty - Universal Basic Income and how it relates to AI: I think we need to take into consideration the current world views that the population is too high and this could be used to lower the population. Paul - Basic Universal income is bad because you would become reliant on the government which would give them more power to control our lives. Saul - You would need to be working to receive Universal income might work. Chris - Are the apparitions of our Lady of Knock just apparitions or were they physically there?

Working with amazing, hard-working property management entrepreneurs is what makes being a coach worth it. Join property management growth expert Jason Hull in today's episode as he interviews DoorGrow client Jeff Garner. Jeff went from 150 to 420 doors in 4 months! Learn how he did it. You'll Learn [02:35] Why would anyone get into property management? [12:40] Fixing the foundation of a property management business [15:14] Importance of culture in a business [25:05] Why you need a coach [27:34] Navigating operational issues  Tweetables “No matter what market we're in, it's good. If we're going to the moon, management's great. If we're crashing, it's even better because people can't sell their properties and they go, ‘Oh shoot, we'll turn them into rentals.'” "Go where they won't go and do what they won't do. That's where the money's at," “It all starts with your mindset.” “Weekly commitments, and you'll start to see the momentum build big time when the team are all visible and can be seen and there's accountability and they get recognized because you have that system installed, performance sometimes goes up.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jeff: I have 420 doors and I have more peace of mind, more direction and I know where I'm going to be and where I'm going and how to get there.  [00:00:12] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not  [00:00:38] because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bss, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:08] And today's guest is Jeff Garner. Jeff, welcome.  [00:01:14] Jeff: Thanks man. Glad to be here.  [00:01:17] Jason: So Jeff, what's the name of your property management business?  [00:01:19] Jeff: Homes Stretch Property Management  [00:01:21] Jason: Homes Stretch. All right, cool. And why'd you pick that name?  [00:01:26] Jeff: I feel like real estate investing it's a long-term play. It builds wealth over the long haul. And for our home stretch of our life, whether you decide your home stretch starts at 40 because you retire early, or whether it's 60 or 70, if you are buying real estate, really it, you know, It's about letting the tenants pay down, you know, principal balance, pay down, depreciation, tax, write-offs, appreciation. Sure cash flow's nice every month, but you can make millions over, you know, 20 year period, 25 year period. And so I see the real value in real estate is being that, so we want to get our owners to the home stretch and, you know, that's kind of how we look at it. So we want to improve and maintain your property so that someday you can either sell or refi and it's in great shape and it's an easy process. Or you just want to keep it in cashflow forever. So our job's to give you freedom and peace of mind knowing that your properties are being taken care of better than you can or anyone else so.  [00:02:29] Jason: Nice. Love the brand. So Jeff. Why don't you give people a little bit of background on you. How did you start getting into real estate and what made you decide to do the crazy thing of starting a property management company? How did this all happen?  [00:02:43] Jeff: Yeah, it was the crazy thing because-- so I'll tell you a little bit about me. Real estate's the only business I've ever been in. I got my real estate license when I was 22. I was going to be a real estate agent. Found a niche working with investors because when you're 22, you know, growing up doesn't come overnight. And so when you're got all your, "oh shoot, I'm showing property today," and you have to crunch the beer cans and put them under your seat. because you just turned 21 a year before, you know, it can be a little awkward putting the 40 year old mom and dad and their kids in the car to go show them property. [00:03:18] Right. Which I did okay at. I did fine. But I found a niche in working with investors because you could sell them one house and most of the time they don't even want to get in your car. Half the time, once you get know what you're doing, you just give them a lockbox code and tell them to call you back and tell you what you think, and they give you a number and you write it and put it in. You could sell them 10 or 20 houses. So I developed a niche at that. I got really good at finding deals and I would send them to my guys. Shortly after that, I decided that I was on the wrong side of the table, you know, three or four years of that. I go to closing, I collect my $2,500 commission check, and he gets a check for $20,000 because he flipped it, right? And I just thought, wait a minute, I'm finding the deal. I'm calling him up, I'm telling him what number to put it in at and he's making all this money. What am I doing wrong? So I got into that side of the business, you know. So, 08 hit crashed. All of us really put me in a position to where I to make a decision on what I wanted to do because all my investors were gone. Right? [00:04:17] They were trying to stay alive. Yeah. You know, in 08 for the people that didn't go through it, was like If you worked in Walmart and all of a sudden the next morning you woke up and no one will shop at Walmart again. [00:04:31] Jason: Right?  [00:04:31] Jeff: Yeah. Never walks through the door.  [00:04:34] Jason: Yeah. So must have been scary.  [00:04:37] Jeff: Yeah. And so, I thought, "well, this investment thing's really what I want to do. So I'm going all in. It's time to restart. So that's what I'm going to go all in at." So I really looked at what happened and I realized that history, you know, tells the story and that everyone was riding this wave and had no idea it was a wave because no one does the research to, you know, see what the cycles are. I didn't know there was a cycle. I was young. Yeah. And so the common sense thought came, well, we were at a high. If I was a real investor and I was really good at what I did, I would've been taking vacations, waiting for this crash to happen, and then I'd go out and buy everything I could find and hold it. Yeah, so I did that. I bought 110 rentals over a three year period, all at, you know, probably 20% of what the market is today. And outsourced the management a couple times. Horrific. Cost me more money than you know, one, when I was at 110 properties, I had to take them back overnight because I realized that I had 16 vacants and they didn't even know about half of them. [00:05:42] Really? Yeah. It was horrible. They just they got overwhelmed and so I built a management company overnight to manage my own properties and had zero desire. It was the last thing on the absolute planet I wanted to deal with was tenants and toilets. I did not get into rentals to deal with tenants or maintenance. It didn't, yeah. So I put together a makeshift management company and decided I'd never take on another property of anyone else's. I'd only do my own, because I was going to do this, it was going to be for myself. There certainly wasn't going to make a hundred dollars a month on a property and do all this for somebody else. Right. That's, that was my thought on being real. And a few years went by '16, '17, realized that I'd gotten tons of equity and I had properties sitting there with 50, 60,000 in equity and I'm making 200 or 300 a month. And I thought, this math doesn't make sense anymore, right? So I sold off over a two or three year period, about 50 of them. But everyone apparently, everyone knew management is a tough gig and there's not a lot of good management companies out there. Why? Right? There was no DoorGrow then that I'm aware of at least. Right? So everyone in the management business just thought, "this looks like we can make some money, let's do this." [00:06:57] But they had no idea. The machine, it has to be to run well. Yeah. And so they said, "well, I'll buy that property. I'll even give you retail for it, but you have to keep the management." So to this day, I still manage all 110 of those properties, even though I only own 60 of them. Right. So to get the money I wanted, I had to keep the management. And then I just kind of started looking at it is in the last couple years when I realized that we could potentially be getting to another place. If you look at the charts and you look at history that we're you know, we're at a high now, will it last four years longer? Probably. So I had to kind of reevaluate what I wanted to do and I looked at all my businesses, flip business, wholesale, you know, my rental portfolios and my management company, I went, wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm focusing all this energy and chasing down deals and having all these, you know, taking all the risk on everything I buy and just grinding away constantly. For over 20 years now. And I got this management company, although it's not sexy, everyone tells me it's the worst thing in the world to do. Yeah. You know, I realize it was the one thing that was repeatable, scalable, and I could predict. And no matter what market we're in, it's good. If we're going to the moon, management's great. If we're crashing, it's even better because people can't sell their properties and they go, oh shoot, we'll turn them into rentals. I thought, "wait, what am I doing? I'm looking at this all wrong." I just started to look at it and so I started working on getting really good at it and filling all the holes on my own, right, with my own. And it's, you know, and I realized that with the right team in place and the right mindset, you know, which is we want to help landlords, right? I want to take 20 something years of resources and try to convert over this management company and give them to everyone else-- that it could be a great business. And then I realized, like I preach, because I did some coaching in the real estate space throughout the years "go where they won't go and do what they won't do. That's where the money's at," right? So if everyone's going after retail flips and a really nice b and b areas, then go look in the C areas because they're being neglected. If everyone's after all the C properties because the cash flows, so well then go up to your A or B areas and start doing flips because those are being neglected. Nice. Certain town everyone's afraid of? Good. Let them be all fighting in one place and you go there. And so I realized that was what was going on in the real estate market for the management business. So I decided that's what I wanted to focus my energies on. So I literally burned all the other boats, man. No marketing, no wholesaling, no flipping.  [00:09:40] Jason: Wow. You went all in on property management?  [00:09:42] Jeff: All in on property management, period. I got online, I did what I did 15 years before, after 08 happened, and I thought, "I'm going to redo myself. How do I do this?" And so I just got online and I started digging around and trying to teach myself things and I got coaches back then, and even though I knew 90% of what they were trying to teach me, because I got coaches in the flipping side, right? I knew you know, 80, 90% of what they were teaching me was that 10 or 20% where I knew would bring me all my money, right? So I did the same thing here and that's how I came to DoorGrow is I found you guys really were the only real system oriented, you know, nuts and bolts teach the how and not just the why. You know, a lot of people want to tell you why you do. Oh, well, you know why? They want to give you the why on, you know, but they don't want to give you the nuts and bolts of the how and tell you connect A to B to C to D and you'll get your results, right? And so, I found you guys, and I knew that's all I was missing to having success because the rest of the management companies all had bad raps. You couldn't talk to a landlord that really loved their management company. Yeah. So I knew I could fix, put those pieces together and really treat it like a business based off of giving people their freedom and peace of mind, knowing that their properties are being taken care of better than theirs. [00:11:10] If you can do that, anyone listening to this, if you can wrap your mind around being of service. No one else is doing that in the management business. Right? Yeah. You will dominate, it's like I used to say when I had lots of rehab crews going, if someone shows up and does what they say and has half of the talent that I need them to have, they could be rich. That's all they have to do. Just not be the best, but do what you say and show up so it's predictable and we can communicate well and get stuff done. So if you did that, and you can do that with a mindset of, "I want to be of service to the industry." Be the best. You'll dominate, end the story, but you have to wrap that around your mind, you know, and it'll come out in your calls. It'll come out in your conversations at the grocery store. It'll come out everywhere.  [00:12:00] Hell, I pulled 16 doors out of my gym in the first 30 days after joining DoorGrow because I just got the structure when we went through mindset and and some sales stuff of. Really taking what was in my mind and putting it in paper and going through the process of splitting the page into four spots and right. You know, going through everything. I got to dial it in and then boom, that was it. There's nothing else to talk about, but what I came up with there, you know, home stretch was the name of the business because it fits what I'm trying to do. I know what our mindset is, the culture for my company and you know, we started just plugging in systems and processes.  [00:12:40] Jason: So let's talk a little bit about it. because you said nuts and bolts, but to most property managers, they're like, "nuts and bolts means how do you like do maintenance and how do you plunger a toilet?" you know, like it's like the practical stuff where you know how to manage properties. Yeah. You know how to deal with tenants, you know how to like do all that. What challenge were you dealing with that brought you to DoorGrow and how did that help?  [00:13:04] Jeff: It's really hard to explain that. What I really had was is I had a business and it functioned and I did okay, but I did not feel at 150 properties, I did not feel I could bring on 10 more doors. I felt like it would all crumble and break because I had no idea what I was doing really. Right. I had nothing to model. I had just said I got maintenance, my maintenance was horrible. I had all these guys that that was one of the hardest parts to find. But I had all these just subcontractors and every once in a while we'd find someone to come on full time, but you'd have to trust them to be out there all day doing what they said they were doing. And I didn't know how to run that. I didn't know how to manage that. I didn't know how to systematize that where I knew what was going on at all times. And I didn't feel comfortable going any bigger because, I felt like I could see why other management companies had problems, and I don't think they want to suck, right? No, I don't think so. But they just don't want to say no to the money.  [00:14:06] "Hey, I got 20 doors." oh, we're going to do a great job for you. Let's bring it on. And they're already struggling with what they have. Yeah, right. Just think it's magically you're going to work, or, you know what? It'll give me more money in that way. More money will mean I can do more things. And no it doesn't. It creates more problems that cost more money. So I needed the systems, I needed the processes. Those are the nuts and bolts I'm talking about. Got it. Who to hire to do what and to, because that's it.  [00:14:34] Jason: I mean, so what's changed then? Like you had 150 doors, you came to DoorGrow and we started helping you change a lot of stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, what things have you changed since joining DoorGrow? Yeah. What are some of the first things we start working on with you?  [00:14:51] Jeff: Okay, well, really it was just getting my mindset right was the biggest one because once my mindset was correct and I knew and I had our, what we were trying to do, where we could be of service, that opened my mind up to, " how do we do that then?" Right. So that's sort of answering questions for me, you know.  [00:15:14] Jason: So with mindset, what you're saying is I believe you're talking about all the culture stuff that we took you through stuff. Just the culture stuff and just kind of, I mean, that's the core foundation of the business. Like if we want to make this business built around you, we've got to figure that piece out, right? So we started with that and that probably had a significant ripple through everything.  [00:15:33] Jeff: Imagine like this, you have children, you all of a sudden you, "I'm going to be the best dad ever and I'm going to have kids." Next thing you know, you got two or three of them, they're under five. You have no, literally imagine your parents weren't good. I don't know. They didn't model worth a crap. Okay. Like, how do I do this? Like, I can feed them, I can put them to bed and I can keep them from killing themselves, but do I really know how to raise them to have commitment, how to be honest, how can I make a five year old a strong member of society at 28 years old, right? But if you have a culture and a mindset, you know, "I want my children to be like this. I want them to have this belief system," and how do we give them that belief system? Okay, "well, let me look into that. Okay. Well, if we go to this school, it'll give them these values and then I can back them up at home. And then with bedtime and, oh, I did a little research here. If I put them to bed at this time, get them up at this time. Oh wait, the sugars and dyes are bad. It makes them spastic and oh, well I'll take that out." And you start learning, right? But it all starts with your mindset. Right. And so my mindset changed and it started making me go down the rabbit holes that are all in DoorGrow of, "Okay. Leasing-- my leasing person that we're just winging it and working out of this software that we really were just doing all workarounds and spreadsheets because we really didn't know how to use it. Watch this. Watch these videos on leasing, watch these videos on placing tenants." And then I would watch them and then we would meet and put together a process and a system on how it's going to go instead of just winging every call we got. [00:17:17] So I started building it out position by position. I went and I found a new property manager that had the capacity to be a really good property manager and grow from some of the-- I'm still new inDoorGrow. I'm only six months in. Right? And honestly over the last month I've had a two months, I've had a really hard time getting into DoorGrow because I. [00:17:42] I'm up 420 in doors. Right.  [00:17:45] Jason: So, yeah. So, and let's get to that. That's interesting. But so the children, in your analogy here, this is your team you're talking about, and this is my team. Yeah. And you were in it for what, maybe a couple months and then you started replacing the entire team? [00:18:00] Jeff: The entire team is gone except for two people. And one of the two was almost gone. Because of just be all of a sudden having this parent mindset, I kind of coached him, or you know, raised him in a way in this little short period of time to where he's changed. Nice. And he is just, and the reality of it is, what I found out is he was so unhappy because of how screwed up systems were that everything rolled down to him that once I realized that I got to take things away, put them create and find out what was broken on his role. And he was a main construction manager that we created a different systems and now he's probably one of my strongest pieces. So everyone knew the whole team is new.  [00:18:50] Jason: So new team, you installed a good culture, you're then able to work with us on the hiring piece and getting good team members in place. Absolutely. You've leveled up some team members because you have culture and you know, like what you deserve and want as a business owner and what have the type of team and we want to build around you. Absolutely. Most business owners build teams around the business, and that's probably what you did before. [00:19:15] Jeff: Absolutely a pure necessity. And I, I didn't but hire people that fit the culture or what I was looking for. I just hired a warm body that seemed like they would work, and I thought, we'll just teach them what we need them to know. Yeah. And their mindset or what they did in their off time or their goals didn't mean they were their business. [00:19:36] Jason: Right. Yeah it's amazing. Some simple frameworks like just understanding the three fits to hiring. Yeah. Like culture fit, skill fit, personality fit can shift hiring significantly. So then you started working pretty quickly with one of our coaches on acquisitions. You went out and found a deal. And in four months you were at 420 units.  [00:19:59] Jeff: Yeah. Yep. 420. And I've got probably we're I'm just, we might be at four 40 or four 50 because we have 20 or 30 vacants that Okay. That are under, that are kind of on make ready that we took over that we haven't been able to fill yet because we have this construction backlog, not on our end, but on his backend. The guy that I bought the management from, which was part of the deal, and one of the reasons he sold was because he had done exactly what everyone else did. He got too big and wasn't saying no, and got backlogged and yeah, he was starting to provide really horrible service, so I went in, bought it from him at a really good price for me, but I think it was still a good price for him because if you're at a point to where you're going to, it's stressing you out, you can't get it all done. [00:20:46] It's affecting anything, all your other revenue streams and people are getting ready to start leaving you. Someone walks in "wait, you can take this off my hands and give me money? Okay. Where do I sign?" You know?  [00:20:59] Jason: So what are the things did you do with our team? Have we done a website for you?  [00:21:03] Jeff: You did a website. [00:21:05] Jason: What about your branding? Did you change your brand at all?  [00:21:08] Jeff: Yeah. Hell, hell yeah. I was starting point property management. I changed my brand. We rebranded a week before this acquisition, which I was like, I'm going to put this rebranding thing off because that's another, and then we sat down and I was talking to the team and I don't think they loved it, but they agreed that doing it before we transition all these new owners and tenants over was going to be the way to go because then we would have to change it all up in a couple months anyway when we rebranded and had them in a new website and portal and such so. [00:21:38] Jason: How about pricing? Did you change your pricing?  [00:21:41] Jeff: I'm on the hybrid pricing. Okay. The three plans. The three plans now, which is exactly from you guys. Which was another thing that really helped me because with changing the pricing and doing the hybrid plan and going through that training, and it was, once again, it was all the why's we're doing it. I got to design the plans that fit our culture and provide the service we wanted to provide. It gave me more confidence, honestly, in what we were doing, even though I was going to be charging more now. So yeah, we're on the three tier pricing, hybrid pricing.  [00:22:19] Jason: So you've changed your team, you changed your branding, you changed your website, you changed your pricing model. You've probably made some adjustments to your pitch. Do you do the Golden Bridge stuff?  [00:22:31] Jeff: I didn't have a pitch before. You didn't have a pitch? I didn't have a pitch. I'd just say, "Hey, we do management. Can we manage your properties?" And I just like, that's what I'm saying, when I didn't know, like I couldn't wrap my mind around, because I'd been flipping houses and wholesaling. I had that down to a science. I am a fricking ninja in that. Yeah. But the management side, it was just, "Hey, we manage properties." Yeah. This is what we charge if you want to come over. Cool. If not, I got to go. I got other calls with me, you know, and to have a pitch. So it was literally everything and the pitch made it. That's what I'm saying. I pulled 16 doors out of the gym. Yeah. Just "what are you doing now? Oh, I'm doing management and it's--" 'boop,' just going into my pitch casually, just real casual because we're at the gym. "Do you know anybody that manages any properties? Yeah, I do. I got this buddy. Cool. Could I talk to him? That was it.  [00:23:23] Jason: So I love clients like you, Jeff. because you implement, like you went through the rapid revamp and you did it rapid, like you got that stuff done. Yeah. Pretty quick. And then you start working on acquisition because you saw that opportunity with our acquisitions coach and you're like, "I'm going to do that." and you're just doing stuff and I think that's a testament to you. You know, this is part, I think when we work out more often at the gym, and I think our brains work better. I think that's science, like that's been proven. Like there's something released in our muscles. And you're a big dude. I got to get to your point. I'm trying to work out to catch up to you.  [00:23:59] Jeff: I'm going to be pitching you on coaching you in that area. [00:24:02] Jason: But I think I appreciate that you've been implementing this stuff rapidly and I asked you at DoorGrow Live, I was like, "where do you see yourself, you know, do you think you could get to a thousand doors?" And you were like, "yeah, probably a year and a half." Like it's nothing. Like it's nothing. And you're like, "well, maybe two years." And I was like, "do you know how ridiculous that sounds to most people?" Yeah. So, but I believe it. I believe it for you. I believe it's possible for you. And I believe any of our clients could do it if they just. Take action and implement. And in order to do that, they've got to trust us. And I appreciate you putting your faith in us and trusting us and just putting your head down and doing the work.  [00:24:41] So what would you say to other property managers that are maybe like the company that you bought or maybe like the way you were before if they've just been watching DoorGrow on the sidelines and they think they know what we're about and they think we're just marketers or something that like have a decent sales pitch, but they don't know if they can trust us? You're behind the paywall. What would you say to them?  [00:25:04] Jeff: Well, I mean, besides being behind the paywall and doing it and having experience with it, I know coaching and I know that space, and so I recognized DoorGrow immediately from watching your marketing and just digging in a little that you guys taught the business. It wasn't a marketing ploy to get people to sign up to you. Actually, it wasn't like I was just going to get a bunch of motivation, "go out there and do it!" right, right. Because I motivated it was, like I said, it was the whys and the hows and and the all the processes and systems. And so man, it's all there for you to just do it. You would just do it. You would literally just go, "okay, I'll start at one and work to 10." I had a management company already. If I had to redo it all when I got real life processes and systems, and then I saw that there was people in it that had a hundred doors, 500 doors, a thousand doors, and I'm like, "that's what I need." I need to be surrounded by people that are at a higher level of success and have been where I am and now are where I want to go. And so if you are watching and you have management already and you are struggling, and it sucks. Whether it's for you or your customers, or both?  I have 420 doors and I have more peace of mind, more direction and I know where I'm going to be and where I'm going and how to get there. And more time to myself if I wanted to take it. I don't take it because I still have big goals and so I'm working a lot. But then I did with 150 doors. That's awesome. I had more certainty with 3x almost than I did where I started. I got the team in place. I watched them problem solve all day long on the chat and working systems and the processes and everything happens the same over and over again.  [00:27:01] So it's really a business in a box, but you have to do it. You can't question yourself. You can't make excuses. You just have to do it. It'll be really easy if you just one foot in front of the other and take the steps. It's all there. And I had to stop because I can't wrap my mind around everything until I get to another place. Right. Yeah. Like I can only do so much and it's growing and working and so like, I've got to pause and then I'm going to dive back in and I don't know I'm still in DoorGrow obviously regularly.  [00:27:34] Jason: Well, let's do some co coaching live on air. Let's figure out what's your next step? Ready? Okay. Yeah. You open? Okay, cool. So you're at 420 units right now. Yeah. Yeah. You've finally got a good team, you've got good culture. Yeah. So the next level to get to, you know, to break past that next kind of major barrier, which maybe is 600 doors, you have to have a great team, but you got to get three major systems installed. Those three major systems are going to be, you have to really get a good process system installed. Not just process documentation, but a system to where they're running the processes each time. So we've got DoorGrow flow. You can use that, lead simple, process street, something, but you need a good process system. That's one piece. The other piece you need is you need a really good people system. So you've started to create the culture, you've started to install that system. Then we want to make sure-- and did you use DoorGrow hiring and do grow ATS and work with Sarah on some of that stuff?  [00:28:32] Jeff: I watched the coaching and implemented some of the things I learned just like I did with Clint. So yeah.  [00:28:38] Jason: So we want to make sure we have a solid system so that as you scale, you can get the right people and get those people quickly. So it sounds like you've done some work on that. And then we want to make sure you have a really good planning system. So once you have a team of people you trust to execute, your executive team, then we want to install a planning system. Now these three systems should not be run by you because as a visionary and an entrepreneur, it's not fun for you to do this. So the key person, the most important hire you will have on the team will be an operator. Somebody that runs the operations. Do you feel like you have that key person right now? [00:29:15] Jeff: I do, but she is one of the people I brought on the most valuable hire I've made after I came to DoorGrow. And it was to have that operator, but she's a CFO. Okay. And she's grown another insurance company to probably where we're at now from scratch, which, you know, I think I'm blowing her mind a little on where we want to go, how fast we're going. But yeah, my goal is to make her the operator. She's the CFO. And so you know management's an accounting business, really at the end of the day, and so we are doing so many changes to our software and our accounting to make sure that all those processes and automations are in place that she is buried every day, but she helps with the team. She helped on the hiring. And she's going to be the operator to try to shorten that. We're working her into that role because as she figures pieces out, we hand them off. So it frees her time up and she's not doing the 15- $20 an hour work because they're paying her more than that. Handing it off and it's freeing up her time and she's. Then we're putting in place some of that more operation stuff, so in process.  [00:30:23] Jason: Nice. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. So when she's ready, one of the things we'll want to do is start to get her to show up on the Friday coaching call, which is operations, and to do that super system breakout and work with her and you to get DoorGrow OS installed. Once you get DoorGrow OS installed, the planning system is that next level system. This is going to allow you to have your team start to function like a visionary, like the entrepreneur, they're going to start to innovate and move goals forward without you having to, you know, push them. And she will run that system. She'll run the meetings, and then you'll be able to set goals and break them down from quarterly to monthly to weekly commitments, and you'll start to see the momentum build big time when the team are all visible and can be seen and there's accountability and they get recognized because you have that system installed, performance sometimes goes up. When I first install a system like that, we grew 300% in a year. And so that is kind of the next level I think for you guys is when she's ready for that, we start to get DoorGrow OS installed and get that planning system and cadence. Because cadence in a business is the communication, cadence is the culture, cadence creates all of this, and it gets everyone rowing the boat in the same direction. So instead of you saying, "Hey, let's do this to everybody, watch this video at DoorGrow," et cetera. They will start to innovate and move outcomes forward because they're given goals and deadlines and then support instead of tasks. And that's where you'll start to see your team really perform. This is where you get like three times the output from your team members. This is where your operational costs drop significantly in relation to the number of people you have per door. And so that's what I see next level for you guys. And once you have that system installed, 600 doors is going to be a piece of cake. [00:32:17] Jeff: Yeah. The other thing too is that I know we need a sales funnel. The funnel right now is this mouth, that's it right now.  [00:32:27] Jason: We got to get you out of that. So what'll be next is either we get you, if you don't have this already, we get you an assistant, a setter, or a sales assistant. And that person will then help you double your capacity currently. because they'll be doing all of the follow up, getting you on calls to close and you can use tactics like the double barrel close and some of these things we talk about. That's maybe, that's like level one, baby step. Level two, we just get you out of doing that all together. We get you a full-time BDM. Just like James Wachob 's team installed Brad, he's been showing up to each of our Wednesday calls where we support the BDMs or the people working on growth and I think he's helped him add like 250, something like that. They've added 400 doors organically in less than a year. [00:33:18] Jeff: Is that Brian Bouler guy?  [00:33:20] Jason: Yeah, Brian Bouler's their operator. And he's, he actually just, yeah, he's a stud. He just became the director of the property management. So he's running all property management and he just hired an operator to replace himself from a Fortune 50 company. Right? So this is like once you have your operator fully functioning as an operator, you get her out of CFO role and you get her into being an operator, then we can start to install DoorGrow OS, get that team to the next level. And part of that plan, I think for your 90 days would be to start to focus on that sales side. If you're ready to ramp up lead gen and growth, then we get you maybe a setter initially, and then we get you a full-time BDM or you can jump straight to getting a BDM and we help you find somebody that can just crush it at sales. We identify the right personality type, they're great at this, and they will go out and just make it rain and create business for you.  [00:34:13] Jeff: I got the hiccups all of a sudden, so I'm like, this is going to look great in the podcast.  [00:34:17] Jason: You're just so excited about the future. Excited. Yeah. And you know, and that BDM could also, and then I think what you would do, if you want to focus on the growth side, if that's still fun for you, you just go out and find more acquisition deals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. You can even get your BDM to start hunting for acquisition deals as well and feed them to you, and then you do double barrel close that way. They're feeding you to close it. Right? So, anyway, I think that's going to be the next level for you and, you know, maybe what I would maybe have your CFO do is do a time study and maybe you do a time study if you haven't done one for a while, so that you can see where can you support her even more and more quickly to get things off of her plate. What are you doing? Which things do you love the most? Which things don't you? And start to take some things off of her plate and give them to other team members as quick as possible. So, and then you'll know like, this is what she spent her time doing over the last two weeks. You're like, cool, we, these are minus signs. These are things that are lower level dollar an hour work. Let's define these processes and we make that a goal and all that. When you have a cadence and a planning system, you can plug all that into your goals. Like one of your quarterly goals would be transition CFO to operator, for example. Yeah. So we could start to build out those systems even right now with her, we just need to get you and her on board with that. And then you'll see things start to go even faster because you're already working a plan. When we put the plan in a way that everyone else can see it and everyone can contribute, the whole business starts to go faster. Otherwise, it's you pushing her and her pushing everybody else, and it's very top down. When you create a bottom up system, you'll start to feel a lot of momentum. Okay. It's a weird feeling when you start to feel the team pulling you forward instead of you pushing them forward.  [00:36:10] Jeff: So, when you say that, what does that, what do you call that then? Like when you're saying bottom up, you know? When you, everything you just said, like, what is that? Like, what do I call that?  [00:36:21] Jason: So I call that the planning system or DoorGrow OS, the operating system. The operating. So we want to get this operating system installed so that there's this planning cadence and communication. So I'd start with by doing a six core functions assessment with your team brainstorming session. That'll be quarterly planning and it'll take like an hour and a half or two hours. First time you do this as a team.  [00:36:44] Jeff: That's all in os. That whole process is an OS. The step-by-step on that. That was my direction. I need OS, and I need Flow, and I'm like, oh, another thing I got to plan.  [00:36:53] Jason: Yeah that's DoorGrow OS. The planning system. What's cool about it and, if you do the math on this, right? Let's say you do in your annual planning, you spend maybe an hour, a half. Your quarterly planning, you do four times a year. You spend maybe an hour, a half, two hours, right? Each of your monthly planning meetings, which you have 12, that adds up to 12 hours, maybe an hour each, right? Then you're doing your weekly commitments meetings every week. Maybe you'll do about 50 of those a year. Maybe those take an hour, sometimes even just 30 minutes, depending on the size of your team and the aggressiveness of your goals. And the goal on a weekly basis is to hit 80% of your weekly commitments. That's a lot of goals getting achieved. This is outside of the tactical work, outside of the day-to-day work. This is innovating and moving the business forward towards your core functions and what the business needs most and what you need most. [00:37:49] If you stack and add all this up, maybe even add a culture meeting here or there, and you add your daily huddles with your teams that are like maybe 15, 20 minutes, all that combined adds up to, you can run the entire business on 300 hours a year, and it eliminates a massive amount of 'got a minute?'s, sneaker net communication, interruptions, and it makes the business far more efficient.  [00:38:14] Jeff: And that's all lined out in OS. Like I start OS, it's like everything step by step. I can do this. How?  [00:38:22] Jason: Yes. However, my disclaimer is, this is not stuff that you're going to want to do. This is stuff that your operator will probably enjoy doing. Okay, but not you. Okay. Like me, I hear a bunch of meetings. My initial gut reaction is like, "oh gosh, shoot me now." Right? Yeah. Like that sounds like a cumbersome and a waste of my time. It actually speeds you up and speeds up the business and gives you more time, but you don't want to run it. You need somebody else to run it because otherwise you end up as the emperor with no clothes because everybody's going to agree to you, say "whatever Jeff says," you need somebody else to run it. And you're last to speak in all these meetings. Yeah. Then you'll start to see the magic and the genius of your team. because some of them are more closely connected to some of the things that need to shift or move or be innovated or move forward than you are, right? Your maintenance coordinator can see what's going on in maintenance and they probably have ideas. And so this will allow them to start to, you know, bubble up some of these ideas and it'll allow them to innovate. When team members don't get deadlines and outcomes that they're given to achieve. And then they can see that there's need for improvement, instead of innovating, they go and try and spend more of your money. Yeah, exactly. And so the team gets more expensive. And then you, if you give them a blank check, they'll just spend like, "let's go buy this new thing and let's buy that. And that might do this," right? When you give your team a deadline and some constraints and an outcome, they will start to get creative and innovate, and you want your team members to start to think like that. That turns them into intrapreneurs. So getting this system installed, I think will be the big next level thing, and we can start getting that installed right away so Sarah can help you get that set up. And set up a call with you and your operator and you're already working on some goals. So let's just get those goals into a system where everyone can see and make sure you start to move the plan forward, create the plan, work the plan, and you'll start to see the team move forward way faster. [00:40:16] So I'm excited for you man.  [00:40:19] Jeff: Can you believe I got the hiccups? I get hiccups like once every 10 years. I get in the middle of the podcast. Yeah, I'm very excited about that because here's the truth is you're right, like you get to this place at, you know, 150 doors on my own right, that's capacity really no capacity would've been much higher. But doing it well, capacity was 150 doors. Now I'm at 400 something and we're going, well, yeah. I think I could add another a hundred doors before anything breaks, but I know we're there. We're 50 to a hundred doors away from having to do new stuff again. Yeah. I can feel it. And so that's exciting, but dreadful to think, to have to implement myself. [00:40:59] I think that's why I've kind of like, "let's just wait till we get everything we're doing dialed it perfectly before I get into that," but I need to just suck it up. I got to call with Sarah coming up the next couple days and I just need to tell her, okay, let's do OS, whatever. Tell me what to do next. Let's go. [00:41:14] Jason: Yeah. And really we're just going to start working on creating a plan. Then we'll put in the software and you'll start to see when you start having these weekly meetings with your team, you're going to start to see stuff move forward. Like our goal, we sometimes have like 40 things in a single week that we're working on as a team outside of our daily work, like 40 tasks that are assigned to different team members. [00:41:38] And my team members do not want to show up with a red 'no.' Yeah. And this increases their performance level, like you would not believe. They want green yeses when they show up on Monday for our weekly commitments meeting. And that means we are really likely to get all of our 30 day goals done, which means we're really likely to get all of our quarterly goals done because they're all connected. [00:41:59] Yeah. You'll start to see your business move forward really quickly. This is a next level thing. So I'm excited for you to get that installed. because first, you got to have an operator. because I've tried to do it on my own without an operator and I really, I get lazy because I just don't like it. Like, I don't like running the meetings. I'm like, "all right, anyone's stuck on anything? Let's move forward faster." And I just skip steps and I tell people, do things, but when the team starts to run this, your operator will start to run the business. The business will start to run itself. Things will start to move forward without you, and then instead of you feeling like you're the entrepreneur pulling your entire team up the hill in a wagon, which is what it feels like until you get a system like this, you're going to start to see them moving forward ahead of you, and you're going to be the one that is in the wagon and they're pulling you up the hill. You're just going to be there like giving some feedback, coaching them, supporting them, but you'll start to see the business move forward. I'm the biggest constraint on my team. Sarah and the team are using DoorGrow OS, and they're moving the whole business forward constantly. And they're like, "Jason, keep up. We need more from you." And so they're keeping me accountable now. I don't need to keep them accountable because I've got A players and I've got a system that brings that out in them. So that's the next level. Cool, man. Awesome. Well, hey, thanks for coming on the podcast and being vulnerable and sharing some of your struggles and your wins. [00:43:23] Really appreciate you as a client.  [00:43:25] Jeff: Yeah. Appreciate you too, man. It's been a huge life changer. So cool. Well, keep pushing me.  [00:43:32] Jason: Yeah, we'll keep going. We'll get you to that next level as well. So, thousand doors, here we come!  [00:43:37] Jeff: Here we come. All right.  [00:43:39] Jason: All right, thanks. See you. All right, so if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to get some coaching, you're tired of not having anyone in your corner, maybe nobody's believing in you, maybe not even your spouse is believing in you right now, and you need some hope, you want to have some results like Jeff, you're wanting to move your business forward. We would love to coach and help and support you. Join our mastermind. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. If you're looking like to get nurtured and warmed up a little bit more and you're not really sure about those DoorGrow people, then go to doorgrowclub.com. Join our free Facebook group. We give out better free stuff than most coaches in this industry give out that's paid, and you're going to get access to our master classes and some really cool stuff in there. Join that and you're going to see that we care and we want to see you succeed. And that will hopefully be a nice pathway into you becoming a client and working with DoorGrow and taking your business to that next level. And finally getting what you deserve, getting paid what you deserve, and having the business that you dream of having. [00:44:47] Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.  [00:44:51] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:45:18] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

This is our next installment of our series called The Church the World Needs. In this series we are looking at how the church operated in the book of Acts. In this episode, Brad and Jeff recap where we've been, and discuss more around Paul's sermon.  Some extra notes from Jeff: It's intriguing that the Eunuch would journey to Jerusalem specifically to worship, as Mosaic Law forbade them from entering the temple/synagogue to worship (Deut 23:1). Perhaps since he had Isaiah 53 on parchment, there is a good chance he also had Isaiah 56 as well, or had at least read it. Isaiah 56:3-5 has a promise specifically for eunuchs who hold fast and true to the commandments and will of God's covenant to receive "an everlasting name which will not be eliminated." Perhaps that is what spurred him to visit Jerusalem for worship in the first place. Several biblical scholars see relevance in a possible link from the Acts 8 story to the prophecies in Zephaniah 2-3 concerning Cushites, specifically the prophecy in Zephaniah 3:10. Ethiopians are the descendants of the Cushites. The city in Gaza had been destroyed and then rebuilt in a new location decades before, and the old city was known as "Desert Gaza." The specific linguistic reference in Acts 8:26 harkens back to Zephaniah and reinforces the viable prophecy connection. If you have any questions that you'd like to see us tackle in future episodes, shoot us an email at podcasts@calvary.church and we will make sure to include them!

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Why accessibility is important What is assistive technology Easy ways to make our content more accessible How to use alt text The four main principles of accessibility This week's question is: Tell me something interesting you've learned this year. Recommendation of the week is: Guava Flavored Lies by JJ Arias Apple Kobo Amazon UK Amazon USA ***this show uses affiliate links Find out more about Jeff, Michele and accessible content: Content For Everyone Buy the Book Here Color Contrast Checker Rebel of the Week is: Angel Ackerman If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Wendy Karas. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack   Transcript: Sacha: This is The Rebel Author Podcast, where we talk about books, business and occasionally bad words. Hello rebels, and welcome to episode 180. Today, I'm talking to Jeff and Michele all about accessible content and making our books, our social media, our websites more accessible for more readers. But first to last week's question, which was: what book has gotten you out of a reading slump? Carrie says, "I'm still in a slump. I'm always so tired by the time I have time to read that I can read a few pages before I shut down. I think I need an audible subscription again." Heather says, "The book that recently got me out of reading slump was the rage read that was Iron Widow, and it was just what I needed." Claire said, "Another Stupid Love Song by Miranda McLeod and Em Stevens. Last summer, I was racially abused on my way home and followed to the train station by a group of white man." I'm already fucking livid reading this. "It was really traumatic, and I fell into a deep depression afterwards. Stopped going out, stopped writing and reading." I hate reading this. I'm so sorry. "But then I saw Miranda mention that she had a new age gap romance. And the part of me that felt curious about stories began to wake up when I started reading the straightforward writing style, fast pacing and promise of a happily ever after made a good book to start with." I seriously don't know what the fuck is wrong with people. Like, I'm not going to get into a whole load of politics and opinions right now, but just know that reading that made me really crass, and I'm really sorry that you experienced that. I'm really really glad that reading and story and happy ever afters have helped you to at least heal a little bit from that experience. This week's question is: tell me something interesting that you've learned this year. We are heading towards the end of the first quarter. What the fuck? And so I want to know, what have you learned this year? It could be something small. It could be something not at all about writing. It could be anything really. So yeah, it can be about yourself as well. Let me know what you have learned about something this year. Okay, the book recommendation of the week this week is Guava Flavored Lies by JJ Arias. JJ is a fuckin master of bickering. This is the same JJ who interviewed me in the Ruby Roe launch episode. And JJ is coming on the show. We are literally just in the process of booking a date. Oh my god, I had the pleasure of reading Guava Flavored Lies in audio, and it was so good. It was the breath of fresh air that I needed. And okay, so let me tell you about it instead of just keep fucking ranting about how good it is. It's a contemporary romance, sapphic romance, contemporary sapphic romance with two Cuban families rowing. They've got a shit ton of like history, familial history, and like generational arguments between them. They're both pastry chef families and they own like pastry shops. The bickering went back to school girl days, and I've just never read anything where the bickering was so real and so funny and so brilliant. And I just like I literally laughed, and I don't know, I don't know. I think it actually will go down as my favorite contemporary romance that I've ever read. I loved it that much. It's kind of rivals to lovers as well. Yeah, enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers. Probably rivals to lovers, I would say. Just because there are no like stabbing knives. But it is just fantastic. So if you are looking for an example of dialogue that is sharp as fuck, and bickering that is just fantastic between two love interests, this is the story for you. I highly, highly recommend this book. Of course, links will be in the show notes. So in personal news and updates, I'm sick again. Literally can't fucking believe it. Woke up a couple of days ago feeling like rough as a dog, and I just honestly, I really want this to be a positive episode. I hate being whiny, you know what I'm like, I like to charge forward at 1000 miles per hour all of the time, and always look to the goal, to the future, to the whatever. I just, I'm struggling this week. It is a struggle. I am exhausted again. And I genuinely don't think it's any one thing in my life particularly, I just think it is the fact that it's all combined. And I really need to fucking slow down or like, not slow down, but just like take something off my plate before I crash and burn, because I sort of feel like this is a mini physical burnout. I have decided to reduce boot camps slightly. Instead of going five times a week, I'm gonna go three times a week for now. And I'm going to move one of those to the weekend so that I get a little bit more time in the week during the working days so that I can, you know, not work in the evenings so much. But yeah, I'm really over being sick this year. It is alarm bells to me. I am acutely aware that this is a problem and that I need to have a holiday or take some time off. The problem is I'm really shit at taking time off at home because my office is at home. So, you know, that's why I like to travel because then the office isn't here, the temptation isn't here. It's probably a very privileged thing to say. But you know, I do struggle to take time off at home. It just is what it is. It's a fact. So that's kind of where I'm at. Yeah, I don't feel well, and I would like to not be working today, if I'm honest. But there are things that need doing and things that have deadlines. So on I go. In terms of what I've been working on, I have started The Villains Journey. I'm super excited. I have been trying Rachel's method, which I know you guys will have heard about last week on The Black Herron. Oh, no, no. So for those listening on the podcast, you won't have heard about this yet. But for those on Patreon, you will have heard about it. So in the coming episode, Rachel and I discussed the fact that she started writing 500 new words a day on anything. They can be any project. And I was like, oh, that's amazing. And basically, if you do it every single day of the year, I think it's about 182,000 words a year. That's like three books, or more if you write nonfiction and shorter word counts. And I'm not going to do it every single day, I'm just trying to do it every working day. And so yeah, I have started The Villains Journey, and I'm already 3000 words in. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm not supposed to start writing this until May, you know, and at this rate, I can go to May with about 20k in the bag. So feels like a lot to me. I'm very, very happy. I'm about 19,000 words into the second Girl Games book. This is the one that I already had 30k in, but no, as you know, I more or less scrapped it. I have salvage some of the stuff from the first version, and so yeah, I'm 19,000 words into the book. I've been doing about 5000-word days, which is great. And using a write to sprint in the morning, and that's really been helping. So yeah, I feel pretty good about the writing projects. And it's really nice to be writing words. I find that I get to a point where I'm exhausted and don't want to write anymore, probably because I burned so hard, and then I like get very sick and tired of doing the marketing or the entity or whatever it is, and want to go back to doing the drafting. So it's a good schedule to have to be able to switch between the two. So when you hear this, it will be my birthday week. And I am considering, given that I'm not feeling very well, that I might take a couple of days off. I don't know, we'll see. I would like to go down to London and go to the Big Waterstones and like spend some time in there, but we'll see. I don't know whether or not I'll actually get to do that. But it would be nice to, so we'll see. You know, given that I'm not feeling very well, I think that is probably everything that I'm going to update you with this week. So the rebel of the week this week is, and I have to say, I did pause for a second and have to reread the name, It's Angel Ackerman, which when you write it and you read quickly, very much read as Angela Ackerman. Not Angela Ackerman, ladies and gentlemen, it's definitely Angel Ackerman. So let me read Angel's story to you. "I work in the Stitch Fix warehouse in Pennsylvania folding clothes for eight hours a day. I'm a former journalist and needed a low stress job that could allow me time and energy to pursue my own creative interests. At the warehouse, which Stitch Fix refers to as Hizzies, with cute names for each, we are the Buzzy Hizzy, but there is also the breezy, the hoozy, the dizzy, and the fizzy. I'm allowed to listen to podcasts, and so as a writer, I discovered The Rebel Author podcast and many others in the industry. "I have racked my brain trying to capture a rebel story from memory and suddenly I realized my whole creative side hustle is rebellion. I founded Parisian Phoenix Publishing in 2021 as the brand behind my paranormal women's fiction series, Fashion and Fiends, debuting with the first volume, Manipulations, in September of that year. "One of my best friends is a graphic designer with an obsession with typography. In her first job as a graphic design professor had invented the name and logo for the company and a complete boxset of the novels in 2008, just to have something to submit for the faculty art show. At the time, I was shopping my novels to traditional publishers and agents, attending conferences and serving on the board of my local writers group. Motherhood prevented me from giving proper effort to that, and the book industry was changing so much in the aughts. "When the pandemic happened, I thought it would be fun and rebellious to self-publish preserve these stories for my now teen daughter. But the project barrel rolled into a full-fledged craft press as more people asked me to publish their books. I asked fellow writers and artists for help with projects being proposed because linking creative communities is one of our goals. "As of 2023 Parisian Phoenix has nine published books ranging from an anthology of marginalized voices, LGBTQ disability, mental health, body image, ethnicity, etc., to a romantic comedy with original photographs, a devotional focusing on how to protect yourself in a violent modern world without violating your Christian values in production, and an 11th book of short stories in the editing phase. Not to mention, poetry, a holocaust memoir, and nostalgic fiction. "Each book seems to host its own rebellion. Our tagline is: publishing unique voices and diverse perspectives. And many of our staff members and peer review board members have disabilities. I have cerebral palsy. My assistant editor has been blind since birth. And we have primarily women on board." This is an awesome, awesome rebellion. And yeah, look up Parisian Phoenix if you are interested in finding out more about them. I think this is such a cool rebellion, and the fact that you are creating communities and collecting people and helping to bring diverse voices into the world is just fantastic. So I absofuckinglutely love that rebellion. And also thank you for listening. If you would like to be a rebel of the week, please do send in your story. It can be any kind of rebellion, something big, something small, or something in between. You can email your rebel story to Becca over on rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com. A huge welcome and a warm thank you to new patron Wendy Karis. And of course, a gigantic thank you to all of my existing patrons. You guys help keep the show running. You make me feel like what I do is worthwhile and having a wonderful impact, so I really, really appreciate each and every single one of you. If you would like to support the show and get early access to all of the episodes, as well as a ton of bonus content, then you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting patreon.com/sachablack. Okay, that's it from me this week. Let's get on with the episode. Hello, and welcome to The Rebel Author Podcast. We are in for a special treat today because we have not one, but two guests on the show. First, we have Jeff Adams. Jeff is a creative entrepreneur, as an author of both queer romances and young adult fiction, as well as the co-host of The Big Gay Fiction Podcast. In his day job, Jeff's a certified professional and accessibility core competencies by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. As the Accessibility Operations Director for UsableNet, a company focused on making the digital world more accessible and usable, he consults with clients around the world about digital accessibility. Next up we have Michele Lucchini. Michele is the Vice President of Delivery and Accessibility Operations for UsableNet and overseas the teams responsible for ensuring client success in their digital accessibility program. Michele's background is rooted in software development first, and moving to team and operation management later. Thanks to experience gathered in over two decades, Michele is an expert at helping companies from the largest to the smallest, making their digital experiences accessible. Hello, and welcome. Jeff: Thanks for having us, Sacha. It's great to be here. Sacha: So Jeff, you were first on the show back in episode 55, which I can't actually believe because that was October 2020. Jeff: It feels like a year ago, like years and years and years ago. Sacha: I know. I know. I mean, honestly, time is a lie. I was texting one of my friends this evening who was talking about the movie, Everything Everywhere... Jeff: Everything Everywhere All at Once, I think. Sacha: Yes, that one. And I was like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that was out like three years ago." And she was like, "Oh, actually, no, it's up for the Oscars now." And I was like, "Wait, what? No, no, no. It could not possibly have been out last year." Though it was. Yeah, time is a lie. It's weird. So normally I ask people like what their journey is, how they came to writing the book. But I'm gonna ask you first of all, like, what have you been up to since then? Because obviously, we know like your journey from the first episode, which I'll link in the show notes. Jeff: It's interesting as I went back to look at 55, and like what was going on in October of 2020. Like, within the month before you dropped that episode, so between the time we talked for that interview and you dropped the episode, we actually ended The Big Gay Author Podcast, which is one of the things we were talking about on that show. Mostly, because with pandemic and other things that were going on, like some of our priorities shifted, and it's like, we weren't sure that show was really relevant anymore. So as it's so popular, now, we learned how to say no and learned when to end something, and put that aside. Big Gay Fiction Podcast continues on. It went into its eighth year last November, so we're 400+ episodes now there. So that's been exciting. I've written the book we're about to talk about. And the neat thing about that, I think, is writing this nonfiction book, I think has resparked my fiction side a little bit, because I've been really stagnant over the last couple of years. I've done some rereleases of some things I got the rights back on, but writing new stuff has really been a struggle. So my fingers crossed, that the nonfiction kind of broke that kind of cloud over my head, if you will, and I'm gonna be able to hopefully get some new fiction out this year. Sacha: I always find nonfiction is a real palate cleanser. Like I adore fiction, but I definitely need to also write nonfiction, because it gets me excited to go back to the fiction. Otherwise, I do tend to find it's a bit of a burn. So Michele, have you written other books? Or is this your first one? Or? Michele: That's the very first one. Sacha: That's exciting. Michele: The last thing I wrote was my thesis at the university. And that was far from exciting. Well, actually, it was in home automation, so it was actually an interesting topic. But I've always loved writing, but I never dedicated myself enough to call myself like a producer or a writer of a proper book. Sacha: So before we dive into the questions like about the book, then how did you find writing, and writing together? Like what was the experience like for you? Michele: Well, let's also consider that it's not my mother language, right. So it was an extremely interesting experience. So I had the opportunity to learn on many different threads. So one is the challenge of transferring something that is my daily job knowledge, and the knowledge that has been built across 22 years, that I would use the word dedicate to this topic. Plus, learning the ability to put in words for somebody who is not an expert. One of the limits that I realize I have is that sometimes when you gather so much experience, you can lose the ability to explain and translate it in easy terms. I think that Jeff has experienced the same. I remember the first iteration of our review process, we were asking ourselves, does it make any sense for somebody if it's their first time approaching the topic of accessibility? So it was an interesting learning curve, but it was what made all the project extremely interesting for me. Sacha: Well, you both absolutely smashed it because it's the most meta book possible. For a book on accessibility, it's extremely accessible for someone who knows nothing about it. So you absolutely smashed it out of the park. So well done, both of you. And that is what we're here to talk about. And your new book is called Content for Everyone. And it focuses on the topic of accessibility. So before we dive into some more technical, practical tips and tricks, like why accessibility? What made you want to write a book on this topic? And why is it so important, particularly for the authors and writers listening? Jeff: The whole thing kind of became this big smashing together of my day job in accessibility. But the things that I do on the creative side, so even before the book was kind of a seed in my head to do, I was trying to make sure that my sites, my email, my social media, were as accessible as I could make them. You know, because I'm not technical. Knowing what you need to do and actually being able to do it can be two different things, you know. So, moving through this, and as I talked about content accessibility all the time, it's one of the things I trained UsableNet clients about, is that very topic. It's so in my brain, I can't not see issues almost everywhere I go on the net. No alt text on Facebook, bad color combinations here, things that don't work with keyboard. You know, all these things just keep being in front of me. And I know that nobody sets out to do that. You know, nobody sets out to make inaccessible content that can exclude, potentially, a lot of people. They just don't know what to do. And they don't know what the topic is. So it's like, why don't I try to create something that distills what you can work on, and also to a degree, things to watch out for, because there are things in the book that are--and keyboard navigation is a great example of this, and we'll probably talk about a little bit more about that piece of it later. But you're not going to fix your own keyboard navigation issues, but if you know you have them, you might get a new template or do something to start to mitigate those problems. And so that's kind of where it started. And then one day, as I was talking with Michele, as we do all the time, I was like, I'm gonna write this book. And he was interested, so we decided to kind of tackle it together. Sacha: I love this so much. And like, I think it was such a humbling experience for me to read as well, because my stepfather is disabled, and he uses a wheelchair. And so I have a reasonable amount of knowledge about accessibility in terms of like mobility and physical issues. And so I kind of went into the book thinking, oh, yeah, like, I'm gonna understand. Holy moly, I was so ignorant of digital issues. Like all of the bits and bobs, like on social media. Like just things that I wouldn't even have thought would be an issue. And that's what I love so much about this book is I genuinely feel like every single person listening to this podcast will go away having learned something. So I think it's really important that listeners do go and educate themselves, and buy your book, I read your book, because it's fucking brilliant. So in your book, one of the things that you talk about are the four main types of disability. And I think it'd be helpful for listeners to understand what they are to give some context to the rest of the podcast. And I don't know if you are able just to give some like references to a couple of the numbers, which were really quite significant. And I was quite shocked when I read it and saw some of those stats. You know, and by that, I mean, sort of how many people are affected by disability. So yeah, because this is an important topic. Michele: Yeah, it is. And numbers are shocking. And I think that we can identify four main categories of disabilities, which is mobility. And this is the largest group, so over 13%, almost 14%, of US population as some mobility impairment. So translated into a digital experience, it could be something preventing the user to use emails, or a regular pointing device. The second category is the cognitive disability. And here we are talking about over 10% of the US population. Any cognitive disorder, it could be learning difficulties, dyslexia, and I'm not just talking about very, very bad disabilities, but just simple conditions that are not preventing an individual to conduct a normal life. The third category is the auditory ability. The count is around 6% of the population. And the auditory disability is any form of hearing loss. And last but not least, is the visual disability. Here we are around 5% of the population. So within the visual disability, of course, we include the blind individual categories, but we might have any kind of low vision, color blindness, contrast deficits, and all impairments that are preventing a user to be able to see colors or transfer the content as the mainstream, which is a word I hate and a concept I hate, will experience on this side. There is one more, in my opinion, a shocking number. Beside the fact that with easy math, we are seeing that 20% of the population as a sort of disability. 20% of your audience, your customers potentially have a sort of visibility. But in these 20%, we're not counting all the temporary impairments. So somebody that broke his arm, somebody that is using his mobile phone under the sunlight, and the sun is hitting the screen and he's not able to see as well as he'd be able to see the screen in the dark. We are now also considering that the age of the digital population is increasing year after a year. I always use an example, so my dad is 74. He is active, smart, quick. His expectation is to keep interacting with his mobile phone, for example, as it is right now. Why should he accept that as his sight is becoming a little bit lower, as his precision with the movements might degredate. In the course of the years, he won't be able to use his phone, he won't be able to do what he's doing with his computer. So that becomes a basic expectation. So we need to take that in consideration. So that 20%, actually, is much, much more if we are considering all the, let's call them disability induced by the context of use. Or simply the population getting older. Sacha: I think one of the things that I found enlightening is the term assistive technology and what that captures. Because I think many of us are actually using some of these technologies without even realizing that actually, they are tools that help those people who do have accessibility issues. I know I certainly was like, oh, you know, I was just using this because this is a handy thing. And actually, they're integral to ensure that our content is accessible for everybody. So I wondered if you could talk about what assistive technology is and give some like examples, just to put it into context. Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. It's something that, as you noted, we use it every day and don't even think about it. You and I are wearing assistive technology right now, Sacha, because we're both in glasses. Think about what you would not be able to see if you didn't have your glasses on. Sacha: I really couldn't. Jeff: You know, it'd be a mess. Using speech to text technology, I think we use it all the time. Authors certainly use it a lot to dictate their manuscripts. You know, if you're dictating a text to your phone, and then sending it that way, or interacting with any home assistant, that's part of it. But also for some people who maybe are restricted in the mobility area, they may use speech to text of that kind to literally navigate the web. And that would be what they'd use in place of a mouse is speaking to the computer. The keyboard itself is a big assistive tool for some people, because theoretically, you know, by the rules of accessibility, you should be able to interact with the site completely on your keyboard, without interacting with the mouse at all. So things like that, you know, are some of the high level things. But then each of our computers, if we're on any kind of, you know, modern Mac or Windows machine, or if we're using Android or iOS phones and tablets, all of those have a huge array of accessibility things built right into them. Whether it's a screen reader, Zoom technology, more around voice to text, a whole bunch of things. And I would really encourage people to look in their settings for their computer and their devices just to see the long list of things that are present that people could use to be interacting with their digital content. Sacha: So like what is the consequence of this to authors if they don't engage with making their content accessible? Michele: I think that the easiest to perceive consequence is they may leave out of the door a good portion of a potential audience or potential customers. But besides the numbers, beside the, let's say, business aspect, I like to think about the impact on potential reputation. Michele: The impact on the idea that the audience, the customer, might have on just ignoring categories of people. So we need to, I think that it is time for us to all get sensitized on the fact that we need to build a more inclusive world. I mean, it is everyone's responsibility, it is not Jeff's, it is not Michele's, it is not Sacha's responsibility only. It is not an expert's responsibility only. Everyone can provide a contribution. So, in my opinion, the impact on the reputation is probably getting to be the most prominent one. And this is what my advice is. Jeff: If you think about the whole idea that not doing this excludes people, and of course, I think all of us creatives really want to be about inclusion. We talk in the book, we talked to four different people in the book who have different disabilities, and in some cases, different multiple disabilities. And one of the things that struck me was speaking to one of my fellow authors in the queer romance space. They were trying to interact with courses, you know, there's a whole array of courses available to independent authors for ads, and for marketing here, and marketing there, and writing craft and all these things. And repeatedly, they are not finding courses where like the live courses don't have live captions through whatever venue it is. And certainly Zoom is really good at live captions for any call that you're doing there. But even in the replays, captions or transcripts weren't available. So they either, you know, don't get to interact with the training at all because they're deaf and hard of hearing. I mean, they've got hearing aids, but those only give them about 30 - 40% of the full picture. So they either strain to hear that content, and try to work on it, which of course is taxing and tiring, or they abandon it all together. And they really feel like they're not getting information that other authors get because, you know, they're not included in that experience. Sacha: Yeah, transcripts is a real sticking point for me, because when I first started the podcast, I used to do transcripts for the show. But at moment, I only have school working hours, and you know, each transcript for an episode is a two hour job. You know, when you do four a month, that's a whole lot. That's more than one working day, and I just can't afford the time. But it is something that I provide for courses. And I do try to make sure I do video audio transcript, and you know, all of that stuff. It's very frustrating for me because I would like to have the sort of AI transcription software be more accurate because I can't just transcribe and leave it and put it up because there are things still that don't make sense. It's not accurate enough. And obviously, outsourcing, it's costly. So that's one of the things for me that I know that I could change, and I would really like to change. But obviously, it's a costly exercise one way or the or another. So we know that it's important to make sure our books and websites and social media are accessible to everyone. So what are some easy wins that people could take away from this episode? Anything practical that we could do to make our content more accessible? Jeff: You kind of hit on one of the things there in what you just said around auto generated. Auto generated anything doesn't make it accessible. Auto generated transcripts or captions are just riddled with mistakes. They come close, they're about 95% of the way there, and they're a great point to start the editing process, but they're not complete. And they will leave your audience feeling the same way, like if you just put out a first draft of a book without any copy editing and without any fixes to it. That's also true for alternative text because Facebook and Instagram, for example, will put alt text on anything you upload to it, and it's horrible. It'll be like, "might be one person standing outside with a beard," because they've got a beard on their face. And they'll just kind of tag that on the end. And it'll also try to read any text that's actually in the image. And if you think about those very popular book promo graphics right now with the book in the middle and all the little arrows pointing with like tropes and plot points and stuff. Sacha: I posted one of those today. Jeff: The AI will actually read left to right, trying to read each line of that, including the book title and the bylines, and present that. That's what Facebook offers. So you need to make sure on social that you're cleaning up the alt text that's present there so that it's not just some real garbage that's sitting there. Then another key I would give, knowing how everybody loves to use emojis, really limit the use of them. Like put them at the end to like finish the punctuation on a post or a sentence or something. Don't start with them, because especially for screen readers, each emoji has its own thing that it reads out, that may not be the context that you want it to be. Don't put emojis between the words for the same reason. Also you think about cognitively disabled people and emojis as well. The context and the way you want those to be perceived, if somebody is already having to parse the words you're putting in there because maybe they're dyslexic and they need a very clean line of text, or some other cognitive disability, you're just making it that much harder for them to get the message that you're trying to give because you're trying to add some visual sparkle with the emojis. So I would say that those are my three quick hits on some things that can start to make the content more accessible. Sacha: Yeah, I still remember the first time somebody asked me to put captions on my stories. And as far as I'm aware, they have no accessibility issues, but they used to watch my stories at work, and they couldn't watch them with sound on. I was like, "oh," and I was like, "yeah, sure, I can do that." And then, obviously, there were other comments from other people who were like, "Oh, actually, now I can like watch your story, like watch/read your stories." And like, that was a real eye opener. I just think so much of this is just pure, like, what's the word? Not nefarious, but it is still ignorance. You know, it's just accidental ignorance in a way. But the emojis, I definitely do far too many emojis and I am going to make an effort to make sure they're at the end instead. I definitely start with emojis, I put them in the middle, you don't even think about it. So yeah, now I will be thinking about it going forward. Okay, so you've just mentioned alt text there. But I wondered if you could give me an example of what good alt text is because I do some freelance work managing a blog, and I know that when we have pictures, we're supposed to put alt text on there. I never really know what it is I am supposed to be describing or what I'm supposed to be putting into the alt text sections. So like, how do I know where I'm supposed to use it and when it's not actually needed? And how do I know what a good sentence is to put in there? Michele: Somebody says that finding the right alt text is like an art. And I actually agree with that. There is no magic recipe to define a good alternative text. We always recommend it is important to understand what role an image plays within the context. The context of what? It could be the context of the page, the context of the message we are communicating. So in the case an image is purely decorative, you're just using an image as a sort of placeholder, an extremely nice placeholder, but it's only conveying a decorative meaning, in that case, your alternative tags should be empty. It does not mean that you don't have to put the alt attribute, because if you don't, assistive technology will read the file name of the image, making it very difficult to understand for the final user. But setting the alternative tax as an empty, the assistive technology will know that that image will need to be ignored. So it won't be read. Instead, if the image is conveying a message, an important message, you should describe it with the right message. I mean it was funny for us, not in the context that we found the issue, it was the classic search icon, the magnifier lens, and so the site we were reviewing had, as an alternative text of the magnifier lengths, magnifier length. Instead, there was supposed to be search, because the function of the image was search, it was not magnifying something. So you can just imagine how confusing would have been the experience of a blind user using a screen reader that was hearing that there was an input text field on the page, so maybe that is what I can use to search something, and then magnifier lens. When you experience that, people with disabilities now have a bad website. With very little effort, you can fix it, you can make your site more accessible and more meaningful to everyone. Sacha: Yeah, that's so interesting, because obviously, you derive meaning from seeing the image, but actually, it's the function of the image that's the important bit. I think that's a fantastic bit of learning for everybody to take away. One of the other things you talk about in the book are the four main principles of accessibility on a website. And I think these are things that authors should be aware of. So I wondered if you could just briefly go over them. Michele: Yeah, sure. The web content accessibility guideline, which is the sort of Bible to determine whether a digital property is accessible or not, are four. And actually, those four principles also apply to everyday object accessibility. So the first one is perceivable. It means that any user must be able to perceive the content and the interface of your website. So we just did the example around the alternative text, that falls under the perceivable principle. The second principle is operable. So it requires to provide the ability for all users, independently by their abilities, to operate with user interface. The classic example is, let's consider a motor impairment, and it prevents the user to interact with the mouse. So the site must provide the ability for the user to use just the keyboard to interact and browse the site. The third principle is understandable, which probably is the easiest to understand. So the interface and the content must be understandable to the user. This actually, on some of these success criteria, it becomes extremely interesting because it also covers cultural disabilities. So the use of an easy language and all these aspects are, I think, extremely interesting for authors. And last but not least, is the final principle, which is the robust. It is probably the most technical principle that is included into the guideline, but it is all about respecting the standards, and respecting the core compatibility. One of the things that we always have to remember is that users with disabilities are massively relying on their system. So they are probably not upgrading them 30 seconds after the operative system notifies us that there is an upgrade ready to be installed. They don't do that because the risk of losing the ability to, for example, have the system working as it was working before, it might generate a big problem. Imagine a blind user that relies on his computer or any screen reader to order the food, to book the train ticket, to book a taxi. If after the upgrade, it won't work anymore or won't work as it was working before, considering that learning how to use a screen reader is probably a multiyear experience. Sacha: I find that so interesting. Actually, that's going to make me slightly more empathetic, I think. So with my stepdad, we often help like change bills over and do things like internet swap over, but there's a lot of resistance to like upgrading. And I was like, you need better internet, like you need it. And, you know, I wasn't particularly empathetic about it, but actually I get it now. I get it. Yeah, I can understand because so much is reliant on the existing system. And I'm just like, yeah, well, we can change it and upgrade it and make it better. But actually, when there are so many systems, you know, phone systems and call systems and nurse systems that are based on it, I can understand why there's that resistance and reluctance to change it. And so yeah, thank you for that. Now, I'm not very empathetic person, but I'm going to try very hard now to be better. Yeah, thank you. I've read the book and learned so much and I'm still learning even more. This is a fantastic interview. Thank you, guys. One of the things, speaking of, that I learned was that using color to differentiate isn't always helpful, which blew my mind because I am an extremely visual person, and I actually rely on color to learn. Like when I was studying at university, I would put my psychology studies in certain colors, so that I could close my eyes and picture like my big brainstorm thing, like with all the different colors on it, and then I'd remember the numbers and the words and the authors and things. And so that helps me to categorize and it's how I find books on my bookshelf. And I was ignorant of, obviously, the fact that that's a huge problem for people who are colorblind. So what are some of the things that those of us who are able bodied take for granted that you wish that we would change? Michele: Yeah, relying on color to convey information is probably one of those. Just the color is not enough, you should use something else. Let's do an easy example. So imagine that the style that you have on your website highlights the links only with the color. Let's also make sure the links are underlined, which is the standard, let's say link style, because otherwise, people might not be able to perceive the difference between the link and the plain text. The same when you are providing instructions on how to do something. Recently, I've seen a sign that was suggesting to use the red button. But what if I'm using my interface only on a scale of gray? I will not be able to perceive what is the red button, and I will not be able to distinguish between the other buttons. So again, it is not necessarily a hyper technical aspect, it is the ability to start understanding which are the difficulties. And these are difficulties that you might be able to perceive, not just on the web, but on the everyday life. So this is, I think, one of the nicest thing around accessibility, that when you start learning, and Sacha, you confirmed that before, right? When you start learning it on a field, then you naturally apply it to a number of different fields. And the use of colors is a classic one that you can find on books, guides, instructions, websites, on Facebook post. It is a very popular mistake. Sacha: I think it's so natural for so many of us to, you know, we go through the world with our own rose tinted spectacles on. We go through the world with our own experience. And so often we take that for granted that that's everybody's experience. And it's not. And that's why this is so important because none of us are perfect. We all have things to learn. And I think as long as we are open to being humble, and to putting our hands up and say, "Actually, yeah, I had no idea. I'm going to change that now." I think that's one of the magical things about your book is that you say throughout it that nobody's expecting you to do everything in this book immediately. You can do one little thing this month, another thing next month, you know. And I think that's what's so encouraging because I actually left the book very motivated to try and fix some of these things. Jeff: The thing to remember, and you kind of touched on it there, that we tell you, you don't have to do everything, but it's also a mindset of progress over perfection. It's one of the big things talked about among all the advocates in this space, because you can't do everything all at once. And especially for who we're talking to here, which is really creative entrepreneurs, probably little to no technical experience, working with little to no budget, you know, maybe if they're lucky, a PA who helps with this stuff. But to know you can choose to do nothing on your existing content and always do better going forward, those little things add up. You don't want this to feel like a crushing like, oh god, now I've got two thousand other things to go do. Baby steps, parse out what you're gonna do, what you think the most important thing is, and just do something. Yeah. Sacha: And like, speaking of doing something, I think one of the things that authors spend a lot of their marketing time on is social media. So what are some of the things that we can do to be more inclusive and accessible on social media? Jeff: Really think about that emoji use. I mean, I will tie back to that, because emojis is one of the places that I think most people, if they're going to abuse emojis, it's abuse on social. Put them at the end of the post, don't bury them in the middle of it, so that your message comes through. And that's really what I look at in every instance when I'm thinking about social. It's let's make sure the message you're giving actually comes through. Instagram stories and TikTok, when you can add your own text to those, make sure you're using text that's actually big enough to read. Those stories, you can't pinch and zoom and do all that stuff. And there's so many Instagrams, people type these big, long missives on their Instagram stories, and it's really teeny, tiny text, and I'm like, I have no idea. And if I am not reading it with my glasses on, it's like, yeah, you're gonna lower your interaction with that. Make it bigger text, more screens, whatever that takes to get that across. The same thing when you're doing caption fonts, like I love your caption fonts when you're doing your stories. It's good, big text. I think I could read that with my glasses off, perhaps, which is great. Think about how you're using images and what you're doing with them. Images of text are used a lot, and you know, they're catchy, like those graphics we talked about with all the arrows pointing to the books. But make sure that that message is coming out into the post itself. Because, you know, we talked about using alt text, which is great, but there are people with low vision, who aren't going to use the screen reader to get to the alt text. So for that book example, all of those little pop points that are running around the outside of the book, make that part of the post in a sentence format. You know, "this book features these things," so that it's equivalent information presented. That comes back to the perceivable principle that Michele mentioned. Different people perceive in different ways, so make sure the content is available in all those different perceivable ways. Sacha: So I got halfway there with that trope's post because I put the tropes in the caption, but then I put a tick emoji by each one. I was so close. Michele: You need to read the book again. Sacha: Clearly, I do. Okay, last sort of major question then. Talk to me about font. You've mentioned font, about having it large in captions, but also there are things that we should know about choosing font for our websites or for our books or social media where possible. Jeff: I would say this is less about books and book covers because that's going to the brand and the feel of the book, and that kind of thing. And the book cover itself is really art. And yes, there are certain things you could do, but you don't want to like take away from the feel of your cover for that. When you're promoting the book, you want the text around that art to be properly accessible and stuff. You can't really adjust the font on aspects of social. You've got some font choices on stories and areas like that. But if you're gonna look at font families, for example, like Tahoma, Times New Roman, Verdana, and to a large degree, Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, those are generally well accessible fonts because the things that you're looking for are easily distinguishable letters. So a font where a lowercase L and an uppercase I and the numeral one, don't all look the same. Because then you're gonna start having people having difficulty parsing the letters if they're visually interacting with them. And then, of course, it's a good font size. So you know, well 14 size font on websites and in emails and stuff. Think about are you using on your emails, for example, a mobile friendly template so that somebody doesn't have to pinch and zoom even if you're using a big font, because it's not reformatting in the mobile window well. And if you're doing tiny text, don't go too tiny. Even if you're doing like rules for something, somebody's trying to read that. So you know, be considered about that as well. Very thin fonts, things with big flourishes in them, be wary of those. Those will be much harder for people with cognitive disabilities, potentially, to parse and low vision to parse out what those are. Coming back to like images of text and that promo graphic, if you do have swirly stuff in there because it's part of the brand feel of the book, just make sure you're getting that message in the post and in the alt text so that it's all considerable. Two other things I'll throw out about fonts, and one of these ties back to color, is color contrast. So beyond the use of color that Michele mentioned, think about the color contrast and the ability to discern what's in the background versus the foreground. So if you're thinking about text, does the text pop enough off of the background color to be readable. And I'll send you for the show notes a link to a color contrast checker that's available, you just put in the hex codes for your foreground and your background, and it's gonna tell you if it passes color contrast. It nice little sliders on it so you can darken and lighten text to find the right balance to ensure that those visually interacting can see and discern the color appropriately and not have to like work too hard on it. The last thing I'll mention around text is the alignment of the text. Centering text, especially large blocks of text, we're not talking like headlines, but large chunks of text, very cognitively draining to read because your eye is always have to find where the start of the line is. Same thing with justification because there's inconsistent spacing between words. Left justify it so that I can follow, you know, not so much with the indents because indentations are expected, but you know, start left align copy so that it's just a straight line. It makes for the easiest readability. Sacha: Yeah, do you know I've always hated center justified text and I've never really know known why. And it is actually exhausting to read it. Yeah, that's so interesting. Thank you both so, so much because I think this is a really, really important topic. And I hope that listeners, even if they're only got to go and do one thing, please do go and take one action after listening to this podcast. Well, two actions. One, read the book, and then two, take a take a practical action. But this is The Rebel Author Podcast, so tell everyone about a time you unleashed your inner rebel. And I don't mind who goes first. Jeff: I will say that I prepared better this time than the first time that we did this because I know Will I found this question to be like, oh my god, what is this even mean? I have one for this though. And I challenge everybody after they read the book to start doing this kind of same thing. And it's gently educating people about accessibility. As you learn it, pass it on. Like, even before I wrote the book, every now and then I would talk to an author colleague, a podcaster colleague, about newsletters or things that I saw that just very clearly popped out to me because of this work that I do. Like maybe think about doing this thing different than this thing, to spread the word. And I'm even more kind of out there with it now. Whether it's a colleague, or a business that I that I work with. You know, I use maybe widgets and plugins on my websites to get to make certain things happen. I'll either go look for new ones, or be like, hey, this is bad, can you do something about this place? It's all about gently. It's not about aggressively coming out of the gate and be like, oh, my God, why aren't you doing this. It's like, you may not know this, but XYZ. And that way, accessibility becomes something that we all start to think about a little more. So it's a little rebellion and it takes a little courage to just know you're gonna go reach out to somebody go, can I just give you some unsolicited advice about this? But it's all about trying to make everything more inclusive. Sacha: Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. And the more welcoming we can be, the better our community becomes, and the more, what's the word, the more appreciated our readers feel. So I love that rebellion. Michele, what about you? You've got to have a rebellion, too. Michele: I do, I do. It might be considered close to Jeff's one, but the message I want to convey is that we live in a world that relies on accessory to use something that has been just purely designed. And we need to stop. The concept of an assistive technology, or even worse, an alternative, it needs to stop. So the fact that the product that you are designing, often we see the main actor as the designer, not the user, is what causes the majority of the accessibility issues. So we need to invest something that is not necessarily related to the technology only, but in the way we speak. And I include myself, I mean, this is a message that I send to myself as well. So to be more inclusive, but in a way that we think we will learn, which could be all the difficulties, all the possible different abilities of our audience, and we try to be more inclusive, but in a way that we don't just consider that if he's not able to use my website, for sure, she will have an accessory that will make her able to. Well, it's not always like that. We can design better, we can write better, we can produce better products to be available for a wider audience. Sacha: Yeah, I love that. And I think the best marketers who are authors keep the end user being the reader at the fore of their design of their books and their marketing campaigns. And you know, they're the ones who are the most effective at this. And so I think that's an amazing rebellion. Okay, tell everyone where they can find out more about you, your book, and anything else you would like to add? Jeff: Absolutely. So you can find all about Content for Everyone at contentforeveryone.info. Information where you can get the book, we're also going to be putting up routine blog posts there to talk about examples that we've seen, news that would be of interest to creatives. So we'll start to have you know that be kind of an ongoing resource to help share even more around the book. And Content for Everyone is available everywhere, eBook, paperback, large print paperback and audiobook. And you should find that anywhere you want to pick up a book, or pick up an audio, it should be there. Sacha: Are you narrating? Jeff: I am actually, yes. Sacha: I love it. I love it. Jeff: If you want more about me, JeffAdamsWrites.com for the fiction, and BigGayFictionPodcast.com for the podcast. Sacha: Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay, well, thank you so much for your time today, and of course a gigantic thank you to all of the show's listeners and all of the show's patrons. If you'd like to get early access to all of the episodes, you can do so by visiting patreon.com/sachablack. I'm Sacha Black, you are listening to Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini, and this was The Rebel Author Podcast. Next week I am joined by one of my fav humans, Ines Johnson, and we are going to be talking about business, processes, efficiency, and basically how she is a fucking badass author. So join me next week for that. Don't forget to tune in and subscribe on your podcatcher. And when you have a moment, please leave a review.  

Founder and CEO of Z-JAK Technologies, Jeff Chandler joins the show to share his over thirty- five years of experience as a developer, systems architect, and consultant. Jeff is also an expert in cybersecurity, serving previously as Chief Technology Officer for Jefferson National Financial. Jeff was part of the startup team that built that company and, most recently, Jeff authored the book Hacked. Today, Jeff talks all about cybersecurity, ransomware and best practices small businesses can implement to make themselves a ‘hard target.' Jeff shares his own entrepreneurial journey, including advice he would give to other aspiring founders.Episode SponsorChampion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/ Small Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Key Takeaways01:09 – Jeff introduces today's guest, Jeff Chandler, who joins the show to discuss his background in technology, cybersecurity and consulting14:37 – Cybersecurity, ransomware and how small businesses can combat these risks16:46 – Best practices for making yourself a ‘hard target'21:32 – Jeff shares his thoughts on the future of technology and how it will impact businesses23:30 – The evolution of the CTO role26:45 – Advice Jeff would give to his younger self32:40 – Jeff talks about the work he's doing at Z-JAK Technologies34:03 – Jeff thanks Jeff Chandler for joining the show and lets listeners know where to learn more about Z-JAK TechnologiesTweetable Quotes“So, as they're filling out the application and answering those questions about their health history and so on, in the background we're making decisions in real time and tracking it as we go. And then we had an underwriter who we took all of her knowledge that we could, fed it into our rudimentary AI engine to make a decision. And this AI engine would even pull credit reports or motor vehicle report. If you weren't a great driver, maybe you weren't a great risk for buying life insurance.” (07:20) (Jeff)“We found that building a brand new insurance company from scratch is really, really hard and takes a lot of money. We were constantly out fundraising and getting new capital investment. So, what we did was we ended up buying another insurance carrier.” (10:10) (Jeff)“It's not that they're particularly targeting small businesses; they're targeting everybody. But if a small business doesn't do some of the best practices, like changing the password on a firewall or running the most current version of antivirus, those are the ones who pop out on these scans that they do.” (15:58) (Jeff)“Ninety something percent of all the hacks happen because someone clicked a link they shouldn't have. So, what can we do to help them recognize those links and what doesn't look good.” (17:31) (Jeff)“Again, it's looking at what you can do with what you have. So, it's taking the tools that you have and using those most effectively to grow your business.” (26:24) (Jeff)“Done is better than perfect. Get something out there. Get some feedback and talk to people and see what you can do better. Just put it out there and take some chances.” (31:49) (Jeff)Guest ResourcesJeff's LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/ Jeff's...

About JeffJeff Smith has been in the technology industry for over 20 years, oscillating between management and individual contributor. Jeff currently serves as the Director of Production Operations for Basis Technologies (formerly Centro), an advertising software company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Before that he served as the Manager of Site Reliability Engineering at Grubhub.Jeff is passionate about DevOps transformations in organizations large and small, with a particular interest in the psychological aspects of problems in companies. He lives in Chicago with his wife Stephanie and their two kids Ella and Xander.Jeff is also the author of Operations Anti-Patterns, DevOps Solutions with Manning publishing. (https://www.manning.com/books/operations-anti-patterns-devops-solutions) Links Referenced: Basis Technologies: https://basis.net/ Operations Anti-Patterns: https://attainabledevops.com/book Personal Site: https://attainabledevops.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffery-smith-devops/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarkAndNerdy Medium: https://medium.com/@jefferysmith duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Fortinet. Fortinet's partnership with AWS is a better-together combination that ensures your workloads on AWS are protected by best-in-class security solutions powered by comprehensive threat intelligence and more than 20 years of cybersecurity experience. Integrations with key AWS services simplify security management, ensure full visibility across environments, and provide broad protection across your workloads and applications. Visit them at AWS re:Inforce to see the latest trends in cybersecurity on July 25-26 at the Boston Convention Center. Just go over to the Fortinet booth and tell them Corey Quinn sent you and watch for the flinch. My thanks again to my friends at Fortinet.Corey: Let's face it, on-call firefighting at 2am is stressful! So there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that you probably can't prevent incidents from happening, but the good news is that incident.io makes incidents less stressful and a lot more valuable. incident.io is a Slack-native incident management platform that allows you to automate incident processes, focus on fixing the issues and learn from incident insights to improve site reliability and fix your vulnerabilities. Try incident.io, recover faster and sleep more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. One of the fun things about doing this show for long enough is that you eventually get to catch up with people and follow up on previous conversations that you've had. Many years ago—which sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but is increasingly actually true—Jeff Smith was on the show talking about a book that was about to release. Well, time has passed and things have changed. And Jeff Smith is back once again. He's the Director of Product Operations at Basis Technologies, and the author of DevOps Anti-Patterns? Or what was the actual title of the book it was—Jeff: Operations Anti-Patterns.Corey: I got hung up in the anti-patterns part because it's amazing. I love the title.Jeff: Yeah, Operations Anti-Patterns, DevOps Solutions.Corey: Got you. Usually in my experience, alway been operations anti-patterns, and here I am to make them worse, probably by doing something like using DNS as a database or some godforsaken thing. But you were talking about the book aspirationally a few years ago, and now it's published and it has been sent out to the world. And it went well enough that they translated it to Japanese, I believe, and it has seen significant uptick. What was your experience of it? How did it go?Jeff: You know, it was a great experience. This is definitely the first book that I've written. And the Manning process was extremely smooth. You know, they sort of hold your hand through the entire process. But even after launch, just getting feedback from readers and hearing how it resonated with folks was extremely powerful.I was surprised to find out that they turned it into an audiobook as well. So, everyone reaches out and says, “Did you read the audiobook? I was going to buy it, but I wasn't sure.” I was like, “No, unfortunately, I don't read it.” But you know, still cool to have it out there.Corey: My theory has been for a while now that no one wants to actually write a book; they want to have written a book. Now that you're on the other side, how accurate is that? Are you in a position of, “Wow, sure glad that's done?” Or are you, “That was fun. Let's do it again because I like being sad all the time.” I mean, you do work Kubernetes for God's sake. I mean, there's a bit of masochism inherent to all of us in this space.Jeff: Yeah. Kubernetes makes me cry a little bit more than the writing process. But it's one of the things when you look back on it, you're like, “Wow, that was fun,” but not in the heat of the moment, right? So, I totally agree with the sentiment that people want to have written a book but not actually gone through the process. And that's evident by the fact that how many people try to start a book on their own without a publisher behind them, and they end up writing it for 15 years. The process is pretty grueling. The feedback is intense at first, but you start to get into a groove and you—I could see, you know, in a little while wanting to write another book. So, I can see the appeal.Corey: And the last time you were on the show, I didn't really bother to go in a particular topical direction because, what's the point? It didn't really seem like it was a top-of-mind issue to really bring up because what's it matter; it's a small percentage of the workforce. Now I feel like talking about remote work is suddenly taking on a bit of a different sheen than it was before the dark times arrived. Where do you land on the broad spectrum of opinions around the idea of remote work, given that you have specialized in anti-patterns, and well, as sarcastic as I am, I tend to look at almost every place I've ever worked is expressing different anti-patterns from time to time. So, where do you land on the topic?Jeff: So, it's funny, I started as a staunch office supporter, right? I like being in the office. I like collaborating in person; I thought we were way more productive. Since the pandemic, all of us are forced into remote work, I've hired almost half of my team now as remote. And I am somewhat of a convert, but I'm not on the bandwagon of remote work is just as good or is better as in person work.I've firmly landed in the camp of remote work is good. It's got its shortcomings, but it's worth the trade off. And I think acknowledging what those trade-offs are important to keeping the team afloat. We just recently had a conversation with the team where we were discussing, like, you know, there's definitely been a drop in productivity over the past six months to a year. And in that conversation, a lot of the things that came up were things that are different remote that were better in person, right, Slack etiquette—which is something, you know, I could talk a little bit about as well—but, you know, Slack etiquette in terms of getting feedback quickly, just the sort of camaraderie and the lack of building that camaraderie with new team members as they come on board and not having those rituals to replace the in-person rituals. But through all that, oddly enough, no one suggested going back into the office. [laugh].Corey: For some strange reason, yeah. I need to be careful what I say here, I want to disclaim the position that I'm in. There is a power imbalance and nothing I say is going to be able to necessarily address that because I own the company and if my team members are listening to this, they're going to read a lot into what I say that I might not necessarily intend. But The Duckbill Group, since its founding, has been a fully distributed company. My business partner lives in a different state than I do so there's never been the crappy version of remote, which is, well, we're all going to be in the same city, except for Theodore. Theodore is going to be timezones away and then wonder why he doesn't get to participate in some of the conversations where the real decisions get made.Like that's crappy. I don't like that striated approach to things. We don't have many people who are co-located in any real sense, nor have we for the majority of the company's life. But there are times when I am able to work on a project in a room with one of my colleagues, and things go a lot more smoothly. As much as we want to pretend that video is the same, it quite simply isn't.It is a somewhat poor substitute for the very high bandwidth of a face-to-face interaction. And yes, I understand this is also a somewhat neurotypical perspective, let's be clear with that as well, and it's not for everyone. But I think that for the base case, a lot of the remote work advocates are not being fully, I guess, honest with themselves about some of the shortcomings remote has. That is where I've mostly landed on this. Does that generally land with where you are?Jeff: Yeah, that's exactly where I'm at. I completely agree. And when we take work out of the equation, I think the shortcomings lay themselves bare, right? Like I was having a conversation with a friend and we were like, well, if you had a major breakup, right, I would never be like, “Oh, man. Grab a beer and hop on Zoom,” right? [laugh]. “Let's talk it out.”No, you're like, hey, let's get in person and let's talk, right? We can do all of that conversation over Zoom, but the magic of being in person and having that personal connection, you know, can't be replaced. So, you know, if it's not going to work, commiserating over beers, right? I can't imagine it's going to work, diagramming some complex workflows and trying to come to an answer or a solution on that. So again, not to say that, you know, remote work is not valuable, it's just different.And I think organizations are really going to have to figure out, like, okay, if I want to entice people back into the office, what are the things that I need to do to make this realistic? We've opened the floodgates on remote hiring, right, so now it's like, okay, everyone's janky office setup needs to get fixed, right? So, I can't have a scenario where it's like, “Oh, just point your laptop at the whiteboard, right?” [laugh]. Like that can't exist, we have to have office spaces that are first-class citizens for our remote counterparts as well.Corey: Right because otherwise, the alternative is, “Great, I expect you to take the home that you pay for and turn it into an area fit for office use. Of course, we're not going to compensate you for that, despite the fact that, let's be realistic, rent is often larger than the AWS bill.” Which I know, gasp, I'm as shocked as anyone affected by that, but it's true. “But oh, you want to work from home? Great. That just means you can work more hours.”I am not of the school of thought where I consider time in the office to be an indicator of anything meaningful. I care if the work gets done and at small-scale, this works. Let me also be clear, we're an 11-person company. A lot of what I'm talking about simply will not scale to companies that are orders of magnitude larger than this. And from where I sit, that's okay. It doesn't need to.Jeff: Right. And I think a lot of the things that you talk about will scale, right? Because in most scenarios, you're not scaling it organizationally so much as you are with a handful of teams, right? Because when I think about all the different teams I interact with, I never really interact with the organization as a whole, I interact with my little neighborhood in the organization. So, it is definitely something that scales.But again, when it comes to companies, like, enticing people back into the office, now that I'm talking about working from home five days a week, I've invested in my home setup. I've got the monitor I want, I've got the chair that I want, I've got the mouse and keyboard that I want. So, you're going to bring me back to the office so I can have some standard Dell keyboard and mouse with some janky, you know—maybe—21-inch monitor or something like that, right? Like, you really have to decide, like, okay, we're going to make the office a destination, we're going to make it where people want to go there where it's not just even about the collaboration aspect, but people can still work and be effective.And on top of that, I think how we look at what the office delivers is going to change, right? Because now when I go to the office now, I do very little work. It's connections, right? It's like, you know, “Oh, I haven't seen you in forever. Let's catch up.” And a lot of that stuff is valuable. You know, there's these hallway conversations that exist that just weren't happening previously because how do I accidentally bump into you on Slack? [laugh]. Right, it has to be much more it of a—Corey: Right. It takes some contrivance to wind up making that happen. I remember back in the days of working in offices, I remember here in San Francisco where we had unlimited sick time and unlimited PTO, I would often fake a sick day, but just stay home and get work done. Because I knew if I was in the office, I'd be constantly subjected to drive-bys the entire time of just drive-by requests, people stopping by to ask, “Oh, can you just help me with this one thing,” that completely derails my train of thought. Then at the end of the day, they'd tell me, “You seem distractible and you didn't get a lot of work done.”It's, “Well, no kidding. Of course not. Are you surprised?” And one of the nice things about starting your own company—because there are a lot of downsides, let me be very clear—one of the nice things is you get to decide how you want to work. And that was a study in, first, amazement, and then frustration.It was, “All right, I just landed a big customer. I'm off to the races and going to take this seriously for a good six to twelve months. Great sky's the limit, I'm going to do up my home office.” And then you see how little money it takes to have a nice chair, a good standing desk, a monitor that makes sense and you remember fighting tooth-and-nail for nothing that even approached this quality at companies and they acted like it was going to cost them 20-grand. And here, it's two grand at most, when I decorated this place the first time.And it was… “What the hell?” Like, it feels like the scales fall away from your eyes, and you start seeing things that you didn't realize were a thing. Now I worry that five years in, there's no way in the world I'm ever fit to be an employee again, so this is probably the last job I'll ever have. Just because I've basically made myself completely unemployable across six different axes.Jeff: [laugh]. And I think one of the things when it comes to, like, furniture, keyboard, stuff like that, I feel like part of it was just, like, this sort of enforced conformity, right, that the office provided us the ability to do. We can make sure everyone's got the same monitor, the same keyboard that way, when it breaks, we can replace it easily. In a lot of organizations that I've been in, you know, that sort of like, you know, even if it was the same amount or ordering a custom keyboard was a big exception process, right? Like, “Oh, we've got to do a whole thing.” And it's just like, “Well, it doesn't have to be that complicated.”And like you said, it doesn't cost much to allow someone to get the tools that they want and prefer and they're going to be more productive with. But to your point really quickly about work in the office, until the pandemic, I personally didn't recognize how difficult it actually was to get work done in the office. I don't think I appreciated it. And now that I'm remote, I'm like, wow, it is so much easier for me to close this door, put my headphones on, mute Slack and go heads down. You know, the only drive-by I've got is my wife wondering if I want to go for a walk, and that's usually a text message that I can ignore and come back to later.Corey: The thing that just continues to be strange for me and breaks in some of the weirdest ways has just been the growing awareness of how much of office life is unnecessary and ridiculous. When you're in the office every day, you have to find a way to make it work and be productive and you have this passive-aggressive story of this open office, it's for collaboration purposes. Yeah, I can definitively say that is not true. I had a boss who once told me that there was such benefits to working in an open plan office that if magically it were less expensive to give people individual offices, he would spare the extra expense for open plan. That was the day I learned he would lie to me while looking me in the eye. Because of course you wouldn't.And it's for collaboration. Yeah, it means two loud people—often me—are collaborating and everyone else wears noise-canceling headphones trying desperately to get work done, coming in early, hours before everyone else to get things done before people show up and distracted me. What the hell kind of day-to-day work environment is that?Jeff: What's interesting about that, though, is those same distractions are the things that get cited as being missed from the perspective of the person doing the distracting. So, everyone universally hates that sort of drive-by distractions, but everyone sort of universally misses the ability to say like, “Hey, can I just pull on your ear for a second and get your feedback on this?” Or, “Can we just walk through this really quickly?” That's the thing that people miss, and I don't think that they ever connect it to the idea that if you're not the interruptee, you're the interruptor, [laugh] and what that might do to someone else's productivity. So, you would think something like Slack would help with that, but in reality, what ends up happening is if you don't have proper Slack etiquette, there's a lot of signals that go out that get misconstrued, misinterpreted, internalized, and then it ends up impacting morale.Corey: And that's the most painful part of a lot of that too. Is that yeah, I want to go ahead and spend some time doing some nonsense—as one does; imagine that—and I know that if I'm going to go into an office or meet up with my colleagues, okay, that afternoon or that day, yeah, I'm planning that I'm probably not going to get a whole lot of deep coding done. Okay, great. But when that becomes 40 hours a week, well, that's a challenge. I feel like being full remote doesn't work out, but also being in the office 40 hours a week also feels a little sadistic, more than almost anything else.I don't know what the future looks like and I am privileged enough that I don't have to because we have been full remote the entire time. But what we don't spend on office space we spend on plane tickets back and forth so people can have meetings. In the before times, we were very good about that. Now it's, we're hesitant to do it just because it's we don't want people traveling before the feel that it's safe to do so. We've also learned, for example, when dealing with our clients, that we can get an awful lot done without being on site with them and be extraordinarily effective.It was always weird have traveled to some faraway city to meet with the client, and then you're on a Zoom call from their office with the rest of the team. It's… I could have done this from my living room.Jeff: Yeah. I find those sorts of hybrid meetings are often worse than if we were all just remote, right? It's just so much easier because now it's like, all right, three of us are going to crowd around one person's laptop, and then all of the things that we want to do to take advantage of being in person are excluding the people that are remote, so you got to do this careful dance. The way we've been sort of tackling it so far—and we're still experimenting—is we're not requiring anyone to come back into the office, but some people find it useful to go to the office as a change of scenery, to sort of, like break things up from their typical routine, and they like the break and the change. But it's something that they do sort of ad hoc.So, we've got a small group that meets, like, every Thursday, just as a day to sort of go into the office and switch things up. I think the idea of saying everyone has to come into the office two or three days a week is probably broken when there's no purpose behind it. So, my wife technically should go into the office twice a week, but her entire team is in Europe. [laugh]. So, what point does that make other than I am a body in a chair? So, I think companies are going to have to get flexible with this sort of hybrid environment.But then it makes you wonder, like, is it worth the office space and how many people are actually taking advantage of it when it's not mandated? We find that our office time centers around some event, right? And that event might be someone in town that's typically remote. That might be a particular project that we're working on where we want to get ideas and collaborate and have a workshop. But the idea of just, like, you know, we're going to systematically require people to be in the office x many days, I don't see that in our future.Corey: No, and I hope you're right. But it also feels like a lot of folks are also doing some weird things around the idea of remote such as, “Oh, we're full remote but we're going to pay you based upon where you happen to be sitting geographically.” And we find that the way that we've done this—and again, I'm not saying there's a right answer for everyone—but we wind up paying what the value of the work is for us. In many cases, that means that we would be hard-pressed to hire someone in the Bay Area, for example. On the other hand, it means that when we hire people who are in places with relatively low cost of living, they feel like they've just hit the lottery, on some level.And yeah, some of them, I guess it does sort of cause a weird imbalance if you're a large Amazon-scale company where you want to start not disrupting local economies. We're not hiring that many people, I promise. So, there's this idea of figuring out how that works out. And then where does the headquarters live? And well, what state laws do we wind up following on what we're doing? Just seems odd.Jeff: Yeah. So, you know, one thing I wanted to comment on that you'd mentioned earlier, too, was the weird things that people are doing, and organizations are doing with this, sort of, remote work thing, especially the geographic base pay. And you know, a lot of it is, how can we manipulate the situation to better us in a way that sounds good on paper, right? So, it sounds perfectly reasonable. Like, oh, you live in New York, I'm going to pay you in New York rates, right?But, like, you live in Des Moines, so I'm going to pay you Des Moines rates. And on the surface, when you just go you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, but then you think about it, you're like, “Wait, why does that matter?” Right? And then, like, how do I, as a manager, you know, level that across my employees, right? It's like, “Oh, so and so is getting paid 30 grand less. Oh, but they live in a cheaper area, right?” I don't know what your personal situation is, and how much that actually resonates or matters.Corey: Does the value that they provide to your company materially change based upon where they happen to be sitting that week?Jeff: Right, exactly. But it's a good story that you can tell, it sounds fair at first examination. But then when you start to scratch the surface, you're like, “Wait a second, this is BS.” So, that's one thing.Corey: It's like tipping on some level. If you can't afford the tip, you can't afford to eat out. Same story here. If you can't afford to compensate people the value that they're worth, you can't afford to employ people. And figure that out before you wind up disappointing people and possibly becoming today's Twitter main character.Jeff: Right. And then the state law thing is interesting. You know, when you see states like California adopting laws similar to, like, GDPR. And it's like, do you have to start planning for the most stringent possibility across every hire just to be safe and to avoid having to have this sort of patchwork of rules and policies based on where someone lives? You might say like, “Okay, Delaware has the most stringent employer law, so we're going to apply Delaware's laws across the board.” So, it'll be interesting to see how that sort of plays out in the long run. Luckily, that's not a problem I have to solve, but it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out.Corey: It is something we had to solve. We have an HR consultancy that helps out with a lot of these things, but the short answer is that we make sure that we obey with local laws, but the way that we operate is as if everyone were a San Francisco employee because that is—so far—the locale that, one, I live here, but also of every jurisdiction we've looked at in the United States, it tends to have the most advantageous to the employee restrictions and requirements. Like one thing we do is kind of ridiculous—and we have to do for me and one other person, but almost no one else, but we do it for everyone—is we have to provide stipends every month for electricity, for cellphone usage, for internet. They have to be broken out for each one of those categories, so we do 20 bucks a month for each of those. It adds up to 100 bucks, as I recall, and we call it good. And employees say, “Okay. Do we just send you receipts? Please don't.”I don't want to look at your cell phone bill. It's not my business. I don't want to know. We're doing this to comply with the law. I mean, if it were up to me, it would be this is ridiculous. Can we just give everyone $100 a month raise and call it good? Nope. The forms must be obeyed. So, all right.We do the same thing with PTO accrual. If you've acquired time off and you leave the company, we pay it out. Not every state requires that. But paying for cell phone access and internet access as well, is something Amazon is currently facing a class action about because they didn't do that for a number of their California employees. And even talking to Amazonians, like, “Well, they did, but you had to jump through a bunch of hoops.”We have the apparatus administratively to handle that in a way that employees don't. Why on earth would we make them do it unless we didn't want to pay them? Oh, I think I figured out this sneaky, sneaky plan. I'm not here to build a business by exploiting people. If that's the only way to succeed, and the business doesn't deserve to exist. That's my hot take of the day on that topic.Jeff: No, I totally agree. And what's interesting is these insidious costs that sneak up that employees tend to discount, like, one thing I always talk about with my team is all that time you're thinking about a problem at work, right, like when you're in the shower, when you're at dinner, when you're talking it over with your spouse, right? That's work. That's work. And it's work that you're doing on your time.But we don't account for it that way because we're not typing; we're not writing code. But, like, think about how much more effective as people, as employees, we would be if we had time dedicated to just sit and think, right? If I could just sit and think about a problem without needing to type but just critically think about it. But then it's like, well, what does that look like in the office, right? If I'm just sitting there in my chair like this, it doesn't look like I'm doing anything.But that's so important to be able to, like, break down and digest some of the complex problems that we're dealing with. And we just sort of write it off, right? So, I'm like, you know, you got to think about how that bleeds into your personal time and take that into account. So yeah, maybe you leave three hours early today, but I guarantee you, you're going to spend three hours throughout the week thinking about work. It's the same thing with these cellphone costs that you're talking about, right? “Oh, I've got a cell phone anyways; I've got internet anyways.” But still, that's something that you're contributing to the business that they're not on the hook for, so it seems fair that you get compensated for that.Corey: I just think about that stuff all the time from that perspective, and now that I you know, own the place, it's one of those which pocket of mine does it come out of? But I hold myself to a far higher standard about that stuff than I do the staff, where it's, for example, I could theoretically justify paying my internet bill here because we have business-class internet and an insane WiFi system because of all of the ridiculous video production I do. Now. It's like, like, if anyone else on the team was doing this, yes, I will insist we pay it, but for me, it just it feels a little close to the edge. So, it's one of those areas where I'm very conservative around things like that.The thing that also continues to just vex me, on some level, is this idea that time in a seat is somehow considered work. I'll never forget one of the last jobs I had before I started this place. My boss walked past me and saw that I was on Reddit. And, “Is that really the best use of your time right now?” May I use the bathroom when I'm done with this, sir?Yeah, of course it is. It sounds ridiculous, but one of the most valuable things I can do for The Duckbill Group now is go on the internet and start shit posting on Twitter, which sounds ridiculous, but it's also true. There's a brand awareness story there, on some level. And that's just wild to me. It's weird, we start treating people like adults, they start behaving that way. And if you start micromanaging them, they live up or down to the expectations you tend to hold. I'm a big believer in if I have to micromanage someone, I should just do the job myself.Jeff: Yeah. The Reddit story makes me think of, like, how few organizations have systematic ways of getting vital information. So, the first thing I think about is, like, security and security vulnerabilities, right? So, how does Basis Technologies, as an organization, know about these things? Right now, it's like, well, my team knows because we're plugged into Reddit and Twitter, right, but if we were gone Basis, right, may not necessarily get that information.So, that's something we're trying to correct, but it just sort of highlights the importance of freedom for these employees, right? Because yeah, I'm on Reddit, but I'm on /r/sysadmin. I'm on /r/AWS, right, I'm on /r/Atlassian. Now I'm finding out about this zero-day vulnerability and it's like, “Oh, guys, we got to act. I just heard about this thing.” And people are like, “Oh, where did this come from?” And it's like it came from my network, right? And my network—Corey: Mm-hm.Jeff: Is on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit. So, the idea that someone browsing the internet on any site, really, is somehow not a productive use of their time, you better be ready to itemize exactly what that means and what that looks like. “Oh, you can do this on Reddit but you can't do that on Reddit.”Corey: I have no boss now, I have no oversight, but somehow I still show up with a work ethic and get things done.Jeff: Right. [laugh].Corey: Wow, I guess I didn't need someone over my shoulder the whole time. Who knew?Jeff: Right. That's all that matters, right? And if you do it in 30 hours or 40 hours, that doesn't really matter to me, you know? You want to do it at night because you're more productive there, right, like, let's figure out a way to make that happen. And remote work is actually empowering us ways to really retain people that wasn't possible before I had an employee that was like, you know, I really want to travel. I'm like, “Dude, go to Europe. Work from Europe. Just do it. Work from Europe,” right? We've got senior leaders on the C-suite that are doing it. One of the chief—Corey: I'm told they have the internet, even there. Imagine that?Jeff: Yeah. [laugh]. So, our chief program officer, she was in Greece for four weeks. And it worked. It worked great. They had a process. You know, she would spent one week on and then one week off on vacation. But you know, she was able to have this incredible, long experience, and still deliver. And it's like, you know, we can use that as a model to say, like—Corey: And somehow the work got done. Wow, she must be amazing. No, that's the baseline expectation that people can be self-managing in that respect.Jeff: Right.Corey: They aren't toddlers.Jeff: So, if she can do that, I'm sure you can figure out how to code in China or wherever you want to visit. So, it's a great way to stay ahead of some of these companies that have a bit more lethargic policies around that stuff, where it's like, you know, all right, I'm not getting that insane salary, but guess what, I'm going to spend three weeks in New Zealand hanging out and not using any time off or anything like that, and you know, being able to enjoy life. I wish this pandemic had happened pre-kids because—Corey: Yeah. [laugh].Jeff: —you know, we would really take advantage of this.Corey: You and me both. It would have very different experience.Jeff: Yeah. [laugh]. Absolutely, right? But with kids in school, and all that stuff, we've been tethered down. But man, I you know, I want to encourage the young people or the single people on my team to just, like, hey, really, really embrace this time and take advantage of it.Corey: I come bearing ill tidings. Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code that they write, but also the containers and the cloud infrastructure that their apps run on. Because serverless means it's still somebody's problem. And a big part of that responsibility is app security from code to cloud. And that's where our friend Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are - Finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, Repos, and Pipelines. Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like code pipeline, EKS, ECR, and more! As well as things you're actually likely to be using. Deploy on AWS, secure with Snyk. Learn more at Snyk.co/scream That's S-N-Y-K.co/screamCorey: One last topic I want to get into before we call it an episode is, I admit, I read an awful lot of books, it's a guilty pleasure. And it's easy to fall into the trap, especially when you know the author, of assuming that snapshot of their state of mind at a very fixed point in time is somehow who they are, like a fly frozen in amber, and it's never true. So, my question for you is, quite simply, what have you learned since your book came out?Jeff: Oh, man, great question. So, when I was writing the book, I was really nervous about if my audience was as big as I thought it was, the people that I was targeting with the book.Corey: Okay, that keeps me up at night, too. I have no argument there.Jeff: Yeah. You know what I mean?Corey: Please, continue.Jeff: I'm surrounded, you know, by—Corey: Is anyone actually listening to this? Yeah.Jeff: Right. [laugh]. So, after the book got finished and it got published, I would get tons of feedback from people that so thoroughly enjoyed the book, they would say things like, you know, “It feels like you were in our office like a fly on the wall.” And that was exciting, one, because I felt like these were experiences that sort of resonated, but, two, it sort of proved this thesis that sometimes you don't have to do something revolutionary to be a positive contribution to other people, right? So, like, when I lay out the tips and things that I do in the book, it's nothing earth-shattering that I expect Google to adopt. Like, oh, my God, this is the most unique view ever.But being able to talk to an audience in a way that resonates with them, that connects with them, that shows that I understand their problem and have been there, it was really humbling and enlightening to just see that there are people out there that they're not on the bleeding edge, but they just need someone to talk to them in a language that they understand and resonate with. So, I think the biggest thing that I learned was this idea that your voice is important, your voice matters, and how you tell your story may be the difference between someone understanding a concept and someone not understanding a concept. So, there's always an audience for you out there as you're writing, whether it be your blog post, the videos that you produce, the podcasts that you make, somewhere there's someone that needs to hear what you have to say, and the unique way that you can say it. So, that was extremely powerful.Corey: Part of the challenge that I found is when I start talking to other people, back in the before times, trying to push them into conference talks and these days, write blog posts, the biggest objection I get sometimes is, “Well, I don't have anything worth saying.” That is provably not true. One of my favorite parts about writing Last Week in AWS is as I troll the internet looking for topics about AWS that I find interesting, I keep coming across people who are very involved in one area or another of this ecosystem and have stories they want to tell. And I love, “Hey, would you like to write a guest post for Last Week in AWS?” It's always invite only and every single one of them has been paid because people die of exposure and I'm not about that exploitation lifestyle.A couple have said, “Oh, I can't accept payment for a variety of reasons.” Great. Pick a charity that you would like it to go to instead because we do not accept volunteer work, we are a for-profit entity. That is the way it works here. And that has been just one of the absolute favorite parts about what I do just because you get to sort of discover new voices.And what I find really neat is that for a lot of these folks, this is their start to writing and telling the story, but they don't stop there, they start telling their story in other areas, too. It leads to interesting career opportunities for them, it leads to interesting exposure that they wouldn't have necessarily had—again, not that they're getting paid in exposure, but the fact that they are able to be exposed to different methodologies, different ways of thinking—I love that. It's one of my favorite parts about doing what I do. And it seems to scale a hell of a lot better than me sitting down with someone for two hours to help them build a CFP that they wind up not getting accepted or whatnot.Jeff: Right. It's a great opportunity that you provide folks, too, because of, like, an instant audience, I think that's one of the things that has made Medium so successful as, like, a blogging platform is, you know, everyone wants to go out and build their own WordPress site and launch it, but then it like, you write your blog post and it's crickets. So, the ability for you to, you know, use your platform to also expose those voices is great and extremely powerful. But you're right, once they do it, it lights a fire in a way that is admirable to watch. I have a person that I'm mentoring and that was my biggest piece of advice I can give. It was like, you know, write. Just write.It's the one thing that you can do without anyone else. And you can reinforce your own knowledge of a thing. If you just say, you know, I'm going to teach this thing that I just learned, just the writing process helps you solidify, like, okay, I know this stuff. I'm demonstrating that I know it and then four years from now, when you're applying for a job, someone's like, “Oh, I found your blog post and I see that you actually do know how to set up a Kubernetes cluster,” or whatever. It's just extremely great and it—Corey: It's always fun. You're googling for how to do something and you find something you wrote five years ago.Jeff: Right, yeah. [laugh]. And it's like code where you're like, “Oh, man, I would do that so much differently now.”Corey: Since we last spoke, one of the things I've been doing is I have been on the hook to write between a one to two-thousand-word blog post every week, and I've done that like clockwork, for about a year-and-a-half now. And I was no slouch at storytelling before I started doing that. I've given a few hundred conference talks in the before times. And I do obviously long Twitter threads in the past and I write reports a lot. But forcing me to go through that process every week and then sit with an editor and go ahead and get it improved, has made me a far better writer, it's made me a better storyteller, I am far better at articulating my point of view.It is absolutely just unlocking a host of benefits that I would have thought I was, oh, I passed all this. I'm already good at these things. And I was, but I'm better now. I think that writing is one of those things that people need to do a lot more of.Jeff: Absolutely. And it's funny that you mentioned that because I just recently, back in April, started to do the same thing I said, I'm going to write a blog post every week, right? I'm going to get three or four in the can, so that if life comes up and I miss a beat, right, I'm not actually missing the production schedule, so I have a steady—and you're right. Even after writing a book, I'm still learning stuff through the writing process, articulating my point of view.It's just something that carries over, and it carries over into the workforce, too. Like, if you've ever read a bad piece of documentation, right, that comes from—Corey: No.Jeff: Right? [laugh]. That comes from an inability to write. Like, you know, you end up asking these questions like who's the audience for this? What is ‘it' in this sentence? [laugh].Corey: Part of it too, is that people writing these things are so close to the problem themselves that the fact that, “Well, I'm not an expert in this.” That's why you should write about it. Talk about your experience. You're afraid everyone's going to say, “Oh, you're a fool. You didn't understand how this works.”Yeah, my lived experiences instead—and admittedly, I have the winds of privilege of my back on this—but it's also yeah, I didn't understand that either. It turns out that you're never the only person who has trouble with a concept. And by calling it out, you're normalizing it and doing a tremendous service for others in your shoes.Jeff: Especially when you're not an expert because I wrote some documentation about the SSL process and it didn't occur to me that these people don't use the AWS command line, right? Like, you know, in our organization, we sort of mask that from them through a bunch of in-house automation. Now we're starting to expose it to them and simple things like oh, you need to preface the AWS command with a profile name. So, then when we're going through the setup, we're like, “Oh. What if they already have an existing profile, right?” Like, we don't want to clobber that.SSo, it just changed the way you write the documentation. But like, that's not something that initially came to mind for me. It wasn't until someone went through the docs, and they're like, “Uh, this is blowing up in a weird way.” And I was like, “Oh, right. You know, like, I need to also teach you about profile management.”Corey: Also, everyone has a slightly different workflow for the way they interact with AWS accounts, and their shell prompts, and the way they set up local dev environments.Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. So, not being an expert on a thing is key because you're coming to it with virgin eyes, right, and you're able to look at it from a fresh perspective.Corey: So, much documentation out there is always coming from the perspective of someone who is intimately familiar with the problem space. Some of the more interesting episodes that I have, from a challenge perspective, are people who are deep technologists in a particular area and they love they fallen in love with the thing that they are building. Great. Can you explain it to the rest of us mere mortals so that we can actually we can share your excitement on this? And it's very hard to get them to come down to a level where it's coherent to folks who haven't spent years thinking deeply about that particular problem space.Jeff: Man, the number one culprit for that is, like, the AWS blogs where they have, like, a how-to article. You follow that thing and you're like, “None of this is working.” [laugh]. Right? And then you realize, oh, they made an assumption that I knew this, but I didn't right?So, it's like, you know, I didn't realize this was supposed to be, like, a handwritten JSON document just jammed into the value field. Because I didn't know that, I'm not pulling those values out as JSON. I'm expecting that just to be, like, a straight string value. And that has happened more and more times on the AWS blog than I can count. [laugh].Corey: Oh, yeah, very often. And then there's other problems, too. “Oh, yeah. Set up your IAM permissions properly.” That's left as an exercise for the reader. And then you wonder why everything's full of stars. Okay.Jeff: Right. Yep, exactly, exactly.Corey: Ugh. It's so great to catch up with you and see what you've been working on. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Jeff: So, the best place is probably my website, attainabledevops.com. That's a place where you can find me on all the other places. I don't really update that site much, but you can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, from that jumping off point, links to the book are there if anyone's interested in that. Perfect stocking stuffers. Mom would love it, grandma would love it, so definitely, definitely buy multiple copies of that.Corey: Yeah, it's going to be one of my two-year-old's learning to read books, it'd be great.Jeff: Yeah, it's perfect. You know, you just throw it in the crib and walk away, right? They're asleep at no time. Like I said, I've also been taking to, you know, blogging on Medium, so you can catch me there, the links will be there on Attainable DevOps as well.Corey: Excellent. And that link will of course, be in the show notes. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I really do appreciate it. And it's great to talk to you again.Jeff: It was great to catch up.Corey: Really was. Jeff Smith, Director of Product Operations at Basis Technologies. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice or smash the like and subscribe buttons on the YouTubes, whereas if you've hated this podcast, do the exact same thing—five-star review, smash the buttons—but also leave an angry, incoherent comment that you're then going to have edited and every week you're going to come back and write another incoherent comment that you get edited. And in the fullness of time, you'll get much better at writing angry, incoherent comments.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Before you sell your company, even the odds. This episode features guests Mark Achler and Mert Iseri, authors of the recent book, Exit Right: How to Sell Your Startup, Maximize Your Return and Build Your Legacy. Exit Right demystifies how to conclude the startup journey, a perfect complement to our podcast, which focuses more on the exits of larger middle-market companies. As Brad Feld states in the Foreword, “Mert and Mark set the roadmap for how entrepreneurs and business owners can proactively manage the process of getting to a successful exit along the way”. As Jeff says at the start of the interview: Mark and Mert cover so many great informative topics in the book. There is a wealth of tips to guide business owners through what can be a tumultuous process, getting through the exit. There are also so many topics we align with: relationships matter most, planning for wealth, time kills all deals, and the importance of following a best-practice process.  In this podcast episode, we focus on three topics with a lot of meat to each:  FAIR, Mert and Mark's framework for a successful exit, (3:00)  The“Exit Talk” and how we suggest that all companies adopt this practice with their board (15:00), and Who is involved in the Exit Talk and why? (28:00) What is FAIR? Why does it lead to the best transactions? (3:00) Mert: What we realized as we started to gather stories and experiences from M&A bankers, lawyers, serial entrepreneurs, etc is that the real question isn't, “Let's find out who's going to pay the most.” The real question is, “What's the right home for this business? What's the right home for my people? What's the right home for the vision? Who is going to serve our customers the best?” Our view of an exit went from being a short-term transaction to a long-term partnership. The term “exit” is a poor word choice.  You're not really exiting anything. If anything, it's the beginning of a brand new relationship. So when we ask ourselves, “What makes a great home for a startup?” we focus on these four elements that make exits great. FAIR. Fit, Alignment, Integration, and Rationale.  If you have all four of those, it just so happens that you've also found the person who's willing to pay the most for your business, because they will realize the long-term value and they'll price the deal accordingly. Fit is the cultural fit between the two companies. Amazon and Zappos are a great fit. Time Warner and AOL, are probably not a great fit. It's easily described. Can you sit next to this person for four hours and not want to kill them by the end of the meeting? Can you actually make decisions without written rules? Are cultural values aligned? Are the DNAs sort of similar, cousins to each other between those two companies? Alignment is about being aligned with your co-founders, board, and shareholders in terms of the direction of where you want to go. The acquiring company also must be aligned.  We almost always dismiss the alignment that we need from all sides of the table. This isn't two sides looking at each other. This is two sides looking in the same direction. Integration has to do with the plan for how these two companies will come together. We've seen so many examples of this plan of integration being done as an afterthought. It's not just product and sales integration but people integration, finance integration; many, many layers. And all of these stakeholders have different agendas that need to be individually managed.  Rationale. Can you explain to your grandmother why this acquisition makes sense? How are we going to deliver more value to our customers as a result of this partnership? How is two plus two equal to 100 in this context? Mark: There are profound financial implications to the FAIR framework. Let's take Integration. Integration is the ugly stepchild. People always say, “Oh yeah, we'll deal with integration afterward.”  Turns out that in many transactions, it's not always 100% cash. Sometimes there's an earn-out for future performance. If you're not integrated well (you don't have the resources you need to execute your plan), there are some significant financial implications to the earn-out. Then there are the financial implications to Rationale. Transactions are typically based on looking backward using a multiple. When you create a rationale that says one plus one equals a hundred, if it's a strategic investment, you take your product and we plug it into the larger company's sales force or the larger company's customer base. What could we do inside the larger company? What's the impact of your product on the larger company? The way to maximize value is not looking backward as a multiple, but looking forward using the rationale. Strategically, why is the combination so valuable? If you can get everybody aligned around the rationale and the financial implications of that rationale, that's how you're going to drive a better price for an exit. Mert: No one's going to just sit down and tell you, “This is our rationale.” You uncover it. You unearth it over years. That's why we urge entrepreneurs to put their party dresses on. Talk to many competitors. Talk to strategics. Get out the door. You need to build this trusted relationship over time with fundamental questions. How can I help? How can I help you push your agenda forward? How can I help my customers? This is what great partnerships really look like. We're not saying go share your financials with your competitors or give away all your IP to a larger strategy, but you need to be that trusted partner that advances the mission on all sides and creates a situation where everybody wins. Mark: We wrote the book about exits, but it turns out that the decisions that entrepreneurs make at the beginning of their journey have an outsized impact at the end of the journey. Even though this book is really about the exit, there is really good advice there about the beginning of the journey as well. Jeff: That's exactly right. This book is really about the journey.  All of the steps on the journey influence the end. There's so much wisdom in the book and insights about all the things that you can do to proactively get to the right end. Management meetings are oftentimes the first time that business owners meet their potential acquirers, whether they're competitors or strategics, or investors. But the longer that relationship can be developed, the more that you can uncover in terms of the shared common goal of what can we do together. And the best valuation and the best terms will just naturally evolve. What is an “Exit Talk”? How can founders use it to reach alignment in their boardrooms? (15:00) Jeff: The Exit Talk really struck a chord with me. Let's encourage clients and future clients to have these discussions and this thought process through the FAIR framework to really think ahead. Sometimes we as investment bankers get brought in late in the game. But most of our transactions and our best relationships really span years. We get to know the business, the goals, and importantly the people involved, the operators, the owners, the founders, and the investors. Some of these relationships for us span a decade or more. We give them advice on how to grow their companies. This concept of an exit talk is missing from my perspective. Exit discussions are often secretive or clouded in secrecy. It is a very small universe of folks within a company that knows that a transaction is imminent. It's rarely discussed openly among the senior leadership team until late in the game. What you guys propose is proactive. Through your work and sharing your work with my future clients, I'd like them to embrace this philosophy. I love this quote that you said, “Instead of fueling the awkwardness of the exit topic by staying silent, we are putting forward a new norm that we believe the entire industry should adopt, which is the Exit Talk.” Mark: This is one of our favorite topics. But before we dive into the Exit Talk: We are such big believers in trust. Every deal has its ups and downs. It has its emotional turbulence, it's the journey. Trust is the lubrication that gets deals done through to the conclusion. I just wanted to put a fine point on that topic of trust because it permeates everything we do. The Exit Talk.  It turns out that there's a stigma to talking about exits. CEOs are afraid. They're afraid that if they bring up the topic of an exit that their board and their investors are going to think their heart's not in it. They've lost hope. They've lost faith. In the Venture Capital or Private Equity world, we have a time horizon. When you take our capital, you take our agenda, and you take our time horizon. We're looking for X return over Y timeframe. And if you're in year one of a fund, we've got plenty of time.  Let's go build and grow. If you're in year 10 of a fund, we've got to start returning capital back to our LPs. With the Exit Talk, what we're proposing is that once a year, maybe your first board meeting of the year, you have a regularly scheduled annual talk where the CEO, without fear of being perceived as their heart's not in it, can talk about the exit. The reason it's so incredibly helpful is that you have the luxury of time. If you had 18 months or two years, you have the luxury of saying, “Who's going to be the most likely acquirer? Is it going to be a strategic acquirer? And why? Who is it and why would they want to acquire us? Or is it going to be a financial buyer and what are they looking for? Are they looking for top-line revenue?”  If we're going to sell to somebody who really cares about growth, we may invest a little bit more heavily in sales and marketing. If it's somebody who is more financially oriented and really cares about EBITDA, we might tighten the ship and focus on profitability.  It gives you the luxury of time to get your intellectual property in order, make sure that every single employee has a signed agreement, and make sure that trademarks and patents are filed appropriately. Get your data room pristine. If you have the luxury of time, you can optimize and present your business. And you could take the time to find the best bankers and attorneys who really are going to represent you well. Mert: An outcome of this talk doesn't necessarily have to be “we're ready to sell, or we're not ready to sell”. It can also be an opportunity to start prototyping some of the theories around how you add more value to your customers. This is a great centerpiece for what we believe an exit should be reasoned around. This will help our customers faster/better than what we could do on our own by just raising more money or gathering more capital or resources. For instance, if you are going to have a strategic alignment with a larger company like Google, but you're not ready to sell, it's still an opportunity to start a relationship. Maybe we work on a mutual customer together. Maybe we create some content together where we tell our stories and we share our wisdom with theirs. You want to start charging up that trust battery over time. When you are ready, you are a known entity. The reality is these M&A (Corporate Development) leaders want to buy companies from trusted entities. They don't want an egg on their face either. They want to know the company that they're investing in. They're not viewing this as an acquisition, they're really viewing it as an investment. They want to know they can trust you. They want to know that you can go the distance. It's a really difficult thing to do to create that kind of trust. You're not going to rush through trust. You're going to build it incrementally over years. Even the identification of a strategic partner when you're not ready to sell is extremely valuable because that's an opportunity to generate a relationship. Find out what their priorities are. See if your solution helps move those numbers forward.  Mark: We're big believers in empathy. We have an empathy framework. There are three rules of empathy: 1) It's not about you. It's always about the person sitting across the table from you. 2) Do your homework.  Deeply and truly understand what's important. Mert just said, “Go listen to the quarterly earnings report.” They're going to tell you what they care about. 3) Bring a gift, add value. When I say bring a gift: what can you do? If you're an industry leader, provide some thought leadership about where the market's heading. Share new bits of technology. Not only can you gain knowledge about their strategic direction, you can also share knowledge and be thought of as a trusted thought leader.  If you take those empathy rules and apply them to building relationships over time, that's how you're going to earn trust. Jeff: I love the idea of a trust battery and charging that up over time. You can't do that overnight. You can't do that in one management meeting. You can't do that in a really compressed timeframe. You really need to start early and think about what you can bring to the table. What can you bring as a gift to add value to somebody else so that they can see the value in what you are bringing?  That's really the roadmap that you guys layout in your book: what steps can we take proactively to get to the best outcome. Who is involved in the Exit Talk, and why? (28:00) Mark: Let's separate out the annual exit talk from an actual transaction process. The exit talk is a board of directors-level conversation. Maybe you bring in one or two top lieutenants into that conversation, depending on the relationship between the CEO and maybe one or two C-suite members. But that's a board-level, strategic conversation that's not for the whole company. (For an actual transaction process), there are lots of different ways of handling it. My own personal opinion is that there is a dance that takes place starting as an aperture that broadens over time. One of the challenges with telling any employee about a transaction is human nature. “What's that mean to me? Am I going to have a job? Am I going to get fired? Am I going to become rich? What are my stock options worth?” One of the challenges is that not all deals happen; deals fall apart all the time. So the team has to have their eye on the ball. For the CEO, when they're going through a transaction, it can be all-consuming.  We've seen instances where companies started slowing down, missing their numbers because the CEO was distracted and not focused on running their business.  The way I think about it is starting with the CEO and the board, keeping a really tight circle of information. And then as the conversations start to broaden and deepen in a transaction, then people are going to start the due diligence process.  Make sure your C-suite is involved and your executive team is involved. The people who are going to be part of the due diligence process, obviously you're going to have to inform them. I don't think it's a great thing to just wake up one morning and say to your entire employee base, “Hey, guess what? We just got sold.” There's a middle ground someplace in that continuum. Try to keep it confidential through most of the process. As you start to get to certainty you need to start opening it up so it's not a surprise to everybody. Mert: There's one major stakeholder that hasn't been discussed and I just want to bring that up, and that's your family. Most founders overlook that and think of this transaction as a business event. This is a life event. Your family is a humongous stakeholder. We want to highlight that this is a critical component of whether an exit happens or not. What's happening with your family is just as important as what is happening with your board and other stakeholders. Mark: I couldn't agree with you more. It's not just us, it's our families and our loved ones too that have a stake in this. Jeff: It goes for all key constituents, starting with the family and then moving down to the board members and the C-suite and figuring out what's the right communication style and method and frequency. These things are really critical decisions that most folks don't really spend the time thinking about. Mark: One of the questions we ask CEOs is: when you're done with the transaction, will your employees come back to work for you in the next company you start? Will your investors want to invest in you in the next company you start? Will the biz dev lead of the large company who goes on to the next company, are they going to want to buy your next company? I think what many entrepreneurs fail to understand is that the relationships you build and your legacy live on way past the deal and the transaction.  We're big believers in servant leadership and that the best CEOs don't view life as a zero-sum game. They make sure that they take care of their customers, their employees, and their investors. They try to find the balance of supporting all relationships over time. ABOUT OUR GUESTS While a successful entrepreneur may exit a handful of companies in their lifetime, large buyers close deals all the time. Without decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, founders don't have the tools they need to get the best results for themselves, their teams, or the new parent company. Through dozens of interviews with M&A leaders at the biggest Silicon Valley acquirers—as well as attorneys, bankers, and founders who have been through the trenches—Exit Right delivers the hard-earned lessons that lead to successful exits. From negotiation to valuation to breaking down a term sheet, managing legal costs, and handling emotional turbulence—this unparalleled guide covers every critical aspect of a technology startup sale. Learn where deals get into trouble, how to create alignment between negotiating parties, and what terms you should care about most. Above all, learn how to win in both the short and the long term, maximizing your price while positioning your company for a legacy you can be proud of. Author Biographies An early employee of Apple and Head of Innovation at Redbox, Mark Achler has been creating and investing in tech startups since 1986. Today, he is a founding partner of MATH Venture Partners, a technology venture capital fund, and an adjunct professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management. Mert Iseri co-founded SwipeSense, a healthcare technology company acquired by SC Johnson in 2020. Prior to that, he co-founded Design for America, a national network of students using design thinking to create social impact, now part of the IBM Watson Foundation. He is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at MATH Venture Partners. Socials Mark Achler Mert Hilmi Iseri Book About the hosts Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider leaving us a short review:

This episode continues with our “industry spotlight series” where we focus on specific trends and opportunities in middle-market M&A transactions. Our previous episodes have covered four industries in which Colonnade has played a significant role as an M&A advisor to both buy-side and sell-side clients. We add F&I Agencies & Payment Plan Providers as industries where we deeply know the dynamics and players so as to provide exceptional service to clients who hire us to assist them in a transaction. Colonnade has studied the F&I Agencies and Payment Plan Provider markets for the last 20+ years. We have worked on nearly 30 M&A transactions on the buy-side and the sell-side. We have gotten to know the industry players and the buyers. We've identified some high-opportunity M&A plays that could help to drive even more value, scale, and customer satisfaction in the industry. Spotlight on F&I Agencies (1:00) In this first part of our episode, we answer the following questions: Where do F&I agencies sit in the F&I ecosystem? (1:00) What does a typical F&I agency look like? (7:00) What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (9:00) What is driving M&A transactions right now and what are some potential M&A plays? (12:00) Where do F&I agencies sit in the F&I ecosystem and what value do they provide? (1:00) Gina: Between the F&I administrators and the F&I office and the dealership, there are F&I agencies. They are independent agencies with independent agents. They are like insurance agents. They bring together the product administrators and the dealers.  Gina:  The agents have deep knowledge about the products they represent. They can train the F&I office on those products and how to sell the products. They also act as the middle man or the interface with the administrator. They are one distribution arm for the administrators, which makes them critical in the ecosystem. They are a valuable component of the overall F&I ecosystem. Jeff: The F&I agency is a particular point in the value chain. It's a differentiator. Some administrators sell to dealers through a direct sales force, others use F&I agents.  Gina: There are administrators who go direct to dealers, but most administrators also use independent agents. They may have a direct sales force, but they have independent agents also. The only sector where that seems to not always be the case is selling into independent dealerships. You tend to see more direct agents that are employed by the administrators selling into the independent dealerships. Gina: An important component of what the agents do is help the dealership with reinsurance. Reinsurance is an important component of a dealership owner's profits. For every contract, every F&I product that is sold, there is a reserve set aside for future claims. F&I agents are usually very fluid and educated in talking about reinsurance and making sure that the dealership has the right reinsurance programs. So they deal with reinsurance, they do training on products, they do training on how to sell products. They sometimes help with staffing in the F&I office, and they'll help with some of the technology that is between the F&I office and the administrator. Gina: F&I represents a third of a dealership's profits. Everybody within the organization and affiliated with the organization is going to make sure that F&I runs smoothly. What does a typical F&I agency look like? (7:00) Gina: There are well over 100 independent agencies, and approximately 75%-80% of F&I agencies are less than 10 employees. There are very few large agencies. There are a few that are scaling, but there really aren't many. There is only one national agency that comes to mind and that's Vanguard (owned by Spectrum Automotive). Vanguard has been very acquisitive in building out its agent network. We also see Brown & Brown, which is a P&C insurance brokerage. They've been acquiring F&I agencies over the last few years. I don't know if they have a national footprint yet, but they're probably getting pretty close. And then you have acquired a lot of small agencies. ​​Jeff: The Brown & Brown example is an interesting one that we've watched over the last five to six years as they've entered the industry. We've always thought their participation in the F&I agency world makes a lot of sense, given the parallels to the P&C distribution market. What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (9:00) Gina: We think that the M&A market for F&I agencies will continue to be hot in 2022. (See Gina's cover article in Agent Entrepreneur, 2022 M&A Predictions for F&I Agents) Agent value is driven by a couple of different factors. One is diversification. One of the challenges for these small agencies, just like any small company, is having all of their eggs in one basket. An F&I agency may have one dealership group that represents 40% of sales. That is a gating factor to trading and getting the highest possible value. Agencies that have significant concentration, which I call greater than 15%, trade at a lower multiple than agencies that have little concentration. Another value driver is size. We look at the number of W-2 employees (as well as financials). Jeff:  Important when you go to sell these companies: Who owns the dealer relationships? And what's the risk of attrition in a transaction? Gina: A lot of diligence needs to be done in these transactions to really understand the nitty-gritty of who, not just on paper but in practice, owns the relationships. What is driving the M&A transactions right now and what are some potential M&A plays? (12:00) Jeff: It sounds like an industry that could be rolled up further. Following the playbook of the P&C insurance distribution market, you got a lot of mom and pops out there and a few large players.  Gina: Both Brown & Brown and Vanguard Dealer Services (Spectrum Automotive) are rolling up agencies. The rest of M&A activity we see is not a roll up, but administrators buying agencies. National Autocare and Portfolio Group have been very inquisitive. There are many other administrators who bought one, two, three agencies, as they attempt to lock in their distribution channels.  Gina:  There should be another roll up of F&I agencies. There should be a private equity firm that's coming in here saying, “I'm going to put a hundred, $150 million to work and we're going to leverage it. And we're going to buy up 20 F&I agencies. We're going to make a super-agency with national coverage.” That could be uber-successful for everybody involved. It just hasn't happened yet. Jeff: The folks that are acquiring are paying pretty high multiples, and that's a challenge. Any new entrant would have to go in and go big pretty quickly. They'd have to find a platform that they can scale and put a lot of capital to work while holding their nose as they pay big prices upfront. Gina: A lot of the M&A activity we have seen is with an older generation that is retiring. There's also some leakage happening where the younger, talented, hungrier F&I agents are like, “I get it, I can do this.” They leave and go start their own agency. I think we'll see that next-generation starting to trade in about a year or two. Gina: I have one last point I want to cover about F&I agency M&A: what's driving the activity. First of all, there's a lot of money looking for deals. There are private equity firms backing administrators that need to grow inorganically. But we also see a lot of M&A activity at the dealership level. They're getting bigger. Big dealership groups are buying up other dealers, independent shops, and dealership groups.  Every time one of those transactions happens, the agent that represents the target dealership is at risk of losing that client. Dealership M&A is driving F&I agency M&A. I think that this is the question that keeps a lot of agents up at night: Are they one or several M&A transactions away from losing a significant portion of their relationships and their livelihood? Spotlight on Payment Plan Providers (18:00) In this second part of our episode, we answer the following questions: How do payment plan providers add value to the auto F&I sector? (18:00) How big is the industry and who are the biggest players? (23:00) Why are payment plan providers a favorite industry of Colonnade? (25:00) What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (29:00) How do payment plan providers add value to the auto F&I sector? (18:00) Jeff: Payment plan companies came out of the ground around 20 years ago. They started as an offshoot of the insurance premium finance market, which we've talked about in a previous podcast. Fundamentally, this market is designed to help consumers purchase F&I products cost-effectively. Whether you're in a dealership (point of sale) and the F&I person says, “This VSC is going to cost you $3,000” or whether you get a piece of mail about an extended auto warranty (aftermarket), once you get sold on buying the coverage, the questions is always: Do you want to write a check for three grand or do you want to finance it over two or three years?  In most cases, the VSC/extended auto warranty gets financed. That's where these payment plan companies come in. Jeff: At the dealership (point of sale), the payment for an F&I product typically gets rolled into the auto loan. It's just one of the line items in the auto loan, and you (as the consumer) pay it off as you go. There are some payment plan providers that focus on point of sale at the dealership, allowing a consumer to finance the product outside the auto loan. In the aftermarket, which is really where we see these payment plans flourish, it's a different dynamic. If you're on the phone with a direct marketer and you agree to buy the coverage, you can put 10% down and pay over 18 or 36 months, depending on the payment plan. Interestingly, they're interest-free and cancelable at any time. And as you continue to drive your car and assess the usefulness of the product, you can cancel it at any time. If you cancel it, all you do is call up the seller or the administrator and say, “I want to cancel my payment plan.”  In that case, you get a portion of your money back (the unearned premium). It works in a similar way to the insurance premium finance market. The contract is earned over the life of the product. If it's a five-year product and you're one year into it, you might get 80% of the money back. The payment plan company is indifferent because it will just get their pro rata share back from the administrator and seller. The seller will sell the product to the consumer, and if they attach financing to it, the seller will collect the 10 or 15% down payment. The payment plan company will insert themselves and front the rest of the money to the administrator and to the seller. The administrator has to front some money to the CLIP (1) provider, but the revenue to the seller and the admin fee gets fronted by the payment plan company. Jeff: Our Industry Report on this sector goes into much more detail about the industry. How big is the industry and who are the biggest players (23:00) Jeff: We estimate this is about a $5 billion a year originations market. There's not good data. We've done a number of studies over the years and think that's the size of the market. It grows with auto sales and the adoption of products. It's grown considerably over the last several years. There are probably 10 independent players in the market. There are just a small handful of large players. The biggest players are PayLink, which is owned by Fortress and Milestone. Walco is the next biggest, and they're growing nicely. This is the Walder team that previously ran Mepco and Omnisure, and they've started up a new finance company that's growing quite rapidly. Mepco is a large player, they're top three, that's owned by Seabury. There are other smaller players like Budco, Line 5. Service Payment Plan is a big company in the dealer space, again different dynamics but similar product offering. PayLink, Omnisure, and Mepco really dominate the aftermarket space. Folks like Service Payment Plan dominate the dealer (point of sale) channel. Why are payment plan providers a favorite industry of Colonnade? (25:00) Gina: I love the payment plan business because it is so low-risk. What the payment plan companies do is hold a cash reserve on each funding in case the underlying consumer cancels. And that happens. There are a lot of cancellations in the direct consumer marketing of vehicle service contracts. As we've discussed before, it's not because the contracts are bad contracts, but it's because consumers actually have transparency. In the case of vehicle service contracts rolled into an auto loan, consumers don't get a breakout every month of the components of their auto loan that they're paying. They don't see that 80% of your auto loan payment is for the car, 10% is for the vehicle service contract, et cetera, cetera. But when a consumer is financing or using a payment plan for a vehicle service contract in the aftermarket, they have complete transparency as to what that cost is for. And if they decide as a household, they no longer need that product (they need to redeploy that payment to something else like their mortgage), they can cancel. The payment plan businesses have a cash reserve for this. So it is a very low risk business and has great returns. Jeff: Some of these companies have several hundred million dollars of portfolio and each contract starts out at $3,000 and burns down. These are very granular portfolios. You're not going to take a big loss on any particular contract. Unlike the insurance premium finance industry, the incidence or likelihood of fraud is negligible, and the risk here is quite low given the granularity. We like the short duration of these assets. We like the low loss rates. Generally, these transactions are priced at a 15% to 20% unlevered return. They're very high-yield. There's no credit risk. We're not doing anything with consumer credit risk.  We really don't care. We're just managing relationships with sellers and administrators. All those dynamics are favorable to this lending universe. I love this business. It's a niche industry, $5 billion is not the $50 billion commercial P&C market, but it's meaningful and growing. What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (29:00) Jeff: There really hasn't been much activity as there's a limited universe of players. Some of the administrators are vertically integrating and getting into the payment plan industry. We worked on the initial sale of Mepco to Independent Bank almost 20 years ago. We sold PayLink (which used to be called Warranty Finance Company) to Oxford Financial. It's now owned by Milestone and Fortress. Omnisure: Ed and Paul Walder started up that business from scratch and grew it to a couple hundred million dollars of receivables. We advised on the sale to Fortress.  PayLink and Omnisure merged in 2017 and put together two leading players in the industry. The other important transaction to mention is Seabury's acquisition of Mepco out of Independent Bank in 2017.  Most recently Walco has come out of the ground. Walco was started in early 2020 by Ed and Paul Walder again, starting up another competitor in the sector. They've grown considerably in recent years and are doing a great job building out that business. We don't see a ton of M&A activity per se, but it's a really interesting market. Part of the challenge from an M&A perspective is that there has not traditionally been a deep bank buyer universe of this product and that confounds me a bit. For all the reasons we mentioned, this is a really interesting, dynamic asset class. It's very similar to insurance premium finance, which has a number of large banks in the sector and a number that want to get into it.  The collateral structure looks very similar, except that payment plan providers have higher yields, higher return on assets, and even lower losses. And there's no fraud. I think there's a real opportunity for forward-thinking banks to embrace this asset class and do quite well with very little risk. (1) A CLIP is a commercial liability insurance product that covers the contractual obligations of the insured. A full reimbursement CLIP would indemnify the insured commercial entity for all monies it expends to fulfill a contractual commitment.   About the hosts Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.

Jeff – It's difficult to get out of the porn life when God isn't a part of your life Margaret - Fatima: When Saint John Paul II consecrated Russia did Lucia personally think it was legit or was she told in a vision? Maryanne - I was introduced to Porn and drugs many years ago and it almost killed me. When Patrick said “jaws of life” I was hit hard. Colin - The priest's phone rang during confession. What are your thoughts on priests with phones in confessionals? Adrienne - I was glad that the woman called in about that third promise about the bishop in white. Patrick describes the Third Secret of Fatima Rose - How do I forgive my family for a hurt they caused?

Intro.(1:22) - Start of interview.(1:51) - Jeff's "origin story". He grew up in Dayton, Ohio. He went to Carnegie Mellon University for undergrad "to study engineering and play football." He graduated with electrical and computer engineering degrees, and took off to Silicon Valley. He first worked in the semiconductor industry with Altera. He later got into financial services, first with Gehrson Lehrman Group, then with SecondMarket (early player in the secondary markets for private shares, later acquired by Nasdaq) and Owler (crowdsourcing data on private companies). He joined Nasdaq in 2014 to help launch the Nasdaq Private Market. In 2016 he got promoted to run the listings team for Nasdaq in the west coast.(4:39) - Jeff's take on Nasdaq's role and vision: "In the last 5-6 years our approach has been to create a lifecycle approach to supporting our corporate clients: 1) Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center (early stage), 2) Nasdaq Private Market (as companies scale and need to provide liquidity to their shareholders), 3) Listings Business (for companies going public), 4) Once companies are public, we offer a number of products and services to empower their IR, corporate governance and ESG disclosure practices." Beyond this work with corporate clients, Nasdaq also operates exchanges in the US and EU, it has an investment intelligence business (indexes, sell market data) and it's a technology provider to capital markets (including market surveillance technology, AML/KYC solutions, and others).(7:38) - Jeff's take on growth of IPOs during the pandemic (~250 operating companies have gone public in Nasdaq this year) and SPACs (there have been 495 IPOs in 2021 raising ~$138bn). "As a private company you've never had more options and better access to capital and liquidity." Private companies can raise: 1) Late stage venture capital rounds ("there seems to be $100m rounds everyday"), 2) IPOs, 3) SPACs and 4) Direct listings.(10:13) - His take on the impact of government actions on the economy (and how they impact markets). The acceleration of digital transformation during COVID-19.(12:39) - His take on the Nasdaq Private Market (facilitated ~$36 billion in transaction volume for ~500+ private companies) and why they decided to spin-off NPM as s stand-alone company, receiving investments from a group of banks including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and SVB Financial Group.(16:05) - The "stay private or go public" decision per Jeff: "It all boils down to the company's goals and objectives in different phases of its lifecycle." Companies go public for a variety of reasons, but some of the primary ones are: 1) to raise capital, 2) to provide liquidity, 3) brand enhancement (prestige) of being a  public company, and 4) to leverage its equity as an acquisition currency.(18:53) - His take on regulatory pressures on private markets (particularly from the SEC, as explained by Commissioner Lee's speech on "Going Dark" and problematic aspects of private markets).(23:24) - On the rise of retail investing and "meme stocks". Zero commissions took down the cost of trading, it made trading more accessible to people. The advent and impact of social media (from social message boards to Reddit). The dissemination of information has changed the nature of trading. The SEC report on equity and options market structure conditions (October 2021).(26:08) - On growth of ESG. "It all starts with the generational shift that is going on, from Baby Boomers to Millennials." "The new generation thinks beyond the bottom line." "People and investors are focusing on non-financial metrics for public companies (more and better disclosures)."(29:52) - History and nature of Nasdaq's Boardroom Diversity Rule (approved by the SEC on August 6, 2021). Standard disclosure matrix and minimum diversity standards (gender and minorities) with long phaseout periods. "We received 200+ comment letters to the rule, 80% was positive. From the 20% that was negative comments, 10% said that we shouldn't implement the rule, and the other 10% said we didn't go far enough."(34:10) - His take on crypto and blockchain technology. "We were thrilled to welcome Coinbase to Nasdaq via their direct listing." "It's really an interesting and dynamic time for the crypto markets." "It's still early innings in terms of the regulatory framework (from SEC and CFTC)." (36:16) - His favorite books:How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936)Genius Makers by Cade Metz (2021)(37:05) - His mentor Bruce Aust (retired Vice Chairman of Nasdaq)(38:29) - On Nasdaq's approach to technology in the boardroom: their board portal Nasdaq Boardvantage, critical for security. The Nasdaq Center for Board Excellence "offers the latest governance insights and actionable intelligence for board members and executives (board evaluations and questionnaires". The topic of ESG is very relevant for boards, and they have an advisory team that consults with boards on ESG, Nasdaq OneReport (to simplify the process of ESG data capture, engagement, oversight, and disclosure).(40:05) - An unusual or absurd habit that he loves: From the book Extreme Ownership (Jocko Willing and Leif Babin): "The first thing I do in the morning is to make my bed." This way everyday you start by accomplishing something.Jeff Thomas is a Senior Vice President of Nasdaq's Corporate Services business unit. Based in San Francisco, Jeff oversees Nasdaq's new Listings and Capital Markets businesses. He also oversees business development and relationship management for Nasdaq's listed companies and Investor Relations Solutions' clients in the Western United States. Previously, he served as President of Liquidity Solutions at Nasdaq Private Market, where he worked closely with private companies to help them provide shareholder liquidity prior to an IPO. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. __ You can follow Evan on social media at:Twitter @evanepsteinLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack https://evanepstein.substack.com/Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Find Jeff and Jessica Jennings at: https://www.greatestmarriageever.com/homepageFollow them:Instagram: @greatestmarriageeverFacebook: @greatestmarriage.everIn today's episode, Matthew and Kim host Jeff and Jessica, husband & wife, and partners in their marriage counseling practice ‘Greatest Marriage Ever.' This power couple met while getting their master's degrees in professional counseling in 2002 and now reside in Charlottesville, VA. With a combined 40 years of experience, they have helped thousands of couples rekindle a deep connection through cutting-edge neuroscience, relationship research, and positive psychology. Tune for incredible advice from the relationship professionals themselves. Key Topics-Things you want to bring from your past into your marriage v.s the things you want to change-Understanding the process (collective needs and fears) behind a conflict -How to break the ice during a fight -Learning to be vulnerable, not defensiveQuotes“Whatever wounds, whatever struggles we have are going to come forward in the marriage, and that's the point. The point is to really create a safe space so each of you, regardless of where you come from, can face these things.” -Jessica “Given my background and experience, commitment means you stay, you stick through it hell or high water”- Jeff “A lot of time conflict resolution has to do with understanding what's going on underneath... It's not the content, necessarily... What's underneath that anger.” -Jeff“It would be this icy cold feeling in the home for 2 or 3 days where we're not really talking, but we've learned to recognize that cycle when it's happening a lot sooner and be able to call it out and be able to communicate what we need from each other” -Jeff“It's easy to point out the bad guy… but there is no bad guy, you are both hurting, and you are needing to feel safe in order to reconnect. The cycle is really the bad guy.” -JessicaFollow us at:Instagram: @kickasscouplesnation Facebook: @kickasscouplesnation Twitter: @kickasscouplesFor access to workshops with professional therapists, keynote speakers, hot seat training and more exclusive content join our online learning community at: https://matthewphoffman.comPre-order ‘Kickass Husband: Winning at Life, Marriage, and Sex' by Matthew Hoffman at https://matthewphoffman.com/ And don't forget to leave us a review! 

Thank you for tuning in for another episode of Life's Best Medicine. Jeff Kotterman is a Licensed Master Sports Nutritionist (the first in San Diego!). He is also a coach, mentor, teacher, speaker, researcher, and is the founder of the TriSystem Health Network. In addition to holding every certification the NASN has to offer, he has earned a degree in health and physical education from the College of New Jersey in Trenton and holds additional certifications from AFAA, ACE, and NAFC. In their discussion, Brian and Jeff talk about how they discovered the benefits of low-carb eating, the multifactorial nature of health, the freedom and joy of knowing, practicing, and teaching truth, the nuanced art of effective health/fitness coaching, and new technologies and systems of doing healthcare that are making patients, doctors, and health practitioners healthier and happier. Life's Best Medicine According to Jeff: “It is realizing that you've gotta let God—someone who has your best interest in mind—lead the way. Left to my own devices, I'm gonna screw it up. Until I said to God, ‘What do You have for me? What did You make me for?,' I was beating my head against the wall.” Thank you for listening. Have a blessed day and stay healthy!   Links:   Jeff Kotterman: TriSystem Health Network Linkedin Facebook Email: jeff@trisystem.com NAS Nutrition Phone: 1-800-538-2348   Dr. Brian Lenzkes:  Website Low Carb MD Podcast   Simply Snackin'

Now that the country is opening back up again, many people are excited to see their loved ones, eat at restaurants, go to shows, and live their lives in a more pre-pandemic way. But as excited as we all are, sadly, many of our favorite places to visit no longer exist. They shut down during the COVID-19 recession and couldn't survive. So today I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back my guest to the show. While others weren't so lucky, today's guest is excited to give us an update. I'm Hilary Topper and you are listening to Hilary Topper on Air. Joining me today on this episode is Jeff Jaffe. He's the founder and owner of Pop International Galleries. They are an art gallery on the Bowery at the junction of Spring Street in New York City. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Jeff - Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, given what we've all gone through this last year and a half or so. Hilary - Gosh, it's been, it's been crazy. Um, well, I'm very happy to have you back on the show and I'm so glad that Pop International Galleries, which is one of my favorite in New York City, is still open and doing well. Can you remind our listeners about who you are and what Pop International Galleries is all about? Jeff - Sure, The Pop Gallery started back, believe it or not, it's hard to even comprehend back in 1997 when I sort of came to realize that there was a need for an art gallery to focus on specific things. And in those days it happened to be pop art, which was Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and big names, John Michel, Basquiat, and Roy Lichtenstein and so on and so forth. And we did really well with that. But as things began to progress, it dawned on me that Pop International really meant focusing on pop culture more than pop art per se, that pop art fits into the realm and genre of, uh, what we're sort of interested in, but there were more things too, we were missing out on. And so we began to focus on sports, photography and rock and roll photography, and, more recently, street art and graffiti, and, as a consequence of which, Pop International Galleries has become this sort of iconic little center for focusing on anything that has to do with pop art and popular culture. Hilary - So, as we were talking at the beginning of the show, I said that this year had been like no other, how was the gallery doing? And how did you fare during all of this? And how did you survive? Jeff - It's funny. I was just going to say before you said the word survive that we dived into survival mode. There were choices that had to be made. And then there were decisions that were made for us that we had no power to overcome or resist or embrace. We just had to sort of take them on. And as a consequence of which, we sort of began to look at what the virtual world was going to offer us. What technology was going to offer us and help us with, that goes past the questions of having conversations with landlords and dealing with those kinds of things. And we were fortunate enough to have a lovely landlord who was willing to help work things out and help us through so that we could really remain in business. And then the other thing is I made a very, very strong decision. Some people questioned me why, but I decided not to let a single staff person go. I was just sort of, of that mind where I felt a certain amount of responsibility. And so I took steps to enable remote working and remote selling, which was very difficult because selling art remotely is not something that we would ever have thought we would ever encounter. People like to come to an art gallery, they like to look at the art and smell it and touch it and look at the frame and we really had to come up with different sort of means and strategies to get people comfortable with the notion that they could buy a lot this way. Hilary - So during this pandemic, you told me that you developed even stronger client relationships. Can you talk about that a little bit? Jeff - Absolutely we, well, again, it sort of goes back to this notion of virtual business and sort of doing things with Zoom and Skype and all kinds of things. And what we discovered was that by actually picking up the telephone as opposed to sending emails, reaching out to people individually and touching base with people, especially regular collectors about us. And we have, we have a huge collectors base and I mean, people have been buying from us for 25 years. We have thousands of people that we've sold out to and we decided that one of the things that we would do is reach out to people individually. And so it began. And emails became phone calls, emails became texts, messages, and text messages, became phone calls. And then it sort of blossomed into this ongoing dialogue between our consultants and our collective base and which led into larger events using a Zoom to have virtual openings and that kind of thing, which had been very successful. Hilary - So, can you tell us, or, share with us some of the interesting artists that you represent in your gallery today and why you represent them? Jeff - Well, we represent roughly about 25 artists or so from around the world. And again, it goes back to what I said a little bit earlier in terms of representing art is certainly pop related, but it has much more to do with the notion of what popular culture is. And subsequently, we still do represent Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and John Michelle Buskey out and so on. But we've edged out into other realms, which focus on things. Like, for example, we did a very, very special event with the godfather of street art, Ron English. And Ron was thrilled at the concept of making a type of work that he had never made before, which is paintings on paper in the manner he had never made them before. And so running this book has become a very important aspect of the pop gallery. We represent a Danish artist whose name is Ola Olberg and Ola has taken the cartoon character Tintin, who many people know lots of American people don't know about Tintin, but put Tintin into different scenarios, sort of naughty sort of sexual scenarios, which is something that most people don't associate Tintin with. But the idea of Tintin and popular culture and cartoons and things, that many people and I grew up with Tintin comics. So, that's been truly successful. We represent an artist by the name of Tony Ray Negro, who did all the backstage passes for the grateful dead. When, you know, from the age of 20 back in the eighties and nineties and so on. So the whole concept of rock and roll and music fits perfectly into this notion of pop culture. And then of course we represent two other artists that really fit into this concept so beautifully that I couldn't have even imagined it. It was just a natural thing. We represent the art of Dr.Seuss, which besides all this sort of nonsense and drama that occurred with the audit Dr. Seuss recently, we represent the estate of. Dr. Seuss, which means all the illustration drawings and things that he made limited additions of and the estate represents and a very special what we call the secret audit Dr. Seuss, which has stuff that he made in his spare time or the midnight audit Dr. Seuss, along with what he called the unorthodox taxidermy, which are these really beautiful, funny sort of taxidermy heads, which are just hilarious. And then we represent Tom Everhart, who was the protégé, if you will, of Charles Schultz of Peanuts and Snoopy fame. Tom was a young guy who saw Schultz Sparky as a mentor. And they had a really wonderful father, son type relationship. They and Tom started to interpret all the Snoopy characters and Schulz gave him permission before he died to be the only artist in the world to be able to make art using Snoopy and peanuts characters without a license. He has a lifetime license. They had a show together in the loop a number of years ago. So again, this whole notion of popular culture and pop, all these, The Seuss, the Tintin, the Snoopy Eberhardt pieces that all fit in really, really well. And then of course we move into street art and graffiti. And I have some lovely stories to tell you about that when you're ready. Hilary - Tell us we'd love to hear. So the very first sort of graffiti street art experience happened with pop and about 12 years ago, actually I got a phone call from a collector, a good friend collector. They said Jeff, these two boys who live in Bushwick in Brooklyn, I've started to collect their art quite, quite seriously. And I think you should go and visit them in their studio. And I said, Mike, if you are sure that's what you suggest, I trust you and happy to do it. So Mike set up this little meeting and I drove out to Bushwick 12 years ago. Bushwick wasn't what it is today, 12 years ago or so. And I arrived in this sort of funny little loft odd building where these two guys lived and worked. They had a studio together. Their names were, Mike Buck, Michael Bucca and, Fernando Romero, their street names, graffiti names were 2ESAE and Ski. So Fernando is Ski and Mike is a 2esae and I arrived at this place sort of not expecting a whole lot, but it was kind of exciting. And the first thing of course was they had a big pile of donuts and coffee for me on the table. And on the other side, they had a big bottle of Hennessy. They had no clue who I was going to be, and they were wondering what I was going to choose. It was really hilarious. And I meant, I went for the coffee and donuts just for the record, but, I'd forgotten to mention that they went by the name of a group that painted and work together. They went by the name of UR New York. And I saw their work around, you know, they used to sell this stuff on the street for a hundred bucks. And here I had this opportunity and as I went through the space studio, whatever you'd like to call it, I knew instantly that they belonged in the gallery. So I pulled him aside and I said, Fernando, Mike, we're definitely going to do something, but there are a few things that we have to deal with first. And they said, yeah, sure. I mean, they were really, really excited. And I looked at them and I said, you know, the 37 indictments that you have against you and the five years probation that you're on. I mean, these guys were like, looking, how do you know? How do you know all this? I said, how do I know it? Mike told me, you know, Mike referred me to you. He told me all of this stuff, they said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how does Mike know? And I had to sort of at that moment in time, decide, should I say how Mike and I figured out what the heck? I said, well, I hate to break it to you but Mike is the undercover cop who arrested you guys. It was always the uniform guys who took you in, but Mike was undercover. So you never knew who he was. And he developed a relationship with your love, of art and started collecting your art. Hilary - That's so funny. That's a great story. Jeff - There's a documentary in there somewhere. I'm sure. Mike, I'm telling you, they went bananas. These two guys jumping up and down hooting and hollering. It was just hilarious. And I said, and based on what. In order for me to put you in the gallery, we have to get rid of those issues that we just discussed and the way we're going to do it is by doing community work and getting involved with children in need and homelessness and whatnot. My attorney is a former judge. Mike, the undercover cop eventually became a DA. We're going to write letters. We're going to do all kinds of things that are going to sort of help mitigate this. And so the first thing we did was a big project in Chelsea in that there's a public housing center in Chelsea, on the west side of New York City. And we arranged for the boys to do a big mural and to work with all the children, helping them draw and paint and do all that kind of stuff. Got a fair amount of press and coverage. And one thing led to another. And the boys started working with children everywhere working with charities and organizations that we were able to connect them with. They went overseas, they went to Australia to work with Aboriginal children. When they went to South Africa to work with children in need, they went to Israel to work with Palestinian and Israeli children to show them how we're all the same. They really did some beautiful things and, as a consequence of all of this, all of those charges and probations were dropped and they have gone on to become two of the most important artists that we represent here. And my relationship with them is incredible. I mean, we are talking about a father-son relationship, and we've sold hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of their art since then. Hilary - Two boys selling their art for 50 bucks on the street, wonderful story. That's awesome, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing those stories with me. So let's take this a step back. Someone walks into your gallery and they're looking to start a collection. How does that process work? Jeff - So the one thing about Pop International Galleries, which I believe was a game-changer and for many reasons, was that we decided to break down that whole barrier. You often walk into these galleries where someone's sitting behind a desk and you can barely see them. It's a high sort of desk and it's just white walls and maybe three pieces of art on the wall and nobody even talks to you. And then they look at you and they want to know what shoes you're wearing or what handbag you're carrying or how big the diamond is, or the watch on your hand. You know, that kind of stuff. We broke that completely. We have a much more open, friendly, inviting, environment. And as a consequence of which people absolutely love coming into the gallery. And so we focus on people who have never bought a piece of art before and on people who have big collections. And so we don't differentiate. We just help people find all that they love. We've always had a policy not to sell art on the basis of investment, when people say to me, well, if I buy this print, you know, it's 3,000 bucks, what's it going to be worth in 10 years? And I say, well, I have a really good stockbroker who has an office down the road. If you'd like, I could send you there, but we try not to. If you came to me with 5 million bucks and said, hey, could you help me invest in art? That might be a different story, but we break down all those barriers. Hilary - That's awesome. Let me ask you something. Do you have any exciting exhibits coming up that you want to share with us? Jeff - I do. Actually. There are a few things that we're working on. I'll just tell you about two that we had that sort of part of what this conversation was about. Where these virtual exhibitions, the first one we did was with Ron English and it was a big test for us to see if we could sell art while the gallery was shut down, or while we have contracted hours or while there were rules and regulations about social distancing and so on and so forth. So we did a test actually with two artists, Ron English, and McKenzie Papa, British artists who I'd been working with for many, many years. And they were amazing, absolutely amazing. They were RSVP events only. So you couldn't come to the Zoom call if you didn't get, if you didn't RSVP, couldn't join the thing. The idea was to show some videos, moderate with questions. My team here had questions for Oscar, the artists, and then, we opened up some of the questions to collectors and again, moderated things well enough so that it didn't get drawn out in long, sort of like into a sort of drawn out thing. And we sold a whole bunch of art. And so it opened up this idea for us. To do some more of them. And, we're now going to be working on a curated show of street art, that Ski from that team that I was just telling you about Fernando Romero is going to curate, that's going to be absolutely amazing, it's going to be a smash hit, no questions about it because he's going to, he has a lot of connections, obviously in the street art world and graffiti world. And he's going to bring in people who we've never represented, um, and curated in a way that will sort of open up art that had never been shown before in this manner. So we're very, very excited about that one. The other one that I'm working on is an Australian couple, the names are Gillie and Mark a husband and wife team who make art together. And, they're actually very well known in New York City for their outdoor monumental bronze works. And, before the pandemic, they did this beautiful, beautiful exhibition of women of valor. They had come to realize that women bronze, sculptures and statues of women, we're sadly lacking female sculptures, and monumental sculptures of women. There were less of them than there were men and they were going to change that. So they did this really beautiful collection of sculptures of some fantastic women, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and so on and so forth, it was just really beautiful. And then they've done these large outdoor installations. People may have seen it up at Astor Place in Brooklyn, the big rhinos stacked on top of one another. Monumental pieces and part of what they do besides them tease and make fun of themselves. Gillie and Mark, Gillie is a bunny rabbit and Mark as a dog in their paintings and they sit on Vespas and bicycles and do all kinds of sweet, lovely things. We're going to do an event with them online and sort of tied in with the time zone with Australia. Those are two really great things that are coming up. Hilary- So cool. How could our listeners get in touch and actually sign up for any of these events? Jeff - Really easy. All you need to do is shoot us either an email, to, you could send it to me, jeff@popinternational.com or just art@popinternational.com. And just say, Hey, I heard the podcast, or you could, um, just call the gallery. And the number is (212) 533-4262. And we'll put you on the list and, and sort of begin to develop a relationship with you the way we have with our many, many thousands of collectors that we have over the years, we look so forward to it. Hilary - This was really informative and congratulations on your successes. I really appreciate you being on the show. I want to also thank our sponsors, the Russo law group, The Profit Express with Tim Healey, Pop international galleries. Thank you. Gold Benes LLP, and the Pegalis Law Group. And last but not least, I want to thank you our listeners for tuning in. If you want more information on this show or any other show you could visit our website at hillarytopperonair.com or you can find us on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, apple podcasts, even Amazon Alexa, where out there you'll find you can find us have a great week and we'll see you next time.

We are excited to focus today’s episode on the final phase of our unique 16-week sales process. Today we are focused on phase four: exclusivity/documentation. We invite you to listen to episode 001 for more information about phase one (pre-marketing), episode 002 for more information about phase two (go to market), and episode 0016 for more information about management meetings: https://www.coladv.com/podcasts/002/ Other episodes dive deep into technical aspects and tactics used in middle market and mergers and acquisitions. We also invite you to download our 16-week sales process timeline for more information on how Colonnade Advisors typically approaches the process of selling a company: https://coladv.com/wp-content/uploads/Four-Phases-with-graphic.pdf In our deep-dive discussion on exclusivity/documentation, the word “scary” comes up quite a few times. Rather than being scary from a horror film or haunted house, this scary is more like cold feet before a wedding. That’s because exclusivity/documentation is when you pick your partner and take a leap of faith with a single buyer. You’ll learn that in this phase of the sales process, we are not yet on the homestretch. In fact, our discussion unveils the many challenges of this phase of the sales process that must be simultaneously and actively managed. You’ll hear that this phase of the sales process almost feels like a crescendo. Our job at Colonnade is to manage this increasing set of workstreams and pull off a successfully closed deal. Then, as you’ll hear in the podcast episode, it’s time to celebrate. Key topics covered in this episode: • Preparing for the shift of power from seller to buyer • The importance of the letter of intent ("LOI") negotiations • How to select the winner (while keeping others warm in the background) • Who’s involved during the exclusivity/documentation phase • How long the process takes, and how much it costs • Pitfalls that we have encountered during this phase and how Colonnade mitigates these risks with our clients What is the exclusivity and documentation phase, and how do you get up to this point? (01:07) Gina: "This phase occurs when a seller is exclusive with a single buyer—we have received several bids and determined the winner. Both parties sign an LOI at this phase, and the seller agrees not to provide information or engage with any other potential buyers. The seller is essentially going off the market, which can be a bit scary because if the deal does not move forward with the exclusive buyer for some reason, then we will have to go back to the other bidders." What tasks need to be completed during the exclusivity and documentation phase? (02:11) Gina: "During exclusivity and documentation phase, we work through the confirmatory due diligence, which often involves a buy-side quality of earnings report. Also, during this period, we negotiate, finalize and execute the definitive purchase agreements and work through any related regulatory tasks to close." Is it possible for sellers to go through the exclusivity and documentation phase with multiple potential buyers? (03:18) Jeff: "In large transactions, it is possible to run multiple parties through this phase, but it typically does not happen in middle market deals.” What is the importance of the letter of intent (LOI) negotiations? (04:13) Jeff: "LOI negotiation is critical because we want to nail down all the topics that we think are going to be critical in negotiation and final documentation before we commit to one party. Hammering out these key topics ahead of time also expedites the process." Is the highest price generally selected as the winner? (05:05) Jeff: "Business owners do not always pick the highest price. It is also about picking the best terms." Listen to Colonnade’s podcast episode 007: Striking a Deal: Price & Terms: https://www.coladv.com/podcasts/007/ Once a seller is exclusive with a buyer, is there a backup plan if the deal falls apart? (05:15) Jeff: "We keep the non-winning bidders warm and engaged in a limited fashion to make sure that we have backups if the deal falls apart.” How do you assess the certainty to close a deal? (06:30) Jeff: "Assessing the certainty to close comes from years of experience working with buyers and thinking through key items such as where is the capital coming from, what their acquisition history is and how likely they are to close on the terms that we have outlined." Are there particular buyer types that are more problematic in terms of the certainty to close? (06:35) Gina: "One group that has caused us problems with the certainty of close in the past is search funds or unfunded sponsors, which are private equity investors that do not have a dedicated fund. These funds tend to bid the highest prices, which is appealing, but they will still need to raise the capital once in exclusivity from institutional investors. Those institutional investors will want to do their diligence, almost restarting the deal process, which creates more risk of the deal not getting done." Jeff: "About ten years ago, family offices were also in this category to some degree. Family offices had smaller dedicated investment teams, so the certainty of closing was considerably lower than traditional private equity firms or a strategic buyer. But that has changed over the last decade where family offices have shifted to become credible buyers." How long does it take to get from signing the LOI to closing? (08:45) Gina: "We generally put 30 to 45 days in the LOI with a provision that both parties can extend the period of exclusivity by mutual written consent based on putting forth best efforts. The time to close depends on the industry. For example, some industries may need regulatory approval or use complex accounting methodologies, which would require more time." What are the components of confirmatory diligence, and how are these workstreams sequenced? (10:06) Jeff: "There is HR, accounting tax compliance, regulatory, legal, IT, and others. Running these workstreams in parallel is key because it is the easiest way to minimize time to close, but you cannot get to the legal documentation until all these other workstreams are completed." At what point do you expect the first turn of the purchase agreement from the buyer? (12:30) Gina: "Pushing to get that first turn of the purchase agreement is very important. We frequently put the purchase agreement in the data room before the LOI, and we expect a markup of it along with the LOI or an issues list, which will help expedite the process.” Who pays for the costs associated with confirmatory diligence and documentation? (13:38) Gina: "The seller pays for the seller's costs, and the buyers pay for the buyer's cost." Jeff: "In the context of a rollover deal, where the company is getting bought by a sponsor, the surviving entity ends up absorbing costs from both sides." What are the typical costs incurred during this phase for sellers and buyers? (14:31) Gina: "The seller can expect to pay for tax counsel or tax accountants if there is tax work to be done, an attorney to assist with negotiating terms, a tax lawyer, and other types of counsels. Buyers can expect to encounter legal fees, accounting fees, consulting fees, IT, technology consulting, and HR consulting." How much does this phase cost for both the sellers and buyers? (14:31) Gina: "Ballpark is anywhere from $75,000 to a couple hundred thousand for a seller. On the buyer's side, a couple hundred thousand easily on diligence for a middle market transaction that's valued $75 to $125 million.” From the seller's side, who is typically involved during the confirmatory diligence phase? (15:55) Gina: "Confirmatory diligence is a big undertaking, and sometimes the knowledge level about the company needs to go beyond the deal team that has been involved to date. At this stage, other people in the company may need to be made aware of the transaction (e.g. sales management, IT, HR, etc.), which can be tricky." What types of issues generally come up in employment contract discussions? (18:57) Gina: "One issue that comes up is pay, which we manage by building out expected compensation levels in the financial model. The second issue is the bonus structure, and the third is vacation. The most important issue that comes up is non-compete, who gets one and what the terms are." Which employees will generally be subject to non-competes? (19:25) Jeff: "There is usually a non-compete for selling shareholders that will be getting proceeds from the deal and non-equity participants that are key to the ongoing entity.” What are the risks associated with employment agreements and non-competes, and how do you mitigate these risks? (20:52) Jeff: "The risk with non-equity participants that are key to the business is that they could choose not to go with the new buyer for whatever reason. This can result in a domino effect from a price change to the deal not happening at all. One tactic that we use is to encourage our seller clients to put in place some type of transaction and retention bonus." Gina: "When Colonnade is working on a transaction, we ask a lot of questions upfront. We will often ask who has employment agreements and what are the terms of those agreements. For business owners that are thinking about selling in a few years, they should be thinking about who their key employees are and how to get them under employment agreements now." What are the different types of employee bonus plans associated with a sale? (23:17) Jeff: "One is transaction bonuses which are for employees who are essentially doing two jobs during the deal process. The second is the retention bonuses that ensure employees are not going to leave when the deal closes." What is Hart Scott Rodino ("HSR"), and how does it impact the transaction? (23:59) Gina: "HSR is one type of regulatory approval that might be needed to close a deal. HSR applies to companies of a certain size, which will need to be approved by the government for anti-trust reasons.” Jeff: "The amount increases every year, but HSR impacts transactions roughly around $80 million in transaction value. There is a filing fee, and it is about a 30-day process.” How long does it typically take from signing the legal documents to closing? Who owns the company during this period? (26:13) Jeff: "It can be 30 days or longer, depending on the different types of approvals. For financial services deals where there is generally regulatory approval, it is often 30 or 60 days. During this period, the seller and buyer essentially both own the company." Can sellers request a break fee if the deal does not close? (27:00) Gina: "In highly competitive, larger transactions, there will be break fees, but in middle market M&A, it's highly unusual to have a break fee. That is because there is not enough diligence that has been done before the signing of the LOI. Without all the information, it is unlikely that buyers will agree to a break fee because they may find out many things during confirmatory diligence." What are typical pitfalls encountered during the exclusivity/documentation phase? How does Colonnade mitigate these risks with seller clients? (28:58) Gina: "One is indemnification, which reps and warranties insurance can mitigate.” Listen to Colonnade’s podcast episode 010: Escaping escrow: Reps & Warranty Insurance: https://www.coladv.com/podcasts/010/ Jeff: "Another pitfall that we have seen involves who owns the intellectual property. To mitigate this risk, we address this issue early in diligence.” Gina: “Another is when the buyers want to speak with the seller company’s top clients. We try to delay that conversation until as late as possible in the process. We want to get to the point where we feel comfortable that we have covered all the major issues, and we're likely to close." Jeff: “The last pitfall that comes to mind is tax, where two parties can have a different view on tax regulations in a given jurisdiction. Our job is to push things forward and cut through all the issues as quickly and efficiently as we can.” What dynamics are typically in play right before a deal closes? (39:02) Jeff: “What I find is when people are the angriest and they're about to throw up their hands, that's when we know we've got a deal, it's sort of where everyone's been pushed to their limits. Everyone's had to give and take, and they're just about ready to walk away, and then the deal signs.” Gina: “And then we celebrate.” Host Information Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners, and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million.

Jeff Sussna is a consultant and author specialized in helping organizations deliver software more effectively. This is Jeff's second appearance on the show. In this conversation, he tells us about Customer Value Charting, a visual tool that helps teams balance strategy and agility. Listen to the show Download episode 61 Show notes Sussna Associates Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy by Jeff Sussna The Informed Life episode 15: Jeff Sussna on Cybernetics Customer Value Charting: A Visual Tool for Customer-Centered Discovery & Delivery by Jeff Sussna Software as a service Salesforce Slack's new DM feature can be used to send abuse and harassment with just an invite (The Verge) Promise theory Mark Burgess Wardley map Impact mapping User Story mapping ServiceNow JIRA Read the transcript Jorge: Jeff welcome to the show. Jeff: Thanks for having me. It's great to be on and great to talk to you again. Jorge: Yeah, I should have said welcome again to the show, because this is not your first time here. So, thank you for joining us again. Now, some folks might not have listened to our first conversation, so for their benefit, would you mind, please, reintroducing yourself? About Jeff Jeff: I'm Jeff Sussna. I live in Minneapolis and I run a software delivery consulting firm there. And our clients are companies that typically are doing some form of Agile and/or DevOps, and they're struggling with it. And what we typically find is that they face a conflict between agility and autonomy on the one hand, and strategy and alignment on the other. And Agile and DevOps by themselves... they're very much about breaking things down into smaller pieces. Smaller teams, smaller systems, smaller units of work, as a way of making change and adaptation easier. But they don't really have much to say about how you put the pieces back together. I like to say that customers don't want to buy microservices, they want to buy service. And so, there's this kind of big missing piece in the discourse around where are we trying to go and what are we trying to do? And so, our focus is partly on helping organizations do Agile and DevOps more effectively, but what that really ends up being is helping them overcome this conflict between, "this is what I'm doing today," and "this is where we're trying to go this year." What customers want Jorge: And this is the reason why I wanted to speak with you again, because this idea of striking a balance.... I'm going to frame it as striking a balance between agility and strategy — or you called that a strategy/alignment — is something that I think plays out in many fields, not just DevOps. This notion that the best way for us to make progress, let's say, is by working step by step and making small adjustments. But those small adjustments need to be in service to something, right? And... anyways, you shared a link to a post on your website about a tool called Customer Value Charting, which seems to get at this idea of striking a balance between agility and strategy, and I was hoping you would tell us about it. Jeff: Sure. But we need to start by taking a little bit of a step back. One of the things that we've learned working with our clients who typically are making the transition from software products to software services and cloud delivery, is that the cloud completely transforms the relationship between the customer and the software provider. I had an epiphany a number of years ago. I was looking at a marketing website for an early software as a service company; might even have been Salesforce. And right on their homepage, they were talking about things like multiple data centers, and offsite backup, and advanced security practices. And I realized that they were spending marketing dollars on IT operations. And then I read a sentence that really opened my eyes. It said, "we update the software so you don't have to." And the epiphany was the recognition that the cloud transfers the cost of change from the customer to the software provider. So, it used to be when software was a product that the feedback from the customer was things like, "well, we have to go through a three-month change management process before we can install the new version." Or "the new version requires an OS upgrade, and we're not scheduled to do that until next year." And with the cloud, the conversation is completely different. It's, "why is it taking you so long to deliver this feature upgrade, or this bug fix, or this stability improvement?" So, customers start to expect this continuous increase in value. And on the one hand, they become impatient with delay. No matter how good your feature is, if it takes too long to deliver, you start to lose customers. But at the same time, what they want is not just this continuous spray of random features. What they want is improved value. And what value is... I think of it in terms of three dimensions. The first is usefulness. Does it help me accomplish something that I'm trying to do? The second is usability in its largest meaning. Can I understand it? Can I adopt and onboard it? Can I administer it? Can I get help with it? Can I integrate it? And finally, dependability, which is everything from scalability to performance, to resilience, to security, to compliance, to trust. If you look at what happened with Slack this week, when they released this new global DM feature and then pulled it because it turned out to be this opportunity for a huge abuse. They violated people's trust. And so, they had to pull a feature. The missing piece in Agile and DevOps Jorge: I see dependability and usability as perhaps table stakes. And when you speak of creating value, that is where the usefulness dimension comes in. Is that a fair reading of that? Jeff: I think we could have a lengthy debate about whether dependability is table stakes. I mean, yes. Ultimately, what you're after is usefulness, right? The reason I need a dry cleaner is because it isn't feasible for me to clean my tuxedo at home. So, I need someone to do it for me and you're right, that ultimately, that's what I want: is to get my tuxedo clean. But I also need to get my tuxedo clean in time for tonight's formal event. So, things like speed may be important. I need to be able to easily get to and from the dry cleaner, so usability in terms of access to roads and shopping malls and whatever, may be important. The reason that I put these three together is... again, the shift from product to service involves this inclusion of operations. And that's something that often falls short. Product management tends to think of itself as being in the feature business. I do a lot of work with what I call cloud native product management, which is working with organizations and helping them understand that product managers need to be accountable for these usability and dependability metrics, as much as they are accountable for number of features delivered, or customer growth, or revenue, or anything like that. In any case, what customers are expecting is a continual evolution. So, across these dimensions that the service is getting continually better, not just sort of a random spray of things. And so, the challenge is how do you become more continuous and how do you have some strategic direction? And again, this is kind of a missing piece in the Agile and DevOps discourse, and I think that's why there's this kind of impedance mismatch intention and a certain frustration between Agile teams and designers or Agile teams and product managers or Agile teams and executives. And in thinking about how to resolve it, it occurred to me that the answer is simply to approach your work, both at the strategic and the tactical level, in terms of the outcomes as opposed to outputs. And what I mean by outcomes is customer outcomes. Customer benefit is maybe a better word. You know, the benefit of the dry cleaner is that I can get my tuxedo cleaned in time to go to the formal event. It's not fundamentally about a cash register or a counter or even cleaning chemicals. And I mention that because a lot of the conversation I see around outcomes over outputs tends to actually talk about business outcomes. You know, revenue growth and customer retention, and time on site and business outcomes are great. I don't have any problem with them, but people tend to skip this step. We have a hypothesis that this feature will cause this change in customer behavior, which will lead to this business outcome or business impact. But it leaves open the question of, well, why is the customer changing their behavior? What is the benefit to them? So, I started thinking about both strategy and direction and context, and also tactical work in terms of customer outcomes. We have an epic, or we have a roadmap, or we have a strategy, or we have a user story. Why are we doing that? Who cares? How does it help? And I started working with teams in helping them figure out, well, how do we start to put those two together? And a couple of things happened. One is that for a long time, I've been using some work in something called Promise Theory, which was developed by Mark Burgess, which is a way of thinking about how large-scale complex distributed systems can work well. Where a distributed system could be anything from a large-scale software system to a company, to a city, to an economy. And it's based on the idea that parts of the system make promises to each other. Where a promise is simply an intention to do something of benefit. So, we can think about Slack as promising the ability to get work done together across boundaries, right? Why do you need Slack? If everybody's in the same office, at the same time and they work for the same manager, you don't need Slack. You just talk to each other. It's when you're separated by space and time, and you're working across an organization, or across multiple organizations that you need help in order to get that done. And you can think about all of the features that Slack contains as working in service to that promise. And you can think of those features also as making promises of their own. You know, in order to work together across boundaries, you need to be able to have real-time and non-real-time conversations. You need to be able to find and start conversations and dip into them and out of them. None of that says anything in particular about a feature. We haven't said anything yet about a channel, or a thread, or an emoji. We're talking about what it is that Slack helps a user do and what the user can accomplish by doing that. So, I started working with teams in terms of thinking about what promises we would make. And these could be promises to end users, or they could be promises to other parts of the organization. I do a lot of work with platform teams and their customers are internal development teams. And what happens if you look at particularly traditional IT, there tends to be this approach of: if you want us to do something, file a ticket and we'll do it. It's very requirements-driven. It's very outside-in. We try and do what we're told to do and often we fail, for various reasons, most of which aren't our fault. They have to do with the way that the organization is structured and the way the work is structured. And this is really about turning it inside-out out and thinking about a platform or whatever the team is in the organization, as a service provider that is making and hopefully fulfilling promises to its internal customers. So, I work with them to understand, well, what promises are you making? How well do you fulfill them? And how can you both do a better job of fulfilling your promises and also think about more useful ones to make, which is where innovation really starts to happen. Promises The other interesting thing about a promise — and I should probably talk about this a little more — why this word promise? Why not contract or guarantee or requirement? A promise represents an intention that may or may not actually come to pass. I might promise to take out the trash, and then I might forget. So sometimes we break our promises. And counterintuitively, that's actually a really good thing. I had a conversation with a very thoughtful person once; we were talking about promises and then she sent me this email and she said, "I really don't understand why you would ever make a promise that you don't intend to actually fulfill." And I said, "well, you never would, but you can't guarantee things." So, the word "promise" forces you to think about the possibility of failure, which on the one hand helps you do a better job of not failing, but it also gives you an opportunity to think about improvement and repair. You could think of a promise as a bundle that brings together this idea of service, and customer jobs, and commitments to actually deliver service and continuous improvement. We can create this process where we think about our work at every level, from the tactical all the way to the strategic, in terms of how are we promising to help? How effectively are we fulfilling our promises? And how can we improve our ability to make and fulfill promises that are useful? The next step was to start developing a visual way of representing this. And in particular, a visual way of connecting tactical to strategic outcomes or promises. Customer Value Charting For a while I was working with something called Wardley Maps, which is a very powerful visual mechanism for identifying value chains all the way from the strategic, down to the very, very tactical and devolving that value. And the only problem I found is that when I was working with people who weren't sort of math or graphing nerds, if you will, they tended to find Wardley Maps kind of hard to look at. They're very much built around kind of graph theory and cartesian coordinates and that kind of thing. And people seem to get somewhat confused just by the visual representation. So, I was casting around for another way to present it. I started looking at Impact Maps and User Story Maps, which were very appealing, but what I found in practice was that they tended to kind of fall back into representing features, right? Here's this big feature we want to build and we'll make a User Story Map to represent the parts, and then we'll create slices and say, "we're going to create this set of sub features first." And I really wanted something that focused on this idea of outcomes and promises. And that's what led to Customer Value Charting. You could think of it as a riff on Promise Theory meets Wardley Maps meets User Story Maps. And it's a very simple visual representation, which is basically a grid of three rows and four columns. When you look at it from the top down, the top row is, "why is your help needed?" What is it that your customer or a potential customer is trying to do that they can't do on their own? So, if we continue with our Slack example, it's getting work done together across boundaries. If you look at the middle row, this is, "how do you help?" What promises do you make in support of that higher need? So, again, Slack promises things like the ability to have structured conversations that are both real time and non-real time so you and I can just chat and then one of us can go off to lunch and come back and continue the conversation. The ability to dip into and out of conversation. So, if I join a new team, I can find out what conversations have been happening. I can see what happened last night or yesterday. The ability to dynamically create and find conversation. And the bottom row is, "what help do you need in order to fulfill your own promises?" If you're on the Slack application team and you're building an application, you need things like elastic infrastructure, because it's a very dynamic system and users come and go. It needs to be able to scale up and down very easily. You also need help from the customer support organization, because you need visibility into how are customers using the application and how are they struggling with it so we understand where it needs to be improved. Once you do that, you have a nice visual representation of your value proposition all the way from the top to the bottom of what business are we in and how do we help and who do we help. Then, if you look at it from the left to the right, you basically lay out your promises in terms of how effectively do we fulfill them. So, at the left, you have promises that you don't make. This isn't part of our business. If you want to manage some very structured workflow like procurement or ITIL or something like that, you don't do that in Slack and do that in something like ServiceNow. Now, that's helpful because it bounds your scope. It allows you to say things like, "nope! We shouldn't be working on this because we don't do it. It's not our business. We don't make any promises about that." But it's also a great place to find opportunities for innovation by identifying underserved customer needs. This is a promise we don't make, but maybe we should. The second column is, "things that you're exploring." You're just dipping your toe in the water, you know? Maybe you're not sure if there's a market or a real need for it yet. You only did it in order to win a customer deal. For whatever reason you haven't fully invested. The third column is your bread and butter. This is the heart of our product. It more or less works the way it's supposed to and more or less does what people need. And the furthest column to the right is this is where our competitive advantage is. This is where customer delight happens. This is where we know people won't switch to a competitor because they really love or are hooked on this one particular feature. So now you have in one place, your value proposition and your operational reality of this is how we actually execute on our value proposition. And then the exercise becomes a matter of identifying areas where you want to move something from the left to the right. Where you want to become more effective at. This is an iterative process. You don't start with something that you don't do at all and try and make it highly effective or compelling in one shot. You start by exploring it. Let's dip our toes in the water and find out. And the final step is you start attaching actual work to it in terms of what is the next step we're going to take. An example of CVC Let's take the example of Slack where Slack doesn't do structured workflow. But a lot of times what happens is people are debugging together in a Slack channel and they find some infrastructure problem and they have to go over to ServiceNow in order to file a ticket. Wouldn't it be nice if you actually had the ability to integrate ITIL directly into Slack because there's a use for it. So, that's an area we want to invest in. We want to explore. And the first thing we're going to do is we're just going to build a very simple connector that allows you to create a simplistic incident ticket directly from a Slack chat. What you have now done is you have identified a simple small piece of work that you were going to use to validate and explore a larger, more strategic direction. And you use this as an iterative management and conversation technique so that you do some work and then you come back and you ask yourself, "well, how far did that get us along the path that we're trying to get?" maybe it was harder than we thought, and there's not really as much market need as we thought, and we should just stop. Or maybe we learn something from it, and we discover that the next thing we should do along that path is to build Y instead of X. And again, this entire process is happening in terms of promises of outcomes, not really in terms of locking down features. So, it gives you this ability to explore in an agile fashion, but to give everybody a sense of what direction we're moving in. What is it that we're trying to make better? You know, so often when I work with Agile teams, they do stand-ups and they drew retros and they define their sprint goals and things like that in terms of work and quantity and velocity. Our sprint goal is to finish these 24 stories, and we finished 23 so we're going to declare our sprint a success. Well, what did you actually deliver? What got better as a result, you know? Or what we need to do in this iteration is we need to add three database indexes. Well, what is the promise that we're delivering on? The promise is to make search 15% faster. And whether you do three database indexes or seven or one, isn't the essential point. The essential point is to make search 15% faster. So, if you connect your work to that promise, you give yourself the flexibility of how to actually go about doing it. But you have a goal that everybody understands and everybody can communicate to each other, to management, to your customers. And so, it brings together this idea of flexibility and agility with having some kind of direction that you're trying to go in that has value in everyone. A better roadmap Jorge: It sounds to me like a tool to help visualize in a more tangible way, the question, "what is this in service to and where might we be missing something?" And, in that way, it strikes me as a kind of more useful version of a roadmap, perhaps? Is that a fair read? Jeff: That is an excellent read. Yes! It is all about identifying value and evolving value. And it's funny, I'm glad you mentioned the word roadmap. If you think about a map, right? Like a real roadmap. And remember... you and I are probably both old enough to remember the days when you actually had one of those foldout paper maps. A map showed you how you could get from point A to point B. It doesn't tell you how to get there, right? You get to make decisions about, well, we're going to take highway or we're not going to take the highway, or we're going to go this way so we can stop here for lunch. It presents opportunities. And the problem I have with traditional product roadmaps is they cause, I think, unnecessary pain and frustration. You know, the underlying insight that Agile had is that when you're building something large and complex and novel — something that's a little different from what you've built before — it is extremely hard to perfectly predict exactly how you should build it, or even exactly what it should be. And if you look at a roadmap... and it's funny, I keep coming back to this idea of AgileFall, where people use Agile to do Waterfall. And there's a lot of grief and a lot of condescension... "Well, if you're doing AgileFall, you're doing it wrong. You're bad. You're bad at Agile." I think what that misses is that AgileFall represents this tension that hasn't been resolved around, "well, we need something more than just what we're going to accomplish in the next two weeks." And so, what happens is people trying to lock down the big picture. There's a presentation where somebody stood up and they presented this completely Waterfall 12-month roadmap that said, "this is what we're going to do in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4." And then they said, "but because we're Agile, we might change the dates." In other words, this roadmap is a work of fiction. And its primary purpose is to frustrate you because we are explicitly telling you that we're making promises, right? We promise to deliver this feature on this date. And we're going to break those promises. And I think that people do that because again, we all need a sense of direction and a sense of context. We need it for ourselves, our stakeholders need it, our executives need it, our customers need it. Where are we going? And we don't know how to communicate that other than in terms of work. But if we can communicate it in terms of value, right? So, if you think about Slack, the ability to find conversations is actually somewhat crude. You kind of have to know what you're looking for, right? You're looking for a particular name, which could be somewhat arcane. So, you couldn't actually really say that the ability to find conversations in Slack is as effective as it should be. If you tell your customers, "we are going to make the ability to find conversations more effective and more powerful and more flexible." — "Oh! That sounds good, because yeah, it really needs to be better. We're really excited about that!" You haven't locked yourself into a particular date or a particular implementation. You can explore and discover that as you go and you can tell your customers, "well, here's this thing that we're delivering this week that will make conversation-finding a little bit better in this particular way." And then, "oh! We can do that again. Well, next week, here's this thing that we're delivering that will make it even a little bit better." So, it allows you to plan, and it allows you to communicate without kind of forcing yourself into a model that doesn't actually work when you're building complex software systems. Jorge: It strikes me that the traditional roadmap is a forecast of what's going to happen that is, by definition, made at a time when your knowledge of the entire situation is imperfect. And the actual process is more like... it's stochastic, right? Every step that you take changes what happens next. If that's a fair read, then this artifact that you're describing is organic in the sense that it needs to be a living document that is revisited often. And a) I'm wondering if that's a fair read and, b) if that's the case, then who is responsible for being the steward of this chart? Jeff: It is a fair read. And I'm going to struggle with the answer to who is responsible. I think there are two answers. One is the product owner and the product manager. But two is the team. Because... you're absolutely right. Its intention is as a conversation and planning tool, not actually as a document. I don't care what it looked like last month. The point is to continuously have a conversation around, "are we getting where we want to go? What's the next step to go there? And do we still even want to go in that direction?" And so, it's simply a tool for that kind of conversation. The reason I hesitate is about who owns it or who shepherds it, is the team needs to be having the conversation. And it's less important to me who runs the session or who... you know, in the good old days, many, many moons ago, before pandemic, I would say: "create a three by four grid on a whiteboard and get stickies and put them up on the wall and move the stickies around." It's funny, because a couple of years ago I worked with a team and they were part of an organization that was very, very JIRA driven. And for whatever reason, they decided to just put stuff up on a whiteboard. And it worked perfectly.So, the mechanism is less important than the process. A high functioning team ought to be able to just have this conversation. Now, I think where it becomes interesting to think about product owners and product managers is the connection with the larger business context, right? Of why are we going in this particular direction? And how do we provide feedback to the rest of the organization about the success of going in that direction? That's really where I think that sort of... I think what you're talking about in terms of stewardship comes in is: this isn't just for teams, it's a way for teams to communicate with other parts of the organization. Or "well, you want to know what we're doing? Well, what we're doing is we're making conversation-finding better, and here's why, and here's how. Here's what we're doing next to move in that direction." And we can have conversations at a higher management level of, "is conversation-finding something that we want to be investing in?" The nice thing about that is that you stop having conversations about, "well, why didn't you deliver the feature that you said you were going to deliver on this date? Your team is not performing." Right? It makes your stakeholder and management-level conversation much richer and more productive, in my opinion. Closing Jorge: Well, this sounds like a tool that is much needed. And I'm grateful that you are writing and speaking about it. Where can folks go to find out more? Jeff: Well, they can go to the sussna-associates.com website, is the best place. There's various information about it there. This is something that I have primarily been using in working with actual clients, so I'm just starting the process of exposing it more generally and starting to talk and write about it more generally. So, I wrote a book, that was really about some of the theoretical underpinnings behind this several years ago. I've been toying with the idea of writing another one, much more practical, down to earth about how to use promises and how to use Customer Value Charts in order to run an Agile organization. So, it's very much of a work in progress. And thanks to you for helping me start to talk about this in a broader context. Jorge: Well, I'm very excited to see where it goes, and, looking forward to having you again in the show sometime, Jeff! I always enjoy our conversations a great deal. Jeff: As do I! Thanks for having me, and hopefully it'll be sooner than another 18 months when we do it again.

In previous episodes, Colonnade Advisors has outlined our unique 16-week sales process timeline in four phases: pre-marketing, go to market, management presentations/buyer due diligence, and exclusivity/documentation.  Today’s episode focuses on phase three: management presentations/ buyer due diligence. We invite you to listen to episode 001 for more information about phase one (pre-marketing) and episode 002 for more information about phase two (go to market). Other episodes dive deep into technical aspects and tactics used in middle market and mergers and acquisitions. We also invite you to download our 16-week sales process timeline for more information on how Colonnade Advisors typically approaches the process of selling a company. In this episode, we focus on the management meetings, where we introduce our seller clients to a limited set of qualified buyers that have put forth strong offers to buy the company. Management meetings fall on the heels of all the work Colonnade Advisors does with our clients to prepare for this stage of the sales process. At this point in the game, we’ve worked through the list of potential buyers and have narrowed the field to the most qualified. Management meetings are the first time the seller's management team will interact with this limited set of buyers. Thus the title for our episode: Seller and Buyer’s First Date. Key questions explored in this episode are: What purpose does a management meeting serve?  What topics are covered during management meetings? Who is invited? What’s the format for a successful management meeting? How has COVID19 changed how management meetings take place? How do we best prepare our clients?  What purpose does a management meeting serve? (02:15) Gina: "Management meetings are a continuation of the storytelling of the company. It is the opportunity for the management team to tell their story in their own words.  Management meetings are different from diligence meetings—it is not a meeting for potential buyers to ask detailed questions.  Management meetings are the showcase for the management to tell the origin story, to explain in their own words what the business does. And then, very importantly, talk about the growth opportunities.” What topics are covered during management meetings? (04:35) Gina: "Management presentations involve much of the confidential information memorandum but told from management's voice. Additionally, financial numbers are updated from when the confidential information memorandum was released. Sometimes, pages are added to the management presentation specific to the buyers we're meeting with.  Jeff: "When we go to market and have one-on-one conversations with buyers and investors, different themes emerge. Some of them are new and intriguing and bring us down different paths and highlight new growth opportunities. We benefit from the collective insights and questions of up to 100 or more different investors that are looking at the acquisition from their perspective. Once we collect all these thoughts, questions, and comments that buyers ask of us, we weave those themes into the management presentation. It is a collection of ideas that we've been able to cultivate from the market." Who is invited to the management meetings? (08:12) Gina: "From the seller's side, you'll have the CEO, President, the Chief Marketing Officer, the Chief Sales Officer, and the CFO.  Management team members that are leaving post-transaction should not attend the management meeting. (From the buyers’ side) if the buyer is a private equity firm, it will typically include Principals, VPs, and maybe some analysts. If the private equity firm has an investment banking advisor, their banking team will typically attend. If it is a strategic acquirer, the group may be larger. There may be an internal M& team and/or an investment banking advisory team. If the buyer is a private equity-backed company, it will usually be the investment banking advisory team, the strategic core team, M&A team, and some of the private equity firm representatives." What’s the format for a successful management meeting? (12:15) Gina: "Meetings typically take place at the seller's location, either their office or offsite location. Some people will dial into the meeting." Jeff: "Typically, after the management meeting, the group goes out for dinner. Historically, these dinners have been significant in building relationships and deciding who our clients like and who they don't. A lot comes out in these dinners. From the buyers' side, who attends, their seniority, and how prepared they are, are an important reflection of their interest level. The best meetings are interactive, going back and forth, and the attendees don't even touch the (presentation) books." How has COVID19 changed how management meetings take place? (12:47) Gina: "Historically, there are typically four to eight people attending meetings in person. During the COVID pandemic, things have changed. We’ve had Zoom management meetings, and because people don't have to travel, the meetings have gotten larger.” Jeff:  “The management meetings being virtual versus the (traditional) in-person meetings can be challenging. One of the major purposes of these management meetings is to build a relationship between the buyer and seller. An important role we play is working with our clients to manage this relationship-building inside of the virtual culture that we're living in right now.” How does Colonnade best prepare clients for management meetings? (17:41) Gina: "At Colonnade, we will do a profile of each attendee and the firm, a list of questions that they have asked, documents that they have requested, and where we think their interest lies. We also do dry runs with the management team." Jeff: "In preparing our clients on what to present, we will draft the management presentation and then have the management team review it. We spend a lot of time talking through how it might go, particularly with the list of potential questions that we pull together." Gina: “We prepare our clients for questions that are likely to come up. One question almost every management team gets is, 'why are you selling now, or why are you raising capital now?' Another common question is 'what keeps you up at night?' We also prepare our clients for questions to ask of the buyer. One question we encourage everybody to ask is, 'what is your experience in this industry, and what trends do you see in this industry that I should be paying attention to?' Other great questions are: 'describe an ideal partnership for our firms', and 'tell me about some of your other deals that were successful?' Jeff: "It is also good for the financial sponsors to talk about some of the deals that didn't go well. If you can get somebody to open up about some challenging situations/investments they've had, that can be insightful.”My favorite question is: 'beyond the capital, why should we pick you? Why are you the best partner for us?'   At Colonnade, we do our best to prepare our clients and get them ready and through the process as fast as we can." Host Information Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners, and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million.  

Max: Hello and welcome back to The Recruitment Hackers Podcast, I am your host Max and today I am delighted to welcome Jeff Wald. Jeff Wald is the author of two books including The end of jobs, The rise of on demand workers and agile corporations hot topics, kicking off into 2021, Jeff, welcome to the show.Jeff: Max, thank you so much for having me.Max: It's a pleasure. And we're at opposite sides of the planet Jeff is logging in from Florida, I'm in Hong Kong. But I think the world is smaller than it has ever been. With so many of the so many of those jobs being kind of remote, being advertised as it doesn't matter where you're, where you're hiring you know it's anywhere in the world as long as you've got the skills. So, it must have been a busy year for you, promoting the cause of the remote worker and the on demand worker.  I'm even more excited about the international dimension of that, as opposed to, let's say, the creation of a new job category. I just like the fact that now the talent pool is universal and global.Jeff: I agree, I will say this man. Let's not gloss over this small little fact that you're sitting in Hong Kong, I'm sitting in Florida. This is mind blowing to me if your mind's not freakin blown by this anyone that's listening to the fact that the two of us are sitting on literally opposite sides of the planet. That is amazing. You know pre pandemic I'd said a bunch of times in the book down the hall, on another floor, down the block, or halfway around the world. You don't need to be in the same place to be on the same team. And that has become all the more true during the pandemic or I should say all the more true, it's always been true. Over the last few years it has been all the more aware than people become of that. And this is exemplified here I mean we had a wonderful conversation, prior to you know hitting record here, as if we were colleagues on a project, just working and it to me there was no difference the conversation we had then are having now than you, me sitting in your office.Max: Yes, yes, Well all the mess in my office is outside of camera view. It looks a lot better. Actually, I  control this environment better. Jeff: I'd probably be wearing pants. Those are all things that are slightly different than if I were in your office. But still, it's all amazing to me.Max: That's great. So far listeners out there. Jeff is pantless.Jeff: Allegedly, allegedly!Max: Well. So Jeff, maybe you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, before you became an author on the topic of employment. It's probably not what you grew up, dreaming to become a kind of happened with life. Can you walk us through the main steps in your career. Jeff: Sure, I started my career in finance with JP Morgan,moved to venture capital, which was just an amazing, amazing experience working with entrepreneurs, and getting to see men and women that were just trying to change the world. So exhilarating that I left and started my first company, that failed miserably and basically bankrupted me. But that's the thing with entrepreneurship, pick yourself up dust yourself off and keep going. Second company we built up, and eventually got sold to Salesforce and that was a good outcome not a great outcome. And then this last company Work Market, founded 10 years ago. Work Market is enterprise software that enables companies to organize manage and pay their freelance population, raised about 70 million from Union Square ventures SoftBank and a few others sold the company to ADP almost three years ago. So it's been a great, great journey and the sale to ADP specifically gave me the space, Max to finally sit down and finish this book because I've been working on it for like four years prior to the purchase of ADP. Max: Okay. Well, congrats on that entrepreneurial journey. I haven't read that. After you sell your business, there was a moment. It's a moment where most entrepreneurs kind of struggle with depression. Suddenly a drop, drop in activity and energy. But apparently, you made the most of that sort of drop.Jeff: That's super super interesting. I guess I understand it conceptually. It's one of the silliest reasons to be depressed, not that I wish to ever make fun of depression. I will tell you having your business fail and going bankrupt. I'd say bankrupt as bankruptcy is a technical term. Have your business fail and virtually going bankrupt. That is something that did in general did a lot of depression in me. And, you know, having not leaving my apartment for some time. As I was super bummed out by that, but I had no experience like that with the sale of joy upon  joy and gratitude and fortune. Max: Yeah. Good, I am really happy to hear that because you know who knows maybe one day I'll have to sell some of my shares. And I'd like it to be a happy moments as well. Jeff: God will. God will.Max: So, your new book, The end of jobs, The rise of on demand workers, I'm excited about this topic, because it is all of our, our mission in the corporate world and the enterprise world, to, to create a performance driven culture, and an output driven culture where people are measured on, you know what they produce, as opposed to you know how why they smile. And I think that the transition towards task base job assignment, as opposed to job descriptions, is one for the best because it actually gives more freedom to be able to just get the job done in as much in as little time as possible, which is giving people more freedom to run their lives the way they want. I mean it could be looked at. It could be looked in that way it could be looked at on the opposite side of the spectrum as like a cold market driven approach to employment. Instead of where many employers to position themselves as we are family. But I think the 'we our family' message is a bit outdated personally. How do you feel about that transition? Do you think that we're moving towards a world which is, is that what's covered in your book?Jeff: So there are a number of things that are ever covered in the book about the future of work. The first and the most important is to look at the history of work. I wrote the book because I get very frustrated with people that make predictions about the future of really anything quite frankly without evidence, specifically in the world of work. We have the history of work and how companies workers have come together to produce goods and services throughout different societal changes different technological changes. So let's study those. And the second body of evidence is data. What does the data, tell us how to data trends and patterns, play out. Currently, and obviously through history as well. The third is how companies actually engage workers. You know a lot of people think the labor resource planning meeting goes like this, CEO walks in and says, 'All right, what are we gonna do ot her workers. Let's hire the cheapest ones, meeting adjourned'. That is actually not how those meetings go, there's a lot of variables that go into that equation. And so understanding how companies actually engage workers, understanding the data and the data trends and understanding history, and how society has coped with some of these struggles before. That to me is a very thoughtful way to think about, or start to make predictions about the future of work and that's what we endeavour to do with the book.Max: So the book has a historical component that goes back to the the history of work. I was excited when I read about the time of Abraham Lincoln when they were talking about what's it called wage slaves, or where it was considered that every man should be his own employee, there was a vision that was articulated at the time that you know you were to be on a regular wage is somehow less envious, that everybody should be self employed as kind of coming back a little bit right from one or two years ago.Jeff: It certainly is coming back to the whole idea behind freelancing is the idea that you get to have flexibility and choose your own path that is a very very powerful thing it's something very encoded in our DNA to want to have control of our own destiny, of course, and all the things that the freelancer faces are starting to permeate the full time workforce. So, like called the book The end of jobs the rise of on demand workers. That is not to say I think everyone's going to be a freelancer, that is to say that all the things that the freelancer deals with task based labor, personal responsibility, algorithms, allocating work data driven HR all of those things Max are permeating the full time workforce and all workers are dealing with kind of things.Max: Okay, so, everybody who's looking at Uber drivers thinking, I'm glad I don't have an algorithm, looking over me. Time is coming up. Yeah,Jeff: it is coming. No question. It is coming.Max: Okay. From a talent acquisition perspective which is really my focus. How does this affect recruitment How does the rise of the on demand worker affect recruitment? Do you think that. Are you noticing that they're, they're being hired in a different manner than the permanent staff?Jeff: Well I think there are a few ways that all of these changes impact recruiting. The first is the recruiting is that tip of the spear right your listeners are the first people out there that are dealing with the changes and how companies are structuring their workforces. We need more of X we need less of Y. We need more people in this geography, fewer in that geography. And so recruiting is seeing in real time, the shifts in labor resource management, and that is super super interesting in and of itself. And we can spend some time talking about the types of recruiting they're gonna be more important as we get into skills based labor, and more remote work, and more on demand work and how robots and AI are going to impact the workforce with large. That's one conversation set that is a very interesting conversation to be had. The other part is how does that specific function change, given all of these things is more recruiting going to be done in an on demand capacity? is more recruiting going to be done via robots or AI systems going to be doing more recruiting? And that's another very big impact that quite frankly we don't know how that's going to play out yet. You know there are just way too many variables and it's way too early in the game, but we certainly have seen some trends around on demand recruiting. And we've certainly seen some trends around some of the tasks inherent recruiting starting to be done by machines.Max: With the start of the new year. Are you talking to companies who are setting targets around. I'd like to move, you know, 10, or 20% of my workforce to on demand, does that come down from the board to the operational level?Jeff: Short answer is, look from the board down the answer to that is usually No, that is. You'd hope, but boards, I don't think, sitting on a few public boards myself boards don't get involved that tactically even though I would argue it is strategic and they should be having that type of conversation. Those conversations are very nuanced very complex, and so I've never seen somebody come down and see any point out. When I was running Work Market because if you wanted to increase your usage of freelancers there weren't any really other places to go, if you wanted to manage a large freelance workforce and Work Market. So, I would usually get that call. And I will tell you we very very very rarely got the labor force transformation call. The call of a we're getting into the change how we're doing things we need to bring in, and we're frankly, what I would get those calls, I kind of was like this is going to be a two year conversation, this sucks, but it usually, the call will come from real big companies so you take it and start having obviously if we could work with fortune 50 company we're going to do it. What the call, we would get Max, the calls that we would get all the time is we currently manage a freelance workforce. It is a very large part of our labor force strategy and it has been for years or decades, in some cases, but it's a mess. We don't know who's where who sent what legal Raymond who is working on what is good and what we need a piece of software to help us efficiently and compliantly manage this workforce, that call, I would get all the time. But the idea that, whether it's on demand work or robots and AI, that there's going to be some huge shifts that data doesn't support it. History doesn't support it, and how companies actually engage workers does not support an argument that oh my gosh all those jobs are gonna go next year, 10% of those jobs are gonna go. Labor force statistics and labor resource planning happens very slowly and very methodically and that's that's just the reality. So it's that reality that people should be mindful of when thinking about the future of work.Max: And there's a huge regulatory component where a change in the law, and how easy it is to hire and fire will immediately impact the percentage of the staff, which is on demand right because it drives a lot of the demand.Jeff: It is a incredibly powerful maybe the most powerful, powerful variable and what I call the labor equation, very complex equations series have a system of equations, I should say that guide how companies actually engage workers, and the regulatory environment, especially when it comes to freelance workers, I would argue is the biggest variable in that equation. And the problem with that variable is that that variable itself is all over the map. It's very different how you engage worker in California than what you do in Louisiana. Workers comp board in Wisconsin has an entirely different point of view than the Labor Department in Portugal. So you got to be super super mindful of how complex it is and that's why most companies go, oh my god it's too complicated just keep everybody employed. Obviously that's a bit glib of an interpretation, but it's not that far from accuracy.Max: Yeah. Yeah, I believe it for sure. For me, I experienced it the other way I was like oh my god it's so complicated I have all these full time employees and be better I'd just have contractors, but either way. Either way, the decision towards a simpler way of doing things. I mean, I imagined that it's a little bit easier to decentralize, the compliancy, meaning. Instead of putting the onus on the employer to be in charge of everybody's, you know, being compliance is to say to the on demand worker, it's your responsibility. And by the way, here's a little bit of money to help you file your taxes or, you know, manager, your stuff.Jeff: That is a really good point there. A increasing number of companies out there that are helping the freelancer set up a corporate structure, which really makes it a vendor relationship, and that stuff certainly helps shield the company, but in no way can the company. And I would not pretend to understand laws in China, or anywhere else. But in the United States, you can't pass that liability down to the worker. So when the State Department of Labor comes, you can't say well I, you know, they all signed these legal agreements indemnify me the department labor's we go okay I don't care. There, we view them as your employees, where is our back payroll tax? Where's Social Security payments? Where's unemployment insurance? let's go gimmy gimmy gimmy. They couldn't care less. But there are ways to your point, that companies can certainly mitigate their risk.Max: Great. Well, what else can corporations think about your talking to you know it was in your title the Agile Corporation. What are some of the trends Do you foresee in 2021 for companies who want to become more agile, Besides that, besides work market. What other what other tools or methodologies do you recommend?Jeff: Well I don't anticipate a huge increase in the size of the on demand workforce. But the on demand workforce as a number shrank. So there were over 240 million workers in the on demand workforce now there are high 30 million workers in the workforce, but the labor force as a whole film. And so we're still trying to parse together, did the percent of the on demand workforce shrink grow or stay the same? My guess is that it probably that stayed about the same. So I don't anticipate in 21, a huge movement back. I think it will stay about the same. percent of the labor force, because companies are just focused elsewhere, right now, right they're trying to make sure their teams are safe they're trying to make sure that their supply chains are safe and trying to make sure that their employees are being productive and they're not thinking about labor force transformation and 21. 22 might be a very different scenario. And as we discussed earlier regulation I think it's going to be the biggest variable in that equation. But when we talk about agile Max there there are a host of different ways in which a company can be agile. The best way is managing an army of freelancers. They are completely agile. The next you know you can move into temps and the vendors to other types of relationships. The biggest change that we saw in the labor market unquestionably in terms of how work gets done, I think the biggest change was unemployment and obviously horrific impacts on labor because of the pandemic. But the biggest change in how work actually gets done was clearly remote. It was moving to remote work and does that make a company more agile? of course it does. Allow your workers to be able to work where they want how they want is a very important step in kind of breaking that bone of the one office one manager 9-5 job. And that's the job by the way that is referenced in the title the end of jobs. Robots are taking all of our jobs, far from it, they are not, that is a very clear conclusion from the book. But this idea that you have one office, one manager, you work 9-5 that job is dying and it gets replaced by people being nomadic people having flexible work arrangements, people working in different contexts so that certainly on demand. Temps of freelancers and all that jazz. Those are the kinds of changes that were sped up by the pandemic as companies had to become more agile, there was no everyone's got to come to the office from 9-5, that wouldn't happen in almost anywhere in the world, in  April of 2020. So, that is a huge step forward in the Agile corporations.Max: Actually, to your last points on, I've noticed the same trends and of course but the 9-5 aspects, there are still a bunch of companies that still look at the nine to five hour. And, and there's a strong case to be made for for the work life balance to say, yeah, starts at nine five so you don't invade people's lives, but on the other hand, it does remove you know to do so because you, you say we want to create boundaries and we want to create overlap or people working at the same time. It does also mean you're removing a little bit of freedom from your employees, from your staff, let's say, to decide when they work. Jeff: Of course.Max: It's not that great right, like. I would argue like work whenever, and we try to minimize the number of conference calls if we can.Jeff: That is a fine way to think about it, but when we're thinking about 164 million people in the US labor force actually 154 million now, 164 at the beginning of the pandemic. That is not the way all of them are gonna work. If you have a shift at H&M. That's when your shift is, there's no hey I want to work from Barcelona this weekend no no your shift is here in the store and that's when your shift is, if you're working on the line at Volkswagen your shift is nine to five, or maybe, whatever it is, there is no a I'm going to you know come in late. And I'll stay later, I don't know, that's when the shift starts like you have to be there. So it's important to think about the full context of the labor force. When we have conversations about the future of work it's easy to slip into this idea that everybody works in these remote first type jobs that are very enabled by remote work and digital work and all these other things. The reality is most people don't, that's just not the reality for most workers in any labor force.Max: Agreed. Agreed. And I work in these industries where people do have to physically come a lot of the time, so I know that's the case, but I guess, for the knowledge worker. I still see, I still see people trying to cling on to this office. You know way of work, sure where, whereas all communication, eventually, as much communication as possible should be moved to the asynchronous. So because we can read faster than we can sit through a meeting.Jeff: I completely agree. But to your point, some people do enjoy it. And there are tremendous benefits to it. I saw a study that 93% of remote workers still live within a commutable distance of the office. Because going remote doesn't mean you never go to the office, there are benefits to having everybody come together and have brainstorming sessions and do small talk. Those serendipitous encounters at the watercooler, they're actually incredibly good for productivity, do they need to be every day? Of course not. Can we allow people to flexible work arrangements, those that want it and those that can do it. Sure. But here's another important thing 42% of the US workforce can work remotely. That's it. Max: yeah.Jeff: And the US by the way is the highest percentage of any workforce on the planet that can work remotely. But another way to say that is 58% of workers, cannot do this digital lifestyle, cannot work remotely their jobs won't allow it. So we need to be mindful of that when having these types of conversations.Max: Alright, so it was a bubble 2020 bubble and the narrative, to a certain degree that was not really supported by hard data. In fact, most people will still be coming into the office and, and the on demand worker or while it's an ongoing transition. We haven't seen a huge rise in the percentage of the workforce that goes on demand. And the robots will now take our jobs. I'm sure that there's a lot more depth to this book, than my cliff notes here. How do people find your book, I'm gonna put a link to where do you want to sell, are we selling through Amazon or is there another place?Jeff: There are tons of other places but 98% of the books that have been sold have been bought on Amazon and, you know, certainly when the book came out in June, there was almost no other place to buy the book. That's not true actually was on barnesandnoble.com, a few other web sellers but it's funny I'm down here in Florida now and Florida's COVID restrictions are much looser than my normal home in New York, and I passed the Barnes and Noble today. As I was going school, get my office set up down here. Home Office, and I'm super excited to go tomorrow and see if my book is there, so hopefully it is in bookstores where it's supposed to be but it'd be the first time I get a chance to go into an old school Barnes noble I'm super excited. Max: All right. Don't forget to put on your protective gear for that Barnes and Noble experience.Jeff: No question. No question.Max: And, well, how do people get a hold of you? What's the best way to reach you?Jeff: Well, you can certainly follow me on twitter at @Jeffreywald, that's the only place that I go by Jeffrey for wells I go by Jeff, but I couldn't couldn't get Jeff Wald, and LinkedIn, I'm always I will always accept connections on LinkedIn and Amazon is certainly the best place to find the book.Max: Wonderful. Well thanks Jeff for sharing your insights and coming on the show and. Well, I look forward to my FREE copy in the mail. No, I'll go and get myself a copy I've got a bunch of books,I am a little bit behind on my reading, and I'll go get myself a copy right now.Jeff: I appreciate it thank you so much. It was so great to chat and I look forward to listening to many more episodes of this podcast.Max: Thanks, Jeff. Jeff: Thank you.

In this episode, Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay focus on valuation - determining what your company is worth. Key takeaways from this episode are: The right valuation methodology depends on the industry and the company Valuation should not be overly focused on the multiple. It also depends on what you to apply the multiple to Market price discovery through a competitive process will drive the highest valuation In this episode, Colonnade Advisors addresses the following questions as related to valuation: What are the different valuation methodologies used? (00:48) Gina: "There are comparable company trading, comparable transaction, and the more complex discounted cash flow valuations. There are also other types of valuation methods that are not relevant to what we do on a day-to-day, so we will focus on the three main ones." At what point in the process is valuation analysis generally performed? (01:12) Jeff: "It is often performed ahead of going to market. Many times, it is ahead of us doing due diligence. We might update these valuation analyses for our clients at various points throughout the process, and we do a gut check on whether we are ready to go to market." What is the value of hiring a sell-side financial advisor in determining the transaction price? (01:12) Jeff: "Ultimately, it is the market that sets the transaction price. The real value of hiring a financial advisor to help sell a business is to get the best price and terms, which is generally achieved through an auction process." What is a comparable transaction valuation? (02:43) Jeff: "It is what the market has offered up to companies that are comparable to the company being evaluated. For example, if a company sold at eight times EBITDA, it's logical to assume that another company that is very similar, or comparable, would trade at eight times EBITDA." What attributes of a target company will impact the comparable transaction multiple? (03:37) Jeff: "The multiple will depend on all sorts of attributes of the specific target company, whether it is growing faster or slower, whether the management team is better or worse, client concentration, or geographic concentration. All sorts of things influence the multiple that a buyer is willing to pay." What is comparable trading valuation, and how does it apply to middle market transactions? (04:17) Jeff: "This involves looking at where the comparable public companies are trading in the public markets. The comparable trading valuation metrics are a little more theoretical for the middle market transactions. It is a helpful metric and something used in negotiations with buyers, but there are all sorts of factors that drive the multiple relative to what you might expect to achieve in the private market." Gina: "Volatility in the public market will impact the valuation of public companies.  You do not see the same day to day volatility in a private transaction. For a middle market company, comparable trading valuation is less relevant because of the size differential." What is discounted cash flow valuation? (06:35) Jeff: "The discounted cash flow valuation is an analysis of the businesses' free cash flows. Then discount the cash flows at a certain discount rate to arrive at the net present value of all those cash flows. The biggest drivers of this analysis include the discount rate, which could be derived using the CAPM model, and a variety of other factors." What industries use revenue multiples? (09:37) Gina: "Pre-profitability companies use revenue multiples. It is often used in high growth type businesses such as software and biotech companies and recurring revenue companies. The revenue multiples can range depending on the industry." What is the rationale for using EBITDA multiples? (10:29) Gina: "EBITDA is a proxy for cash flow and normalizes income between various companies." How do you determine which multiple metrics to use? (11:58) Jeff: "There are many different metrics that buyers and sellers can focus on, and it is generally industry-specific. It is important for the seller and their advisor to focus on what are the right metrics for the seller's business." What are the multiple metrics applied to? (12:34) Gina: "There are a lot of different ways to look at what the metric is. Different methods are used in different industries. Some industries use GAAP accounting, and some industries use some special purpose accounting. There are also add-backs to EBITDA so that anything unusual and extraordinary can be added back to increase EBITDA and valuation." What is the significance of add-backs? (14:18) Jeff: "Add-backs help demonstrate what the company's earnings stream looks like going forward. It gives a sense of the pure earnings of the business." What are pro forma adjustments to EBITDA? (14:58) Gina: "It involves adjusting historical EBITDA for known future or recent arrangements, such as a decrease in expense or increase in operating efficiency. The adjusted EBITDA demonstrates how the business is going to operate going forward." What is synergy in an M&A transaction, and can the seller benefit? (17:13) Gina: "Synergy is when two companies combine, and instead of being one plus one equals two, one plus one equals three. That could be because of expense reductions or revenue enhancements. Buyers will benefit from synergies in the future. A competitive process will increase the likelihood that a seller will get paid for at least a portion of the synergies a buyer may achieve." How does customer concentration impact valuation? (19:26) Gina: "Customer concentration or any distribution channel concentration will typically reduce valuation. Customer concentration involves anything greater than 15%." How does the transaction process impact the price and term? (20:49) Jeff: "There are various factors that could lead to a potential buyer dropping out. Therefore, finding the greatest number of highly qualified buyers and working diligently through the process delivers the best price and term for sellers." What is the difference between enterprise value versus equity value? (21:47) Gina: "If a company has debt on the books, then the debt is subtracted from the enterprise value to get to the equity value." What is the ultimate answer to "What is my company worth?" (23:30) Gina: "Your company is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Our job is to create a competitive environment to yield the highest price and the best terms." Host Information Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners, and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million.

In this episode, Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay continue their discussion on deal structuring. Today, the focus is on roll-ups. Key takeaways from this episode are: • Highly fragmented industries are ripe for roll-ups • A roll-up is an attractive exit alternative for companies that are subscale or have an incomplete management organization • Transparency from both the buyer and the seller leads to the most successful outcomes Other episodes in our series about deal structuring include price and terms, earn outs, rollover equity, and reps and warranty insurance.  Later in this episode, Gina is joined by our guest Rob Humble, Chief Revenue Officer at Innovative Aftermarket Systems ("IAS"), to share his insights from executing a roll-up strategy for IAS as the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development. In this episode, Colonnade Advisors addresses the following questions as related to roll-ups: What is a roll-up? (01:02) Gina: "A roll-up is when an owner, which could be a private equity owner or a strategic, starts with a platform company. The roll-up adds other companies in the same industry, and they're typically smaller companies than the platform. The add-on companies are rolled into the platform." What is the purpose of implementing a roll-up strategy? (01:34) Gina: "It's a way for a company to increase in size inorganically, quickly, and while doing so, they are recognizing both expense synergies and perhaps revenue synergies." Jeff: "It plays on the themes that we've talked about in other episodes, which is bigger is better, in many respects. Generally, bigger companies are more attractive to a wider audience of investors or buyers." What industries typically do roll-ups? (02:42) Gina: "One industry that comes to mind is the insurance agency industry. We have seen this time and time again, where a private equity firm buys an insurance agency, a large insurance agency, and then they start making smaller acquisitions." Jeff: "The insurance distribution sector is perfect for the roll-up strategy. It's low capital intensity, recurring revenue, and highly fragmented market." What type of companies implement roll-up strategies? (04:29) Jeff: "This strategy works for large public companies, private equity firms, and independent companies." What is the rationale for roll-ups? (05:34) Gina: "One is geographic. Number two, it might be because of specific product knowledge. Number three, it can be to get a specific customer. What is the financial benefit of roll-ups? (06:49) Jeff: "A large platform company is going to trade at a higher multiple than a smaller company. There's arbitrage if a large platform company acquires smaller add-on acquisitions and integrates successfully." Why is integration important? (07:56) Gina: "Sometimes, acquisitions fail because they fail to integrate properly. That is not just making sure everybody is on the same technology system, but integrating cultures, integrating client relationships, and integrating product sets. That is the real challenge in an acquisition." Jeff: "The integration is key to a lot of things, certainly to value maximization over time." How do add-on companies benefit from roll-ups? (10:23) Jeff: "The add-on companies benefit from the resources of the parent company, the larger enterprise. Add-on companies can grow their business, which probably will have some contingent consideration involved in the transaction, and be a part of the success." Gina: "The smaller company, ideally, will have some rollover equity or earn outs that are structured on growth in the company, so you get to participate in the upside." When Colonnade represents a seller into a roll-up, what diligence is done on the buyer? (12:10) Jeff: "We do diligence on the parent company and the financial sponsor. We talk about their track record and history in doing roll-ups. We do diligence on the acquisitions they have done already and the outlook of the combined entity. Part of the consideration to our client is likely going to be equity in this new entity, so we will think about how much to rollover, what's it worth, what are all the conditions around it, and who is in control." What is one of the challenges for sellers in a roll-up? And what are the trade-offs? (13:23) Gina: "One of the challenges for entrepreneurs when they go through a sale process is the sudden realization that they're going to have a boss. Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs for a reason. They like running the show. It can be a challenge to be part of a larger organization and not be in charge." Jeff: "There are the trade outs with control. Being part of a larger organization, the add-on company benefits from the growth of the larger organization, increased size, and resources for future acquisitions." What is the potential upside for sellers that rolled over equity into the new entity from a financial perspective? (15:63) Gina: "The upside can be enormous. The next exit with the platform could be worth just as much if not more than when the seller went in and did the first transaction." What is your outlook on roll-ups used in transactions? (17:45) Gina: "Roll-ups are used all the time. Going into the next decade, I do not see a slow down in roll-ups as a strategy being deployed by private equity firms." Gina invites Rob Humble, Chief Revenue Officer at IAS, to share his insights from executing a roll-up strategy for IAS as the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development. What is the most effective structure for proceeds to the seller for a roll-up? (18:40) • An acquisition under private equity ownership generally comes with an equity component • For sellers that are not looking to be a long-term part of a bigger organization, they are likely maximizing value at closing, which means they are going to value cash and as little earn out as possible • IAS was private equity-owned and was buying companies that bought into the private equity model, which is to invest the executive’s energy, and together produce greater value and then share in that value How do you guide sellers that shy away from roll-ups because they want to protect their employees? (21:13) • As the buyer, be honest and transparent as much as possible throughout the process • Sellers can build a deep trust with the buyer and can trust that the deal that they entered into together is going to work out for not only what the buyers’ strategic intent is, but sellers’ as well • It is best if the buyer can collaborate with the sellers on what are the ways that they can be more efficient together How do you get business owners comfortable with working for someone post the transaction? (23:33) • It comes back to honesty, transparency, and as much diligence both ways as possible. What would you tell a business owner that is getting ready to sell into a roll-up strategy? (23:51) • Get prepared and get organized. Perform diligence on your own company before you let somebody else look at your company • Sellers should understand why they want to sell then find a buyer that they believe meets that criteria Featured guest bio and contact information: Rob Humble Email: rhumble@iasdirect.com Rob Humble is the Chief Revenue Officer at Innovative Aftermarket Systems. Before coming to IAS Rob held strategy and corporate development leadership roles with financial services firms NetSpend and Rent-A-Center. Prior to his time in financial services, Rob held strategy, finance, and operations roles at Fortune 500 companies spanning the automotive, defense & aerospace, and chemical industries. Rob earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating magna cum laude. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Rob lives in Austin, TX with his wife and two young kids. He enjoys hanging out with his family, distance running, binge-watching the hottest TV shows, watching Oklahoma Sooners football and indulging in random interests including knitting, furniture building, and home improvement. Host Information: Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners, and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a privateequity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million.

In this episode, Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay continue their discussion on deal structuring. Today, we explore reps and warranties ("R&W") insurance. In this episode, we cover: · What is R&W insurance? · What is the pricing of R&W insurance? · What is the process to obtain R&W insurance? Key takeaways from this episode: · R&W insurance is a tried and true product, and securing it will not slow down the pace of a deal · Smaller deals, down to $10 million in size, can still get R&W insurance · R&W insurance is a great way for a seller to get more cash at close, rather than having 10%+ of the purchase price tied up in a multi-year escrow Other episodes in our series about deal structuring include price and terms, earn outs, rollover equity, and roll ups.  Later in this episode, Gina is joined by our guest Mike Wolf, who specializes in R&W insurance at Willis Towers Watson's M&A Group. In this episode, Colonnade Advisors addresses the following questions as related to R&W insurance: What is R&W insurance? (00:27) Jeff: "R&W insurance insures the seller and buyer from a breach of representation and warranties in the purchase agreement. " What is the difference between R&W insurance and an escrow? (01:27) Jeff: "R&W insurance avoids utilizing an escrow. An escrow is deferred consideration that is withheld to make sure that these reps and warranties survive and that they are fulfilled post-transaction." How often is R&W insurance used in transactions? (02:38) Jeff: "R&W insurance is a relatively new concept in the M&A world." Gina: "It really came into being about seven years ago. Now, it is used in almost 95% of all transactions." What is the purpose of R&W insurance? (02:48) Gina: "In a purchase agreement, there's always a section called reps and warranties regarding the company and the seller. The seller has to represent fundamentals such as that the organization is in good standing, is licensed in the state, and the sellers have the authorization to do the transaction and have the consents. " What are other typical reps and warranties in the purchase agreement? (03:45) Gina: "There is usually a representation that the capitalization is correct, all subsidiaries are listed, the financial statements are in GAAP or other accounting standards used, there is an absence of undisclosed liabilities, the contracts are true and all have been disclosed, all obligations to related parties have been disclosed, all real property has been disclosed, all intellectual property has been disclosed, listed, and truthfully identified, litigation has been disclosed, privacy and data security representations are made, taxes have been paid, and employees and labor matters have been disclosed." What is the typical coverage amount? (06:12) Gina: "The coverage is typically 10% to 15% of the purchase price. For deals under the size of $50 million, the coverage percentage may go up.” What is the typical premium for R&W insurance? Are there any other fees? (07:11) Gina: "Typically, we see premiums between 3% to 5% of the coverage amount. Economically, it does get cheaper with more coverage. Small deals are more expensive on a percentage basis; larger deals get a break. Another fee is the underwriting fee charged by the insurer, typically around $50k." Who pays for the R&W insurance? (08:50) (13:29) Gina: "This is where the negotiation comes in. Everybody has a different view. The buyer wants the seller to pay; the seller wants the buyer to pay." Jeff: "It is really a buyer's policy. No matter who is paying the premium or who is paying their share of it, it is the property of the buyer." Why do buyers prefer R&W insurance versus an escrow? (09:51) Gina: "Buyers do like R&W insurance. A breach of a representation and warranty can cause a lot of conflict between the seller and the buyer when there is an escrow, especially when the seller is continuing to manage the company. It's easier if there is a breach of representation and warranty and the buyer goes to the insurance--no conflict." What is Colonnade's typical process in representing sellers to negotiate who is paying for the R&W insurance? (11:02) Gina: "At Colonnade, when we ask for the indications of interest, the letters of intent, or bid letters, we ask the buyers to indicate whether they are going to pay the premium for the R&W insurance. Some buyers will pay the full amount, some won't, and some will pay a portion of it. It is a negotiated point. Another negotiated point is who pays the underwriting fee." What is the process of obtaining R&W insurance? (12:26) Gina: "The process starts very early. It starts when the seller is picking their legal counsel. It is important that the seller has legal counsel that has experience with R&W insurance. Also, the seller or buyer will need a broker." Why is the broker's role in obtaining R&W insurance? (13:37) Gina: "The broker will work with multiple insurance companies to get the best rate and the best coverage.” At what point during the transaction process should buyers or sellers speak with a broker? (13:37) Gina: "The proper time to speak to a broker is once the LOI has been signed and you have entered the exclusivity period." Generally, how long does it take to obtain the R&W insurance? (15:31) Gina: "Generally, it takes only one to two weeks to get through the underwriting process. For a 60-day exclusivity, contact the broker day one of 60 days, but probably around day 30 or day 35 is when the representation and warranty process in terms of getting the coverage starts." Jeff: "The timing is really important. Brokers and carriers are pretty aggressive these days, so they will move pretty quickly.” Who are the dominant carriers and brokers for R&W insurance in recent years? (19:19) Gina: "For brokers, two that I've seen a lot are Willis Towers Watson and Lockton. There are many carriers, including AIG, Zurich, Hartford, Allied, and Berkshire. The brokers will know who the right carrier is for the right types of companies.” Gina invites Mike Wolf, who specializes in R&W insurance at Willis Towers Watson's M&A Group, to share his insights. What is the typical cost of R&W insurance? (21:40) Mike: "Similar to other insurances, there is the premium, which is usually 2.6% to 3.3% of the limit purchase. Second, there is the underwriting fee, which is generally $30,000 to $50,000. Third, there are surplus lines, taxes, and fees, which is another 2% to 5% of the premium. Lastly, there is a fee to the broker to facilitate these products." What items are not covered by R&W insurance? (25:21) Mike: "There are the standard exclusions such as asbestos and PCBs, underfunded pension plans, certain types of NOLs and tax attributes. Right now, COVID-19 has become an interesting exclusion. Transfer pricing is sometimes an exclusion. In addition to the standard exclusions, there are deal-specific exclusions. Deal-specific exclusions arise either at the stage of getting the quotes or during the underwriting process." What are the common things that come up during underwriting? (30:38) Mike: "It depends on what the target does. The common themes are wage and hour, employee independent contractor issues, SLSA issues, anti-corruption and bribery." What size deal is too small for R&W insurance? (32:15) Mike: "Everybody will tell you something different, but I think $10 million." What is the typical brokerage process? (36:15) Mike: "Phase one is going out and getting the quotes, which doesn't take very long, and we don't charge any money for that. The first non-refundable fee is once the client selects an insurer, which is when the process really gets started." Featured guest bio and contact information: Scott Wolf: Email: scott.wolf@willistowerswatson.com Scott Wolf is a Client Relationship Director at Willis Towers Watson. Scott specializes in assisting strategic and financial buyers and sellers with transactional insurance, including reps and warranties insurance, tax insurance, and contingent liability insurance. Since joining Willis Towers Watson in 2017, Scott has worked on over 100 transactions involving representations and warranties insurance, ranging in enterprise value from approximately $9 million to $3 billion. Scott's prior experience includes working as an associate at DLA Piper, an associate at Gould & Ratner, and an associate at Kirkland and Ellis. Host Information: Gina Cocking: Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners, and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private-equity backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Waukesha, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay: Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million.

Where Does Cannabis Fit Within Physical Therapy Scope of Practice? What is a Cannabinoid? How Can You Educate Your Patients About Cannabis? What does the research tell us? What laws and legal issues do PT’s need to consider? Jeff Konin and Jim Farris are physical therapists who specialize in cannabis education and research and collaborated to create their own company called PHD 420. To understand the basics of cannabis, Jim broke down what a cannabinoid is from the cannabis plant and each of its strands (THC, CBD, etc.). Therapists should understand the availability of cannabis for patients at the federal and state levels. While some states have passed legal use either medicinally or adult use, it is still illegal federally. Regulations to conduct studies using cannabis continue to be federally run which minimizes the amount of research available. Cannabis needs to be pulled from a schedule 1 drug for it to be studied. Conditions that have shown benefits from cannabis include pain, multiple sclerosis, cancer, post traumatic stress syndrome, HIV/AIDS, neurodegenerative diseases, fibromyalgia, migraines, sleep conditions and epilepsy. Key takeaways are to look at the research (i.e. PubMed) to learn more about cannabis and understand your state practice act when educating healthcare providers and patients. QUOTES “There is something out there and the patients aren’t waiting for us to find the science. They’re finding solutions.” – JEFF “It is crazy what people think about the plant versus what the plant can actually do and what it provides. There is a stigma.” – JIM PARTING SHOT “Try to help get rid of the stigma of cannabis... Don’t be afraid to get into it and ask.” – JIM “Look for the donut, not the whole.” – JEFF

Making a Foundation for Growth with Jeff Chastain Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. I've got Jeff Chastain here from Admentus. And he's going to be talking to us about a few different ways that you can make a foundation for growth with something called EOS. So tell me a bit more about the process and what EOS is for anyone out there that's listening. Jeff: Sure. Well, thanks for having me. EOS is really just a, it's honestly just a simple set of business practices, business processes that work for entrepreneurial-led organisations to kind of instill that foundation, what you're talking about, it's still kind of that basic process in place, because honestly, most entrepreneurs that come into business, they've got a great idea, they've got an idea for a solution, a product, something like that, they take it to market, but what they don't necessarily have is an MBA and know exactly how to go structure and build a business. They go out to market, they hopefully have something that's viable, that a customer wants to go by, they've got it sold. And then we're kind of at the stage of, okay, now, what do we do are we actually going to grow up and treat this like a real business and scale out people, scale out systems, things like that, so we can move forward. If you look at all the business statistics and stuff like that three to four year mark, when a lot of small businesses failed, it's really that stage where the entrepreneur, their core team has basically kind of hit their limit of they're trying to do everything themselves and getting frustrated that okay, things just aren't working quite as well. And they lose traction, the business saying, okay, when we first started, it was really easy change really easy to adapt. Now we're here and it just feels like the business is stuck in the mud, we've kind of lost all sense of fun of direction here. And that point, they just say, hey, we're bailing out and starting over. Whereas an operating system like EOS really comes back in underneath their successful business really that they built to that point and says, okay, now let's solidify the foundation underneath it. Let's actually get everybody working together with the same vision, get everybody performing the same way. And just really kind of reinvigorate that business going forward. Josh: Okay, so what you said there pretty much you need to create structure within the business to allow for growth and to allow for everyone to pull the ship in the same direction. Because if everyone's blowing wind in the sails in the same direction, the ship will move forward, as opposed to creating turbulence. So how would you go about moving to a structure where you have the systems in place when most people are going off their feet their busy as. Everyone's complaining, they have no time. So how do you go about introducing something that takes up time, that will save you time, if you need to get over that hump to be able to get there, what's the process? Jeff: It's a longer journey process is the way we look at it. With a lot of things you'll go out and visionaries especially go to a weekend conference, or read a book and come back into the office Monday. And here's all the new ideas we're going to go implement. That kind of stuff honestly never works, it never gets the traction. Whereas EOS is really implemented as a very phased process where it will actually start working right off the bat with individual tools to say, okay, go back in tomorrow and into your business, let's start on just this one tool, just these two tools, and start kind of building that piece by piece into your daily journey, your daily practice your daily work right there, and really build it in over time. It's a longer implementation process. But it helps take, okay, everything that you're doing today, all your ideas you're doing today, now, let's map in a little bit of structure. Let's map in some new processes. Let's figure out okay, what are you doing today in your sales process, for example. And let's go take and document that at an 80/20 kind approach from an entrepreneurial standpoint, and really get just that little bit in place to where now everybody on your sales team is using the same process kind of a thing. So it's little pieces that you can build into time, and it's not a complete turn right right now with the entire company and expect everybody to stay on the track. Josh: Getting back to my ship analogy, you can’t turn a ship on a dime, can you? Or a five-cent piece if you're listening in Australia. So what kind of tools would you say you're looking to implement or would be something that you that you go into and you get, okay, 80% of the people are having this same problem because they haven't implemented X, Y, Z or haven't reviewed this stack? Jeff: Oh, one of the keys that we really look at first and you kind of already touched on it is simply just looking at the company vision to say, okay, this entrepreneur, this leader has his idea of, okay, where are we trying to get to as a company, but I forget where it was, was a Forbes study or something not too long ago that went in and did basically a study on all those thousand something different employees of a company, and they said basically one in four had some idea of what was going on in the company, that they understood the direction of the company, they understood where they fit, etc. And if you look at it and say, okay, if you've got Sally sitting here working in your operations department, and she's just there to go in and punch a clock, nine to five, in and out kind of a thing, versus you've got somebody over here on the other side that is in tune with the company vision, they're excited about, hey, this is what my job is. This is how it contributes to the company. This is how where we're going as a company, and this is how I'm helping to facilitate that. That type of employee is going to be a lot more productive for you. And obviously, if you can get everybody in the company with that mental attitude, then to your earlier point about blowing the sales, okay, yeah, now we've got everybody on the same page, because that's really the key is to say, okay when most people look at vision they're looking at, okay, here's our core values, our core focus of being honest, integrity, all the kind of buzzwords that they go stick on the website. And honestly, forget about at that point, it goes and collects dust out there on the About Us page, and really what vision should be, it starts with that but it goes a lot deeper to say, okay, our vision X, Y, Z IT company here, who are we trying to serve? Are we trying to serve a different certain market? And why are we trying to reach out to them? What makes us special to go reach out to that market? What are our key differentiators for reaching that market? So that way, it's defined at a company level. And so when marketing is putting together their pitch, sales knows what marketing is doing. Sales can go out and use those same three key differentiators right there and their sales pitch. And that way, the support team, the IT team, the operations team, whatever this delivering the service knows exactly what they're supposed to deliver. Because if marketing goes off and sells one thing, sales, goes off the rails and sells something else, operations just kind of sitting there left saying how in the heck are we going to deliver this? And everything's a mess at that point. Josh: Yeah, and unsatisfied customers are never a good thing to have. And that then makes the whole system crumble down. Like I know, for us, when we first started out 13 years ago, the direction that we went was like a lot of people that haven't read enough personal development books and decided to jump out there with a gung ho awesome attitude, knowing that you can do better than some of the other people out there decide to get the clients charge a lower price. Wrong move, Josh. What are you doing? Jeff: That works for a little while. Josh: That's right. I'm gonna go back and select teenage Josh, what's he doing? Idiot, read a book. Jeff: Yeah, you had to start somewhere. Josh: That's right. So when we did that, we had incredible growth, and we bought someone else on and we're both sitting on 150,000 a year. So we're both pretty happy before turned 21. So we're both pretty pumped, if I call myself Batman, and he's Robin. When Robin had a stroke, and Batman had to pick up the slack. Batman didn't have enough time. And he say to do that he was too busy saving lives. So that was nearly the collapse of our company. And that came down to all processes at that stage and growing on a price. And when we decided to change that around, exactly like you're saying, create that differentiator. So now the businesses that we work with, we guarantee that they will have the uptime that we've agreed upon. So depending on the business, that could be businesses not down for more than 30 minutes, or for an IT problem not down for four hours, if it's a smaller business or something like that. And if they go down that guarantee means we pay them per hour at the agreed rate while their business is down. So we want them to be up and running as quickly as possible, because there's no money in us paying them while we're fixing the problem. Jeff: Sure, sure. Yep. Josh: It just realigns the way and make sure that our offerings and what you're saying there perfectly with the team. You want to make sure your team's pulling in the same direction. We figured as an IT provider and solutions provider to make sure that we are pulling in the same direction as them. And if we're charging people per hour, when something goes down, they're already upset with us, and then we're whacking them with a big invoice. So they just get more upset with us. And we found that the less skilled, less experienced IT companies would take longer to fix the problems therefore earn more money. And we went this doesn't make any sense. What is going on with this world? Why are we doing this? This doesn't make any sense at all. So we changed the model and then let's flip it on its head, let's have them be paid when things go down. That's one of our differentiators that we try to push through in our marketing as well as through our sales. But you're exactly right. You need to have that thing that we differentiate it isn't price because it's very easy to see the differences between that and that doesn't help businesses out. Getting back to what you said you said is Sally's in the business that may just want to do nothing but clock in. And it did sound like you want to create a latest mentality throughout the whole company. We have ever been looking at a problem, finding a solution and bringing that to the table for everyone to review and look at as opposed to just being a meat in a seat, so to speak. Jeff: Definitely you want to you want to empower your team basically give them give them a reason to come reason that they want to be there a reason that they feel like they're contributing, and also basically have that almost honesty, integrity, kind of openness in the company such that regardless of what level of the company Sally's at, if she sees an issue, or has a problem, or whatever, she feels comfortable raising that and everybody's going to take it seriously kind of a thing. While, you've got to have the structure in the company, and obviously reporting structure hierarchy, stuff like that. You've got to be real careful not to make that too rigid, especially in a small company that say, okay, well, you're at the bottom level, you can't do anything, just go do your job kind of a thing. You want to encourage that growth, that leadership model there to say, hey, no matter what your role is you're contributing this is how you fit into our long-term strategy, our long-term vision, this is where you are. And really, I said, empower them, make them feel like they're part of that so that they can contribute, they feel like they've got a worth and value in that company. Josh: I know, Dad has always said, if you can think of a way a problem can be solved. It's better to have that solution be found by a staff member. And they will then take ownership over that, and they'll cradle that and that'll become their baby, as opposed to even if you know what the solution can be just jamming that down someone's throat doesn't necessarily have people care for your solution. But if someone finds that, and then they take that ownership, and they take that pride in what they have found, that they brought to the table, and everyone wins. It's kind of like inception, you need to try and put that idea into their head, if you've got the idea, or work together and have people just started to spring up ideas and have moments. So we do a half Friday. And normally at the moment, I'm not drinking any beer for six weeks, but we only have a few beers and have a beer meeting, and go through how can we have done this week better? What was your favorite part? What was your least favorite part? And is there any new tools that you've seen out there that could help? Was there any special compliments that you had from clients? Was there any particularly difficult clients? And then we go through and work out how we can phase that. And then we do a difficult question section, which is where we reflect on each other? And we say, oh, look, I didn't quite like the way that you said X, Y, Z. Or you could have approached that question that you asked me in a less hasty way, or whatever the case is, just to make sure that you do have a better team, a better family that you're working with. When you go into businesses, what are the families like? How is the structure that disparity? Is it sometimes like, is there more strength in one arm than there is another say, for instance, they've got a fantastic team, but not a very well defined vision? Or is it all over the place? Jeff: Honestly, I'd say family is the right term to describe it with, because you can obviously have some families that are really tight, well knit together and enjoy being together, working together. And you've got other families that you better not put them all at the dinner table because they're going to be yelling and screaming at each other. Yeah, picking whatever, whatever the discussion is politics or religion, or whatever, they want to go at each other about kind of a thing there. You see it all in both kind of thing. And a lot of times, that's really, it's a culture really, from the top of the business. I see most of the time, that okay, are you going to have that entrepreneurial leader, because if you look at entrepreneurs, the journey, most of the time you've been talking about, okay, you and your partner starting off that business, at that point, you start growing out, start growing out. And the question is, are you going to be able to hand off one of those hats that you're wearing to your new teammates that you brought on? Or are you going to kind of pull and tug on the hat at the same time, they're trying to take it sit in their back pocket and say, make sure you're doing this this way, make sure you're following these steps kind of thing, writing over them. At that point, you're not instilling any kind of trust or any kind of confidence in your team. They're sitting there looking over their shoulder all the time, saying, okay, am I about to get beaten over this kind of a thing? Am I about to get called out in front of everybody, because this didn't go exactly the way the owner would have done it kind of a thing? And when you've got that kind of mentality with that owner, not being able to delegate, not being able to hand things off, and it just cripples the entire staff right there from an attitude perspective, because honestly, everybody's sitting there saying, okay, I'm basically ducking the entire time saying, okay, who's going to be the next one to get on his radar? And being glad that okay, sorry, it's your turn here to go be in the spotlight, not mine kind of a thing. And it's like bad attitude. I've seen that in too many companies where the owner is all frustrated himself or herself saying, okay, why is the company not working? I'm having to get down to here in the weeds and do all this stuff. It's like, you got to realise that okay, delegation is one of the key points of being a successful leader. And then really, where really the EOS comes in is, okay, yes, is delegation, but you've got to have the processes in place. You've got to have the numbers, the metric stuff in place where if I've got a documented process for how we're going to handle a trouble ticket in an IT business, I can hand that off to my IT support team over here. And as long as my numbers, my dashboard are correct here to say, okay, all tickets are getting handled in less than 30 minutes or whatever our metrics are for our business. Then as a leader, as the CEO, I can step back and actually relax. I don't have to go stand over that IT tech and sit here and watch the stopwatch. Okay, are you getting done here, you got five minutes left kind of thing. Because I can see the metrics. I know everybody's following the process. And I don't have to worry about that anymore. And that's really the key with these businesses as you've got to be able to systematise the business, you got to go put those processes in place. It's almost kind of counterintuitive to say, we've got to put more structure in the business, we've got to put more framework more processes in place, so that you can relax and have more fun. But most people would look at that and say, wait a minute, more structure means rigidity. I take the creativity out of my business, I take the fun out of my business. And it's actually just the opposite. Josh: We call it elastic documentation. And in where I'll be the first to say I'll create our documentation internally, and I think you have owned that hat so to speak, it's only fair that you write down how you've managed that hat and how that has worked. But once that's being created, it's then up to the person or team that has received that hat to then modify it and change it and tweak it as time goes on. And as processes change, as you might find a better way. Because ultimately, I'm just one person that's walked one direction, but the path you've walked in your life, Jeff, is different to my path. And that's means that the input that you would have would be different. So we make sure that everyone knows that this is the documentation and how it can work, not how it should work. And make sure to have elastic documentation. And as you're saying, delegation is key. Absolutely. You need to be able to let go and let that bird fly than hold its wings and hold it back. Because if you’ll just tire it out. Jeff: And really the key with especially when you're talking about documentation, because too many times I'll see a company say okay, we don't have enough capacity, we need more resources. So they'll go hire somebody in. And it's like, well, jump in, go, Good luck, go figure out your own job, almost kind of a thing. So when you've got these processes and stuff, like you're talking figured out, you can go scale out your helpdesk support team, because you've got documented processes where somebody's gonna step into that role, know exactly what they're supposed to do on day one, it can be productive there rather than spend the next three, four months trying to figure out what their job is or reinvent processes, reinvent things figure out, okay, previous guy walked out the door and basically took all the knowledge in his head with him. And now what am I supposed to do in my new job? And we're sitting there as owners paying them to flounder basically, having that kind of system. Again, that kind of structure in place for those people just facilitates that scale and just again, adds economies of scale, right there. Josh: Coming back to that first employee, I was talking about, we both just worked together enough to learn how to do it. The second employee after David was Alex, and it took seven months before he became profitable. And I went this is terrible, especially like I had read the E-myth by Michael Gerber. And I thought, okay, I should know to do this, but I got caught in that. Don't have time to do it. So I haven't done it. And so I'll just keep doing what I'm doing until that's done. And then I'll never have time to have any fun, which sucks. Yeah, but the moment you have these processes in place, like the E myth, sort of discusses, McDonald's is run by 14-year olds. It's a multi billion dollar business, it's ran by teenagers, really old enough to know how to read the documents that you've got in front of them. And it means that you've got something to lean back on for KPIs, for everything. Every business should have their processes documented. And sometimes it's a lot easier to say than it is to do. Jeff: Definitely is. And one key point about McDonald's or any kind of place like that, if you go in there as your 14-year-old and say, okay, you're going to be a new line cook. They don't hand them a six-inch-thick SAP manual that says, Okay, here's every single little detail about every single little thing you need to know. They've got a laminated sheet there that says step one, step two through step six, this is what you need to follow right here. So to me, that's where a lot of people get stuck when we talk about processes. It is like, okay, where do I even start, and I'm going to end up working for months building out this huge thing. And then nobody looks at it kind of kind of a system, whereas EOS really pushes the 80/20 approach to say, okay, we're going to document the top 20% of exactly what you need to know from a high level to go figure this out, rather than dive down and build that entire SOP manual kind of a thing there that nobody does. It doesn't matter that it's 100% perfect right up front. Take a quick pass to say okay, this is what we do every time. This is the high-level points, and we can always go back and refine it agile kind of process but still just make a quick pass at it and get started, rather than sit there and say, hey, there's no way we can spend months trying to figure all this out, you don't need much, you just need something quick to get started. And honestly at that point, let the people doing the job right now fill in the details as needed. But even still, I would say, don't even, it's not worth their time your investment to go build that huge manual, you don't need all those little details. Just make sure you've got the flow to where somebody can sit down and figure out okay, I can take these six steps and go cook the hamburger, I can do whatever I need to at a high level right there. Josh: Keep it simple, stupid, I think is the case sort of mentality. And keeping it simple. I know if you bought up earlier going to different day seminars and things like that, that they tell you, this is how you change the world with your business just implement this one little thing. And one of them said, I document everything, everything has to be documented. I document where the coffee filters have to be purchased from. What seat I want in an aeroplane. And I've got 120, whatever it was, a lot of procedures just around the way that I travel. And I thought, holy shit. I left going, why oh my goodness. Jeff: At that point, you hire the person on and is still take some six months just to go read all that. Yeah, it’s still why? Josh: It's just too much I went My goodness. And I thought he must have a huge churn rate in his business. Because if you've got a VA, and they're used to booking tickets for you, and they're doing what they're meant to be doing, they already know your preferences. You've told them once, they know. If there is, sound like getting away from the documentation thing, but it gets to a level where it's you don't need to know that on the plane, you're going to be ordering this drink first, followed by this many drinks if it's this many hours long flight, it just becomes too much. Jeff: It's definitely too much. But at the same time, there's a balance between it because for whatever reason, even if you want to scale out, it's not that you lost your VA, you just need to add a second VA. She doesn't necessarily or he doesn't necessarily know all that and having the quick high-level points to say, okay, we prefer this airline, or we prefer middle level seats, mid seats instead of aisle seats or whatever. It's just a couple quick bullet points there to say, Okay, this is what our list of preferences are, it doesn't have to go down to the point of okay, we want a third aisle or third row only, not fourth row kind of a thing and all that kind of mess. It's just okay, here's the couple quick points that we just know, anytime we go book travel, here's the quick set of preferences that we need to follow. And that just makes that new VA that comes on board, their job, they’re onboarding is so much easier, because they can just say, oh, we need to book travel. Here's the five or so pieces of data that I need to know when I go book travel. Josh: I agree completely. The way that I kind of worked at any process that we do in business, whether it be making documentation, or creating systems comes back to something that my brother told me many years ago. I was in my bedroom as a young teenager building electronic projects. And I said to my brothers and oh look up the one remote control turns the lights on, turns the fan on, turns the TV on, turns DVD player on, turns the computer on, does everything with the one can control. Anyway, so I said I'm going to make it to this remote control can also unlock the door and then with an actuator open up the door and then close the door as well. So that sounds pretty cool. And he's an engineer 14 years my senior. Yes, that sounds pretty cool. So he said, how long that's gonna take you to make? Oh, well with these parts, I have to make the PCBs and everything I said it's probably gonna take me 100 hours 100, 120 hours programming everything else. Okay, cool. Cool. How many times could you have open and close the door in 120 hours? Yep. Okay, I get it. Yep. So the door was never automated. But the lesson learned there was if you're going to be telling someone something more than once then document it. If you're going to be telling someone, something many times 100% documented. But if it's something that's just very quick, and you're not going to need to do that process, the same in business, we went automate something unless we know that it's going to benefit the masses of people. And that's what it comes down to being sensible, and maybe just writing a list of what would you suggest that maybe a list of 10 or 20 things of processes? Get five things that they do on a daily basis and try to write those down. What would you say is the magic number? Jeff: I don't know there's necessarily a magic number, but it's definitely just even hitting a one or two kind of a thing to say, okay, let's just look at this at a high level. But what I would take from what you were just saying, supposed the door was already automated or whatever, you wouldn't want to write the process that explains exactly how the motor turns and that electrical current comes on to this motor, and then it swings 35 degrees and it pushes here. It's like no, the process says press the button. That's all the process needs to say kind of a thing there. So you got to be careful with that's really what I'm trying to get at is how deep you go. All they need know is press the button right there if you need to go in or out kind of a thing. You don't need to know how it works. You don't have to no all that kind of detail at that level. Yeah, to your point, it's, it's really just a matter of, obviously one keeping it simple like we talked about, but really just getting started is the biggest thing. With the EOS implementation, it's actually typically almost a two-year journey that we look at from initial start to really calling mastery at that point of all the tools and the processes. And it's just literally, it starts out actually month to month, but then goes to more of a quarterly basis. But the idea is just to start doing something, getting one or two of those tools and start getting some muscle memory basically built with that. And that's really where you got to start with any of this stuff, it is just okay. Again, keeping it simple, but just get started with something. Pick up a piece and move forward with it. That's really the whole premise behind the system, it’s just simplicity. Because even going all the way back the first we were talking vision, at one point, I was working with a branding coach on one company I was working with, and I got this huge document on all the different logos, the color styles, the fonts, everything was all laid out, it was just this big old thing here. It's like, okay, this is just the brand that doesn't even talk about anything else. And when we talked to a company about establishing your vision, it's not again, some master plan that you got to bring in all these consultants on it’s literally two pages. It's eight questions that we go through, it's two pages. It's entrepreneurial, keep it simple, keep it basic, because again, same as the process is if you get in too deep, you start getting too big. Everybody freezes up and nothing gets done, or else it gets over-done and it’s never used kind of a thing. Josh: Well, I think there's going tp be a lot of listeners out there that have heard a lot of what we've been talking about, and probably looking at ways to get this implemented. And at least some consulting. I understand you’ve got admentus.com/resources, there is some bits and pieces such as a quick 20 question checkup? Jeff: Yeah, there's actually three different things on that page. The EOS system itself is built around six different key areas that we say, okay, if you strengthen those six key areas, basically all your issues fall into those buckets. So that's where that checkup comes in is, like I said, a 20 question checkup, they're just kind of measures how strong you are. And those those six key areas. And we'll actually utilise that through the implementation journey to say, okay, here's where we started, here's where we are now kind of a thing to other resources on that page are actually. Two of the EOS books, there's a whole, honestly, a whole library pretty much about EOS, but the traction book, literally lays out the entire system. You've got all the tools in that one book right there. So if you want to just pick up the book, read it yourself, go through it yourself, more power to you kind of a thing. The difference really is that I build myself or it was more of a coach and facilitator, I'm not a consultant, I'm not going to come in and do EOS for you. My role is to come in here and be that third-party working with you on that book. So we're still working from that book from those materials. So you can very easily if you're just curious right now the first chapter’s free up there on that website slash resources, grab the traction or the Get a Grip book, either one right there. And then other resources, simply just if you're curious, or you got questions about any of that, just send me an email at admentus.com/ask. And I'm always open for questions always opened up to help anywhere I can there. Josh: Cool. Well, we'll make sure to check this in the description there for the podcast over on the blog for us. And so everyone can definitely jump in there. I'm actually looking at jumping into doing the organisational checkup. Why not? Why not? It's only 20 questions. What's the harm? Jeff: We're going to get another set of data point for you. Josh: Exactly. Well, I've only got one other question for you. And that is, you've probably already answered the question, to be completely honest. But if there was to be one book that you think that anyone should be reading to be doing better in their business, what would that be? I think I already know the answer. Jeff: You're looking at two of them right there. It really is. It was because honestly, I've been doing I've done a number of businesses myself, I've been doing this kind of stuff for 15 plus years, too many I wouldn't want to count at that point. But it's it really was almost just a complete lightbulb moment when I first saw Traction, because I've been through so many businesses, getting frustrated with clients just you've got to get the foundation the business together. Because we were talking earlier about technology and stuff like that. It's like it doesn't matter how good the technology is, if you don't have the foundation there, and it just really hit me when I was first introduced to Traction. I'm not trying to sell I really do and it's not even my book, it's somebody else. Gino Whitman's the one that wrote it kind of thing. I don't get any credit on it. But it's still it's just that from an entrepreneurial standpoint is just one of those books that just really the lightbulb kinds of content comes on. And the other book is called Get a Grip and it's right there in parallel. But basically what that book is a fictional in quotes, narrative about actually implementing EOS into a technology company, or all type of companies. But still, it's one of those that Yeah, we didn't write this with any one particular person in mind. But sure, yeah. But yeah, if you prefer more of the fictional side, then the technical implement the tools side, but they complement each other really well right there. I've read them both multiple times, and like I said first chapter on both. I was free right there on the website. But honestly, those are the two books that from a business perspective I'd be diving into pretty quick right there. Josh: Sweet. Well, is there any other questions that you had for me? Jeff: I don't think so at this point. Like I said, technology's always kind of my thing I just I know exactly where you're coming from there all the all the terminology and everything. But it's a fun world. But I just try to emphasise especially now being on this side of it, there's like, okay, it's a great tool to help improve productivity, help make things better if you got the foundation laid right, and getting that foundation is really key, because I've seen too many times trying to implement technology to fix underlying problems. And it just can't do that really. Josh: We definitely find you have technology problems, then you have people problems, and you shouldn't be trying to fix people problems with technology. It's been fantastic having on the show there, Jeff. And if anyone has any questions, you can definitely jump across to a admentus.com or ask at admentus.com. Is that correct? Jeff: That's correct. Yep. Or you can email me anytime. Josh: Awesome. Sweet. So definitely jump across there. If you have liked this episode, head over to iTunes and leave us some love. Give us some feedback. And everyone stay healthy out there in podcast land.

Without question, the last several months have accelerated ecommerce adoption and drastically changed consumer behavior. The entire sales lifecycle from finding a prospect to closing the deal has been turned upside down. Now two key obstacles lie in the path of ecommerce leaders… The first is the more obvious, more discussed problem: How do you operationally and technically need to change to meet your customers' evolving needs?  The second key obstacle is not as often addressed, but is equally as important: How do you then communicate to your customers that even in these changing times, you are equipped and ready to meet their new needs?  The binding and laminating business doesn’t sound like it would be ripe with insights into answers to both of these questions, but Jeff McRitchie, the VP of eCommerce at Spiral, is here to prove that assumption wrong.  Jeff has nearly two decades of experience in the ecommerce and digital space. Just last year, his own company, MyBinding.com, was acquired by Spiral, where he now helps lead ecommerce operations. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jeff explains what it has been like merging his ecommerce business with a more traditional binding company. He shares some of the challenges he faced along the way, and what methods and strategies he’s leaned into to find success. Jeff also discusses tips for building out a winning SEO and content strategy, and how ecommerce is playing a larger role across the entire business, including in customer acquisition and content marketing.  Main Takeaways:   The Merge: When a primarily ecommerce company merges with a larger more traditional business, there are a lot of balls in the air to create a cohesive and efficient system. Most of the adjustments have to be made on the side of the acquiring company, which needs to learn how to compete in a digital marketplace. That means that education has to be a priority both internally and externally.    Use Their Words: Every industry has jargon and industry-speak. It’s easy to fall into the trap of using that language throughout your platforms and channels. Instead, you have to meet customers where they are with their own language, and use the words and phrases they use. This will ensure that your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them and it also helps create more longtail SEO opportunities. Content For Now that Pays Off Later: Some of the most-viewed content you create might be consumed after a customer makes a purchase. On the surface, that might make it seem like content-creation is not a good customer acquisition strategy. On the contrary, it’s actually a critical long-term strategy in the sense that good, useful content is critical for brand awareness and building trust, which customers will remember when they need to buy in the future. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome to another episode of Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles. Today on the show, we have Jeff McRitchie, the VP of Ecommerce at Spiral Binding, My Binding and Binding 101. Jeff welcome. Jeff: Thank you. Stephanie: Thanks for coming on the show. I was excited when I was looking through Spiral's background. It looked like you guys started in 1932. Is that right? Jeff: Yeah. I mean, we've been around for a long time. Stephanie: Yeah. I think that'll make for a really fun conversation because I'm sure that the company and you have seen a lot of transformation over the years, so that'll be fun to dive into later. Jeff: For sure. Stephanie: Tell me a bit about Spiral. What is it? How do I think about what you guys do? Jeff: So Spiral is really a company and we've built ourselves around helping people to bind presentations and proposals. We do a little bit of laminating. We do a little bit of other things, but really we focus a lot on binding. We sell the equipment and the supplies for people to be able to bind presentations, proposals, books and training materials. Those are probably the primary things that come out of it. Jeff: We're a niche player in the office products market is one way to think about it. We're an interesting a hybrid of a company because we sell a little bit in B2B, a lot in B2B, a lot in B2C or B2B to C sort of space. Then we also have some really interesting national account sort of business as well. Kind of a little bit of an evolving company, we're a manufacturer and a distributor at the same time. We have lots of different faces which presents some really cool challenges from the standpoint of being in a digital transformation or Ecommerce role. Stephanie: Okay cool. So how long have you been at the company for? Jeff: My story is interesting, actually I'm co founder of a company called My Binding about 17 years ago. Last year we sold to Spiral. I've been with Spiral for just over a year now in this sort of digital transformation role but with My Binding, which was more of a pure play Ecommerce space. We grew and we were the largest sort of binding Ecommerce player in the market. Then all of a sudden we joined forces essentially with Spiral, which was the largest sort of B2B player in the market. Now we're one force together going after the binding and laminating market. Stephanie: Oh, interesting. What was that process like where you had your own company, you guys were selling online and then joining a company that maybe wasn't doing as much of that. What was that process like when it came to incorporating your company into an existing older company? Jeff: There's definitely some upsides. Suddenly you have increased purchasing power, you have more access to talent and capital. Those were amazing things, but the integration side of things is tough. Jeff: I mean, you're trying to merge systems and figure out how everything works together and learn the language of a new company. Some of that stuff is not as easy as it should be, as well as trying to figure out where exactly are they on the landscape of digital transformation and how do you navigate that when... We were pretty much an Ecommerce or digital first organization. That wasn't really their background. Now we're figuring out how do we be both? That's a pretty big challenge actually. Stephanie: Yeah. That sounds really difficult. What does the customer journey look like for Spiral or what did it look like compared to My Binding? Jeff: I guess the best way to think about it would be that in a B2B, B2C sort of Ecommerce experience, we were really building our business around a large number of transactions with a large number of customers, essentially small transactions to a large number of customers. On the more traditional B2B model, the traditional side of the Spiral business would have been around a small number of transactions to really big customers. Which is pretty typical when you look at this idea of traditional B2B and more like an Ecommerce B2B sort of experience. At least a B2B, to C sort of experience. Jeff: That was the really interesting thing is that we were dealing with customers from all over the country that in almost every industry that you can imagine, but most of them were rather small and we are filling specific needs for those customers. That was fine. On the spiral side you were looking and saying, hey, they had deep relationships. Relationships that went back decades, in many cases, with organizations where they were the supplier of choice. They had complex contracts and all those kinds of things. That was never really part of the Ecommerce world. Trying to figure out how do you merge those two together to get the best of both. It's not easy, but it's really fun actually. Stephanie: Yeah. I can imagine it takes a lot of training for their existing customers who are used to those contracts and used to things being done a certain way. How are you maybe going about training the customers who are used to doing things the old way to be like, Hey, we actually can do this online usually. Jeff: Slowly. Stephanie: Any lessons there that someone can take away if they're going through the same thing right now within their org? Jeff: You don't have to do it all at once. Our approach is really to allow customers to interact with us the way they want to interact with us by giving them better options. Really the priorities for this past year have been to try to integrate systems and then upgrade our footprint so that we can allow the company to put its best foot forward. Really starting with the E-comm side and getting everybody on the same platform and then tied into the same systems. Jeff: Now we're actually probably just a couple of months away from launching our brand new B2B E-com experience for the traditional spiral customers. Essentially we have been allowing them to continue to exist and deal with the company in the way that they used to while improving the experience and then bringing the platform up for the entire organization. One of the things about especially B2B commerce is that it gets really complicated as you tie in lots and lots of systems and a lot of interesting rules. Jeff: Customers want to deal with you in the way that they want to deal with you. What we've found is that we have to build specific experiences for our different customer types. That's the approach that we've been taking. I think that's a good approach from the standpoint of, you're not trying to force everybody into the same sort of experience because not everybody wants to deal with it in the same way. As a large organization that sort of deals with these sort of different challenges, we have to answer questions, like, do you display pricing on the front end of your website or is it a login only experience? Jeff: What pricing do you show people or what price pricing do people get and how do you control that and how do you manage that and how do you make sure that that experience is personalized for individuals? Then there's the age old question, which is really challenging in an organization that has multi channels and that is, how do you deal with the channel conflict? Whose customer is that? I guess it depends on who you would ask because everybody thinks that the customer is theirs. Yet ultimately the customer needs to deal with the organization in a way that the customer feels the most comfortable, not in the way that the organization feels most comfortable. Stephanie: Yeah. That makes sense. What kind of legacy or what things did the legacy customers get hung up on the most when you guys are making this transition and trying to show them that a new platform's coming? Is there similar themes of things that they're like, oh, I don't feel comfortable with that, or, I don't want to move because of this? Jeff: I think when it comes to customers, most customers want technology. I mean, they become comfortable. I think that they don't want to lose functionality. That's been probably one of the hardest things is that even if that functionality wasn't the best, they become comfortable with it and they don't really want to lose that. Yes they do want a best in class experience. One of the hard things that we all have to deal with in Ecommerce right now is that the bar has been raised. Jeff: There are people who want more and more features in terms of their online shopping experience. What you find is that you need to be able to roll these things out, but you need to make sure that it doesn't make things harder on those customers, especially long time corporate customers. They are really dependent on these things working smoothly and easily. That's actually one of the hardest challenges in this process has been, okay, well, we've done a lot of cool things for customers over the years. One off, you build a feature on the website just for that one customer. Jeff: Well, trying to then redo that and not lose a substantial amount of functionality for specific customers, especially large customers that you have these really deep relationships with, that's pretty tough. Stephanie: I was actually going to ask that next, when you mentioned that you were personalizing the experience for certain customers to make them feel more comfortable or hearing what they want and trying to incorporate that into the platform, how do you go about picking out what things you should maybe personalize or give to the customer without going down a worm hole of having a personal experience for every customer? Jeff: Ultimately, we're taking an approach of first saying, what's the best in class experience that we could build. What are the things that are going to be the best for all of the customers and then looking and saying, "Hey, can we in our roadmap put in the flexibility to accommodate for these many things that customers have asked for?" Jeff: How could we build this in such a way that we can add that on or this on? I'm not sure that we always nail it just from the standpoint of... It's pretty tough to keep everybody happy. But we're taking the approach of, hey, we can make it substantially better for everybody. It may not be perfect, but it should be a dramatic enough improvement that they'll recognize that we have their best interest in mind. Stephanie: It seems like some of those requests might also fit other customers as well or it might be something where they're like, oh, I actually wanted that and never thought to ask. It could be helpful when it comes to product development on your side, like technology development. Jeff: Yeah, totally. We had a really good team that we used to build out stuff and we're able to iterate fairly quickly. That's the good news because sometimes we miss something and so... But as long as you can respond fairly quickly to a customer's need, it gives you an opportunity to serve them better and to communicate. But the other really important part of this is really getting the account managers and your sales people involved in this process so you get some really good feedback because one of the challenges that we face at least is that sometimes as the E-com department and on the technology side, you don't always get raw feedback. Jeff: Maybe the stuff you're hearing is from the people who are yelling the loudest, not necessarily from the people who are trying to help you. You're not necessarily hearing about the features that are going to make the biggest difference for most number of users. Stephanie: That makes sense. With this whole re-platforming and new tech stack that you're going to be launching what pieces of tech are you most excited about showing to the customer or bringing online that maybe wasn't there before? Jeff: For us it's really about an enhanced user experience. We kind of been a little bit on the old school side on the traditional B2B piece of it. This gives us the ability to provide a really much better experience end to end in terms of transacting with us. Some of the things that we're aiming for, that are harder than I was thinking they would be, would be real time freight quoting. When you're a B2B company and you've got a distribution network across the country, and you're trying to figure out how much that pallet is going to cost to go to this customer. You think, hey that should be super easy. That's like in the Ecommerce world, until you start to realize, well, it's really important that you get that right. You have to first know where all that's going to ship from. Jeff: One of the biggest things is a really deep integration with our ERP so we can understand where the inventory resides and then how much it weighs and the sizes and all those kinds of things so that we can do that on the fly. Because right now we do an add back type thing. We'll tell you what the freight is later. Customers don't like that. Especially not in the Ecommerce world. Getting that upfront, same with sales tax calculation. Right now, a lot of that's done on the backend and people want to know upfront. That means building a system that has management for resale certificates and all of those pieces. Jeff: I need to understand where are you exempted, where you not exempted and what are you exempt from and all of those kinds of things so that I can quote you and tell you what the sales tax is going to be upfront before you place your order. That's another piece of it that we're excited about. Requisition list is another one where people will have their own custom price list in the system where they can quickly order. We're building a system where they can upload an Excel file with all of their items that they want so they can do quick ordering and quick reordering. Jeff: I guess those would be a few of the systems. Like a quote management system to allow people to request pricing on items and then for us to respond to them live and track that inside of our system is another one that we're building. Those are all areas where we're saying, hey, this could really enhance the user's journey and make it a lot easier for them to do business with us. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah that sounds like some great changes. Have you had any customers trying out the platform as beta testers and have you seen any difference when it comes to average order value or anything? Jeff: We're not quite there yet. We finished design and we're in the midst of development at the moment. I would say that that's going to be one of those steps prior to launch. Will be first to have sort of sales associates and account managers jump into the platform and test it for themselves and then to really get especially key customers in the system testing, and then also giving us feedback. What do they love? What did they not like and how can we make it better for them? That's on the roadmap before launch to be able to say, "Hey is this better for you?" It's funny because on a traditional B2C Ecommerce launch, you'd be focusing so much on the front end. Jeff: Like, the My Account pages are taking just as much time for this site because that's where our customers are living. They want to use the search, but they really want to use the my account pages. They know what they want, and they need to be able to quickly reorder it. They need to be able to see their orders. They need to be able to have the ability to upload those requisition lists. It's a little bit of a twist but getting them, especially into those my account pages so that they can spend some serious time understanding their accounts and telling us what they like or what they don't like is going to be really important for the launch process. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really interesting about focusing on my account page and how much time they're spending there. I'm sure that things like product suggestions or also bots might be very important on that page to help showcase items that maybe they wouldn't otherwise buy when they're just quickly uploading something or just reordering. Are you guys experimenting with some of the suggestion features? Jeff: Most definitely. Yeah. That's part of the vision is to try to figure out and say, okay, we have these deep relationships with customers and they buy specific sets of products. How can we expand to purchasing a product set? How do we get them and introduce them to complimentary products and show them the right pricing and the right place so that they can say, "Hey, I should totally add that on." That's something that I should consider. It's an interesting challenge for us because we have different personas or groups of people that we're dealing with. Jeff: On one hand we're dealing with dealers and they're really reselling product. You're trying to show them maybe categories of product, where do they need to expand because they're buying for specific purposes. Then you have end users and those end users you might want to show them a different size or a different color. We're experimenting with what the best algorithm is that we can use to show them the right products and then also in the right places too. Stephanie: That's great. What tests are you most excited about that you're pitching to everyone right now and some people maybe aren't sure about? Jeff: I'm actually most excited right now about the lead gen side of our business. Stephanie: Tell me more about that. Jeff: When you start to think about what the power of Ecommerce is for a B2B organization. Ecommerce can really become the engine that powers the acquisition efforts of a company. Especially because we can get in front of hundreds of thousands of customers a month, whereas the traditional B2B sales force might only touch hundreds of customers per month. Maybe thousands, but definitely not hundreds of thousands. Jeff: The idea of... What does it take for us to build a really cool robust system to not only bring these leads in but then to try to figure out how do I score these leads and then not only take them and turn them into an immediate sale, but to determine which ones of these really can be turned into those more traditional B2B accounts that we have these deep relationships with that are going to buy from us for years to come, many tens of thousands of dollars, right? Jeff: The really exciting part to me is looking at it and saying, okay we are on the Ecommerce side, on the B2B2C Ecommerce piece of it. We almost have too many leads. We get so much traffic that comes in. So then how do you figure out, take all those leads and build a really robust system where you can make sure that they're getting exactly what they need, and you're closing as many sales as you can, but then how do you figure out a way to pass those accounts up, the right accounts to the right people so that you can build them into a much larger long term sustainable program. Jeff: For us, that means building a really cool inbound sales team that makes sure that we take care of those leads and that we foster them and do all the things that we need to do, but then building an outbound sales team as well that's going to go in and then say, "Hey, let's take these leads and take them to the next level." Then also figuring out a system for passing accounts up and down inside of the organization. You really want to be able to pass a lead up or a customer up that has substantial potential to be either a national account or what we'll call an enterprise level account. Jeff: But you also want the reciprocity of getting those accounts back or the smaller accounts back from the team. I will say that no one wants to give up that account. That's a big challenge inside of an organization when you're trying to say, "Hey, I'll give you some, you give me some." The way usually ends up being is someone... Everyone wants to receive, no one wants to give. But the system only really works if you can give the best to the... But then also that you can receive quality back. For instance, handing back to the E-com team, only the accounts that don't do any business, isn't really a win. Jeff: You really want your enterprise salespeople focused on enterprise level accounts. We're having to sort of wrestle through what does that look like in terms of structure. I don't know that we really have it all figured out yet, but it's a cool idea. Stephanie: I'm guessing there's a way to automate that and create rules. So it, like you said, can go up or down depending on certain criteria from when they're coming in. How are you all thinking about automating that process? So it's maybe less of a salespeople having to give and take and whatnot, and more like, Oh, this is automatically routed to you based on these metrics. Jeff: That's exactly what we're doing. We're exploring machine learning and big data to try to figure out a really good way of scoring customers because using that scoring, you can figure out how to pass customers up. Then a set of rules as well that says if these customers aren't of a certain size or if they have this kind of profile, they really belong in this group. But it's an interesting challenge from trying to figure out where do you get all this data from, and then how do you process it? We're exploring different options right now in terms of what that might look like and how we can best approach that without spending a ton of money before we bet that it actually works. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really cool. So outside of the prospect giving that information, what kind of things are you looking into right now to find the information to help with that scoring process? Jeff: It's actually challenging. You have certain pieces of information that are given to you which you have usually a name and an address. Their email address usually has a domain associated with it, especially in B2B. So you can pull a lot of information from that and you can start to sort your domain, your customers by domain. But really we're looking and saying, okay, well we do know the purchase history. The idea then is, okay, if you were to sort all your customers out, you can sort them on a scale of, let's say a one, two, three. You can say my best customers spend the most money with me. My worst customers spend the least amount of money with me, but that really misses part of the point. Jeff: You almost need to add a second access to this, which is really about customer potential. When it comes to customer potential, we're looking at the idea of what would it take for us to add some big data to this? To understand the size of their company and the profile of the company that they come from, or the industry that they come from as well, because the industry can be really important to us. But then the other side of it is also looking at what they purchased. Like for instance, people who purchase specific equipment or supplies, they're going to have a much higher lifetime value with us because those are proprietary or have maybe a really good pull through rate. Jeff: For instance, it may not be that it's a proprietary supply, but when you buy that machine, you have to go through a lot of supplies to make it worthwhile. You look at the data and you say, okay, that customer has a huge amount of potential. Not because of the amount that they bought from us, but because of what they bought or who they are, the company that they work for or their position. We're looking at the possibility of maybe even extending that into some of the databases out there that help you understand whether people are in market and what their roles are as well. Jeff: Because when you're dealing with B2B, you're not really selling all the time to the company, you're selling to a person inside of the company and that person has a role. You have to figure out, okay, well what role do they play in this picture? That helps us to sort them into personas. If you're dealing with a really small number of accounts, you can figure this out, but we have to automate it because it's not really feasible to do that in a one off basis. Stephanie: Yeah, definitely seems like you're going to need a whole entire data or business operations team who can build those rules out for you and have dashboards. That seems like a big project, but well worth it. Earlier, you mentioned that you guys have more traffic than you know what to do with and lots of leads coming in. Of course my first question is how are you getting this traffic? How are you acquiring potential customers? Jeff: Sure. I mean... We're in a niche industry, right? So that's part of it. We've been around for a really long time. Because of that, at least... Spiral has been around 80 years, My Binding for almost 20 on the web. As you start to look at that, we created a massive amount of content. Thousands of videos and pages. We really have in a lot of ways, the best websites in our sort of space and industry. Because of that, people are finding us to solve problems. What you find is that we built out these websites and either through SEO or through paid search we're driving a ton of traffic to the websites because they convert and that makes a ton of sense. Jeff: We're essentially... We have all of this content and it's really designed around this idea of how do we solve these problems for customers? We can drive more and more of that content. The website deals with a certain number of those sort of leads and converts on its own. The challenge for us tends to be, what do you do with the people that are maybe a little higher in the funnel? You're now talking about making sure they have a really awesome call center that is going to be able to answer those questions. Live chat is really big. We've extended our live chat hours all the way to midnight which is unheard of in the B2B space. Jeff: I want somebody there to talk to somebody if they have questions about products. Especially really big products. We're experimenting with the idea of doing triggers for live chat. We did that and that was really successful for us. We turned on the trigger and said, with the idea of if I walk into a store, somebody says, "Hey, how can I help you?" We did that on the Ecommerce site and we had massive numbers of people that were engaging with us. But the surprise to us was that many of those people were actually much higher in the funnel than we were used to dealing with. Jeff: In other words, they were now engaging with us and they weren't ready to buy. They were in the research space and they had lots of questions. Which is really cool but it just changes the model a little bit and you all of a sudden have to figure out how do I step up for that? How do I make sure that I have the right person to answer those questions? That's part of it. Driving the leads really comes to how do you acquire traffic on scale? Really good high quality traffic for the site. Then the question is, well, what can you do with it? Driving the traffic is really exciting from a standpoint of it doesn't have to be done in one way but you have to be maybe a little bit creative to do it because you really are trying to get in front of people that have problems rather than... Jeff: At least in our space, you don't come to a binding website unless you have a problem that the binding website can solve. It's not exactly an impulse purchase. You're going to show up and you're not going to just browse around. I wonder what kind of binding machines they carry. You probably are on a mission to solve some sort of problem. Right. Whether that's like your bosses told you that you need to buy a binding machine or you need to upgrade the way that your reports or presentations are going to look, or you have a deadline of Friday and you need to get these reports out for the annual meeting. Jeff: These are all sort of really common sort of scenarios and so then the question is, will this product work for my specific needs? That's a question that our customers are constantly asking. Building to that has been a really great sort of acquisition model for us to build around the idea that every customer that comes to us comes to us with a problem that we can solve for them, and then figuring out how do you work backwards to that? What problems could we solve? Then as you start to get creative with that and build massive amounts of content, that content lives out there forever. That's been really a big part of our success, is really the longevity but also the content generation sort of machine that we've built over the years. Stephanie: How has your content... What is the style now today? Is it only educational? Is it humorous and how has it evolved over time? Jeff: We've tried a lot of things over the years. We've tried to be funny. I think we think we're funny sometimes. We've tried a bunch of different things. We've tried to be really educational. It was really hard to figure out the ROI of that. What we've really... If you were to look at our content, we do a lot of content that is really close to the bottom of the funnel, but that would be really helpful. We go with that sort of helpful thing as well as deep. So the idea of building out a really robust and large set of content over the years about products. Jeff: We spend a lot of time making sure that we have all of the details about the product, even to the point where our competitors come to our sites to look up products because they don't have as good of information as we do. That's one piece of the content side of things for us. We have a lot of how to videos. We did a bunch of experimenting around the videos. We found that the videos that people really cared about would basically answer a couple of quick questions. But mostly it was, will this product work for me? How does this thing work? Jeff: We made a whole series of those videos, almost five thousand of them that are really around the idea of how does this product work and a quick demonstration essentially. Usually around a minute long that takes the product out of the box, show someone how to use it. Those really work well for us because they show a customer generally what are they looking for. A lot of customers they want to see what it looks like or they have a machine already and they want to say, "Is that's the thing that works with my machine.? They don't understand our language. Those videos have worked really well for us as well. Stephanie: That's great. Are there any surprising pieces of content that you didn't think would work that did, or surprising sources of customer acquisition that you wouldn't have looked into before? Jeff: We've had a few blog articles that have found traction in the world and the web that I wasn't really anticipating. We've written a lot of content over the years. Most of the blog articles get a little bit of traffic. They're like evergreen content, little bit of traffic over a long period of time. But occasionally we'll end up with one like... Something about how to laminate without a laminator. Stephanie: That's a good one. Jeff: Amazingly, there's a lot of people that look up that and I was shocked. It consistently drives more traffic than almost any other blog article for us. Which is odd. I'm not sure it drives a ton of business because they don't want to buy a laminator, but if you think about it, there's a whole segment of people that have maybe problems that we don't traditionally associate with our business. That would be one thing and then the other piece would be the language piece. Jeff: It's always surprising when I discover that the language that we use internally for our business doesn't match the language of the customer. An example would be we talk about binding covers all the time because we're in the world of binding. A lot of people they just talk about card stock. In the paper world, the card stock doesn't even exist. It's not a thing. People will talk about it. It's cover weight paper. Index weight paper. Card stock is like this sort of crafting term. Yet it's sort of taken on a vocabulary of its own in the world. Jeff: When people search for binding covers, often they'll use that word. That's always surprising to me as well. There's a whole list of those things where people basically they choose to use their own words to describe things. Now you're trying to figure out how do I technically be accurate about this product but really use their language? Because if you don't use their language, then you're not going to show up in search for this stuff and they're not going to feel comfortable with it. Stephanie: That's a really good reminder, especially with generational shifts that the new consumer might be using completely different language than what you're used to. How are you exploring what that language might be? I mean, especially a company that has been around since the thirties, how are they figuring out, oh, this is what they call it now, this is what the kids are saying these days? Jeff: Probably the easiest thing for us is to look through our search results and especially the no results found once because often it's those things. When people are typing in stuff in the search bar and nothing's popping up. You look at that and you're like oh... A smart merchandiser, someone who understands your products really well, they start to make those connections and they're like, oh, wait a second. That's what they mean. Obviously a lot of that like spelling mistakes and things like that. You can fix those in your search engine but when you start to look at it, you start to see sometimes patterns. That's one of the easiest ones. Jeff: The other two that are really helpful for us would be Google autosuggest. Just start typing things in Google and then figure out what Google thinks that you should add to the end of it. All of a sudden you realize, okay, maybe people are searching for maybe a slightly different side of things than we thought they were. Then the other one would be Amazon. Amazon, their product terms are awful. Yet they sell so much. Why? Because they tie into language. They have usually products that have all these different words in the titles that you would never imagine. Jeff: As you start to look at products that are really successful on the marketplaces, you can start to realize, okay, well maybe they're onto something there. They've managed to call out even the most important attributes of that product in a very search centric sort of model or they have really been able to hone in on maybe key words that we weren't thinking of when we've been building this out. Especially because often you start with whatever... A point of reference would be the manufacturer's title. It becomes quite difficult sometimes to sort of detach from that, but Amazon detaches automatically because they let people come up with their own titles for stuff. Jeff: Usually it's the sort of ecosystem that will change the title to try to optimize. Sometimes when you find really successful products that you're realizing, Oh, maybe people do care about that. Stephanie: I love that. That's really good tips to remember about, finding those keywords and how to discover them because yeah, I think even longterm key words would probably be really good for your industry. I'm thinking, how would I Google something like that? I would probably be like how to create a hard cover book for my presentation or something really long winded like that. It's a really good reminder about the keywords importance. Jeff: Then obviously you have your paid search stuff too. You can look and see in your paid search accounts, you can say, okay, what keywords are actually driving? If it was a broad or a modified broad match keyword, you're going to start to dig in and you can say, oh, it actually matched on this keyword and it drove a sale. Again, driving back and saying, okay, what am I driving sales on? It tends to be a really good place to start discovery as well. The only thing, the problem with that is that you might be so far off that you're missing the boat completely. That's where it takes a really good merchandisers to sort of nail that stuff down. Stephanie: I also think it was interesting earlier when you were talking about how to laminate without a laminator and thinking about selling something through saying, oh yeah, you don't need to buy through us. Here's how you do it because I'm sure a lot of people, like you said, are searching for stuff like that or how to fax without a fax machine. I know I've searched that quite a bit, but making fun of it and you might actually be able to convert someone who's like, Oh, I actually just do need a laminator to do this, but having a humorous video around that. Jeff: Yeah. As well as maybe they decide that they want to buy some cold laminating pouches. The idea is, if you can be really helpful in the long term, going back to that idea of video. We've done a lot of videos over the years. We understand that many, many, many times people use our videos post-purchase not pre-purchase. People are going to the video to figure out how does this thing that I already bought work. Well, that doesn't really help us but it does help us in the long term. Jeff: As you look at it and say, it's not going to win us the sale today, but it will win us brand awareness. It does potentially when you do supply sales. Because we're a very supply driven sort of space. If you think about it, if you buy a binding machine, you got to buy some supplies for it. Longterm, we want to have an awareness and be in front of customers so they understand who we are when it comes time to buy the supplies that they need. Stephanie: Just like you said, it's really important to continue to stay in front of that customer so they come to you to buy supplies and remember you guys. How do you go about doing that and keeping a customer retained? Because it seems like it would be easier with these legacy customers who are maybe in these year or three year long contracts. Now when you're moving towards Ecommerce and they can hop around really quickly, it seems like you wouldn't be able to retain customers as easily. So how do you go about staying in front of them? Jeff: I mean, there's a lot to that, the question. To give you maybe a general overview of our thoughts is a big part of our business and something that's really important to us. Especially on the E-com side of things, it really starts with delivering a really awesome experience upfront. So you need to be able to help them find what they need and then deliver it to them in a really reasonable timeframe or meet their deadline. All that kind of stuff. To have the product in stock and all of those kinds of pieces. That's actually harder said than done when you deal with a really large niche category. Jeff: That's the beginning piece of it. Once you've given them that positive experience, or if they've had a negative experience, you use your customer service to basically earn a customer for life. That's actually the motto of our customer service group. Earn a customer for life. As you look at this idea, you say, okay, well, we now have a shot at their business longterm. Now the challenge for us is, okay, what's the best way to reach them? The easiest way is email. We have a ton of automation in our emails. We send emails based upon what you've purchased with replenishment. We send life cycle campaigns based upon... Welcome to the store anniversaries campaigns, and then also best customer campaigns, win back campaigns and reactivation campaigns. Jeff: We have all these automations that go out. They're really helpful. We also have sales that go out on a weekly basis that keep people engaged and keep things front of mind for them. You combine all of that on the email side, but then you recognize that that maybe only gets you half the customers. The question becomes... Because there's a bunch that are opted out in the B2B space, it's really hard on deliverability to get into the inbox. More and more people are using advanced filtering programs to prevent spam from getting through to their employees. Jeff: As you look at that, you say, okay, well, email only takes you so far. So then what do you do? The real question is, back to that conversation we had earlier about lead scoring, how do you determine your best customers or your best potential customers and make sure that you get somebody to call them? To send them a personal email which are easier to get into their inbox or to find another way of touching them. For us right now, the two other ways of touching them that we're sort of exploring, one would be SMS and then another would be direct mail. We're kind of in the process of exploring a test on SMS. Jeff: I'm not too sure how we feel about it, honestly. We have to figure out how our customers feel about it, just from the standpoint of as you look at customers giving their personal cell phones for business purchases and getting text messages. But you think about it, that's a great way to get in front of people and stay in front of them as long as you're going to be super, highly relevant. Then the other piece of it that we do a little bit of would be on that retargeting side of things. If you don't know who that customer is exactly, or don't have their ability to email them, you can at least sort of [inaudible] do it, make sure you're sending or placing ads more frequently into their feeds on different platforms through retargeting. Stephanie: That makes sense. It seems from, especially in SMS perspective, it seems like the only angle you can go about is being helpful. Like oh, you probably are running out of supplies, order now. I don't know, you can get a discount or something. It seems like there's not too many ways for B2B companies to use texting without the customer being like, "Oh, I don't want to be thinking about work right now." Unless it's a trigger for them to be like, "Oh, I need to reorder this or else we're not going to have it on the day." Is that true or are you seeing other avenues? Jeff: Well, the first step would be to be helpful with order cycle. For instance, think about what Amazon has done with allowing you to get a text when the item is delivered. Which is a big problem for a bunch of our customers, especially in pandemic, but even outside of that. It might be delivered to a central desk or to the shipping and receiving area of their company like an alert. Alerts are a pretty good option for us to sort of get our toe in the water a little bit and to stay active. Then yes, something that's personalized. Jeff: Then also, what we're struggling with is what is the best time of day to do this? Probably don't want to send it to them in the middle of their evening. They're disconnected from work, but you also need to make sure that... It's got to be time adjusted for the time that they're in and they also really needs to be followed in their workday probably. Those are some of the things that we're sort of figuring out and testing right now and saying how is this going? Then what's also the most appropriate way to collect where people don't sort of get freaked out. Because it's one of those things, do you want to get text messages from your binding company? I don't know. You got to ask it in an appropriate way. Stephanie: Yeah. That's a really good reminder. All right. We have a couple minutes left and I want to jump into a quick lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Jeff, are you ready? Jeff: Okay. I'm ready. Stephanie: I'm going to start with the hard one first for you because I feel like you're in a game right now. I got to keep it going. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Jeff: Well, I think obviously it's COVID. It's pushing people online in completely new ways. It's shifting customer expectations around a whole bunch of different things. It's ruined the Amazon two day expectation, which I don't mind, but it's also shifted the way that people shop, where they're shopping, how they're shopping, and even their mentality. I don't know that we even really totally understand how it's affected everybody yet because everybody's still sort of in this scrambling mode. But ultimately I think as this shakes out, it's going to change the landscape of how we market, but it's also going to change the landscape of how our customers interact with us. Stephanie: I like that. What one piece of advice would you give a new Ecommerce entrepreneur? Jeff: I would probably say stick with solving the customer's problems. I know that tends to be a B2B thing, but it's not really a B2B thing. If you think about it, I need the right sweater for me. Really be customer centric. That becomes really cliche and that's why I go to the idea of solving a problem. You got to think about what sort of value proposition are you offering to this customer that's unique, that is going to allow them to accomplish something that they wanted to accomplish when they came to your site. Jeff: I think by focusing and being really focused on the customer problem, I think you can build out really awesome experiences, and then that deep understanding of your customer will take you really far. Stephanie: That's a good one. What is your favorite day in the office? I'm trying to imagine what a binding company feels like. What's your favorite day in the office feel like? Jeff: I mean, most of my days are pretty full of meetings. A day without meetings would be an awesome day in the office. Stephanie: That's a lot of people. Jeff: I think so. In the world of the binding company, a day in the office doesn't look all that much different than a day in a normal office. It might be a little bit like an episode of the office. Stephanie: That's what I had in my mind honestly. Jeff: Yeah. It's like paper company. There is a little bit of aspects of that, but I mean, we're just like any other company. We're a retailer, we're a distributor. We deal with customers all day long. I would say the other thing, the best day in the office is the day that you have customers that love you and that are just heaping praises, especially on the customer service people and your salespeople. When you have customers who are just singing your praises, those are great days. Stephanie: Yep. That's awesome. I'm glad you mentioned the office and I didn't have to. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Jeff: That's a tough one. If I were to have a podcast. I am super passionate about entrepreneurship. I'd probably do an entrepreneurship sort of a podcast about starting a business, growing a business, and the creativity that goes around that. If I could get anybody on the show, I would probably pick an entrepreneur. Maybe I pick the person from lemonade stand or one of those organizations that's really making a big impact on starting up entrepreneurs with kids. That's something that I really love. Stephanie: Yep. I like that. Brings back the memories of my parents make me [inaudible] my neighbor's yard for 25 cents which is well below market. Jeff: I think you could make at least 50 cents for that now. Stephanie: I think so too. All right Jeff, this was very interesting, such a good conversation. So many good tid bits that people can actually use from this interview. Where can people find out more about you and Spiral? Jeff: Sure. You can definitely visit one of our websites. We've got SpiralBinding.com. We have MyBinding.com and Binding101.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Shoot me a message and ask me to connect and I'd love to meet you. Stephanie: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining Jeff. Jeff: You're welcome. Thank you.

In this episode, Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay continue their conversations around deal structure.  Today we explore earn outs, a form of contingent consideration in which the buyer and seller share both the risk and upside/reward based on the future performance of the business. Other episodes in our series about deal structure include price and terms, roll over equity, R&W insurance, and roll ups. Earn outs have been used in about 20% to 25% of middle-market M&A deals in the last few years, and the use of this financial tool is expected to increase during and after the COVID-19 crisis. The episode features guest Mark Kopidlansky of Munsch Hardt. Mark shares an attorney's perspective on earn outs and what tactics work best for buyers and sellers. In this episode, Colonnade Advisors addresses the following questions as related to earn outs: What is an earn out? (00:49) Jeff: “Contingent consideration - that's the simplest way to think about it." Why are earn outs put in place? (01:37) Jeff: "It's a risk-sharing mechanism. They shift risk back to the seller. Earn outs can be an important part of getting transactions done." What metrics are used in earn outs? (02:28) Gina: "In my experience, the buyer always starts at the bottom of the income statement, EBITDA or net income. The seller prefers a metric at the top line level, like revenue or units sold. We end up with a disconnect, and that's where negotiations come in to determine the best metric to use." Are earn outs standard in middle market M&A transactions? (03:46) Jeff: "In a perfect world, we agree on a price, and the buyer pays in cash in full at closing. No hold back, no escrow, no earn out; but that's not the way that a lot of our deals happen in the middle-market. Earn outs are frequently used (and becoming increasingly so) in middle-market transactions.” Is it possible to structure the earn out with multiple metrics? (06:29) Jeff: "You could key the earn out to a top-line metric, and then gate the earn out provided that earnings don't fall a certain level.” Who should have control of the company during the earn out period? (06:51) Jeff: "In nearly all earn out situations, the seller is still in control of the business.” Are there instances where a seller would want a longer-term earn out period? (08:25) Jeff: "Some clients want a really long earn out because they think that there's a big pathway ahead. And they think there's a huge opportunity.”  What percentage of deals have earn outs historically? (12:37) Gina: "15 to 25% of deals have earn outs as a component." How will the COVID-19 pandemic impact earn outs used in future transactions? (12:37) Gina: “My guess is that earn outs will be a tool that is deployed more consistently across deals because there is so much unknown (both downside and upside)." What happens when earn out discussions come up towards the end of a transaction? (13:33) Jeff: "When an earn out concept comes up late in the game, it's really a question of whether both parties want to get the deal done?" If the earn out equals one-times earnings in year one post-transaction, wouldn't the seller just keep holding the company and pay themselves that earn out? (15:38) Gina: "That gets back to the conversation around the seller's objectives. [Remember you may have already pocketed 7-8x earnings upfront.]”  What percentage of the total transaction is typically structured through an earn out? (16:59) Jeff: "In general, an earn out is a small percentage of the total transaction. It's often 20 or maybe up to 30% of the purchase price. 25% on average." Can earn outs go towards other holdbacks? (17:26) Jeff: "Oftentimes the earn out will mitigate or minimize any escrow or hold back." What is the sell-side advisor's role in reviewing the buyers' bids? Jeff: "As advisors, we draw on our experience in looking at term sheets and work with our seller clients to think four steps ahead, like in a chess game. Thinking through what the likely outcomes will be based on experience with working with particular buyers or just on transactions in general.” Gina invites Mark Kopidlansky, from Munsch Hardt, to share an attorney's perspective on earn outs and what tactics work best for buyers and sellers. What suggestions do you have from a legal perspective around structuring earn outs? (22:13) As a seller: Negotiate some sort of release from restrictive covenants Pursue a consent to jurisdiction provision in your hometown Know that if you continue in a management role, and something goes wrong, a buyer is a lot more likely to negotiate with you to keep you happy  Include in your employment agreement a clause that says you can quit for good reason if you are not paid under the purchase agreement/earn out  Seek out a clause so that, if you quit for good reason, you are released from any non-compete agreement Featured guest bio and contact information: Mark Kopidlansky Email: mkopidlansky@munsch.com   Bio: Mark Kopidlansky has extensive experience assisting principals and other participants in a variety of sophisticated corporate, securities and business transactions, including mergers, acquisitions and dispositions involving privately-held and publicly-traded companies, with a focus on high-end, middle market clients and transactions.   His representation of middle market clients consists of counseling clients in general corporate and commercial matters including with respect to joint venture and partnership agreements, shareholder agreements, buy-sell agreements, executive and employee stock option plans and compensation packages, consulting agreements, severance agreements, distribution agreements, covenants not to compete and confidentiality agreements, and license agreements.   Mark also has significant experience in capital market and capital raising transactions, including representing issuers in public and private equity and debt financing and refinancing transactions (including initial public offerings and other registered offerings, private placements and venture capital financings). His experience includes counseling clients with respect to corporate governance, disclosure and other securities law compliance matters (including compliance with SEC reporting and disclosure requirements).   Some of his most notable experience includes serving as lead counsel on two award-winning transactions - the D CEO and Association for Corporate Growth 2016 "Midsize Deal of the Year" ($25 MM to $149 MM) and the M&A Advisor's 2015 "Energy Deal of the Year" (up to $100 MM). *** For more information on earn outs, read Colonnade's blog post, Earn Outs in M&A Transactions: https://coladv.com/earn-outs-in-ma-transactions/ To learn more about Colonnade Advisors, go to https://coladv.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/company/colonnade-advisors-llc_2

In this episode, Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay conclude their discussion around the due diligence process related to the sale of a company. This episode is part of a four-episode series exploring the due diligence process that began with 003 on the business aspects of the due diligence process. EP003: Business aspects of due diligence EP004: Legal aspects of due diligence EP005: Accounting aspects of due diligence EP006: Technology aspects of due diligence Gina is again joined by our featured guest, Rob Humble, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at IAS. Rob shares his insights as a buyer on technology issues that arise in diligence. Gina and Jeff’s discussion highlights four key questions related to the technology aspects of due diligence: 1) who is doing what (who is leading the tech team, who is on the tech team, and what aspects of technology are outsourced)? 2) Who controls the intellectual property? 3) How much has been spent, and how much needs to be spent over the next few years? 4) Is the technology scalable for growth? In this episode, Colonnade Advisors addresses the following questions as related to the technology aspects of due diligence: Are technology aspects of due diligence applicable even if the company is not a technology company? (1:00) Gina: “Every company is tech-enabled, so every company is going to have some element of technology that they utilize every day. Disclaimer, this is not for technology companies. This episode is not a deep dive on the due diligence that a buyer or investor would conduct on a technology-focused company but instead a more general review of what all companies should think about when they're preparing to take on capital or sell the company.” When answering the question about who is doing what, where does a company start? (2:25) Gina: “Start with the easiest thing, and that's an org chart. Is there a chief technology officer who reports to the chief technology officer? Is there a database administrator? What is outsourced? Is there even a CTO? Is some of it done by a consulting firm that comes in weekly, quarterly, just on call? Who is doing the development, and who has the rights?” Does a company need proprietary technology to raise capital or be sold? (3:26) Jeff: “The in-house versus outsourced piece is particularly interesting especially for some of the smaller companies we work with, because a small company obviously may not be able to afford a CTO. Many of the clients we work with use off-the-shelf technology platforms, standard email, and other operating systems. The important issue is scalability.” What do investors look at during due diligence as related to technology? (3:00) Jeff: “They're going to come in and look through the financials and see where the costs are. They’ll look at the org chart and see who's doing what with whom.” What areas of technology are investors assessing during due diligence? (3:15) Jeff: “Everything from the reliability of the systems, cybersecurity, disaster recovery, the policies and procedures in place, and whether or not you’ve had any data breaches.” What should a company put together prior to a capital raise or sale? (4:57) Gina: “A system diagram. A piece of paper with a bunch of boxes that show laptops, servers, internet/cloud form, e-commerce backbone, CRM, and where all the systems are located.” What else needs to be compiled and documented? (5:47) Gina: “What licenses do you have? What technology do you own, and who built it? What is your cybersecurity around all these different technologies? What are the processes and procedures as documented in manuals? Another big area when assessing the technology is disaster recovery. If the electricity were to go out for three hours and you had to bring everything back up, can you do it?” Does having proprietary technology make a company more valuable in a sale? (9:34) Gina: “One thing that we run into sometimes with companies that we're working with is they'll say, "I am different from my competitors because I have a better operating platform. We spent $4 million on it, and it is better than what my competitors are using. Is my company worth more?" That question always causes me to pause. It's great to have your own platform; it may make you more efficient, and we will want to explore and test whether or not it increases your efficiency as a company. But unless you can actually take that technology and sell it to other customers, it may not have intrinsic value unto itself.” Should I build proprietary technology prior to selling my company? (10:27) Jeff: “We encounter the buy versus build discussion all the time. It is challenging because entrepreneurs may be thinking in terms of an outlandish multiple. It depends on whether or not that technology is unique enough, flexible enough, adaptable, and scalable.” What are some of the scalability issues around technology in the sale of a company? (11:45) Gina: “Buyers will ask: "How much is it going to cost me to keep this up? When do we have to upgrade? How do we know you're keeping up with all the regulatory, compliance, latest and greatest in cybersecurity?” In middle market companies, these questions are hard to cover with a four-person tech department.” Does a company need to upgrade systems prior to a sale? (13:23) Jeff: “We're working with a client right now that has been on an older loan management platform for 25 years, and as part of the capital raise we're going to help work with them to upgrade systems. They're going to jump from one smaller universe loan management system to a more widely adopted one. The transition from one system to another is always tricky and expensive and takes longer than you think. There's business risk of moving from one platform to another. We've talked about in other podcasts the importance of hitting your numbers and focusing on your business. To layer on a systems transition or integration project at the same time is probably more than you want to bite off.” How are technology investments accounted for in valuing a business? (14:45) Gina: “When looking at the costs of technology, you look at the past investments and future investments. For past investments, we’ll look at: Was it properly accounted for? Were technology costs capitalized where they can be capitalized? Oftentimes we'll find that these expenses could have been capitalized. We’ll do a proforma adjustment to the financials to add back those costs. These costs will not count against you on your EBITDA, as it was a one-time charge. Then we'll look at future technology expenses and we will model that out in our forecasts.” How is technology when used as shared services between divisions or subsidiaries accounted for in a transaction? (16:27) Jeff: “Some of our clients, particularly larger corporate clients, are operating as divisions or subsidiaries of larger businesses. They share services with the parent organization. We go through the financials carefully to make sure that you have the right expenses associated with the business, you have the right licenses that can transfer with the business that you're selling, boxing the whole thing up to make sure that the package is complete.” Why is scalability a key issue in technology due diligence? (17:43) Gina: “When a buyer is evaluating a company, they are looking at future growth. A big part of that is how scalable is the technology.” What is typically more scalable, off-the-shelf technology or home-grown systems? (18:00) Gina: “Typically, off the shelf and web-based systems should be very scalable. You can get to two, 10, 20 times the current size, and the technology should be able to scale with you. When the technology is homegrown, there will be a deeper investigation into how scalable that technology is and what costs are involved with scaling that technology.” Why is a technology review important when selling a company? (19:10) Jeff: “It all comes back to valuation and the forecast that we present to the buyers. Even if these aren't technology companies, they're all tech-enabled, and you don't want them to be tech disabled. We absolutely have to be able to defend the diligence that the platforms and systems and policies and procedures we have in place can support the growth plan.” Gina invites Rob Humble, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at IAS, who shares his perspective from the buy side of a transaction as related to technology due diligence. What exactly are you looking for in technology diligence? (21:45) Rob: “For us, it's not about whizzbang innovations; it's not about is it bigger, faster, better. Generally speaking, what we're looking for is sustainability. Is it secure? Is it written on a solid code base? Is it written on the right tech stack that we're going to be able to support long term?” Featured guest bio and contact information: Rob Humble Email: rhumble@iasdirect.com Rob Humble leads strategy and corporate development for IAS. Before coming to IAS, Rob held strategy and corporate development leadership roles with financial services firms NetSpend and Rent-A-Center. Prior to his time in financial services, Rob held strategy, finance, and operations roles at Fortune 500 companies spanning the automotive, defense & aerospace, and chemical industries. Rob earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Washington U. in St. Louis, graduating magna cum laude. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Rob lives in Austin, TX with his wife and two young kids. He enjoys hanging out with his family, distance running, binge-watching the hottest TV shows, watching Oklahoma Sooners football, and indulging in random interests including knitting, furniture building, and home improvement. About Our Hosts Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private-equity backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Waukesha, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79 and 99 securities licenses. About Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan’s Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University’s McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders’ take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast, and please consider leaving us a short review. Learn more about Colonnade Advisors: https://coladv.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/colonnade-advisors-llc_2/

In this episode, Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay continue their discussion around the due diligence process related to the sale of a company. This episode is part of a four-episode series exploring the due diligence process that began with 003 on the business aspects of the due diligence process. EP003: Business aspects of due diligence: https://coladv.com/podcasts/003/ EP004: Legal aspects of due diligence: https://coladv.com/podcasts/004-due-diligence-deep-clean-and-hygiene/ EP005: Accounting aspects of due diligence (today’s episode) EP006: Technology aspects of due diligence (coming soon) In today’s episode, we invite our featured guest, Joe Kaczmarek, to share his insights on how companies can best prepare for an M&A transaction. Joe is the National Fintech practice leader at RSM, a leading provider of audit, tax, and consulting services focused on the middle market. Show Notes: There are six key takeaways from the episode (35:17) Start early Review your financials monthly Keep books in GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) Get an audit Prepare forecasts for your business and track achievement to forecast Invest in the finance department. If your goal is to sell your company, the number one action you should take (related to accounting and finance due diligence) is to get a good CFO In this episode, Colonnade Advisors addresses the following questions as related to the accounting aspects of due diligence: When should an owner start preparing to sell their company? (01:20) Gina: “It starts years in advance. At the very basic level, a business owner or leader of a company should be reviewing the financials on a monthly basis. The reason is to get comfortable with the cadence of their business so that they can talk to the financials.” Does a company need a public audit prior to selling the company? (1:40) Gina: “We recommend all companies have a financial audit for several years before they go to market.”  What is the difference between an audit and a compilation? (01:58) Gina: “A compilation is when accountants come in and put your financials together for you. They may even do it on a GAAP basis. An audit means that the accounting firm is doing a deep dive into the numbers. They’re looking at bank reconciliations. They’re doing different types of testing for fraud and for receivables and payables, et cetera. It’s a very involved process, but it is a must for a business that is planning for a successful sale.” Do I need a financial forecast? (02:35) Gina: “A company should keep a forecast and measure themselves to the forecast and plan. The reason for this is twofold: 1)  I believe that you only get to where you’re going if you plan for it, and 2) buyers are going to look at the company’s financial forecast and how they are doing compared to that forecast.” What other financial statements must be in order? (03:54) Gina: “Another good thing to prepare for a sale process is a monthly data book. This data book includes the income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and MD&A (Management Discussion and Analysis).” How does a company select an accounting firm to work with on accounting due diligence? (06:25) Gina: “I usually recommend that companies not go with the local firm that does their tax returns. Typically (I recommend) a regional accounting firm, or a national one, because you need a team that can defend its choices in accounting principles interpretation.”  When should a company start working on accounting due diligence? (08:20) Jeff (07:37): “The sooner the better. The first audit is the worst. After that, it gets a little bit easier. Getting that process rolling is important.” When is meeting the financial forecast key? (10:21) Gina: “The financial forecast is crucial when we’re actually selling the business. The key is when you’re in the sale process, from the moment we release that confidential information memorandum (CIM) until the check clears and the business is sold, the company has got to make its numbers.” What is the management team’s role in owning the forecast? (11:44) Jeff: “It’s important that the management team understands and owns the forecast because they’re going to have to live with it. The financial forecast obviously develops the metrics upon which you’re going to be judged either through management contracts, earn outs or just general performance. You really want to be confident that you’re going to hit the numbers one, two, three years out.”  What is an MD&A (Management Discussion and Analysis)? (13:45) Gina: “A paragraph or a page and a half that explains the numbers, e.g. ‘Revenues were up by X because we sold Y more; expenses were down by Z because we lost three people in headcount.’”  How should revenues be broken out? (14:12) Gina: “By number of products sold, pricing, number of customers; whatever metrics that are core to your business. Companies that can do that generally have a good finance department.” What are some common missteps Colonnade sees in accounting practices of middle market companies? (16:40) Gina: “The finance department is looked at as a cost center.” Owners keep the books themselves or use a part-time bookkeeper. When companies don’t hire a CFO, there’s a potential problem.  What are some other missteps management can make when getting ready to sell their company? (18:00) Jeff: “When the CEO is the master of everything. He’s the head of sales, he’s the head of marketing, he’s the head of IT sometimes, and in a lot of cases, he or she is the CFO. That’s a problem because an investor could come in and say, ‘Well, I’m not going to pay $50 million for this one guy or this one woman. Where’s the team?’” When do you know that a company has the infrastructure to be sold? (18:35) Jeff: “The real enterprise value gets built when you say, ‘This is a business that is going to be my legacy, but I don’t need to be here as the CEO or the founder. I built this business. I built out a team. The finance function is all built out. The marketing function is built out. The sales function is built out. This business runs on its own. And so if you want me here or not, that’s fine, but my team is really more important than I am.”  Why does a company wanting to be sold need a CFO? (19:00) Gina: “Without a CFO, when a buyer comes in, they will do a negative adjustment to your historical financial statements to fill that role. That CFO role will be built into your valuation regardless. So invest in the CFO. It’s going to be worth far more than not doing it.” What is the difference between GAAP and cash accounting? (20:22) Gina: “Here’s the non-CPA’s way of explaining GAAP. Under GAAP, the timing of your revenues and expenses need to match, and they need to also match the timing of your liabilities, which means if you are selling a service that is a service for six months, you receive the payment upfront, the revenue upfront, you’re going to have to recognize that revenue over six months.” What is an example of GAAP accounting vs. cash accounting? (21:00) Gina: “ A common example is payroll. Accruals should be done for payroll. Let’s say you pay your employees every other Friday. The month doesn’t always end on the fourth Friday, so you end up having to pay in the following month, let’s say the Wednesday the following month. (When you pay in the following month) you’re paying for the prior month’s work. You need to do an accrual for that payroll so it matches the month in which it occurred. So accruals need to be done under GAAP and revenue needs to be recognized in line with what the services or the products provide.” What industries can use modified cash accounting? (21:36) Gina: “We work a lot in the F&I (Auto Finance and Insurance) and administrator space. (These companies) can be sold on a modified cash basis. But that doesn’t happen in all industries.” How does modified cash accounting work when selling a business in the F&I or administrator space? (22:16) Jeff: The important thing is understanding the difference between the two accounting processes or procedures. In the cases where it’s beneficial to the clients to present themselves on a cash or a modified cash basis, we’re certainly going to do that to maximize value. There has to be a spreadsheet that says, here’s the audit according to GAAP, and here are the cash financials that we want you to value the company on, and here are the adjustments we’ve made to get there, and it has to be logical and make sense and be consistent.” Gina invites Joe Kaczmarek, an expert in audit tax and consulting services, to share his perspective on due diligence accounting aspects. What is the difference between an audit and a sell side Quality of Earnings (QOE)? (24:19) Joe: An audit is to go back and verify information at a point in time. We’re validating the accuracy of your balance statement and your income statement. When we do a quality of earnings (QOE) report, we’re really stripping out one-time expenses, one-time revenues, and coming down to a real accreditable earnings number on a cash basis. From a quality of earnings perspective, it’s also much broader.”  How many years back should an audit go? (27:02) Joe: “What I typically say is, ‘If you want three years in the marketing documents, it typically presents the best if those are all audited.’ (Three years). But more importantly than how many years is having a firm that really understands the industry and is really nailing down those things that could come up in diligence.” What are the bare minimum processes and procedures a firm should have in place before they go to market? (28:02) Joe:  “The big thing is having a CPA on staff and having that person really understand what’s required. We like to see monthly financial statements, on not only a cash basis but an accrual basis, a GAAP basis.” What else should companies thinking of selling consider? (28:34) Joe: “investing in your financial reporting group. That’s not something that’s providing revenue so it’s often overlooked. You really need to have the infrastructure there to be able to report and provide the information necessary to go through diligence.”  How quickly should a company be able to close the prior month’s books? (29:07) Joe: “It really depends on the complexity of the organization and the systems they have in place. It can take two days to two months. (However,) those companies taking two months realize very quickly through this process that that’s not going to be adequate (fast enough). If it’s a private equity group coming in to acquire them, they’re going to need reporting on a monthly basis that’s going to be out within a week or two from the month-end or the year-end.” What is your view on QuickBooks? (30:36) Joe: “Depending on the industry that you work in, Quickbooks may be adequate. QuickBooks could be fine for smaller companies and midsize companies. But you’ve got to realize what the limitations with QuickBooks are (such as controls, access, and integration).” How should companies account for a PPP loan? (32:40) Joe: “There is going to be a portion of it that’s going to be forgiven, if not all of it. You should record it as debt. Then as you get approval for that forgiveness, that’s the point in time when it should flow through your income statement for GAAP purposes. If you look at a transaction, that’s one of those one-time items that will most likely be backed out, and I would say that’s non-operating revenue, so it should be down below the line.” What’s one piece of advice you would give a company that’s about to go through an M&A process? (33:47) Joe: “Engage a reputable firm to conduct sell-side due diligence. Sell-side due diligence firms will dig into the company’s financial information and figure out where there may be issues. If identified issues are likely to be deal-breakers, then the company will need to pause the process until the issues are fixed.” Featured guest bio and contact information:  Joe Kaczmarek Email: joe.kaczmarek@rsmus.com Joe Kaczmarek services as the National Fintech leader at RSM. In this role, he is responsible for driving the firm's strategic objections in fintech, while assisting traditional financial service clients with their digital transformation. Joe also leads RSM's specialty finance practice for the Great Lake Region. Joe has expertise servicing fintech and online lenders, direct to consumer lenders, sales financing lenders, purchasers of automobiles and other retail installment contracts, rent-to-own companies, title lenders, purchasers of distressed debt, mortgage originators and servers, and various types of commercial lenders. Joe has vast experience providing and supervising audit, consulting, and risk management services to entities ranging in size from startup companies to international organizations. Joe also has extensive experience in transaction advisory services working with private equity groups, venture capital firms, and clients. Joe earned his bachelor's degree and MBA from Eastern Illinois University.   Host Information Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private-equity backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Waukesha, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million. *** For more information, read Colonnade's blog post, Accounting Due Diligence: https://coladv.com/blog If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and please consider leaving us a short review. To learn more about Colonnade Advisors, go to https://coladv.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/company/colonnade-advisors-llc_2

Jeff:Welcome to the VIP Home podcast where we talk about all things homeowners need to know. Today we're speaking with Pete and Megan from Powerhouse, which is a TV show produced with Alliant Energy. Welcome to you both.Caroline:Tell us a little bit about Powerhouse and how it started back in 1996. How did you guys get started?Pete:Well, thank you, Caroline and Jeff. It's great for Megan and myself to be with you guys today to talk about this. We're going to be coming up on 25 years for Powerhouse and Alliant Energy started this back in 1996, because it wanted really to educate its utility customers about the importance of energy conservation and safety, but also to help us save energy dollars. They started the Powerhouse program looking at energy efficiency. It's a 30 minute program that airs in six markets across the Alliant Energy service territory in the upper Midwest on Saturdays and Sundays. Megan and I are very fortunate to be hosting it for the past 24 years.Megan:I have a theater background. Pete is in broadcasting, so we kind of have different background experiences. The cool thing is, is that Pete and I have known each other almost all our lives. We grew up across the street from each other.Caroline:Wow. That is so awesome. No wonder why you guys work so well together.Pete:The number one question we get asked, because again, we know each other so well and play off of each other. They do think we're married. We're married, but not to each other. We're learning and that's the great thing about Powerhouse is that we're sharing the insight that we see in terms of helping customers be comfortable in their homes, be knowledgeable and save dollars and save energy and be more efficient when it comes to energy in the home.Megan:The interesting angle that Alliant has chosen to take it is that Pete and I are kind of speaking for the consumer. We're speaking for the customer. We ask the questions that our audience would want to hear. We don't present as though we know everything. We've learned a lot over the years through this process.Caroline:At VIP HomeLink, our goal is to make the homeowner's lives easier. Although we're homeowners, we don't know everything. That's why [inaudible 00:02:05] wonderful guests like yourselves is so wonderful for us and our bran and to just share knowledge of home ownership with everyone. We like to look into homeowner horror stories, sort of those stories that no one really wants to talk about, but maybe a few years down the road, you get a good laugh out of it or you're frightened to even think of that it might happen again. Do you guys have a story like that, that you could share with us?Pete:One of our first years here at the house that I live in, one of our segments was blowing in insulation up in the attic. Oftentimes, Megan and I, we have the do it yourself projects, and I was helping with our expert to blow in insulation up in my attic. I'm maybe not the most agile or gifted in terms of home projects and I stepped off one of the joists in the attic and put my foot through the ceiling in my house as I was blowing in insulation. I did get the insulation and my attic is much better insulated, but I had to repair the ceiling in one of the bedrooms because I was a goof and slipped off the joists and put my foot through the ceiling.Jeff:You pulled the Chevy Chase from Christmas vacation where he's up there [crosstalk 00:03:10] himself and he just....Pete:Absolutely. Yeah. I did that. That's a bit of my own horror story that I did on one of our shoots.Megan:The crew and I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that through the years. There's a, sometimes they put together a blooper reel and that's kind of fun. Maybe this is just a horror story to me, but they were trying to kind of figure out what the show was going to be and looking back, Pete and I did some things that I can't believe we did. Pete was in the shower for one episode. I was in a hot tub in a bathing suit for one episode.Jeff:Got to get those ratings. I mean, it's [crosstalk 00:03:50].Megan:Oh my gosh. To me, that's a horror story. Then there was another shoot that I remember where they shipped us off to Wisconsin for a catalog shoot. We had all these products that were for sale in helping you be more energy efficient. One section was all about grilling. Well, they do these things so far in advance. I think it was February in Wisconsin and Pete and I are wearing shorts and T-shirts and trying not to breathe so you couldn't see our breath. We were freezing. That was a horror story too.Caroline:I used to intern at a magazine. We did the reverse as well so we were doing Christmas in July and everyone was in [inaudible 00:04:30]. I remember all the models being like, "This is horrible." That is a horror story in my opinion because I [inaudible 00:04:37] serve chilli. No. No. Too much.Jeff:I actually do have a horror story. We bought a condo in Hoboken, fourth floor walkup. I decided, hey, I'm just going to replace the switch. How hard can that be? I watched YouTube videos. I thought I can do this. How hard can electrical work be really watch the video. I did it. I brought my wife in for the big reveal and I turned it on and then you just see like go up the wall and just like burn all the way up. I was like, "Oh my God." Yeah. From that point on, I was not allowed to do any DIY, especially electrical work. We had to do another chandelier in the dining room. I got my very smart, downstairs neighbor who had an engineering degree. He came in and he wired it all. I was just like, "Oh God." Horror stories abound when it comes to electrical work, I can only imagine.Caroline:I feel like that was such a good segue to start talking about how somebody could start their home energy efficiency journey.Pete:We talk about insulation and over the many years of Powerhouse, doing a home energy assessment, we've had professionals that come in and do it. You can also go around your own house and do an assessment. The whole thing about is, is keeping in the wintertime, keeping the warm air in your house and in the summertime, keeping the cool air in your house. Again, not allowing vice versa. Insulation is certainly a great place to start. Attic insulation is a great way to check and make sure you do have enough insulation above you because the warm air rises. If you don't have enough insulation in your attic, that's the first place. We always say, when you do that assessment, start there. Then your walls, making sure that you have enough insulation in the walls, which may be a little bit more difficult.Pete:Again, on Powerhouse, we have a the do it yourself projects, but we also, we'll bring in the experts and the true professionals. We are not the experts. We're sharing the insight and the knowledge. That's the fun part for us. I've learned so much about taking care of our home, being comfortable, energy efficiency. It's the insulation in the walls, making sure that you have enough there even around gaskets, your plugins, making sure that those, it really starts with the insulation in your attic, your walls and in the floors.Jeff:Installation, that sounds like a professional job. What about DIY? Are there simpler things that I can do that are just easy? I run to the hardware store and do myself.Pete:Yeah. You can spend maybe 50 to 75 to a hundred dollars caulking, weatherstripping, going around and checking windows because windows obviously are the biggest source where if you've got gaps in the framing, get a caulking tube and a caulking gun and seal around the windows, weather stripping on the floors. During the wintertime, keep the warm air in from getting outside. Those are very easy things that you can do yourself. We talk about that on Powerhouse. It seems like that's one of those shows every year that we get into, as we get into the winter season.Megan:Led light bulbs. That's newer technology, and those can make such a difference. We always encourage homeowners. It's a little bit more of an investment, but it really pays itself off. What you want to do is you want to take those few lights that you use most frequently, or that are hard to reach, those pain in the neck lights and replace those because they do last much, much longer.Jeff:The technology has gotten a lot better over the past decade I'd say. The one thing about led lights in the beginning was just the look of them. They had this like hospital quality to them, very I'm in an office and it starts flicking of that florescent. Nowadays, I mean, I replaced a lot of our lights, not all of them, but a lot of them with the Phillips hue so it's all smart connected. You can adjust the very, my wife has a very specific setting that she likes the kitchen on and it's called Mrs. White or whatever. It's very customizable and the quality of the light I feel has just completely changed over the years.Pete:The LEDs, the upfront costs are much more than the old incandescent bulbs, but LEDs and the thing that we, Megan and I, have stress on Powerhouse is again, how much longer they last in terms of years for a bulb. We often talk about putting LED bulbs, just start replacing the ones that you have to replace more often that are easy access. As you said, the design has gotten much more friendlier. The lighting's much better. LED bulbs, 95% of the energy goes into the lighting with LED bulbs, which is certainly much different than the old incandescent. Only 5% of a LED is going to energy usage. That's the big thing. It's longer lasting and much, much more energy efficient with LED bulbs.Jeff:We moved into the house and we had all ... all the ceilings were kind of the cheaper ... I don't know if they were LEDs, but they were a certain type of white that, like I said, it was like a hospital flicking on all the lights. I don't know if I'm light sensitive, but it was just like, they had to go. We put them all in a box and gave it back to the builder who redid the house and then made the investment in the smart LED bulbs. Because not only is it customizable, but you can put them on timers, you can reduce your energy consumption that way and make sure at the end of the day, they turn off all the lights and all the lights are off. You don't leave the one in the basement on by accident. I thought that was a really a plus, but downside, they are expensive.Caroline:Do lights on dimmers count, like if you dim your light, does that count as energy efficient? I mean, my fiance definitely has some bulbs that are the LED, but not all, but we have every one on a dimmer.Megan:My guess would be that it would be using less energy.Pete:I would think. The one thing that you do have to make sure that when you buy LEDs, that they do allow for dimming. I mean, you go to your hardware store, you do have to make sure that they are built for dimmers.Caroline:Can we touch a little bit on appliances and energy efficient appliances and how that affects your overall efficiency?Megan:When it comes to your appliances, there are a handful that you really need to maintain well and use appropriately because they use the bulk of your energy. That would be your refrigerator, your dishwasher, and your washer and dryer. Of course, maintenance is important on all three of those things. With your refrigerator, you want to keep the temperature at 40 degrees and the freezer at zero, that's going to be an energy efficient path and still get the job done. Also, I'm going to sound like your mother for a second, but you don't want to leave the doors open. Know what you want out of the refrigerator before you go in there. It takes a lot more energy then to re cool the unit if you stand there with the doors open. Don't forget about the vent and the coils down below the refrigerator. Every year, check that out and clean that out with your vacuum cleaner.Megan:Or if you have a pet, you'll want to do it more than once a year. Check that because that keeps the flow running efficiently. You also don't want to overcrowd your refrigerator. They're designed to basically be full, not jam packed because then the circulation doesn't work. When it comes to the dishwasher, there are a couple of things you can do. You can use the eco settings that are built right into the dishwashers that we buy today and only run it when it's full. Some people are in the habit of doing it every night, whether there are four cups in there or it's loaded and do wait until it's full because you're going to use not only less energy, but you're going to use less water. Another tip is to put it on the air-dry setting. That's going to save you energy too and rinse your dishes off.Megan:Even though the new dishwashers can sense how dirty your dishes are, but do yourself a favor and rinse them off because you're going to get a cleaner wash and it's going to require less energy to do that. To the point that I made about the dishwasher, you also want to take into account when it comes to your washer and dryer. Do full loads. Doing a couple shirts at a time is not going to save you any energy at all. Wait until you have an appropriate load and also use cold water. It'll get your clothes just as clean. Make sure that you clean out not only your lint catch, but also your dryer vent too. That can cause big problems. If you have anyone who is ill in your house, of course, you want to make sure that you put it on this sterilize setting.Pete:In normal times, we talk about washing with cold water, but if you do know that you've got some sick people in your home, in that instance, we do recommend washing with hot water during that time. Megan mentioned cleaning that lint filter in your dryer, but also the duct coming out of it. One of our viewers reached out to us after one of the shows we did and said that he got out his vac and cleaned up the vent coming out of his dryer. It was like a new dryer he said, because it actually dried the clothes much more efficiently. One of the common things that we talk about with your furnaces is changing that filter vent once a month. Most people don't. It's about making sure your furnace is running efficiently and if you've got a dirty filter, it's not going to run efficiently and you're going to use more energy and you're going to use more dollars to run that furnace.Pete:That's one of those things that I always stress. Keep track on your phone, hey it's time the first of the month to change my furnace filter. The other thing that we also recommend is having a service plan. Have your heating and cooling system checked once a year. That's a well worth it 50 to a hundred dollars service call, but to make sure that your furnace, that your air conditioner is running efficiently, again, we'll save over the years, save energy dollars for you and your home.Jeff:It's interesting you say that. VIP HomeLink is an app, and it's basically for people who they have a home, they want to stay on top of these things, but we all know it's easier said than done. You say, "Oh, I'm going to do this." Then life gets in the way. The app is there to actually send you reminders. You put the information in on exactly what your HVAC system is. You can log in your what filter you need, and it'll send you notifications every time you need to change the filter, every time you need it serviced. It'll actually keep you on point there, because like I said, it's one thing to say, "I'm going to do this." It's another thing to actually do it.Megan:A lot of times we tell our viewers, mark a day or think of a day on your calendar and do that monthly. Now, your app sounds luxurious, and I'll certainly look into that, but in a simple way, if you just think the first of the month, I'm going to check my filter.Pete:Probably the one thing that we've done over the years on Powerhouse is if people haven't, it's a programmable thermostat. I know on some of your other podcasts, you've had a smart home, the programmable thermostat. Maybe it's a Nest that you can control off your phone, which is so nice that you can set back at night, turn down that thermostat and save, turn it down 10 degrees. Over a year time and 10 hours, I think you can save something like 10% on your heating bill. There's really savings and again, that's what, here on Powerhouse, we're about. Saving energy, but also helping our customers and our consumers save energy dollars. Megan and I have put in more programmable thermostats over the years. That's another small investment. They can be as simple as maybe a 25 to a $50 investment. Again, you can go up and get Nest and have everything programmed off your iPhone, which is wonderful. That's significant savings in energy and energy dollars.Caroline:I know Ruth is a very smart home tech kind of guy.Jeff:I like the gadgets. When we moved in, that was the first thing I did was let's get the Nest thermostats. Let's get all the security stuff. Let's get all hooked up and you put eco mode on. It kind of just keeps it at a comfortable ... It's not blowing air on you, but Nest will remind me even when to change my HVAC filter, which I didn't know when I bought it. I mean, it's an amazing device.Pete:It really is. Again, I think that's one of the other things here on Powerhouse that Megan and I are very fortunate is to learn about the new technology all around our house. We've done shows on things in terms of reminders with a smart home, to change the filter, to setback your water heater. Some people might be away for a while and they can set back that. It is amazing the technology, the changes that we've seen over the past 24 years of Powerhouse. It all comes back again to helping that homeowner be more comfortable saving energy and saving energy dollars.Megan:Right now it's, we're approaching summer and here in the Midwest, it's really, really hot. That's another thing. If you can program that with your phone, program your air conditioning. You don't have to have it run all day with a programmable thermostat. You can set that to kick in before you get home from work, before you get back from vacation. One of the things that you can do to maintain your air conditioner is to clean it off. We had an episode where I got to do that, and I had no idea that I could do that myself. Of course, I had a professional walk me through it. You just go outside and you have your air conditioner, make sure that it's turned off at the electrical panel.Megan:Then you take your garden hose and you spray it all the debris off the outside and inside the compressor, spray the fins on the inside carefully, starting at the top down so you don't force any debris in there. That's something that you can do that's really, really simple. Another thing is to make sure that you've got airflow around your air conditioning compressor. A lot of people have landscaping and things like that because they want to hide it. Well make sure you keep it trimmed away so you have about a foot, at least a foot around there for circulation.Jeff:I thought I read that it's not a good idea to put a cover on an air conditioner because it can create mold problems or mildew or something like that. Dumb air conditioners, you can go and you can cover it with like an air conditioner cover, which they sell. I assume there's a need and a reason for that, but then I also read you don't want to cover it.Pete:You just got to make sure again, debris and everything's clear. To me that would be the benefit of having it covered, but then you also have to check to see if there's anything that may have crawled up or may have gotten on the fans. Just be aware of that.Jeff:Some resident chipmunks in there.Pete:Sure.Jeff:I did have a dryer vent [inaudible 00:18:54]. I think somebody moved the dryer and it popped out of the wall, but it's so big that we couldn't see behind it. You don't want to scratch the floors and all that. We only knew something was wrong because we'd run the dryer and then it would get really humid and the hallway started fogging up and it turned out that somebody must've moved it and it popped out off the wall. All the wet steam was basically not going where it should. It's just going into the room and we have a small room. That was an issue. We called the professional.Jeff:They came over and charged me four or five hundred bucks to really ... I mean, I was like, "Oh my God, is that really necessary? Can I not do this myself?" He had a whole thing, it goes all the way up to the roof, I guess. He had to put this thing together and clean the whole thing because I guess dryer vents are a big source of fires. There's something like 15,000 fires a year, the NFPA says are caused by dryer vents. It's a real problem. You got to stay up on top of it or else you can put your family at risk.Pete:I think that's a good point. Megan was mentioning cleaning the coils on your refrigerator. I mean, you don't need to do that, but once a year, but again, making sure that that vent is connected properly. That it is again, blowing that hot air and getting it out of your home. Making sure that the vent is clear there and then go on outside where that vent actually vents to the outside, making sure that's clean out there. I just last weekend went and checked mine. I wanted to make sure that I didn't have any issue, but you're right. A dryer vent fires, I hate to say, can be more common than you think, but a little bit of maintenance can help save from a fire. Also, just the overall, again, the efficiency of your dryer operating.Megan:Speaking of vents, I'm going to reverse the season, but if you have a gas fireplace, they vent outside. I know it's important to make sure that they are covered and that when you're not using it, the six months that you're not utilizing it, things can get in there. Animals can get in there. Debris, all of that kind of stuff so in reverse, that's something that you want to make sure that you check out and have a professional look at. Always. We always recommend a seasonal tune up on those appliances, on your air conditioner, as well as your fireplaces and your furnace. That's another vent issue, right?Jeff:I have a gas fireplace. That is definitely now on the top of my list because you know what? I was outside and I was trying to find the dryer vent exhaust, and the guy said it was on the roof. Then there's another vent. I was like, "What is this?" It's the gas fireplace vent. Now I know.Caroline:My parents had a horror story. They were using, I guess their fireplace once. I don't know. [inaudible 00:21:45] not really sure. Then one day there was this squirrel in the bedroom because I guess the fireplace vent wasn't closed all the way. It was just start of fall into winter. There was just a squirrel in the house. If that doesn't count as a horror story, I don't know what does.Jeff:A squirrel in the house counts as a horror story. I've had that in that apartment that I told you about in Hoboken. I had a squirrel. I was home and I walked into one room and my dogs are there and they just start going bananas. I go in the other room and the squirrel had come in the bathroom and walked into the bedroom and the dogs discovered that. It was just going around in a circle, just like on the ceiling. I literally just closed the door and then freaked out. Then I was like, "Okay, I got to do this. I'm not going to trap an animal right now at this point in time." I just opened the window and left. Then I came back like four hours later, just hoping it was gone. Thank God, it was gone, but not after peeing all over my head.Megan:I think I'd rather have a squirrel than bats.Pete:On Powerhouse, again, we've had episodes again, where chimney sweeps, the importance of making sure your chimney is clean and again, having a professional come out and clean your chimney. We've had episodes where they talked about the chimney sweep, talked about different animals that have been found and maybe have been dead there. That also takes me over to cleaning your ducts, your duct work in your house, occasionally is a good thing to do. If you have a lot of pets, it is worthwhile, but again, make sure your duct work is cleaned. It's about efficiency and making sure again, your appliances are operating efficiently. Just like we know with your car, you have an oil change and a checkup with your car. You need to have a checkup of your house system to making sure that it's operating properly and efficiently. Cleaning your ducts, D-U-C-T-S, and making sure that again, that it's functioning efficiently.Caroline:These are amazing tips. We were talking about outside home efficiency so can we just touch a little bit more kind of beyond the AC unit or whatever the real term is for that, and just kind of touch base on some other outdoor efficiencies that would help along your journey?Megan:Well, I think with landscaping, this goes back to the air conditioner, energy.gov says that you can save up to 50% of your energy if you shelter your air conditioner. Shade it with a bush, a tree, of course, distanced. If you think about it, we run more efficiently when we've got a little bit of shade when the heat is pouring down on us. Your air conditioner is no different. Call a professional, make sure that everything is operating smoothly and I will just reiterate what Pete said. The system of your house is designed to be efficient and all your appliances are designed to work well, but we have to do our part and take care of them as well.Pete:Plant that tree to shade your house, your overall house can make a difference. Just a little bit of shade on your house can cool the house so that the sun isn't beating down on it. That's another opportunity. Again, we've done that numerous times on Powerhouse. Come out and plant a tree and again, obviously again, think safety when you're going to plant a tree. Call to make sure you're not digging into a power line. Look up and make sure you're now also not going up into power lines above that might be up there. We always stress safety on any, do it yourself projects on Powerhouse.Caroline:People like Jeff Ruth here might take things into their own hands when they should be calling a pro.Jeff:Felled enough trees in my day that I know to call a pro.Megan:One thing that can make a real difference in your energy usage is how you plug in all of the things around your house. You think about all of the cell phone chargers that we have on the small end, but then we also have our home office. We have all kinds of little appliances, toasters, things like that, that we don't use all the time, but they are always drawing power. We call that phantom power. That phantom energy can really add up, up to 10% of your utility bill. That's huge. I have a prop for you. This is a smart strip. What this has is different plugs here that will remain on if necessary, like say your wifi router. You don't want that to go off. There's a designated place for those items, but for the things, video game systems, things like that, that you don't use all of the time, your DVD player, things like that you can put in here. Then it actually will sense when you're not using it and shut those things off.Caroline:That is an amazing product.Jeff:Yeah. We're going to definitely recommend because I need one. I'm going to find one, we're going to recommend it to the listeners and give some links out there so you can find the right one for you.Pete:With your ceiling fans during the summer, they are pushing the cool air down. You want to make sure it's spinning the right way to push down. In the winter months you want to pull the warmer air up. Remember when you're out of a room, I remind my family to turn off ceiling fans if you're not in the room.Jeff:Is that because money doesn't grow on trees?Caroline:You mentioned the right way. There's clearly a wrong way. Is the right way for cool air counterclockwise or clockwise or [crosstalk 00:27:25]?Pete:Well, again, making sure you can feel it when you turn it on. Is it pushing down? I mean, you can feel it pushing down. Make sure it's spinning that way. I'll let the listeners check themselves, okay?Caroline:Perfect. Perfect. Your website, discusses home energy assessments. What would that entail and how does a homeowner know that they're ready for such an assessment?Megan:On the Alliant Energy website, we offer an energy assessment and you enter all of your specific information in there, and it's really basically a checkup for your home. It offers recommendations of ways that you can improve and it's something that once you make those improvements, you can then watch your utility bill and see how things change after you do that. I would say every five years, you can revisit it too. If you've done any other home improvements, you can plug those in. It just kind of keeps things up to date. It's not unlike your app actually. You can keep all of that in one place as well.Jeff:We have a lot of things in common. I'm definitely excited to check out more about the Alliant Energy assessment. Can you tell us a little more about where to find that and how to, is it for just people in the service area or can anybody go and get tips there?Pete:Most utilities, again, I think around the country are offering that. I would always say to your listeners to check with your utilities for what kind of services they provide in terms of a home energy assessment. I think most energy companies today are trying to be good citizens of our Earth and are looking at ways to make sure your home is energy efficient and offering that. I would say check that. One of the things that we stress on Powerhouse is energy star rated appliances. When you're going out to look for new appliances, make sure they have that energy star on the product.Pete:Maybe you've got that second old sort of a beverage refrigerator or beer refrigerator that maybe is 20 years old, but it sure keeps those beverages cold. That's not always the best use of that old refrigerator because they really burn through energy. A fridge that's about 15, 18 years old, it might be time to look at a new refrigerator because they are so much more energy efficient here today than just 15, 20 years ago. You can save again, a lot of energy dollars that you're paying to keep those beverages cold.Megan:Another service that Alliant energy offers is a refrigerator recycling program. To Pete's point, you want to check with your utility company and see what services they offer, because you might be surprised.Caroline:Thank you for all these tips. I mean, I'm so enlightened. Knowledge is power they say.Megan:People are sheltering in place and their home a lot more. Their utility bills are creeping up because of that. With the use of the home office, kids playing video games, all kinds of things, homeschooling, using your computer more than you might have before. People are cooking a lot more. There are ways that you can use your kitchen a little bit more efficiently, and that is to scale down your appliances, especially as we're approaching summer. Grill outside. It's a common sense thing. Use your crock pot, a slow cooker, toaster oven, they use so much less energy than torquing up your oven.Megan:Also, you can scale down how you use your stove top as well. You want to make sure that you use your cookware appropriately by using the right pan size so you're not wasting energy by extra heat coming up. Also, put lids on things. That's going to speed up your cooking and it's going to use less energy too.Caroline:I know my fiance doesn't quite get the toaster oven versus the oven. I'm really trying to help him out there. It also got so warm that the toaster oven is, it seems a bit quicker, but it also doesn't make the whole place like it is outside.Jeff:I think one of the best wedding gifts that I ever got was the Breville toaster oven. It's like-Caroline:I just said that, for our wedding.Jeff:It's great. I mean, I use it every day.Megan:It's fast, quick, easy. You can watch it happen and it doesn't heat up the kitchen.Pete:Brilliant. Again, appreciate being able to, Caroline and Jeff, to talk with you guys and share tips with your listeners. As we like to say, always as we finish an episode of Powerhouse, with these tips and ideas and saving energy, we can make your house a power house.Megan:A powerhouse. Visit our website, Powerhousetv.com. There are loads of tips on there.Caroline:Thank you so much, Megan and Pete. It was so lovely to have you both. We hope that we can partner again soon. Our missions really align in that we really have a lot in common. We'd love to have you guys back on the show one day.Pete:Thank you.Megan:We would love it. Thank you.Jeff:Thanks guys. Have a good one.Caroline:Have a great day.Megan:Thanks. You too.Jeff:Bye.

Episode # 2 of the OTD Podcast. Here I interview Andrew who grew up attending the Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, New Jersey. We discuss some of his struggles challenging the Jewish Teachings he grew up with. Specifically, how he was able to reconcile some of the conflicts he had with his family with his beliefs diverging from theirs. We also discuss some of his Libertarian political beliefs and how they relate to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Below is a snippet of the interview transcript: [00:00:00] Jeff: [00:00:00] So my first question is, where are you from? How did that place and those people that lived in that place influence your life. [00:00:08] What about influencing my life? Okay. I'll say it again. Where are you from and how did that place and those people where you're from influence your life? [00:00:17] Andrew : [00:00:17] Sure. So I'm from Northern New Jersey. I grew up in a small little town called Bernardsville, New Jersey. [00:00:28] I had never spent a day out of Jewish day school or Yeshiva. I'm not sure if a particular location influenced my life so much. I kind of feel like modern Orthodox communities are the same everywhere you go. I don't know if I have much to say on that topic. How they, each place is a little bit like the still the neighborhood might have some interesting nuances that are a little bit geographically. [00:00:55] I actually grew up, I lived not directly in the Jewish community [00:01:00] that I was a part of. I lived a little further away and drove 30 minutes every day to a Kushner Yeshiva where I was for middle school and high school. My parents actually became religious later in life. They both grew up somewhat conservative. [00:01:16] To a larger extent, my dad had kind of a religious awakening when I was around seven or eight. Something happened in one day, but it was slow over the course of years and years and years, and he became more and more religious than. [00:01:33] My school was a Jewish school that wasn't associated with any movement. there's a term for that. Jeff: It's called non-denominational Andrew I went to a non-denominational lower school, and the fifth grade, and then, you know, as they were becoming more religious, they switched me to Kushner which was a modern Orthodox school for middle school and high school. [00:01:52] Jeff: And what would you say your father was sort of Bal-Teshuvah? Andrew: So it's kind of interesting. I don't, it's, you wouldn't use that term for himself though. He [00:02:00] He wouldn't use that term for himself because I don't think he believes he's become religious as he should be. [00:02:07]So what's kind of interesting is my parents were somewhat a conservodox, actually, I would say when I was growing up. So they, when, I mean growing up and as I got older they became more religious. So after. after I was maybe 12 or 11, that's when they really, I think they peaked in terms of their religiosity. [00:02:25] And so, what that meant really was that my, they, they definitely believed Orthodox Judaism was correct and they wished they were closer to Orthodox Judaism, but because of the circumstances of living further away from the community, it did present some problems in terms of Shabbat and driving. So for example, they would, they were, the, what it ended up being was they would never, you know, touch your TV or electronics on Shabbat but they would be a little more okay with turning the lights on and off. [00:02:50] It was more about the spirit of Shabbat than it was about holding to the exact letter of the law. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Episode # 2 of the OTD Podcast. Here I interview Andrew who grew up attending the Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, New Jersey. We discuss some of his struggles challenging the Jewish Teachings he grew up with. Specifically, how he was able to reconcile some of the conflicts he had with his family with his beliefs diverging from theirs. We also discuss some of his Libertarian political beliefs and how they relate to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Below is a snippet of the interview transcript: [00:00:00] Jeff: [00:00:00] So my first question is, where are you from? How did that place and those people that lived in that place influence your life. [00:00:08] What about influencing my life? Okay. I'll say it again. Where are you from and how did that place and those people where you're from influence your life? [00:00:17] Andrew : [00:00:17] Sure. So I'm from Northern New Jersey. I grew up in a small little town called Bernardsville, New Jersey. [00:00:28] I had never spent a day out of Jewish day school or Yeshiva. I'm not sure if a particular location influenced my life so much. I kind of feel like modern Orthodox communities are the same everywhere you go. I don't know if I have much to say on that topic. How they, each place is a little bit like the still the neighborhood might have some interesting nuances that are a little bit geographically. [00:00:55] I actually grew up, I lived not directly in the Jewish community [00:01:00] that I was a part of. I lived a little further away and drove 30 minutes every day to a Kushner Yeshiva where I was for middle school and high school. My parents actually became religious later in life. They both grew up somewhat conservative. [00:01:16] To a larger extent, my dad had kind of a religious awakening when I was around seven or eight. Something happened in one day, but it was slow over the course of years and years and years, and he became more and more religious than. [00:01:33] My school was a Jewish school that wasn't associated with any movement. there's a term for that. Jeff: It's called non-denominational Andrew I went to a non-denominational lower school, and the fifth grade, and then, you know, as they were becoming more religious, they switched me to Kushner which was a modern Orthodox school for middle school and high school. [00:01:52] Jeff: And what would you say your father was sort of Bal-Teshuvah? Andrew: So it's kind of interesting. I don't, it's, you wouldn't use that term for himself though. He [00:02:00] He wouldn't use that term for himself because I don't think he believes he's become religious as he should be. [00:02:07]So what's kind of interesting is my parents were somewhat a conservodox, actually, I would say when I was growing up. So they, when, I mean growing up and as I got older they became more religious. So after. after I was maybe 12 or 11, that's when they really, I think they peaked in terms of their religiosity. [00:02:25] And so, what that meant really was that my, they, they definitely believed Orthodox Judaism was correct and they wished they were closer to Orthodox Judaism, but because of the circumstances of living further away from the community, it did present some problems in terms of Shabbat and driving. So for example, they would, they were, the, what it ended up being was they would never, you know, touch your TV or electronics on Shabbat but they would be a little more okay with turning the lights on and off. [00:02:50] It was more about the spirit of Shabbat than it was about holding to the exact letter of the law.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: So Jeff, have you had all the different types of facial hair? We have beard, sideburns[鬓角], goatee[山头胡], mustache, soul patch.Jeff: Handlebar[翘八字胡].Todd: Handlebar.Jeff: Nice big chops, sideburns. Oh, yeah, I've had the Abe Lincoln style where you got the beard that just goes around from your ears around your chin, and back up to the other ear, Abe Lincoln, the soul patch, the mustache, the handlebar, the sideburns, the full-on lumberjack[伐木工人，木材采运工] beard. Yeah, facial hair is really good. I like it, so.Todd: OK, well let's go through these. When did you have the Abe Lincoln beard?Jeff: I went through a real good Abe Lincoln beard phase when I was in India. I was in India for a couple of years and I went with the Abe Lincoln style there, and I liked that. It was pretty.Todd: Why did you choose the Abe Lincoln style?Jeff: It's a good style of beard and it was just I grew it and I liked it so I just kept it for a while. It was a good style. And I like Abe Lincoln. He's great so it was nice to have a nice facial hair like him. It was good.Todd: So what about the mutton chops? Have you ever had the mutton chops?Jeff: Yeah, I have had mutton chops but my mutton chops don't grow in as thick and nice as some real nice … some people like old England, you know, like 200 years ago in the 17th Century, they had some really nice mutton chops.Todd: Like how long have you had a beard? How low could you get it?Jeff: The sides of my beard don't grow in on my cheeks so they don't grow in too thick but I get a real long wispy beard, almost like an Asian style beard.Todd: OK, so one last thing about the facial hair. We got to talk about the handlebars? Have you ever had the handlebars?Jeff: Yeah, I've had a handlebar mustache a couple of times. Very groovy[时髦的；吸引人的] style, and again like my lamb chops, they don't grow in. The handlebar mustache for me doesn't grow in so well, but I've attempted the handlebar and it's not bad, but it's one that I don't do so well.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: So Jeff, have you had all the different types of facial hair? We have beard, sideburns[鬓角], goatee[山头胡], mustache, soul patch.Jeff: Handlebar[翘八字胡].Todd: Handlebar.Jeff: Nice big chops, sideburns. Oh, yeah, I've had the Abe Lincoln style where you got the beard that just goes around from your ears around your chin, and back up to the other ear, Abe Lincoln, the soul patch, the mustache, the handlebar, the sideburns, the full-on lumberjack[伐木工人，木材采运工] beard. Yeah, facial hair is really good. I like it, so.Todd: OK, well let's go through these. When did you have the Abe Lincoln beard?Jeff: I went through a real good Abe Lincoln beard phase when I was in India. I was in India for a couple of years and I went with the Abe Lincoln style there, and I liked that. It was pretty.Todd: Why did you choose the Abe Lincoln style?Jeff: It's a good style of beard and it was just I grew it and I liked it so I just kept it for a while. It was a good style. And I like Abe Lincoln. He's great so it was nice to have a nice facial hair like him. It was good.Todd: So what about the mutton chops? Have you ever had the mutton chops?Jeff: Yeah, I have had mutton chops but my mutton chops don't grow in as thick and nice as some real nice … some people like old England, you know, like 200 years ago in the 17th Century, they had some really nice mutton chops.Todd: Like how long have you had a beard? How low could you get it?Jeff: The sides of my beard don't grow in on my cheeks so they don't grow in too thick but I get a real long wispy beard, almost like an Asian style beard.Todd: OK, so one last thing about the facial hair. We got to talk about the handlebars? Have you ever had the handlebars?Jeff: Yeah, I've had a handlebar mustache a couple of times. Very groovy[时髦的；吸引人的] style, and again like my lamb chops, they don't grow in. The handlebar mustache for me doesn't grow in so well, but I've attempted the handlebar and it's not bad, but it's one that I don't do so well.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Jeff, I noticed you're sporting a very nice look. Nice little mustache you got going there.Jeff: Yeah, this month … I don't usually have mustaches. I find them … only certain men can wear a mustache and look good. I'm not one of those men. I look horrible in a mustache, but it's November and every year countries like Australia and New Zealand, American and Canada, and especially England have a charity gig[演奏会] called Movember, and it's to raise money for prostate cancer.So in English a nickname for a mustache is a Mo, so November they change the beginning to make it Movember, so all the men must grow a mo or a mustache during November and get donations for prostate cancer, so how it works is that at the beginning of the month, November 1st, you must shave your face clean, and then you start to grow a mustache. Any style you want. A big swirly one, or a little short, zip across the top lip or a big bushy mustache or handlebar or whatever, and you must grow it for the entire month, and then at the end of the month, you send in your photo to the local contest organization and they choose the best mustaches and you win a prize, and then all the donations, all the money that's raised goes to prostate[前列腺] cancer for men. It's like the pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer for women.Todd: That's fantastic.Jeff: It's very good but I have to go around looking like a moron for a month of November cause I don't look very good with a mustache.Todd: Actually, I think you look pretty good. I like your look.Jeff: It matches my hairstyle which is not so good either so it's a good match.Todd: So you haven't shaved since the first of the month? It's taken you a month to grow that mustache?Jeff: That's right. It's a mustache. I shave the rest of my face but you leave a mustache, so yeah, you can't have any other facial hair. You can't have sideburns or a goatee[山羊胡子]. It must be mustache only, and you shave your face all except your mustache.Todd: Oh, I see. So how do you get money for this?Jeff: You raise money through donations. You ask your friends and family to sponsor you but, where I'm living right now it's a very foreign concept. They don't know about Movember, so it's hard to get money cause you have to explain what you're doing and they don't really understand, so they're a bit skeptical. Maybe they think you're just trying to get beer money from them.Todd: How much have you raised so far?Jeff: I've got fifty dollars so far.Todd: Fifty!Jeff: Yeah, fifty.Todd: That's not bad. I'll throw in some. How about I throw in another twenty.Jeff: You give me ten and you promise to grow a mustache next year, and we're even.Todd: OK, that sounds like a deal. 10 Bucks and I grow a mustache.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Jeff, I noticed you're sporting a very nice look. Nice little mustache you got going there.Jeff: Yeah, this month … I don't usually have mustaches. I find them … only certain men can wear a mustache and look good. I'm not one of those men. I look horrible in a mustache, but it's November and every year countries like Australia and New Zealand, American and Canada, and especially England have a charity gig[演奏会] called Movember, and it's to raise money for prostate cancer.So in English a nickname for a mustache is a Mo, so November they change the beginning to make it Movember, so all the men must grow a mo or a mustache during November and get donations for prostate cancer, so how it works is that at the beginning of the month, November 1st, you must shave your face clean, and then you start to grow a mustache. Any style you want. A big swirly one, or a little short, zip across the top lip or a big bushy mustache or handlebar or whatever, and you must grow it for the entire month, and then at the end of the month, you send in your photo to the local contest organization and they choose the best mustaches and you win a prize, and then all the donations, all the money that's raised goes to prostate[前列腺] cancer for men. It's like the pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer for women.Todd: That's fantastic.Jeff: It's very good but I have to go around looking like a moron for a month of November cause I don't look very good with a mustache.Todd: Actually, I think you look pretty good. I like your look.Jeff: It matches my hairstyle which is not so good either so it's a good match.Todd: So you haven't shaved since the first of the month? It's taken you a month to grow that mustache?Jeff: That's right. It's a mustache. I shave the rest of my face but you leave a mustache, so yeah, you can't have any other facial hair. You can't have sideburns or a goatee[山羊胡子]. It must be mustache only, and you shave your face all except your mustache.Todd: Oh, I see. So how do you get money for this?Jeff: You raise money through donations. You ask your friends and family to sponsor you but, where I'm living right now it's a very foreign concept. They don't know about Movember, so it's hard to get money cause you have to explain what you're doing and they don't really understand, so they're a bit skeptical. Maybe they think you're just trying to get beer money from them.Todd: How much have you raised so far?Jeff: I've got fifty dollars so far.Todd: Fifty!Jeff: Yeah, fifty.Todd: That's not bad. I'll throw in some. How about I throw in another twenty.Jeff: You give me ten and you promise to grow a mustache next year, and we're even.Todd: OK, that sounds like a deal. 10 Bucks and I grow a mustache.

How important is content marketing strategy to your e-commerce business? Crafting valuable content helps build brand trust with both existing and potential customers, allowing you to successfully grow your brand. Today we're talking all about content and smart ways to ramp up your strategy. Jeff Coyle is co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of MarketMuse. Coming from twenty years in the SEO and content strategy arena, Jeff's products use AI to accelerate content planning, creation, and optimization. With their spokes-of-a-wheel keyword approach, MarketMuse's content marketing strategy connects ideas, allowing clients to demonstrate product expertise. Episode Highlights: How content relates to growth and where to start assessing the need for your business. Strategies that help tell the story that you are trying to tell. How to gauge the success rate. Where the news dynamic fits into your content campaign. The breadth and depth of your content. Figuring out where the gaps are. When to hire an expert. How the Marketmuse suite of services help the writer. Using smart content to illustrate expertise. Why search volume is not the only strategy for content valuation. Some quick win strategies – aka one-page plans. Packages MM offers for different sized audiences. Tools and hacks Jeff recommends. Transcription: Mark: So there was a time early on in Quiet Light Brokerage when I was doing all of the Content Marketing for the firm and I was writing on average eight blog posts or articles per week averaging about 18,200 words in length. And I underestimated when I started on this kind of venture of can I do these eight to 10 per month; I underestimated how much work it was going to be and it was a lot of work because it's not just writing down your thoughts it's writing for the web and writing for SEO and understanding what do you write about next. It's amazing how quick the writer's block comes in. I know that you had a conversation with Jeff Coyle a mutual friend of ours from Rhodium and one of the founders of MarketMuse which is an awesome company; a great tool from an SEO and content marketing standpoint. You guys talked about everything content which is relevant to buyers, anyone looking to acquire a web-based business and grow it. I know it's been a huge part of our marketing plan. What are some of the things that you and Jeff talked about in this conversation? Chuck: It's quite great. I had a great conversation with Jeff and we're talking about if you've got a dollar spend where to spend it. Most people they're doing basic keyword research, they're looking for what's the keyword that's getting the most searches versus the keyword difficulty. And he takes it like way beyond that and they're looking at not just the specific keywords but what keywords are actually tied to other keywords that show that you're an expert in the topic. If I'm talking about like a specific thing but I fail to mention other words Google then thinks that I'm not an expert because anybody who's an expert would be using these other words or when you're just looking at keyword tools to look at the ones they're getting the most traffic you often miss the additional keywords that are in there. Mark: Right. And I know full disclosure I use MarketMuse with Quiet Light Brokerage and actually with my other company as well. I use their service and the general sales pitch is pretty simple. It's this idea of setting up pillar pages and having this kind of spokes on a wheel branch now so the example that they use I think in some of the marketing materials is if you're going to have a website on craft beer you should have a blog post on craft beer but you should also have an entire section on hops and an entire section on barley and malts and then even from there if you want to be all about hops and afford it to do a page on hops you should also have some satellite pages on imperial hops or these other types of varieties of hops and being able to have this kind of wheel with different spokes coming out. And you know what a bunch of SEO tools use this. Like I've been using Sight Bulb recently; a really cool software that diagrams out your site and the sort of hub sort of format. What MarketMuse does is they take a blog post and had topics so you say I want to focus on craft beer and they say okay if you want to really be known as an expert, make sure that you're talking about hops at least 10 or 15 times in this blog post. And make sure that you're also talking about different types of barley. And then you can use that and say well okay I'll talk about this in this blog post but what do I write on other blog post? It's made for me and I don't do a lot of the writing anymore but it makes the content creation process super easy; like the ideation part, I mean that's the hard part about all of this. How do you come up with new ideas on what you should write about? But I don't want people to think this is just a sales pitch for MarketMuse. It's a great piece of software, obviously, I believe in it from that standpoint. But I think from a buyer standpoint also from a seller standpoint having a solid content strategy is really really key. If you were to spend money; Chuck you've had a bunch of businesses in the past and I know you've used content, if you're going to spend your money somewhere for long term marketing dollar I'm kind of leading you to the answer here, where would you spend it? Would it be in the content marketing world or would it be PPC or what are the advantages in your opinion of this content marketing versus other types of marketing? Chuck: Yeah I mean it really depends I think on the type of business you have. Obviously, if you have a content-related business then you want to hop out as much quality content as you can. If you've got an e-commerce business there's different funnels and then buckets may be that you need to put your money in but you definitely need to be investing in content. Even on Amazon when you're thinking about like selling something on Amazon you go to some people's pages and the content is just horrible and it's so important. One of the things we didn't talk about but like when you're looking at Amazon you'll look at the questions people are asking and then answer those questions. So content is definitely important. We talked just a lot about what you should be writing about next. When you're looking at competitors sometimes you can actually see the direction they're going and then beat them and write a bunch of content. Actually, get in front of them because you look at their keyword list and you know the direction they're headed and you can actually get in front of them. Mark: Yeah for my money I think the two areas that are the most important for a marketing strategy at least long term return will be content marketing and CRO, conversion rate optimization. Those two things alone have such staying power where you invest now and you're going to benefit for years to come as opposed to PPC which is great because you can throttle PPCC; that's the reason people love it. You can throttle up and down. You can really find some gems and it's very immediate. But long term success I think is predicated on this content strategy frank that's something we've even bought a little bit at Quiet Light. I just got to give you a quick shot out Chuck because you are wearing a Quiet Light shirt. So for all those people that are watching on YouTube and I know it's not a ton of you that are watching on YouTube but those that are you can see that Chuck actually has a really cool shirt. I don't even have that shirt. Did you give me one? Chuck: I think I kind of bought Joe one but I didn't get you one so maybe I'll have to get you one as well. Mark: Okay, I think Brad gave me one and it was like enormous. I was swimming on the thing. Chuck: I think that's the one I have with Joe when I bought his it was too big for him so I have to get your size. Mark: Make sure you size it down and hey if we get a few extras of these maybe we can set up a contest for people that actually want a Quiet Light; I don't care what you do with it but it's kind of fun to give that away as a prize. Let's get into the episode. Content marketing is where I cut my teeth early in the Internet world. I love this topic. I think Jeff is one of the smartest people in the industry when it comes to content marketing [inaudible 00:07:02.0] good market views and this is definitely one to learn from. Chuck: Yeah absolutely and two things before we dive right into it; one they're giving a special discount. Again we're not trying to promote it. It's just a good product if you want it great but in the show notes, there's going to be a discount code to get a nice percentage off. And stay tuned to till the end of the video because I also asked Jeff for some additional tools that he likes to use. I always think it's fun to ask entrepreneurs what are some various tools that are unrelated to our discussion from what you're using so. Chuck: All right hi everybody Chuck Mullins here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today on the call we have Jeff Coyle the co-founder of MarketMuse and chief is it, product officer? Jeff: Yeah, Chief Product Officer, I manage the product data science and engineering teams as well as the marketing team at Marketing News. Chuck: Awesome. So I've known Jeff for a couple of years, we run in the same circles. I've been on the Internet world for quite a while. Jeff do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Jeff: Sure. I am as you mentioned the co-founder and chief product officer for MarketMuse. Prior to this, I've been in this space as Chuck mentioned for quite a long time; about 20 years as scary as that might sound in the search engine optimization content strategy game. I have generated like 50 million leads and not as an exaggeration for B2B technology primarily companies in the early part of my career. I worked as an early employee at a company called Knowledge Storm which sold to Tech Target which is also a great B2B publisher and an intent data and ABM platform for enterprise and mid-market B2B companies. I worked for them through their in-house team and in-house capabilities while I was there really focused on driving engaged users through content and content strategy. When I left Tech Target having already spoken with my co-founder about ways that we could grow MarketMuse I came on as a bit of a late co-founder and we've since grown the company to almost 50 people; really, really an amazing story about growth, building a new category about content strategy, what should you write next, what should you update or optimize next that's going to have the biggest impact on your business and everything that goes along with that from how do I assess my own authority, how do I understand where my gaps are, how do I know where my strengths are. And that's been the mission of our business is really to tell the story of I could spend a dollar on content; creating, optimizing, blah, blah, blah, tomorrow what should it be? And that's what MarketMuse is for; to tell that story. Chuck: Alright so kind of you alluded to it but today we'll get you on a call to talk about SEO and maybe more so how content is applicable to SEO. So maybe starting at the base when somebody either acquires a new site or maybe is looking at a site trying to think of how do I grow this site like where's my opportunity, what kind of analysis do you think somebody should start off with? Jeff: Well I think that traditionally the way that people have assessed sites for their strengths sometimes is only by looking at their current and existing rankings or their historical rankings. So it's a bit of you know kind of a tail wagging the dog assessment of where you're at, where you have been, but that as a starting point does provide some value as to where you are. It just doesn't tell typically the entire story about what it means to be about something. So when I'm looking at assessing a site for the merits of its; the collection of its content or its inventory of content, when I'm looking at is to say yes certainly I want to see performance. I want to look at also things that I might get out of my analytics package engagement. I have to understand the goals of the company the key performance indicators of the business. Am I driving those things? Can I peddle out of them? But divorcing those concepts for this point in discussion about conversion rate optimization and such from a search engine optimization or authority perspective I want to see where I've written great content so how much content have I created on core topics that I care about. When I do cover those topics how in-depth do I get and how successful does that; what kind of success does that yield when I write about a concept I care about when I get deep when I write high-quality content on concepts that I care about. Those two things really tell the story of your existing momentum on a concept. And so that when I'm assessing a site that's one thing I want to want to figure out is where do I have momentum? What concepts can I write about and I expect to be successful. And that's Stage 1. Chuck: Before we move on from that one how do we gauge that success rate; what do we think is successful, what are the indicators that say hey I'm already doing well here or I'm not doing well here? Jeff: Absolutely and that's the hardest part. And to run an effective content marketing team and a content production team for any company you've got to start at what are the key performance indicators? If I'm an e-commerce site the key metrics that I have is my average order size, it's my conversion rate close to a closed cart, it's my cart abandons, it's my total revenue. If I'm an affiliate site it might be an RPM metric and I have to be agnostic of and when I have agnostic a reference of affiliate and then I want specific combinations of affiliates because sometimes you can actually fake your books accidentally if you've got great affiliates on one page and not great affiliates on another. So it's really about I think engagement with affiliate opportunities in addition to revenue. You get a look at both of those things. If you are a publisher it's going to be RPM but also it's engagement with those pages. Because again how your ad server validates is do you have paid ads? So if you have a bunch of house ads and those have a different rate you want to always account for that because you might have great content this shooting off impressions engaged users clicks and such. So I always like to look at my current value per visit and then by the way from a B2B tech or something PI attorney; all these places are where MarketMuse does business so I like to kind of list a full fledge. I'm looking at my conversion to lead. I'm also looking at as far down the funnel as I can track and attribute. Every deal no matter what every situation you're looking at you always want to get it back to current value per visit and aspirational value per visit from a channel. In this case, let's say organic. So if I'm in a scenario I want to always be able to back that up. That's the only way I can truly define quantified value. And for MarketMuse obviously, that's the only way we can truly walk in the door and be confident in that ROI analysis. And that's why we've had to do this hundreds of times. When we talk to somebody it's to say how much do you really value each one of these visits? And if you can't answer that question it's okay, let's back into it, let's figure it out. How much is that truly about? Because then if you grow your traffic 20% you can say okay well that's worth this much to me. How much am I willing to invest in that? And that's how I define. So that's a long way of answering a short question that was actually really duped question. But the answer then is my quantified value metric. How much did I publish? How much did I update? How much do those act motions cost or those actions cost? And what was the efficiency rate on the content achieving some sort of baseline goal? I like to use recurring traffic from organic search as my goal. So I might get a boost from other channels and then it dies off. So I want recurring traffic at or above a particular baseline. So if I wrote 100 articles and 10 of them achieved my baseline of ongoing recurring traffic when I have 10 percent efficiency rate in that zone. If I updated 100 articles and 40 of them grew in traffic at or above a particular level. Then I've got a 40% efficiency rate on optimization. So when I talk about effectiveness of content I want to see how much should I publish, how much should I update and how often did that achieve my goals? I see ranges by the way just it scares the crap out of me sometimes, 1 to 2% of efficiency. Like I write 100 articles and only 2 get rankings. Quite often 40 and 45% at best practice that it's so wide. So you need to take stock today whomever you are and say how often did I write, how often did that yield recurring traffic; that's my efficiency rate. Am I in that 10 percent zone? I got some work to do. Am I above 20, 30, 40? I'm kicking butt. Now how do I take advantage of that? What do I do? No matter where you are there's always steps you can take to really maximize your earn. But it's a great question because so many people talk about ROI and they can't explain how they calculated. Chuck: Right. And it sounds like what you're saying is maybe like diving into your analytics but not looking at like how much traffic this page is doing but what is the segmented traffic; how much is coming from Google or Bing or whatever you're targeting. Maybe you're targeting link acquisition with an article then you got to figure out what's the value of a link that's coming in, how many did I get on this piece of content, and then maybe kind of summing up the value of all the different components. Like knowing what your KPIs are for the specific content. Jeff: Absolutely. And so the ways that I do that so it's manageable; there are ways where you can do that so it's manageable because [inaudible 00:16:38.2] I have thousands of pages or I published hundreds of pages how could I possibly do that? It's do it for the site level. Do it by site section; it's the way Google thinks about your site anyway. Do it by site section and then take your marquee pages and do a more thorough analysis of them. And marquee could mean your best pages that you feel are the best but they punch below their weight class, stuff that does really well, stuff that you invested a lot of money in. So build your plat; this is the stuff I'm going to do with deep dive but I'm also going to get my section level and sight levels metrics. An example might be that when Chuck writes an article he's on a 20% conversion rate to my effectiveness metric. But when Ron I don't know who Ron is but well just say Ron, when Ron writes an article he's 5%. So you're to get; you could do person level, you could do section level. You really want to get that slice and dice to know what's the thing that is causing success to happen or is it luck. A lot of sites a lot of B2B companies they rely on all of their authority for 5, 10 pages and they've got hundreds. Not only is it completely scary and unhealthy from a competitive space situation but if you're a Quiet Light listener it's an opportunity. I mean it's an opportunity to see a site that has a risk of ruin. It's an opportunity to see a site that has huge opportunity if they just publish the right content. So all of those things are what we're typically looking at. It's when I publish about Chevrolets it does real well when I publish about smart cars it doesn't. So when I get that site I'm shooting off about Ford and about gosh as my adjacent so I'm talking about; so it's really getting into when I get in how can I write about tangential or semantically related concepts, really expand my inventory in ways I know we'll have more success, and if I do want to cover other things. I think a reasonable expectation about investment need because I can't just go right kitty cats and crush it. But I know that if I cover what hubcaps should be on the PT Cruiser I can. And so those are the types of conceptual analysis, editorial content strategies I have been doing with years. Now you have data to support it. And that's where I think that the next phase of great Search Engine Optimization outcomes comes from this type of content strategy analysis for sure. Chuck: And one of the things I was reading the other day was just and I think everybody already knows this but they were talking about news websites and why don't news websites rank for everything. Like a news website gets all the links because everybody's linking to articles but yet they don't have the ability to rank for all topics, right? Certain news agencies actually get a lot more traffic for specific topics because that is maybe their topical relevance of their business. Jeff: Yeah. Oh, I mean news is so unique. The news algorithm has so many components and so from a Google news perspective and Google top stories there's components of real-time boosting. There's the concept of the fact that news articles appear in organic search. And they're coming from different channels of information. So they cross the chasm from just being news to being appropriate in search results. So then there's the dynamic of some of those items stay forever. Some of them are temporal and they're going to bounce out when that thing becomes less of a temporal story. We actually have a solution for that. MarketMuse allows you to analyze both serps and overlay analysis and it's called newsroom but that's neither here nor there. But the point of the message is what if you write news articles about this topic you care about but there's four to five aggressive publishers also publishing in that that have authority for news and you're just picking up the scraps. You can see that with solutions that are out there now. You're going to just see what those things are and then tracking that back to assessing performance. If I'm looking at my content items and I write 80 articles about some topic I get no news referrals and I get trickles in of organic and I'm writing it for the purposes of news, is that great? Let's say they get other KPIs, let's say they do gather links and they become powerful. But I'm not winning news, I'm not getting the organic search value that I think I should, how do I use that? How do I use the power that those pages are acquiring to my benefit? And most of the time when I see problematic content strategy; document the content strategy at a company they're not looking at their existing power pages. What content are they publishing that is gaining some value and how do we use that? Because I've got something that's a link magnet that every SEO in the world will go we need to do something with that but they don't necessarily know what that is. And a lot of times you see these link magnets and they're out there. They got a little bit of traffic upfront. They're not valuable enough to get recurrent traffic or it's not; it was a temporal staged story so they don't know what to do. And so weaving that article; weaving that item into some real good content strategy, that's the win. That's building my thought leadership, building my clusters of content, and hey this powerful battery. Plug the battery in here, plug the battery in here, and weave it in with internal link, weave it in with appropriate content, upgrade opportunities for conversions, there's so many things you can do to repurpose but when you get a winner use the winner. And we see that older people are scared to touch them because they're like it might break up. So these are the main dynamics that we run into with kind of the Assessment Authority and news as a special case. But it's so misunderstood what to do when you get a news winner. Because if you can predict that every time you publish a news story on Linux you're in the top three of Google top stories. Like, open that wallet every darn day. And I have clients that are in that scenario and we're like you must write about this every day and they cringe at first and I'm like here's the value that this produces; it's not just traffic. It's all the good stuff that comes as a result of that. It's also a long answer to a short question but I think that's usually a theme with me. Chuck: Alright, so number two you're about to say before I ask you a question? Jeff: Oh gosh I don't even remember what it was now. No, I'm just kidding. So it's kind of breadth and depth and then is the things that you see as being really high quality that you've written. These pillar pieces, the centers of the universe, the things that have acquired the KPI. How are those KPIs; they've acquired some metric that gives you that sense. So we've talked about how your existing momentum, well what are these cornerstone pieces, what are the center of the cluster pieces that exist and how are you using them today? Are you weaving them in? Are you using them to write then support pieces, etcetera? And how do you combine that with analysis of your target readership or user or buyer intent? So what's their purchase cycle; do you have coverage in the information phase, do you have coverage in the middle of funnel, do you have coverage late in the funnel, do you have post-purchase troubleshooting and adherence in ownership? So when you have a beacon of power really that's the time your mirror needs to be the most clear. I always say this. Like, stop tilting the mirror your way because you think you have success. The garbage in the game right now as I call it is people looking at search results and saying I need to write articles just like that search result item regardless of whether you want to argue differentiation it doesn't work. It only works if you have existing power to start to do things like that. What you have to do is just say with my site that I'm assessing, do I have coverage at all phases of the cycle that people would care about who are in this motion; I mean research, intent, decision, conversion, adherence, troubleshooting, whatever the metrics of the buy spying journey would be. And that comes to the why I say this way because the pragmatic approach is to say does this site truly represent my business as an authority and as an expert? What about this collection of pages or this content inventory tells a story that I actually am an expert? And so when you're looking at coverage, you're looking at momentum and what's been validated that I am an authority. But then it's also going to be like aspirationally if I truly were an expert what would I have covered? I can do that by doing competitive analysis or I can do that by doing semantic analysis and manual research. And so when you cross-reference; the punch line here is cross-reference the aspirational model against what you have and that's your gap analysis. So think about the outcomes there. I have gaps in this part of the bio journey. I have gaps, I have blind spots I don't ever cover these topics. I have blind spots here blah, blah, blah. I also have ranking gaps where I have striking distance keywords like I'm on page two that's that the SEO trick, right? Go tell them to update the pages where you're on page two and they'll go up a little and hey you did your job. So but if you weave that into this type of semantic analysis; this gap analysis, your content strategy becomes 2, 3, 10x more impactful overnight. And so compare that to keyword gap analysis, think about the outcomes. You get a word out of it. You get a word where you're ranking 12th and you think you should rank 5th. Well, now you know why. And then you know what you need to do. And that's the secret here. It's get yourself out of just keywords; get yourself into the content that's needed to plug the holes. Chuck: So we don't know what we don't know so how do we figure out what the gaps are? Are there tools you can recommend? How do we figure this out? Jeff: Yeah. Well I think that they're certainly on it and they're obviously not just the ones I present with MarketMuse but there are ways if you want to see. You want to be able to look at using your analytics, using any off the shelf Search Engine Optimization suite whether you are a higher-end person in a more enterprise or kind of using an [inaudible 00:27:29.2]. Looking at those pages; again all of your pages trying to organize them or you're looking at you don't want to buy those things, you've got analytics and you look at something that can crawl and analyze the structure of your site like a screening frog or a [inaudible 00:27:45.5] or a solution like that. Get a true understanding about your site and what it's about. What are the things where every time you publish it it's a winner or more of the time versus what's the stuff where you've been tilting at; aspirational goals. So looking at that or even looking at just traffic and revenue versions by section or by page type or by publish state because last year this was under this person's management this year this is under this person's management. Just a combination of this basic information from analytics and page-level data from a [inaudible 00:28:23.7] can get you at least started. And just to start thinking critically about your content inventory. A solution like the MarketMuse obviously is going to give you the sniper rifle to say go write this page, go fill this gap. But even if you if you're just looking to get kind of a basic understanding it can be easily put together to say gosh Chuck I don't know if we should publish any more articles about backgammon we're a chess site, it just hasn't extended. But when I write about you know particular defenses, we crush. Why don't we just lean into that? So you can make those types of decisions but then how do you get where we want to be a backgammon site. What are the ways that we can bridge the gap between chess and backgammon? How can we become more of an authority on strategic board games in general? So those are the types of questions that are out of this type of analysis, if you're real with yourself you stop publishing stuff that's not going to succeed. Try to figure out why it's not succeeding. That's where a person like a business like ours operates. But there's many out of an agency that knows the answer to these questions that can do that introspection that can do that analysis. But if you're analyzing your site I think it's truly to step back and say am I putting myself out there as an expert? Am I really showing it or was I chasing keywords? And it's always that oh man I haven't even thought about; I've just been looking up keywords, building lists, writing articles, keywords, lists, articles, keywords, lists, articles especially in the affiliate side not knocking always [inaudible 00:29:58.8] so much. It clearly comes out of a keyword list. And then I wrote the article some of them get linked together. Some of them don't. It's not leaving the web of somebody who actually knows their stuff. A great example of this; I've got uprise for every product in the world prices or reviews combination; bottom of funnel. That encompasses my contact strategy against this topic. It could have helped with that and then people wonder why they get hit when there's a quality change in the algorithm. It's because they're looking for that thing. They're looking for that stuff. You haven't told the story about buying that thing. Why are you the expert on pricing it? It doesn't make sense. And so that's the thing that; think about; get out of these search engine optimization shoes get into an editorial shoe. Hire an expert to say hey if you were writing an inventory of content about sound bafflers what would you cover; what are the things you need to know? And then cross-reference that against your stuff. Obviously, there's ways of doing both of those things taking technology like what we do. Chuck: So let's talk about that I know we don't want to like hardcore pitch your product but you have a great product that I think is a lot of value to a lot of people. So let's talk about like how your product can help and maybe even hit it as like these are the things that my product can do and some of the stuff people can do without the product so they could do it on their own but you're offering a service that makes it a lot easier. So let's talk about that. Jeff: So if I'm going to assess the value of a site; for example, if I want to see where there's areas of opportunity to create content or update content and be more successful. If I can get that hit list immediately and go execute on those plans; really move the needle quickly, that's a direct value of what one of the components of MarketMuse Suite. So MarketMuse Suite is a collection of; a combination of an automated content inventory and content auditing solution. We'll also take it to the next level and say after you build; after you say I want to create this page or update this page we'll build a comprehensive content brief for your writer. So it acts as a blueprint or an outline or a brief if you're familiar with what a brief looks like. And it tells a story so that the writer can be creative. So that the writer can research imagery; so the writer can research their sources and doesn't have to worry about is this thing going to have success after I hit publish. So many writers the anxiety they have; this is a huge pain point in the writing space is am I doing my keyword research correctly. Ask them. I mean that's the part I don't know. That's the part I really don't care about. I'm speaking from their standpoint. So take that mystery out of it. Take the SEO mystery out of it. Here's the outline we need you to follow. Be super creative. So we answer that question with that side of MarketMuse. We also have some point applications for doing competitive analysis so I can look at any search engine result page and understand who's got great content; high quality, who's got weak content, what are the gaps. And if I were going to put out true best in Class content on this specific intent, this specific topic what would it look like getting into the gritty details. Chuck: So what are some of those details? Jeff: Yeah. So what are the concepts that need to be included, what are the variants to consider, what are the questions to ask, what are the questions to answer, what are the internal linking; things you should do to internally link to other pages to tell the story that this isn't an orphan page on left field that actually weaves into your existing inventory and then grading your existing coverage and understanding how to interweave and to weave those things together. I have this great page; the one that you talked about, the news one, I want to make sure that it's linked. So all of those things we have point solutions so you can do a one-page analysis and get recommendations to improve it. You can get that one-page analysis and recommendations to make it equal to or better than your competitors every time and go head to head or against the whole field; questions and answers analysis, internal and external linking recommendations, and then we have for premium; one of our premium offerings is the newsroom solution specifically for Google News optimization. So basically the story is what should I write next, can you give me details as to how I would execute that so that you're getting me as close as you can to publishing? And then for all of my adjunct workflows; this specific analysis, this one-page analysis, we have applications to solve those specific goals to say okay why is Quiet Light Brokerage beating me for this topic? Is it because of quality; MarketMuse will tell you. Is it because of links and they have a worst page? Darn, they're more authoritative than me; what do I need to do? I need to go write a package of content. Tell me more of the story that I'm the expert because I don't have that off-page authority. So no matter where you sit it's giving you the advice as to what those next steps should be. And that's kind of the spirit of what we do. Chuck: So one of the examples I've heard you say before is like you're writing about a specific topic blue fuzzy widgets, everybody who writes about blue fuzzy widgets also includes pink monkeys and if you're not writing about pink monkeys then you clearly don't know about blue fuzzy widgets. You're not an expert. So maybe can you talk about that a little bit? Jeff: Sure. So our core technology is built on it. It's a topic modeling technology and it tells the story of what it means to be an expert on a concept. So it tells me by analyzing in some cases hundreds of thousands or millions of content items that people who know a lot about blue fuzzy widgets also know a lot about pink monkeys and so if you write about blue fuzzy widgets and you don't include pink monkeys you're not telling the story that you're an expert. So often in the market people have just looked at like the top 10 results to do this assessment. For so many reasons that I could get into there's a great article online called TFIDF is not the answer to your content and SEO problems and it goes into detail of each one of these logic challenges that exist. It's great for information retrieval. It's been around for 30 something years. Obviously, it's still being used. The challenge though is don't base your business content strategy and thousands of dollars of investment on that. And so what we were able to do is to say that but we're also then because we're analyzing so much data we're able to say that well guess what the top competitors aren't talking about orange donkeys and it's very relevant. That's a way for you to differentiate yourself. So you're covering the blue fuzzy widgets, your covering the pink monkeys but then you're going to differentiate yourself by also illustrating that you know all about those orange donkeys and that's what makes you special. And how does that drive back to true expertise? In this, we see constantly being successful with the best content strategies. They're writing about the table stakes content but they're also illustrating that they really know this stuff. And I always use more detailed examples but a cool one I always use for content marketing is a lot of people that write about content strategy don't talk about buyer personas. They don't talk about target audience. They don't talk about the roles on a content strategy team. Do you know why? Because they're chasing keywords. And if you can look at a search engine results page and go ooh, they're chasing keywords, there's my opportunity. Even if they're 9,000-word articles by HubSpot if you can find gaps in their game you can really take advantage of that and you can punch above your weight. And if you can pop a page that doesn't have as much traditional off-page authority link profile to build that beautiful cluster you can start ranking with undersized off-page pages and sections. And that's niche hunting. That's what the niche hunters talk about. That's what the UN fencers of the world; that's what they're really focusing on. How can I punch above my weight with undervalued off page sites? That's the way you get there; great content illustrates that you're an expert every time. Chuck: So we're thinking; traditional people when they're thinking about articles they're doing keyword research they're finding those low difficulty versus high search volume relative and then they're just going after that but what they're missing is just because people aren't searching for a specific word doesn't mean that it's not important. Jeff: You shouldn't have it in there. Chuck: Right. Jeff: Oh yeah. Chuck: Or specific words within content that you need to have to show you're in authority even though people; the average Joe may not be searching for that. Jeff: Exactly right. And that is the funniest thing about to watch the evolution in this market. When we first launched four years ago everyone when they would see a list of topics; this is the most interesting thing I'll say today, four years ago they used to look at that list and go why isn't it sorted by search point? And I said because that's irrelevant to what we're trying to do here. We're trying to tell you what it means to write that golden article to be an expert. Why does it matter what search volume is because you're so ingrained to use volume and PPC competition which that's another story for another day; crazy. Why don't do it? By the way, I'm not correlative to organic competition. I can get into that in a second but they're so ingrained; heavily so ingrained to use search volume as their North Star. They want everything to have search volume next to it so they can sort by it. So if we sort by that and then you discredit the stuff on the bottom, that's bananas. You're thinking about this from a content strategy perspective or from an expertise perspective. And that's what we see time and time again. Fun fact and I think you've heard me speak about this; it's totally exploitable. If you see competitors who clearly take topic lists and sorted by search volume you can; we usually call it chopping down a tree, you can chop down the tree. Every time it works because they have this strategy gap. You can predict what they're going to do. You can also chop down the tree in areas where they have blind spots. They will never fill them because they're using search point as a North Star. And so another way to say it is stop using that four square; that volume competition, you've all seen it. Alright, let's try to find those low competition high volume words. Sure those are great. Lean into those but that's not the whole picture of how you should write your content. Because the last thing I'll say about this is if you have no content at one stage of the purchase cycle and you think that you're not at risk with having content at another stage you've got another thing coming. It's going to catch up to you. Someone is going to fill that. Somebody is going to fill those intent gaps and crush you. It's just common. And we see it with publishers that have been resting on the laurels of their powerful content. They're just getting their tail handed to them by real content strategies every day. Chuck: So what are some quick wins you think people can have? Like okay, I have a let's say a site about; I don't know, let's just say a general content site, you pick the topic. What are some real quick wins I can get? Jeff: I like to call them one-page plans. So I'm going to find a page of interest. So something that's special about my site and maybe it's a small collection of pages. This is my page that's for some reason it's special. It's really long form, it's beautiful, it converts very well. Chuck: Are we defining special meaning like it's already getting traffic or I just think it's pretty? Jeff: I like it and it gets me some KPI that I think is legitimate and is giving me value. So it could be traffic already. It could be rankings that I am already getting; it ranks for lots of words. So that's a signal of comprehensiveness. A quick win could be to look at what that page is ranking for and pick out the words; this is using SEM Rush; using that to pick out the words in that list that the page doesn't actually satisfy the user intent for rewrite those pages; quickest win ever. So that one-page plan I rank this; I'll use a great example. Content Marketing Institute; I love that site, they have a wonderful page on LinkedIn profiles. It dominates LinkedIn profile marketing. They also rank for marketing profiles, not very good. And the site; the page just covers LinkedIn profiles. It doesn't cover generally marketing profiles. So they could beam their other zoom higher and now cover marketing profiles in general and write about other marketing profile presences as a cluster. All boats are going to rise. So you do that exercise, a quick win every time. You can find it. We call them content mismatches or unaddressed intent plants; always a win. You can always find one on your site because you've probably got pages that rank for hundreds of things. No one page can answer a hundred things beautifully. So when you go write that page people are like won't that cannibalize? No. I mean [inaudible 00:43:23.2]. Do I have to explain myself no? Chuck: So the key there is again you've got that one page; it's linking for a lot of words, you've got tons of words, you'll pick out the few that it's not ranking well for and then you'll link through that keyword to a new article that is specifically about that content? Jeff: Or expand it if it's a fit. If it's not a fit writing new but the key is it's not just that it's not ranking. I mean if it's not ranking for that's important but it could be ranking reasonably but not satisfying like user searches for that on Google and then they land on that page and like this sucks this isn't what I wanted. So if that intent mismatched so can you correct that and improve the page or do you need to do that in a new creation motion? So that is a tried and true technique. That's a recycle, recycle, recycle. Inside MarketMuse you just press a button and it tells you those plans which make life a lot easier obviously but you can do it. It's just that manual labor to use that one technique. And if you ask me for a quick one it's always a quick one. Look for that hundred word or more ranking page, find the word that this; read the page. You'd be surprised how many content strategists and CEOs don't actually read their sites; it's amazing. Read the page, know what value it has, and does this page get people to achieve that value. It can also be done on the back end. Andy Crestodina who works at Orbit Media; he is an expert in Google Analytics and content strategy. He wrote a book called Content Chemistry. Inside his analytics book; parts of the book, it shows you how to do this in Google Analytics by looking at exit rate and engagement gaps. So you can do it there or you can do it from keywords or any other ways but those are some quick ones. Look at your worst exit rates. So many people don't break those down by; they don't cross-reference those two things. So they've got a page, this thing is broken it's 90% in exit rate. Go back to the words that are driving the users to that page. What if all of them are out of alignment? You can just flash the content double engagement overnight. So there's so many wins that you can do with just a quick one-page plan analysis. I like to say pick one you like, get started, put few wins on the board, prove it out, and then decide is this something I want to get serious with and invest in technology that can support it. Chuck: I got you. Now when I started first looking at your product a couple of years ago and seeing kind of the wonderful amazing things you were doing, it was at a price point where I actually kind of like when high price points because it keeps; on really good things it keeps other people from being able to do it. But I guess you just launched a new price point for a self-service. Jeff: Yes. It's actually something we've been looking forward to doing. And we are a mid-market enterprise large publisher; people who have really invested in content that's traditionally been our target market. Chuck: Could you give an example of some big players that you work with? Jeff: Yeah sure. I'm trying to think of who's on this site. G2 Crowd is a customer and they're on there; we work with divisions of the Walmart Corporation, Home Depot, large e-commerce but also just great publishers. Business.com; love them so there's a lot of people who are publishing content. A lot of people I can't name and I wish I could. But if you type in MarketMuse case studies you can find a cool example from Tomorrow's Sleep on that one and how their site grew from 4,000 to 400,000 in a year with their agency that works with us. So that was always a big focus of ours. It was make sure that they can write content. Make sure that they can update content, that they've committed; they actually believe content can get them there because then life's going to be a lot easier for everybody. But we then also said let's look at the mirror. I'm always about looking in the mirror and look at the demand that we have. And so we really looked at who's coming in the front door saying we want to be MarketMuse customers. And right now having made that case internally or I just I'm not a profile of a customer that can spend tens or in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars on software. And so what we did was we right-sized for a specific target market, we right-sized a self-serve offering. And there is also a trial experience that everyone who's listening can go to the site. Go to MarketMuse trial. Go to MarketMuse, see the trial and you'll get an experience with your data; we've actually set this up so you can use your site, optimize a page, create a content brief, update some existing content like I mentioned, get that content brief and then there's also a special workflow baked in there that'll amaze you that I'm not allowed to explain but you'll see it when you get there. But you can do a competitive analysis, you can update a page, you get a content brief; by the way, take that with you it's free and make that decision of whether you want to become a MarketMuse Pro customer which is our self-serve offering at 499 a month. Quiet Light Brokerage Podcast listeners have a promo which Chuck will include in his notes which gets you a discount there. Or if you're a larger team, if you have four writers, if you write 10, 15 articles a month it's going to make more sense for you to be in one of our other packages; a bronze, a silver, or a gold, or a higher offering. So it gives you an understanding about the value that we provide, the opportunity to buy, to see if that's a fit, or to immediately recognize oh gosh this is what I need for all of my content items. I need one of the larger offerings. So the experience we typically is that people find the right car on the lot. Or they begin using and saying oh wow I need more of this. I was successful with the first thing I did. I know this makes sense. Making your content higher quality, that's the fun part about being in Market Muse; it's you never look at it and you're like oh man I wish I hadn't made that page better. You're always on this ongoing quest to do a better job, write better content that resonates more with your audience. And that's what we do every day. Chuck: Awesome. So to wrap this up I always like to ask people could you give us a few random tools not really related to what we're talking about but just things you like to use in your daily work or just regular life. What are some of the hacks you may have? Jeff: Man, there's so many. I love this. So a couple that I use, when I had some personal time management issues I tried everything. I tried boards with; con bomb boards and everything. And one thing that helped me analyze where I was spending my time was called Tomecular and it looks like an eight-sided dice and you put stuff on it. And as you're working on stuff you move the dice around and it seems so; maybe it's because I like touching things like that but it really gave me an understanding about where I was spending my time and I fixed some stuff within MarketMuse like the business organizationally just from that information. So that's cool. I love Boomerang. I think it's a beautiful solution for making sure you don't forget stuff if you get a lot of e-mails. It's a really good productivity tool. Chuck: Before you move on from Boomerang I think Google now have something similar built-in where they have the… Jeff: They have don't let me forget this. Chuck: Yeah. It's like a little reminder you can set for different dates and it comes back in. Jeff: Yeah. Boomerang has some features that I'm so used to being able to set and forget things pause so I don't know if Google's ever going to pause Google so that's something that, but I like Boomerang. It's not that expensive. You do need to watch your SaaS subscriptions though. That's another story. Another one I love, love, love, love is Full Story. Full Story isn't; they keep going a little bit a little more expensive each time you look at them. Good for them. It's like having a DVR on every user that ever comes to your site. You can watch the experiences; obviously anonymized but you can watch their experiences, build pattern matching, look at segments, and really get an understanding about why people are doing things. I mean I think that that's really valuable. Chuck: It's kind of like what is it Crazy Egg? Jeff: It's similar to a Crazy Egg but it's more of like a heat map reporting. They've got this capability and a handful of other solutions that are out. I just think Full Story has this like really robust like I can go in and I can find users that went through this specific sequence and just watch all the sessions. I mean so many times. Just learn from that to really tell a story and it really is powerful when you are already doing a new multivariate testing to really catapult that into the next level. I mean if I told you what conversion rates we have you'd blow up. But yeah I mean you really have to think critically and fly the flag of your customers so that when you do get these solutions they don't just sit on the shelf. I mean my goal every day is to make sure that the next article that every one of my clients publish is more successful than it could have been without us. And I think that comes through in our online messaging. It's not just that we're this secret weapon of the elite agencies which I know for a while that's what we were. It's that if you use MarketMuse your stuff will do better more consistently and then I will be happy. And if it does not happen then I and our entire team will not be happy. And we hope that our messaging comes through and we couldn't do it without these other solutions that we work with Full Story, like Pendo; Pendo is a beautiful thing, and some other metrics, some other things we use to really dive deep into our customer experience. Chuck: Awesome well I appreciate you taking the time to talk with everybody today. Is there a way that people can reach out to you or the company? Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. So MarketMuse.com, Chuck's going to post a promo code that's for the MarketMuse Pro self-serve offering as a discount. You can email me directly Jeff@MarketMuse.com, Jeffrey_Coyle on Twitter. I'm pretty active. LinkedIn, please. I typically don't say no unless you've sent me a weirdo request that tells me in an unreal way that you like my profile and you'd love to connect. If it's clear that you bought or sold a website before in your life I'm probably going to connect with you and want to talk in any light. So yeah please reach out and go check it out. We have a lot of content. I have a lot of; this conversation is like this throughout the web that I think can really level up your game and give you the ability to assess deals quickly without just hunches. You got to go with your hunches but it's nice to have hunches and data. Chuck: Yeah for sure. And a quick pro tip from me, if you're trying to get somebody to accept your LinkedIn profile and they don't know who you are, write a message. Don't just send the like later. Personally, I feel like if I've LinkedIn with somebody and I'm connected then I'm somewhat vouching for them so I don't just accept random LinkedIns. Like, everybody, I've accepted for the most part are people I've actually met in person. But then we go to these conferences and somebody sent me a request and I don't remember them so it's like just send a little message with them, take the two seconds to write. Jeff: Yeah, and make it from the heart. We can smell of that. Come on. I think MarketMuse is cool. Oh really do you? I do too. So I guess we are connected I love the thing but you know. Chuck: There you go. All right well I appreciate your time and thank you, everybody, for taking the time to listen and see you soon.   Links and Resources: MarketMuse MarketMuse coupon code (mentioned in the podcast): QLBMM Email Jeff Twitter LinkedIn

Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum and I’m back with Nachi Gupta. Nachi: For our regular listeners, you probably noticed a lapse in recent episodes as we pulled away from our usual monthly releases. Jeff: With both of us having increasing demands on our time -- myself with business school and the busiest 21 month old in the world and Nachi with yet another entrepreneurial endeavor on the horizon -- we decided that it would be best to pass the podcast on to another host, so EMplify can continue to create and deliver the high quality materials that you deserve. Nachi: We have obviously really enjoyed creating this podcast and working closely with EB Medicine to produce it. We are deeply appreciative of you, our listeners, and your wonderful feedback and comments over the years. Without you, there would be no point in us working so hard on this. Jeff: And keep the feedback coming as we hand the reins to Dr. Sam Ashoo as the new host of EMplify. Dr. Ashoo is an Emergency Physician based out of Tallahassee Florida with a keen interest in informatics who has been featured on several other podcasts you may have heard. We can’t think of a better person to take over for EMplify. I’m sure you’ll really like him and the content he produces. Well, with that, let’s get started on our final scheduled episode of EMplify! Nachi: As we are just about to see one of the busiest travel days of the year, that would be the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we thought there would be no better time to discuss the September 2019 issue of EMP: Assisting With Air Travel Medical Emergencies: Responsibilities and Pitfalls. Jeff: This was a fantastic issue, thanks to the hard work by Drs. DeLaney and Greene, both of the University of Alabama Birmingham School of Medicine. Thanks as well to the peer editors, Dr. Knight, and Dr. Hill of the University of Cincinnati. Nachi: And I think you have a bit of a disclosure for this month... Show More v Jeff: Well, this is a first! Finally at the point in my career where I can announce a disclosure, though it’s more of a potential conflict of interest than an actual disclosure, but certainly still worth noting. I currently spend some of my time working for STAT-MD - which is an airline consultation service run by the Center for Emergency Medicine and UPMC. Though I’m certainly a junior member of the team, in some sense, I’ve responded nearly 500 inflight emergencies over the last two years. Nachi: And this definitely places you are in a particularly nice position to share some information with our listeners this month, and I’ll have some questions scattered throughout the episode for you too. Jeff: Sounds great, so let’s dive in, starting with what I think is the most important point - qualified, active, licensed, and sober providers should volunteer to assist in the event of a medical emergency rather than decline out of fear of medicolegal concerns. Nachi: I couldn’t agree more, so let me reiterate, please trust the evidence. And volunteer to help should you hear the call. We’ll get to this in a bit but there is little medicolegal concern and you owe it to the sick passenger to help. Jeff: So what are the chances you are called - well, they are not particularly high, but certainly not negligible either. In 2019, of the 4 billion passengers expected to fly, there will be an estimated 60,000 medical emergencies. That means there will be about 1 emergency per every 604 flights. Nachi: So, I fly about 4 times a month for work. At 4 times per month, over the next 12 years I can expect about one medical emergency. Already excited! Let’s start with some physiology. Cabin pressurization varies, but is typically equivalent to an altitude of 8000 feet. Jeff: And this has a huge effect, in one study of healthy volunteers, this change in pressure resulted in a 4-10 point decrease in oxygen saturation and a 35 point drop in arterial oxygen partial pressure from 95 mm Hg to 60. Nachi: In another study of healthy volunteers on a long haul flight, this change caused 7% of passengers to report symptoms consistent with acute altitude illness. Jeff: Due to the principles of Boyle’s law, decreased cabin pressure also causes expansion of gases within anatomical spaces in the body such as the eye, GI tract, sinuses, middle ear, etc. This expansion can potentially threaten surrounding structures. Nachi: So there must be guidelines for those recent post-op for flying - right? Jeff: There certainly are, but I don’t think we need to get into the weeds on this one since nobody listening will likely be doing pre-flight screenings. I think one thing to remember here, is that though cabins are pressurized to several thousand feet, they CAN be pressurized even further if necessary. The airlines don’t do this because it takes a tremendous quantity of fuel to do so, but if pressurization will defer a diversion, this option may peak their interest. Though an anecdote, the only time I’ve ever suggested it is on a flight from someone recent post-op eye surgery who went blind midflight. We pressurized the cabin from 8000 to 4000 and then finally to sea level and his vision returned. Pretty cool stuff. But getting back to the text, next we have air quality. Only 50% of inflight air is recirculated, all of the flow is compartmentalized between sections of rows, and all the air is run through a HEPA filter. The authors note that the air is actually comparable to that of an operating room. Nachi: Then why are people always getting sick after flying…? Jeff: Well it’s hard to prove, but experts believe that most post flight respiratory illnesses are likely caused by exposure to fomites on high-risk surfaces of airplanes and in airports - like the trays on the seat back. Nachi: Interesting. Jeff: It’s also worth noting that the air is quite dry, though this is unlikely to produce any clinically significant events. Most of the dehydration that occurs is more likely due to inadequate water intake and excess caffeine and alcohol consumption depending on the time of day. Nachi: Don’t judge. Even though it may be 8 am, some of our night shift locums friends may prefer an airport cocktail after a long week away. Jeff: Oh I’m definitely not judging, facts only over here. Anyway, let’s move on to a little epidemiology. Nachi: Syncope and cardiac events account for a large proportion of in-flight emergencies, with cardiac events accounting for the largest percentage of diversions. Jeff: Gi, endocrine and respiratory emergencies follow syncope and cardiac events, with specific percentages varying based on which study you look at. Nachi: Thankfully obstetric emergencies are relatively rare, accounting for less than 0.1% of all emergencies. Jeff: Trauma and substance abuse related complaints have also been reported, but represent only a small percentage of inflight emergencies. Nachi: I think that covers the main pathologies you may encounter. Next we should touch upon the actual responders. Physicians reportedly respond 44% of the time, followed by nurses at 20% and EMS providers at about 4%. Interestingly, despite physicians being there only 44% of the time, they were involved in the care for over 70% of diversions. Jeff: It might seem crazy, but that’s definitely my experience. Many physicians, especially non-ED physicians are not familiar with caring for the acutely ill. Additionally, most physicians are very uncomfortable actually witnessing someone syncopize and then immediately checking vitals and finding the passenger to be bradycardic and hypotensive as is the case with many patients immediately after a vasovagal syncopal episode. I cannot tell you how many times we get called by pilots considering diversion based on a physician’s request only to have the symptoms completely resolve in just 10 minutes. Be patient, this is a common in flight pathology. Nachi: Your experience has not failed you - data from your own group showed that 31% of cases resolved before arrival. Even in cases where EMS was requested, patients were only transported 37% of the time and of those, only 8% were actually admitted for further work up. Death is also a very rare phenomenon, occurring in only 0.3% of cases. Jeff: Alright, so let’s move onto the actual logistics of responding. Each airline has its own protocols and policies with respect to medical responders - some will require credentials, others may not. In some instances, you may be the first responder, in others, the flight crew may have already been in contact with their ground based medical control. Nachi: In terms of supplies, the FAA requires an emergency medical kit and an AED on all commercial flights. These kits cannot be opened without direction from a medical professional on the ground or on board. Jeff: And while airlines may add additional drugs at their discretion, the FAA mandates certain supplies. You can remember these supplies by thinking of the 5 A’s - asthma, allergy, altered mental status, ACS, and ACLS. The 5 As should help you remember the bronchodilators, epinephrine, antihistamine, dextrose, nitroglycerine, aspirin, and lidocaine as the one antiarrhythmic available. Of course, there are also gloves, an IV start kit, and a few other basic supplies. Nachi: AEDs are also required and have been since 2001 and amazingly when a shock was delivered in flight, 40% survived to hospital discharge with a good outcome. Jeff: Just as on the ground, shockable rhythms do well with good BLS care. And lastly, airlines also have a portable oxygen tank in addition to the emergency oxygen that is stored in the event of cabin depressurization. The exact quantity varies, but portable cylinders are certainly available. Nachi: So next we have to talk about a topic that I’m sure many of you have wondered about - what are the medico-legal risks of intervening? Jeff: As with most incidents of concern over medico-legal risk, we really just shouldn’t be too concerned over the potential legal ramifications. Though we’ll get into specifics, the short answer is that you should definitely volunteer your services - there are lots of protections in place with a paucity of case reports of legal actions against medical volunteers who volunteers in flight. Nachi: Perhaps most importantly, remember that ultimately the captain is in charge and you are functioning in a strict advisory capacity. Remember that most airlines can handle most emergencies with their ground based medical control, their typical staff, and predefined protocols - you are an added bonus. Jeff: For many ED providers, functioning as a consultant will be unfamiliar. Nachi: If I’m a consultant, I’m going to demand a WBC before seeing the patient, as I’m fairly certain that’s rule number 1 in consultant school... Jeff: It’s actually rule #12, now get out of your seat and come see the patient…. But back to medicolegal issues. In the US, health care professions are protected by the good Samaritan law and the 1998 federal aviation medical assistance act. Nachi: The Good Samaritan law provides legal protection to medical providers who perform their services in response to medical emergencies outside of the hospital. The exact verbiage of the law differs from state to state, but all 50 states have some version of it in their legislation. Jeff: Similarly the aviation medical assistance act applies to “medically qualified individuals and offers broad medico-legal protection to the airlines in the event that a medical volunteer is accused of malpractice as well as to medical providers who respond to an in-flight emergency.” Nachi: More specifically, the act states that “...an individual shall not be liable for damages arising out of the acts or omissions of the individual in providing or attempting to provide assistance in the case of an in-flight medical emergency unless the individual, while rendering such assistance, is guilty of gross negligence or willful misconduct.” Jeff: That’s a bit of a mouth full to get out. But basically, you need to remember that the AMAA protects you from everything shy of gross negligence. Because of this, there have been no reports to date of a medical professional falling below that standard. Nachi: There is one caveat to all of this though: don’t forget about your own mental status - for example if you have taken any sleeping aids or had any alcoholic drinks. Though this may not preclude you completely from rendering care, do so only with extreme caution. Jeff: And I don’t think we were clear enough about this up front. Up until this point we have mostly talked about US based flights. Flights run by International airlines are a somewhat different ball game for a number of reasons. First, medication kits will vary widely. Many will carry medications similar to those mandated by the FDA, but there certainly is no international standard. Next, the availability of ground based medical consultation is similarly widely variable, with many in the middle east contracting for this service and almost no airlines in Africa offering such services. Nachi: And lastly, with respect to legal risk - the international laws also vary widely. According to French law, for example, a French physician who does not volunteer may be committing willful negligence. Similar laws exist in Germany, Australia, and Canada. However proving you were there and refused to provide care would be quite difficult. And lastly, it’s unclear how to determine which countries’ laws apply when - for example, is it the sending country’s laws, the receiving country’s laws, or the country whose airspace you are currently in? Jeff: All excellent points. Next, we are moving to my favorite topic of the article - diversion. This is a tremendously complicated topic and I think the authors handled it quite well. Remember, the decision to divert is multifactorial and you are only there to communicate your medical opinion about the passenger - leave the decision for diversion up to the flight crew. I cannot stress this enough. Getting on the radio with the pilot and ground based medical control and demanding a diversion is often very unhelpful and simply not the right approach and can really be quite costly. Nachi: All of this is so interesting. I can’t believe you do this and divert planes.... Can you go into a bit more detail about everything the pilot considers when they are deciding to divert? Jeff: So there’s quite a bit, but I can touch on some of the main considerations. First, you have to consider the medical needs of the passenger - can he or she be temporized to get to the destination? Is there a suitable airport for diversion with an accessible local hospital with the required resources? Logistically, you need to find an airport that can not only safely accommodate the plane you are on but also one in which the airline can refuel and guarantee that the passengers and crew are safe. Remember, if you are on an A380, there are only so many airports with runways long enough for a safe landing. Fun fact: planes also take off heavy - with tons of fuel that will be burned prior to landing. Say you were to take off from London, bound for the US. To turn around and land back at London Heathrow, you may have to literally dump thousands of gallons of fuel to get the plane to a safe weight for landing. Alternatively, you may have to fly in circles for some time to burn fuel off in planes that cannot dump. A heavy landing necessitates a thorough maintenance overhaul of the landing gear and can cost the airlines not only money but significant time, which is equally as valuable. Nachi: Speaking of cost - while exact costs are unknown, one airline estimates that the cost can be as high as $600,000 - we are not dealing with small numbers here... Jeff: No definitely not. That’s why it’s so frustrating when medical volunteers demand the plane divert without talking through the medical scenario with the crew and ground based control - often temporizing measures are adequate. Nachi: And we alluded to this earlier - Physicians advise diversion more frequently at 9% of the time followed by EMS providers and nurses. When the airlines are left to their own means, they divert at rates roughly half that - just 5% of the time. At half a million dollars for some diversions, and an overall very low level of morbidity and mortality, a 50% reduction amounts to massive savings for possibly no clinical difference. Jeff: I can’t stress this enough - you are a consultant, helping the captain and the ground based medical control to come to most appropriate plan of action. When your advice causes the airlines to deviate from their standard protocols, that’s where they potentially run into trouble. Nachi: There are just two controversies to discuss this month and I actually think they are extremely pertinent. The first one relates to using personal medication or medications from other passengers. Given the relative paucity of medications in most airline medical kits, it may occur to you that someone else may have a helpful medication on board. While there is no strict rule against this, it could result in an increased level of scrutiny if there is an adverse event. So consider this a last resort. Jeff: The next controversy to discuss is the issue of gifts. There is a widespread belief that accepting gifts from the airlines would void legal protections. To date, there is ample airline-based data to suggest that medical providers’ legal protections are not negated in the event that the airlines wanted to reward a medical volunteer. Additionally, there are no reported cases of providers losing legal protection for receiving compensation for their services in flight. Nachi: Interestingly, some international carriers even offer points or other bonuses for registering as a medical volunteer. While I’m hesitant to call this controversy a myth, it seems like there isn’t much evidence to support it. Jeff: Agreed, don’t expect a gift, but if you do receive one, you can keep it and enjoy it without concern for your legal protections. Nachi: Alright so that wraps up the new material for this special edition of EMplify - let’s close out with some key points and clinical pearls. Jeff: Aircraft cabins are typically pressurized to about 8000 ft, resulting in a 4-10 point drop in oxygen saturation in healthy adults as well myalgias, fatigue, and generalized discomfort on long haul flights. Nachi: Only 50% of the cabin air is recirculated. When recirculated, it is subjected to HEPA filtration, which is adequate to prevent infection by airborne pathogens but not the infectious respiratory viruses, which are spread by droplets. Jeff: Dehydration on long flights is likely due to inadequate water intake and the increased use of diuretics such as caffeine and alcohol. Nachi: There is about 1 in-flight emergency per 11,000 passengers or 1 in 604 flights. Syncope and cardiac events are most common followed by GI, respiratory, and neurologic events. Jeff: Most in-flight emergencies are minor. When EMS is requested upon arrival, roughly 1/3rd are transported and less than 10% are admitted, with mortality estimated at 0.3% of cases. Nachi: AEDs are required on all US-based flights. Jeff: Airlines have a limited supply of supplemental oxygen for use in medical emergencies in addition to that provided to the entire plane in the event the cabin becomes depressurized Nachi: All US airlines have some form of ground-based medical assistance. Ultimately any decisions are the responsibility of the pilot in command – medical volunteers function in a strictly advisory capacity. Jeff: Medical volunteers are protected by both the Good Samaritan law and the 1998 Aviation Medical Assistance Act. Nachi: The Aviation Medical Assistance Act protects medically qualified individuals, unless they are guilty of gross negligence or willful misconduct. Jeff: International laws and protections vary widely. In some European countries, for a physician to not offer their services during an in-flight emergency may constitute willful negligence. Nachi: The decision to divert is multifactorial and can cost as much as $600,000 in some circumstances. Jeff: When physicians and EMS providers respond to in-flight emergencies, diversion rates are nearly double that of when the airlines work solely with their ground based support, increasing diversion events from 5% to 9%. Nachi: It is largely a myth that accepting any gift or payment after responding to an in-flight emergency would void your legal protections; the AMAA has no language regarding compensation and to date there are no such reported cases of lost legal protection. Jeff: And that’s the end of this months episode of EMplify: Assisting With Air Travel Medical Emergencies. This also marks the end of our run as your hosts. Over the past 3 years, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed hosting EMplify and having the unique opportunity to share high quality evidence based medicine with you all. As health care continues to move towards a quality over quantity paradigm, understanding evidence based practice will be increasingly more important. Nachi: We thank you all for giving us your ears and your time to help hone your clinical practice. Naturally, a big thanks also goes out to all of the contrubutors to Emergency Medicine Practice -- authors, peer reviewers, and of course the kind and thoughtful staff at EB Medicine. Jeff: We have no doubt that Dr. Ashoo, who will be taking over, will keep you on the edge of your seat as he brings new material to you. Couldn’t be more excited to have him as our successor. Nachi: As always, additional materials are available on our website for Emergency Medicine Practice subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber, consider joining today. You can find out more at ebmedicine.net/subscribe. Subscribers get in-depth articles on hundreds of emergency medicine topics, concise summaries of the articles, calculators and risk scores, and CME credit. You’ll also get enhanced access to the podcast, including any images and tables mentioned. PA’s and NP’s - make sure to use the code APP4 at checkout to save 50%. Jeff: The [DING SOUND] you heard throughout the episode corresponds to the answers to the CME questions. Lastly, be sure to find us on iTunes and rate us or leave comments there. You can also email us directly at EMplify@ebmedicine.net.

James: So few things; we want to go through some of the markets and some of the value-add stuff and I think you do a lot of student housing things. Also, we can go through that as well. Yeah, that should be what it is. And okay, let me just get started. So 1 2 3...  Hey audience, welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast where we focus a lot on value-add real estate investing. Today, we have Jeff Greenberg who has more than 40 years experience in management, staff supervision, development, and training. Jeff has been investing since 2007 and has more than 40 million multi-property projects consisting of around 2,000 units. So deals that he controls consist of student housing and some of the multifamily units across, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, and Ohio. And Jeff focuses a lot on value-add student housing, which is very interesting. Until now, we have a lot of podcast interview on conventional multifamily in workforce housing, but now, we're going to talk a lot more about student housing. Jeff has also done market rate and also senior living multifamily properties. Hey, Jeff, welcome to the show.  Jeff: Well, how you doing today?  James: I'm good. So thanks for coming in. I want to go with more details on how did you get started because you rent a thousand units across different states. So can you describe to our listeners and audience on how did you get started?  Jeff: Well, probably similar to a lot of other people, I started out with single-family, but actually never did any single family deals. That was in 2007 when the prices were going down so fast that it was hard to do much in the single-family area as far as REO properties, the bank's weren't releasing them. So I did bump into a guru and so I did go to seminars and did get some mentoring around in 2007-2008. And then started with my first property that I ever bought, other than my own personal residence, was a 20-unit property and it was a syndicated deal.  So we brought in investors into that first deal and that was essentially my entry into it. skipped right past all the single-family stuff. James: And what year was it, Jeff? Jeff: That was the first property we bought, actually it was in 2010. James: Okay. So 2010 you started with 20 units and the guru and the cost that you had taken was that more multifamily or was it more a single-family size? Jeff: It was all multi-family stuff.  James: Okay, got it. So you got into that and then you started buying 20 units and which market was that?  Jeff: Well, that Market was in Harlingen, which is in South Texas. Okay. It's near Brownsville and McAllen, for those people that know that area.  James: Okay. Okay. So 2010 was supposedly supposed to be a perfect time to start investing in real estate after the 2008 crash. So can you describe what happened in your first deal? I mean at high level and what happened and how did you come up, in terms of the results for the first day of... Jeff: Yeah. The first deal, that property was only three years old. It was built in 2007. It was a hundred percent occupied and it was in a very slow growth market. So we had big plans for raising rents and they were already paying electric so we were planning on billing back water. And the problem was it was very difficult to raise the rents. We were getting a lot of resistance and doing the bill back of the water, we met with a lot of resistance. So we had nowhere else to go. It was already a hundred percent occupied because it was a new property. And so that was a plan which didn't work very well because we couldn't get those rents up. It took them a long time to get the rents up. So the lesson learned from there was that you needed to do more research on to the potential for the value-adds. And in that property, we held it for six years; we were supposed to sell in five. We held it to 6 because we drew a line in the sand as far as what price we would take and it took us an extra year before we are able to get that price in order to get the investors a fair return. But it took us an extra year. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been much much of a profit on that property. So it was a seminar.   James: I mean, that's awesome that you're sharing your first lessons learned, right? Because sometimes you know, we forget that there are things that we missed out or there are things that you know, we don't really see it when you go and buy a multi-family. Sometimes you buy in a hot market and it went up 200-300%. People think that they did the work but that's not going to be the case all the time. Jeff:  Well, that's basically what happened on the next property though. So the next property was a property we bought in Houston where it was a foreclosed property that we were buying it. The owner we were buying it from actually bought it as a foreclosure so he had had it for about two years. It is 62 units so he bought it for 600,000 and we bought it for 1.3 after he had it for two years and so we got it for about under 21,000 a unit.  And at the time, in Houston, the values were going from 25,000 to maybe 35,000 a unit so we still bought it under market value and then in three years, we sold it for 2.7 million. And the reason we got that value part of it, it was 85 percent occupied when we got it. We got it up to 95 percent occupied. The revenue was about 36,000, we got it up to about 42,000. But also at that time, the cap rates compressed so we bought it at a 9 cap and sold it at a 7 cap. So we got the advantage of the market, the market appreciation as well as what we did for it so that was a perfect storm for us. So it completely made up for our first one, in that the investors got a 120% return on a three-year whole. So a 40% annualized return, which nobody complained about. James: Yeah, absolutely.  Jeff: But that's unusual and that was totally different from the other property where the investors got a lot better than they would have in the bank, but they didn't get a fantastic return. So different properties, different deals.  James: So I mean that too is conventional multifamily, right?  Jeff: Yeah. James: And how many conventional multifamilies did you do before you start hitting into student housing?  Jeff: Well, the next one after that actually was a student house. I mean, I was invested in another person's deal that was about 700 units 20 million dollar deal that we were in. But the next deal I did after that, actually, we broke up our partnership. My partner back decided not to do real estate anymore and I continued on my own and that's when I got a small property in Ohio. I had a 19-year-old student that went and found this property for me in Oxford, Ohio, and that's when I got into student housing. So we were talking, we mentioned earlier as far as how it getting into student housing, I really didn't plan on it. It was my intern that found the property and said, "Hey, let's get this," and the numbers look good and we got into it. So that was our first student housing deal in Oxford.  James: Yeah. I mean, I'm going to go a bit deeper into that. But I mean you are now in California, you are based California, but you have been buying in McAllen, Texas and Houston and Ohio. So how did you decide on where to go or is it just whatever opportunity that comes to you?  Jeff: Well, I've been pretty opportunistic, basically, when an opportunity comes in. Right now, we're kind of reversing out a little bit and trying to do more focus on markets. But at that point in time, we were just looking at opportunities and when an opportunity came we did our research on the market and did it afterward, rather than doing it up ahead of time. We decided do we really want to be in this market and if we did then we went up to the property. But it was more properties came to us from different directions. The one in Georgia, I had a lady working with me that I had trained and she developed a relationship with a broker in Georgia and that was pretty much where we got the Georgia property from, which was our next student housing property.  James: So one thing I want to clarify. You said you had an intern and you have this lady that you have been training. So do you have interns working for you or do you have students that are looking for deals? Jeff: Yeah. The first one was an intern that I had trained and then after that, there was a group of people that came to me and asked me to train them and so I started training them and teaching them how to find properties. And in the last three years, we've done a couple of deals together, but they basically found the properties. Yeah, and you know that I've been training them as we've been going, showing them a lot of the different aspects of it; doing due diligence with them and taking them on the tours with a lot of those students. Since then things have changed a little bit but at that time, those were people that I have trained. James: So is it like part of your mentoring program or you just train for fun kind of thing? Jeff: It wasn't a formal mentoring program, but it was kind of a mentoring program.  James: Okay got it. Jeff: But it was just more informal that I had helped people and in turn, they would bring properties in and if I like them, would go after them. Say it saves me underwriting a hundred deals to find one, they would underwrite a hundred deals, bring me one and I'd only have to look at a few of them. So much of our deals that I had to look at, you know, when they would bring them supposedly all ready to go and I would decide yay or nay on them if I liked them. James: Okay, got it. So coming back to the student housing and you said one of your interns found it. And, I mean, can you describe how did he find that deal?  Jeff: Well, he was embarrassed to tell me, actually. He was embarrassed to tell me until after we had closed that he actually found in on LoopNet. And you know there are deals on LoopNet but usually, they're overpriced or maybe there's some other problem with them and it so happened that the seller was beaten up by two other buyers prior to my purchase. We got it for a much lower rate. So at the price that we got it at,  it was a great deal but at the original price, it wouldn't have been.  James: Got it. Got it. So let's describe the process. So this intern brought you the deal. So what are the few things that you look at the deal that you think you're going to take a second look at it? Jeff: Well, I mean several things. The one thing I had my interns do is I want to do as little work as possible myself. So I told them I want bullet points on why I want to be on that market, you know, what's the advantages of this market? With student housing, the emphasis is more on the school, but all the different reasons that this is a great market to be in and also as well as the numbers for the property itself.  And basically, they have to come in and give me a sales pitch and convince me with a presentation that this is a deal I want to do. And on the regular market rate ones, you know the typical stuff with the employment and the population growth and the age of the population and all of that typical stuff that we look at. Over the student housing, it's the size of the college, the percentage of rooms available on campus versus off campus, basically, the health of the university. The location of the property, how close it is to the university, those kinds of things that we look for more so on the student housing. James: So, can you go a bit more, dig deeper into how far from the campus which you consider in campus versus other campuses? Jeff:  Well, as far as what we look for, typically, we want something within a mile of the campus. My Georgia one is a block away, my Ohio one is within what they call a Mile Square. My Arizona property is a little bit farther out. It's two miles off campus and that one, it's a little bit more of a struggle but you're not going to get the prime rates and we understood that because when you're two miles out. So you want it close by the campus, you want it on the right side of the campus, rather than way away from the classrooms where people still have to walk a mile across the fields to get to campus. So you want to be on the the the closer side where the classes are but it will help you out also if you're near. the bar district or where all the hangouts are that sometimes will make up for being a little bit far from the campus.  If you're where all the hangout places, the cool places are that helps you out. The other thing in student housing is the bedroom bathroom parody. If you could get a one-on-one with a one-bedroom and one bathroom that's going to be a lot better than your four twos or your 3 ones or whatever. The more bathrooms you have, they like that. Also, it seems that student nowadays, they want to share with fewer people. So a 4-2 wouldn't be as popular as a 2-1, you know where you still got two people sharing a bathroom, but you only have two people that have to get along with each other. And if you could get a 1-1, you're even better off; that they're a lot happier with.  In fact, I was talking to someone the other day that I had some 4-2 that I actually split them in half and made two ones out of them. Just had to put a kitchenette in order that they have fewer people to share. James: Okay, interesting. So have you started focusing fully on student housing now or you're still doing conventional multifamily? Jeff:  We're doing both because I do like the fact that people mess up student housing and it gives us an opportunity, you know, everybody we know from the groups we're in, everybody's looking for value-add multifamily, but there are fewer people looking for value-add student housing. And so that just gives me a little bit of an advantage on that. But other than that, I mean that's the main reason I'm looking at student housing is that there are fewer people looking at it and if you know what to do with the student housing, there are certainly some great opportunities. I don't think I would recommend it as somebody's first opportunity, the first investment because there is a little more risk into it, but it's a good asset class.  James: So let's discuss some of the risks that's involved with student housing. So can you outline a few risks that a newbie should watch out for student housing?  Jeff: Yeah. Well, part of the risk is missing the lease up window, wherein multifamily if you don't get it leased it up this month, maybe I'll lease it up next month. But on student housing, if you get it leased up by a certain time and each campus is usually different, if you don't get it leased up in time, during that time, you may be stuck with empty units for the whole year. So you've got to get it leased up during that time.  The other thing is, you're going to have higher turnover and it depends on the property as well. My Georgia property, we're hardly getting any turnover because there are not a lot of other options in the market. My Ohio property there's plenty of other options so they may go from one property to another each year. Same with my Arizona property, they may switch around. So it's going to depend on what's available at their price range if there's going to be turnover.  My first year on the Ohio property, I think was like 85 percent turnover, which most people will freak out thinking, you know, okay, 85% and it's all at once. It's everybody's gone at the same time. And so, you've got to turn all these units and have them ready for the new tenants coming in. So we always budget for a higher expense as far as because of the turnovers because turnovers, as we know, is one of our bigger expenses so we'll budget for that.  A lot of people think that student housing, you have a lot more in the way of damage and we really haven't seen that, we haven't seen a lot of damage. And the thing is we charge back everything that's caused by the students that not that normal wear and tear. I mean, we get things; wine stains in the carpeting or iron marks where they put an iron down on the carpeting and melted the carpet, shot glasses or beer caps in the garbage disposal. We do get lockouts, you know, where were you're having to fix the door because somebody kicked it in, in order to get in or you get domestic disputes where some boyfriend goes and punches a wall because he's pissed off or something. I mean, we do get some of those but the deposits cover most of that stuff.  James: Got it. I'm sure the parents will pay too, I guess. Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, if it gets beyond the deposit we have then the parents will usually jump in. James:  And how much is the turnover cost that you usually budget for student housing like in conventional usually like for me I usually budget like $100 per unit, per year? Jeff: As far as for turnover? James: Yeah. Not repair and maintenance,  just turn over.  Jeff: Well, if we look at the overall repair and maintenance budget usually we're about five or six hundred, overall. And my student housing ones, my Ohio, I believe we're at 1,800 per units. James: Repair and maintenance? Jeff: Yeah. James: Well, that's a lot.  Jeff: I have to lower that down. I don't even think we're using that but that's what I originally put it about. James: Okay. Got it. Yeah. Because usually total repair and maintenance plus turnover is like 500 to maximum $600 on conventional.  Jeff: Yeah, I mean, mainly because of your turnover costs. On that property, we've been painting every wall every time we turn over. I'm not sure if we need that but we've been doing that. It's been a little bit higher. I mean, it's been higher on that one. The other one in Georgia, our turnover costs aren't nearly as much.  James: And what do you expect other than, do you do anything special to reduce your turnover cost? Jeff:  Well, we try to encourage re-leasing and we do give lower rates for those people that are releasing as well as if they release early, we do give them discounts on that. And in the thing is, on my Georgia property, if they release, we may keep their rents at the same rate or maybe just raise it slightly in order to keep them in because that saves us a lot of money. That saves us a lot of money on the turnovers.  James: Okay, correct. What about the interior? Like carpets vs. vinyl vs metal.  Jeff: Typically, I mean, we don't have to make it too fancy. But we do put, I believe in the Ohio one, we've got the role on vinyl flooring. In the bedrooms, we do have carpeting. It's just Formica countertops. We don't need to do anything fancy and that's going to depend as well on the demographics of your clients. My Ohio property is upper middle class. It's Miami University and it's probably an upper-middle-class clientele. My Georgia property is a very low economic clientele, they would be thrilled with anything we put in there. So we just kind of resurface the Formica countertops. We did some chemical wash on the showers and the tubs and repainted everything. We do have nice laminate floors in there, except for the bedrooms. The bedrooms are the only rooms with carpeting. We just painted the cabinets. From the state that they were in, what we did just totally brightened up the property. I mean, just totally changed it. They were a mess and this isn't an old property. That's a 1999 property but there was some old indoor-outdoor carpeting in the hallways that just look just totally disgusting. That we put all vinyl laminate in the hallway and it looks great now. James: Awesome. And what about during the summer? I mean a lot of them don't stay in the unit, right? So they still pay for the summer or does it get re-rent or is it vacant or what's happening? Jeff: Again, that depends on each of our markets. And the Georgia one, I believe we are 70% for this summer, which is high. I think last year we were about 60 percent during the summer. So those that are going to summer school can stay there. But in August, we'll be back up at 98 to 100% on that property.  That was a property we bought at 30% occupied and now we're over 100, we're at 100 like it's not over. We're at 100% occupancy on that one. James: And what about students which is more like, you know, four-year degree versus postgraduate degree, have you tried experimenting with that? Jeff:  You know, my Ohio property, we have some studio apartments and a lot of those are rented to graduates as well as young Professor. So yeah, those are great tenants if you can get them. The graduates, they're a little more mature and you never hear anything from them so those are great on some of the properties. We do have graduates in some properties, but most of them are second-year students. Typically the schools require that the students stay on campus the first year so as freshmen, so we usually get them as sophomores. James: Got it. So coming back to the demand side of it for student housing. I'm just trying to understand but I lost my train of thought here. I mean, for example, let's say the price, in terms of rent, I mean the rent is much higher compared to the normal workforce housing. Do you think that's a benefit as well?  Jeff: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And the rent is higher than we get more benefit from the additional rent than it costs us on any additional maintenance expenses. So there is a higher cost benefit that we do get from the student housing. So that's one of the things we like. The other thing that we do like also about the student housing is it is fairly recession-resilient and you know, we all know that we're at a high point in our market right now, we don't quite know what's going on, as far as where we're going to be in the economy. And student housing, historically, has done very well during down markets and that's something also that I look at when I look at properties. How well did it do during the last recession and to see how far down it dipped. And typically you find that student housing and as well as self-storage typically do well in those markets. And so that's another reason why we like looking at those deals.  James: Well, yeah, I mean the rationale is people go to school when the economy is downturn right? Jeff: That's part of it. And the other thing is parents are going to try to get their kids into college as soon as they get out of high school because if they lose them to the workforce for a year or two, it's going to be really tough getting them back in. So if a parent is going to be paying for their kid, they are going to find a way to do it. Otherwise, they may not get them in the college later on.  James: Got it. So, in terms of value-add and I'm sure you are trying to make your community, in terms of student housing much better than other communities. So is there one of the value-adds that you do in your community that you think, you know, you will be able to command much higher rent and much higher occupancy? Jeff: Well, the one we haven't really done is the bed to bath parity. And as I mentioned the person that broke a 4 2 into a 2 1 that was a value-add because as I said, the students prefer not to share. If you could add another bathroom, so you've got 2-2 even if it's a small little bathroom, you know, or just a makeup area with a sink that's of great value because the students now don't like to share the bathrooms.  In Ohio, I've got some 4-4s, as well as some 4-2s but they love having their own private bathroom. In Arizona is all 5-2s - five bedrooms, two baths. That's not as desirable. If I could put in some other baths, I would probably you know, make people happy but that's well expensive. That's not a real cost-effective way of doing it. But also in the Georgia property, we put Wi-Fi throughout the property. So essentially, anywhere they get on the campus or on the property they've got the Wi-Fi. So that was definitely a value-add that we put into it. James:  What about other things like study rooms or the Library, the community? Jeff: We just redid our office and we did put in a workspace. James: A workspace, a business center.  Jeff: Yeah a business center. Exactly. We did put in a business center where they could come in and print if they need to print documents because a lot of people, a lot of the kids have their tablets or their laptops or their phones or whatever, but they may not even have printers these days. And I guess a lot of the stuff they submit right online in a PDF to their teacher whatever but we did create the business center so they could come in and print stuff out if they need to. And also have a scanner where they can scan their documents.  The other thing that we were looking at but we may leave for the next owner because we are selling this property, is a picnic area. We haven't built that yet; put a picnic area with some barbecues and that kind of stuff but that's the last phase of what we've been trying to do on this property. The main thing on this property is, the students have loved it, just fixing it up so it's much more livable. It was pretty disgusting when we got there. I mean it was a nasty place and that's why it was 30% occupied. And now, we've got the premium property in the market.  James: Yeah. I mean, there you go. I mean, value-add in terms of managing it. So people love that. Jeff: And then the other thing that we did on this particular property is we got a relationship with the school. We went on campus and talk to all the coaches and told them we wanted them to send their athletes over to the property. And at first, well, the track coach went and looked at us like we were from Mars and said, "Why would I want to send my kids over there?" And then we invited him to come over and look at the property to see what we have done. And now we've got a bunch of athletes over there now after they've seen the improvements we've done.  We also have participated as a sponsor with the athletic department where we give them a donation every year and we've been able to get an advertisement spot on their Jumbotron during all home basketball and football games and so we've been putting our advertisement there. That's why we're essentially 100% with waiting lists on the property. You know, we got a relationship with them, we went and communicated with the police chief and the mayor. The mayor actually came out to our open house wearing one of our t-shirts, the mayor of the city. So we got really involved with the community and it's a small market but we did get involved with that and all of that essentially added value. As I said, we've got a waiting list now, we can raise rents. The main thing that we were emphasizing throughout this two-year hold, we've only had it for a little over two years, was getting the occupancy up. That was the big thing. I wanted the occupancy up, I didn't care about raising rents. Now, we've got the occupancy now, we're going to start raising rents. Or what we're doing is we're actually selling it. So we're leaving it for the next person. The next guy could come in raise rents without having to do anything. They can come in and raise rents without having to do anything just because we've redone this entire property.  James: Awesome, awesome. Very, very, very, very interesting tips on how to get engage in student housing marketing. So what about financing, who gives the financing? Is it still agency loans or is it small Banks or how's that?  Jeff: Well, we'll start off with the Georgia, probably. The Georgia property we paid all cash. At 30% occupied we weren't going to be looking for a lender. Yeah, my Ohio property that was a challenge and it ended up that I went with a privately owned bank. It's not a small bank, it has 36 branches so I wouldn't call it really small but it's privately held and they loan in Kentucky and Ohio, I think. So if anybody's looking for either student housing or lending, they do those two states. They're actually a Kentucky-based lender. The Arizona one was just a regular bridge lender that funded that one and eventually, we'll go out of the bridge into an agency loan.  James: So you think you can get an agency loan on student housing?  Jeff: Yeah. We can get an agency loan. James: Because I know usually when I go to an agency, they usually ask, you know, how many percents are students, how many percents are corporate housing and all that so I'm not sure. Jeff: Yeah, I don't remember if it's Fannie or Freddie that will do student housing. But they do require a certain population. I think it's 15,000 student population, something like that. James: Got it. Oh, really? Okay, that's interesting.  Jeff: Yeah, but I don't remember which one it was but one of them will do agency. James: Yeah, that's awesome. So, let's go back to slightly more personal questions. So do you have any proud moment in your real estate career that you're going to remember for a long time, that you think 'I really, really did something that I'm really, really proud of', do you want to share that?  Jeff: Oh, I could go back to the Georgia property where I had a period that I actually was brought to tears. When we were doing that video that I was talking about that we gave to the school to put on there, our advertisement, I actually went down and did the interviewing of the students myself for that property because I have a background in video. And the stuff that our property management was taking was just horrendous.  I went down there and interviewed the students and I didn't tell them who I was, they didn't know I was one of the owners or the owner. And the last question I asked them was if you had an opportunity to talk to the owner or to let the ownership know, what would you tell them? And some of the answers that I got were just tearjerkers. I mean, I had one girl that said that she was so happy with her new room that she now can actually bring her mom and show her where she lived that she was actually proud of where she was living now. And some of the other students were just saying, how much safer they felt, you know, much nicer environment. We had gotten rid of all the riffraff. We had gotten rid of a lot of people that were not students, but they were just living there and just smoking dope and we had increased the security and we had the police coming by, you know, just to keep things safe. And so just talking to these kids, they're not kids, they are 19- 20-year-old, you know, young adults, but that was one of the most rewarding moments I had. Because here they were, this is a low economic area where most of these students have very disadvantaged upbringing and we were giving them a nice clean safe place to live that they can be proud of.  And they appreciate it much more so than some of the other properties where we may have upper-middle-class people in there that probably don't appreciate what you're doing as much as these guys do. So that was just an absolute, you know, great opportunity to be there with these guys.  James: Yeah. It's very interesting on how we as entrepreneurs and operators change people's lives and it's just so fulfilling when you do that. And for me, It means a lot. Making the money, I mean, this story, you will always remember it. Sometimes you forget about how much money you made in that deal but you will remember how you impacted people's life, which is amazing. Jeff: Yeah, I mean, that's what I think about. I mean certainly we're all going to make money on this deal, you know, a good amount once we sell this but that feeling, you know, I'll have all the time. I mean that was great, you know hearing these guys.  James: So any advice that you want to give for newbies who want to walk your path in multifamily and student housing in general; if they want to be as successful as you? Jeff:  The thing is, find somebody that has walked the walk. You know, it could be a mentor, it could be a formal mentor, it could be somebody that's doing it. If you find somebody in your area or someone you meet up that is successful in whatever it is they're doing, be it multifamily, student housing, you know, senior living whatever; you find somebody else that's successful and find a way of being some kind of service to them. How you can help them out and go to them with that, hey, I would like to help you out. Do something and learn from them. That's the best way to learn anything is to be working with somebody else that's doing it. You know that would be what I would do. I did some formal mentoring in the beginning and that helped me get started. I would have loved to have been working side by side with someone with more experience. As it was, my partner and I were both about at the same level when we started but being around someone that's been there and done that is a great way to start out in this business.  James: Awesome. Awesome. Hey Jeff, we almost there to the end. You want to let our audience know how to reach you?   Jeff: Well, you can email me jeff@synergeticig.com or you could go to my website, which is also www.synergeticig.com  You could also get a hold of me at Bigger Pockets and I'm around on the forms a little bit. James: Yeah, I remember when I was starting in real estate, I used to see you a lot on Bigger Pockets. So it's good. Jeff:  I haven't been on as much lately. I need to start renewing some of that but I was on a lot in the beginning. That got me a lot. I mean it got me on my first podcast so... James: Awesome. Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks for adding value to our listeners and audience here. I'm sure we learned a lot. I learned a lot as well, in terms of student housing and the nuances of how to add value in student housing and how to operate and at least look at the deal. And so it was very good to have you here, and that's it. Thank you very much and talk to you soon.  Jeff: Thank you.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Jeff, you mentioned to me that you went across the Amazon in Brazil.Jeff: Yes. Yes. I was going to South America and when I do a trip I don't like to be a regular tourist and just go and sightsee, so I got an idea from a National Geographic magazine to go straight across South America from the Pacific Ocean in Peru, starting in Peru, across to the Atlantic Ocean on the opposite side in Brazil and you have to go through the Andes Mountains and then you have to go across and through the Amazon, so that's what I did.Todd: That's fantastic.Jeff: It was a good trip.Todd: How did you go? Did you travel alone? I mean it must have been dangerous.Jeff: It was. It was dangerous. It was high season, monsoon season, so the river was high, and of course they speak Spanish in South America and I can't speak Spanish and I was traveling alone and I didn't want to travel alone. It's too dangerous, so I had to look for another travel partner who was a little bit as crazy as I was to do this trip, so when I arrived in Lima, the capital of Peru, I started looking around for someone else who looked like a tough, good traveller, and one night in my guesthouse, this bald Russian guy came into the guesthouse carrying a big pack, and he had a big pack with a tent, a sleeping bag strapped to it and he had a big machete hanging off his belt, and I said this guys perfect, so went up and talked to him.Todd: He sounds a little bit like Indiana Jones.Jeff: Oh, he was great. He was a great guy, and his wife is Mexican so he spoke perfect Spanish, so I told him my idea and he was gung ho. He was ready to do it.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Jeff, you mentioned to me that you went across the Amazon in Brazil.Jeff: Yes. Yes. I was going to South America and when I do a trip I don't like to be a regular tourist and just go and sightsee, so I got an idea from a National Geographic magazine to go straight across South America from the Pacific Ocean in Peru, starting in Peru, across to the Atlantic Ocean on the opposite side in Brazil and you have to go through the Andes Mountains and then you have to go across and through the Amazon, so that's what I did.Todd: That's fantastic.Jeff: It was a good trip.Todd: How did you go? Did you travel alone? I mean it must have been dangerous.Jeff: It was. It was dangerous. It was high season, monsoon season, so the river was high, and of course they speak Spanish in South America and I can't speak Spanish and I was traveling alone and I didn't want to travel alone. It's too dangerous, so I had to look for another travel partner who was a little bit as crazy as I was to do this trip, so when I arrived in Lima, the capital of Peru, I started looking around for someone else who looked like a tough, good traveller, and one night in my guesthouse, this bald Russian guy came into the guesthouse carrying a big pack, and he had a big pack with a tent, a sleeping bag strapped to it and he had a big machete hanging off his belt, and I said this guys perfect, so went up and talked to him.Todd: He sounds a little bit like Indiana Jones.Jeff: Oh, he was great. He was a great guy, and his wife is Mexican so he spoke perfect Spanish, so I told him my idea and he was gung ho. He was ready to do it.

In today's podcast Mason chats to Jeff Chilton. Jeff has been working in the medicinal mushroom industry since 1973 and is an absolute specialist in his field. Jeff is the founder of Nammex, the leading supplier of organic mushroom extracts in the world today. With over 40 years of mushroom growing experience, Jeff was one of the first people to bring mushroom extracts to the North American market. All you medicinal mushroom nerds out there make sure you catch this episode, Jeff is a deep reservoir of knowledge and insight!   The gents wax lyrical over: The ins and outs of mushroom harvesting. The difference between products made from mushroom mycelium as opposed to their fruiting body.  Cordyceps Cs-4. The inferior nature of grain grown medicinal mushroom products. The nature of the medicinal mushroom industry at large, and what to look out for in regards to quality and authenticity. Following your passion in business. Retaining your integrity in the mushroom industry. Polysaccharides and betaglucans. China as a superior source Who is Jeff Chilton ?   Resources  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 :)! Plus  we're on Spotify and Soundcloud!   Check Out The Transcript Here: Time to talk tonic herbalism people. Maybe some medicinal mushrooms and philosophy for longevity, so pour yourself a tonic and get ready to get super human, baby. Let's start the show!   Mason: Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Got one that, I've been really looking forward to doing this interview. Jeff Chilton, I'll go into a little breakdown now, rather than just jumping ahead to why I'm really into his work. He's been in the mushroom industry since 1973. When it comes to mushroom cultivation, back then, he was really pioneering. Especially, a lot of the mushrooms that we have available today via cultivation in the west.   Mason: He had a lot to do with the developing the manufacturing of those. Then in 1989, switched over to the manufacturing of medicinal mushroom extract, so he's OG in this medicinal mushroom world. There was no real trending back then. And I, like him, we met two years ago at a herbal symposium in Oregon. That's when I really ... super aware of him and just how he was just via just his own integrity and just educating the market.   Mason: He became this internal watchdog of the industry. Just in the sense of just calling out real bad practices that are going on in the medicinal mushroom industry, and still today, and educating people, so you can spot a product on the market which is telling fibs, and really doesn't have the good stuff that we have all come to know and love about medicinal mushrooms.   Mason: So NAMMEX is his company, also Real Mushrooms, and I love the fact that we can sit down as colleagues, offering medicinal mushrooms, having more at it from the Taoist perspective and Jeff just rocking gin that specialization of mushrooms and especially being such an originator of the entire industry. I really love to be able to sit down, talk with him and ask him about the history, especially he's really been shining in educating people about the difference between growing medicinal mushrooms on wood and on mycelium. And we dive into nuances of that.   Mason: Basically we talk about the industry and we talk about setting up relationships in China and just how amazing it is to be able to source really incredible, the most high quality mushrooms that you're gonna be able to get in the world outside of a wild cultivated situation. Where we are talking about medicinal qualities. Getting those from China and being able to educate people about the beauty of getting them from China. We talk a little bit about that.   Mason: Also what it's taken for us to develop the relationships with growers and farmers and so I think you'll find it really interesting hearing me from 2011, Jeff from 1989 really navigating the difference in our stories. As well we go into organic because Jeff has pioneered in getting the first certified organic mushroom supplement in the US which is really amazing. We go a little bit into that, I share my two cents on where I see organic is at. More so the reason why I like Jeff is because he's not like most companies that just think the be all and end all is paying for this little sticker, jumping through a couple of hurdles and getting the sticker on your product.   Mason: But what we call going beyond organic. And Jeff does that with the organic certification and I share my two cents on where I'm at with that whole thing. But mostly just how much I love that he's non-stop out there educating people. Not just trying to flog a product, not just trying to grow this crazy big business. But I think that's kind of inevitably happening, it's just a nice slow growth of a business. Because it has a lot of trust and it has a lot of consistency in its messaging. And we talk a lot about that and have a lot of laughs and get a couple of stories about the history of the mushroom kingdom and those mushroom people back in the day. We talk about mushroom conferences and a bunch of other things. I think you'll really enjoy it, I hope as much as I did, here's Jeff Chilton from NAMMAX.   Mason: Jeff, thanks for joining me, man.   Jeff: Hey Mason, thanks a lot for having me.   Mason: Absolute pleasure, so remind me where are you again in the world?   Jeff: I am in British Columbia, Canada. I like on Vancouver Island out on the West Coast. You and I are actually connected by the Pacific Ocean.   Mason: Vancouver Island especially, for some reason that just keeps on calling in. I keep on having friends, awesome friends and now you. You're waiting there. And I'm like "What is the pull?"   Jeff: Yeah. You have gotta come. Definitely come in our summer time because otherwise you'll just be hit by all of those things you don't like, which is rain and all the rest.   Mason: Well, it brings mushrooms, yeah?   Jeff: It's true.   Mason: When is it really on for you there? What months is it on for mushroom harvesting?   Jeff: Mushroom season is really going strong in October. First couple weeks in November still happening but then things cool off too much then it slows down and there's nothing happening. We get rains in August, which really primes things then in the last couple weeks in September we could see things starting to pop up.   Mason: All right, I love it. October, that sounds good to me. Let's dive in a little bit because we met maybe we were chatting it must've been two years ago.   Jeff: At the American Herbalist Guild Conference in Oregon, which was just awesome.   Mason: That was amazing, I mean, we were in Silverton? Is that right?   Jeff: Silverton, exactly, yeah, that's where we were.   Mason: But apparently not the witch one. No, I think that's on the other side. Tony was looking at Silverton but that's where all the witches were.   Jeff: Oh, ah   Mason: That's a different Silverton. I can't remember the name of the hotel but their grounds rolling in and the ginkgo trees, big ginkgo trees as well lining it. And then all the herbalists who came and did their herb walks were just frothing at how much they were able to go and show everyone how to forage, how to identify. Because the array of herbs there was incredible. That place is designed.   Jeff: It was absolutely designed. It was a huge property and they put in all sorts of different plants, herbs and different kinds of trees. It was a beautiful venue there are a great place to have that. Even on the Saturday night when they had a band playing and everybody was dancing. I had a great time.   Mason: That's so good, yeah. I imagine that place gets a lot of herbal symposiums going through it. And man, the best thing, the fig tree was kicking. Did you get up there and face on the fig then, during that symposium? That was the best part of it. Right next to the pine.   Jeff: Oh my goodness, no. I hardly had a chance to get outside which is back to my place where I was staying on the grounds and then down to the venue. But I was locked into my booth most of the time and talking to people. And then in the evenings it was nice. It was a fun thing. And I know you said you had a chance to get to hear Christopher Hobbs while you were there. That had to have been really great because I always enjoy seeing Chris. I know he was really busy in fact, funny thing was Chris told me, he said "God, I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with you. I ran into an old girlfriend."   Mason: Oh, right, I'm happy for him.   Jeff: Me too.   Mason: You're like, 100%, I can't contend with that. So '86 Hobbs wrote the book. Were you aware when his book 'Medicinal Mushrooms' came out, because when was NAMMAX first created?   Jeff: I started the business in 1989. I'm trying to remember whether I knew Chris at that point in time or not, but he was part of the whole herbal industry, so to speak, and Herbalist Guild and all of that back then. I wasn't nearly as much in touch with herbalists until I started my company. Before that it was just pretty much just mushroom people and all the people that were in the mushroom world over here. There are a lot of them. Mushrooms really happening. Long before the herbal industry figured it out and got wind of it.Chris was one of the first because he was an herbalist but also was interested in fungi. So that was really cool.   Mason: Yeah, I think he studied and formally became a mycologist as well.   Jeff: Well, no, he was a botanist, definitely a trained botanist and a history orf botany in his family. Herbalists and things like that. And now he went on and he got a PhD in molecular genetics.   Mason: Okay, he's going down that route. I like that book because he was really able to balance the mystical aspects of the mushroom herbal kingdom especially and then dive deep down into the science. It's something that only him and Steven Hardliner. Steven is the master at going down deep, molecular how a particular compound is interacting with a particular viral passade. And then blowing into full throttle Earth poetry in the next paragraph. It's a real gift. Going back to the 80s, you were running with the mushroom clique in America. Yeah, tell us the story.   Jeff: The thing was in the 70s... Well, first of all in the late 60s magic mushrooms were really great interest. That was one of the things that I was really studying at university. I had this interested in mushrooms in the 60s and I reading all about a man named Gordon Wasson. Are you familiar with Gordon Wasson?   Mason: Just the name and loosely, but not really.   Jeff: Yeah, so Gord Wasson was a New York banker with a Russian wife. He learned about mushrooms being used deep in the mountains of Mexico by Curanderez and went down there in the 50s and spent the next five summers down there. He classified a whole bunch of different psilocybes during that period because he took a French mycologist with him. And so, five summers. But he basically opened up this whole world of Look! Still today after thousands of years there are people in the world that are still using these psychoactive mushrooms in their healing practices. Man, that was a mindblower.   Jeff: So I was reading Watson and other people that were involved in that and they had published these books that were incredible books. I mean Watson went on to publish a book called 'Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.' He published that in 1968.   Jeff: Then somebody came along a man named John Allegro came and published a book called 'Sacred Mushroom and the Cross,' which talked about mushrooms in early Christianity. So, Mason, listen, think about it for a second. In 1968 two books are published. One says that a mushroom is at the root of Christianity. The other one says a mushroom is at the root of the Hindu religion.   Jeff: And then all of a sudden from there it just... You get going forward and you find that mushrooms, you see symbols of them and you start to hear stories about them used through all sorts of different groups throughout history. Pre-history actually, because as that came out people started looking and discovering this. That was really part of my study in university because I was studying anthropology. And mycology on the side.   Jeff: Going into the 70s in Olympia, Washington where I lived and worked on this big mushroom farm there was a whole core of people that were interested in mushrooms. It was an amazing group of people. Paul Stamos is one of those people. Ultimately he and I wrote the book called 'The Mushroom Cultivator' in 1983. We even had a group. We had four people, Paul and I and two other people, where we had four different mushroom conferences. These conferences were so ... You would have enjoyed it so much. We had people there that were speaking about how to identify mushrooms. I was speaking on cultivation of mushrooms, speaking on the anthropological aspect of mushrooms. We had great people there speaking. There was Andre Wyle was at our conferences. And it was just a great time had by everybody, right? You can imagine. All these mushroom people coming together. 200 people coming together for a weekend. Amazing.   Mason: So good. I mean, it's different, you got this original crew, there's always something special when you've got the original crew.   Jeff: Yeah.   Mason: There's a medicinal mushroom symposium every year that moves around the world. It was in Colombia a couple of years ago and then in Italy. Do you know that one?   Jeff: You're actually talking about the International Medicinal Mushroom --   Mason: Conference?   Jeff: Society IMMS and you know what? And that was more of a scientific group that was formed much later. I know the principles of the group. It started somewhere around 1999. They're having a conference in China on the 18th of September this year. You should come. I'm gonna be over there at this conference. I know lots of other people are gonna be there as well. It's gonna be an interesting time. I'm gonna be giving a paper there, which will be fun. There will be lots of other people too. I don't know what time of year you go to China.   Mason: Yeah, I go in September. I think this year we've got our staff retreat in September. I'm gonna check the dates, but otherwise I've been wanting to get along anyway. I've been trying to revolve it around going to Wudang mountain and doing some Taoist training as well. This is where I've been tossing up this year, what time to get over there. But that sounds a bit serendipitous.   Jeff: Yeah, well, the conference is I believe the 18th to the 22nd of September. That's normally kind of early for us. We like to go over more in November. We go every year. November's really harvest time for a lot of mushrooms like Shiitake, Maitaki, Wood ear. A little bit later is Hericium, Lion's mane. In September it's the Reishi harvest.   Mason: Yeah, Reishi harvest is normally for us in September. Where's your Lion's mane growing? Which region?   Jeff: It's growing in Fujian province.   Mason: Okay. Ours is a little bit earlier, in September as well. In Heilongjiang. In the northeast.   Jeff: Okay, yeah, because in Fujian province it is late, late November when it's quite cold. It's back to the mountains, quite cold. Maybe up in Heilongjiang it's colder in there right?   Mason: It's chilly.   Jeff: (laughs)   Mason: That's spoken like a true Australian.   Jeff: Let's fly in and start up north there and step off. I just can't wait to get to Yunan province.   Mason: (laughs)   Jeff: I can't wait to get down into that tropical vibe. Although, nothing beats that crisp air.   Jeff: Well that's good. I'm at that point where -- I don't know when your periods of this business growth have been -- but I've been real head down, bum up in the business. Not really been in that space of upgrading my information. Of course, I'm always reading and everything, doing all these things. I feel like that's like, you're at a point in your business where you are traveling around and you're educated. You're back at that point where you're free to go and educate and then go and educate yourself non-stop, constantly, which is really nice. I'm nearly back there.   Jeff: Yeah, you know what it's like. We are so swamped right now. We've got so much demand for the product right now. We're growing and over the past two years we've hired four people, two people for lab and another person for regulatory and, can you imagine, we've got one person that's strictly regulatory affairs and deals with all the paperwork that we have to deal with. The paperwork is really monumental. We get forms from companies that are 220 questions!   Mason: Companies that you're doing business with and they wanna know, looking at purity or is it you getting stocked with them that they want all those questions answered?   Jeff: No, they qualify their suppliers. And so this is all about GMPs for the most part and how your product is manufactured. They want to know that everything is according to the GMP, quality, and the standard operating procedures and all the rest.   Mason: I think that's where Real Mushrooms. Was it your son that created Real Mushrooms?   Jeff: Real Mushrooms, yeah. Sky created Real Mushrooms in 2015 as part of NAMMAX so it's just one division of the company. He runs Real Mushrooms as well as other things because he's in training to allow me to go fishing and he can stay and do all the work.   Mason: Great. NAMMAX is providing more providing bulk for people that are putting it into products and stuff?   Jeff: We're a business to business. We sell the raw materials and then Real Mushrooms is retail products and mostly sold online. Maybe getting it into the stores at some point, but right now an online business. But we're business to business where we sell to companies that then put the raw materials out under their own brand.   Mason: Does NAMMAX do... I'm increasingly aware because I think NAMMAX... we get a lot of people asking at SuperFeast but we don't really specialize in that B2B space. But one thing I want to talk a little bit about later is a lot of people who, like NAMMAX has bridged it and made it really accessible. Especially with you and the middlemen not having to deal straight with trying to... I'm still appreciating, it took me quite a few years but you'd know the in's and out's beyond what it's like developing relationships, critiquing, getting the authenticity on the testing. Also developing a relationship based on integrity and qualifying on that level takes so long. I feel like NAMMAX has really made it possible.   Mason: I know a lot of people in Australia who are like "Ah, great, I can just go and NAMMAX can just do it all for me." Which is really great, because there's a lot of people. I like it because there's a lot of people jumping onto the bandwagon, and Australia has got this nice buffer. We don't have too much shit here, which is really good. And that's something that's nice for me to be able to say about my competitors as well. Australian community doesn't need to be as wary, I think, as the U.S. world because the U.S. is a bit...I didn't realize it's a shit fight. I know talking to you a lot back in the day, I don't think I presented that I was from SuperFeast. We were just talking about mushrooms and I was just learning a bunch off you and learning about your history.   Mason: As a company when I started out it was an absolute no-brainer that we weren't gonna use fillers, that I wasn't going to be using mycelium product myself. We'll talk about that, it has its place. Of course, growing on good-quality wood. In Australia we're just small companies. I started in Mum's spare room getting products for me and Mum. Then talking to you I was like... and then reading your blogs and really falling off the back of it just like that. Wow, because you actually really inspired me after that talk going, "Well of course, I do talk about the fact that we don't use fillers and we don't grow on grains." And all these kinds of things, but it was getting to that point I didn't realize people really needed to know the in's and out's of your product and be able to ...   Mason: After seeing what happened in America with how much trickery there is and the percentages of polysaccharides there is, lets' go into it a little bit now. You've been watching it and been the internal watchdog of the industry, which I really like. When did that first start cropping up? When did people start jumping on the mushroom bandwagon and fibbing about the levels of polysaccharides and active ingredients?   Jeff: The interesting thing was that having been in the supplement industry since 1989, the key thing for me was that I was a mushroom grower by trade. So i spent ten years as a commercial mushroom grower on a very big, big farm. Not a hobbyist growing in my basement or a closet or something like this. A commercial mushroom grower, large farm. Millions of pounds of mushrooms every year. So I knew how it all worked, I knew the economics of it all. I realized back in the late 90s, for example. Or even the early 90s that you couldn't actually produce mushrooms in North America and turn them into a supplement, because it's a dry powder it's not a fresh product. Once you dry that thing out it's 90% water you gonna get ten times as much money for that pound of mushrooms. It doesn't work in the supplement world.   Jeff: That's where going to China and I went to farms, I went to factories, I went to research institutes, I went to conferences. The 90s was just amazing to see what was going on. I went north to south, east to west. Yunan province all the way up to Jilin province. It was all over China seeing this industry and seeing the research. One of the things, you talked a bit earlier about quality how do you know. Here I am visiting these companies going to all of these conferences. I'm having people coming up to me all the time saying, "Will you buy my product? Here it is." And they just show me a brown powder and I'm just like, it's a brown powder, I don't know what it is! How can I really know what that is. And then getting to know companies and people that were genuine and you could go to their factories and see what they were doing. Especially if they were only producing mushroom products and then building the relationships to that.   Jeff: Then I turned around and back in the United States here are these companies that come along and they start to produce mycelium on sterile grain. The worst part about it is they sell it as a mushroom.   Mason: Some people might not know what, so, we're talking about the fact, which you alluded to, which I completely agree with, that the only way to make a viable super high-quality product that's a powder is doing it in China. Based on the fact that, say you have 10 or 20 kilos worth of raw product that's gonna then give you a kilo of the powdered product in the end, it's not viable in the U.S. so to make it viable in the U.S., the way it generally works is that it's grown on a grain substrate, like rice, brown rice, oats, this kind of thing.   Jeff: Yeah, and the thing is, what people need to understand is that a mushroom is just one part of this fungal organism. So the other parts would be a spore, the spore germinates in to a fine filament, those filaments come together, they create mycelium, which is the actual body of the fungus. Which normally if you're out there hunting mushrooms you never see that because it's in the ground or it's in the wood. So most people are unaware of that. But that mycelial network amasses nutrients. When the conditions are right it produces the mushroom. That's what we see because up it comes and it's like "Wow, look at that thing there!" And then that matures, it produces spores, and then we have a complete life cycle.   Jeff: The interesting part, Mason, is that growing mycelium, which is the vegetative part of this organism, on sterile grain as a mushroom grower, what that is and what that was developed as mushroom spawn. Which is like the seed that is used to grow mushrooms. Because mushrooms don't have seeds they have spores. You don't plant spores when you grow mushrooms, you plant live mycelium. The mushroom growing world, what they developed is "Okay, we'll take that live mycelium and we'll put it onto some kind of a carrier. Then that carrier we can spread into our compost or whatever it was that they're growing their mushrooms in. If you take a gallon of grain, you've got maybe thousands of grains in there you coat that with mycelium, and then you take those thousands of grains and you can mix them into a big pile of straw or compost or something. Each one of those mycelium grows off of and it grows into this thing. So that myceliated grain actually was developed in the 1930s as mushroom spawn or essentially seed to grow mushroom.   Jeff: It's an easy process, it's done in a lab and people in the United States, we can't grow mushrooms. Why don't we just take that process, we'll grow out the mycelium. Mycelium in and of itself it's got beneficial properties because it is a fungal hyphae that has beta glucans in its cell walls. If you grow it in a certain way like in liquid or something it can produce certain medicinal compounds. But when you grow it on grain and then you don't separate it out from the grain at the end of the process you end up with mostly grain powder. That's what companies started to do. They started to grow the mycelium on grain. At the end of the process they would dry it -- just like you're drying a mushroom, but -- they'd dry it, they would grind it to a powder. No mushroom there at all. No mushroom, it's just myceliated grain, and it's mostly the grain powder. Finally, the worst part about it is then they call it mushroom when they sell it.   Mason: I definitely know I've been surprised, because my first trip to the States I went and bought all the different brands. I was floored by some of the grainy non-mushroom powder that I was buying. That was like white powder, it's in your face.   Jeff: Yeah, white powder and you taste it and you're like, "How's it supposed to taste like mushroom? It tastes kind of like flour."   Mason: Yeah, it's like flour, sawdust. So are there companies doing a mycelial growth that are more on the ethical spectrum, that they're not doing a full grain wash and that they're growing on a particular grain that they're able to separate out a lot of the mycelium? I know that a lot of the mycelium is embodied grain. That's just a reality that you're not gonna be able to get rid of. But I'm trying to play that... is that possible in your experience?   Jeff: In China they grow mycelium in large tanks of liquid.   Mason: Like Cs-4 Cordycep, yeah.   Jeff: Yeah, Cs-4 Cordyceps. They've been doing that for 50 years. But the thing is that it takes a lot of money to put in a big facility that can grow and these tanks are huge and you have to have a steam generator. It's a big investment but to actually grow out the mycelium on sterilized grain does not take a lot of money, it doesn't take a lot of expertise. It's a very simple process. Anybody can do it. In my book that I published in 1983, it tells you how to manufacture mycelium on grain at home in your kitchen. It's not difficult so it's very easy and ultimately, the stuff is so cheap to produce. And these people are selling it as mushroom and making a fortune doing it. It's really immoral in my opinion, and unethical. And especially if you're calling it mushroom.   Mason: I think because we sometimes maybe look at the market and what we subconsciously are looking for when we want a mushroom and most of the studies have been on if you're like... Most of the time we're looking for a fruiting body. That's the mushroom. It's the unspoken that we know that we're talking about is the fruiting body there? And I guess there are some companies that have been quite averse or trying to sign typically validate the mycelium. When I was first kicking around all this there were people going "Look, just have it all. Have the fruiting body, have the mycelium, have all these..." and I very quickly, before I had a company was like "Mmm, no." I'm not in this to justify a particular aspect of the market or go for ease. I'm in it personally, and especially in the beginning, being a dreadful romantic, trying to connect to a herbal system, particularly Taoist tonic herbalism for me.   Jeff: Exactly. The people who grow those products and they say "Oh, we want to have all parts of this. We want to have the spore, we want to have the mushroom, we want to have the mycelium." It's like they say "It's full spectrum." Well, the problem is that they leave out the fact that (A) there is no mushroom in it, and (B) the grain! How can it be a full spectrum product if they've got all of this grain in the product? That's what they don't like to talk about. They don't like to talk about the fact that it's mostly grain and all of this other stuff about "Oh, you know, the fruit body's in there and the spore's in there." Absolutely not. It's really a lot of smoke and mirrors.   Jeff: That's what's so hard to take is that when there are people out there actually espousing that and claiming that they've got a full spectrum product when in fact it doesn't take much in the way of analysis to prove what they do and they don't have. We've run analysis and what's really interesting is if you analyze it, for example, with a proximate analysis, which is proteins, carbohydrates, fats, ash, minerals. Those products line up perfectly with the grain they're grown on.   Mason: Are there exceptions to that?   Jeff: No. All of these products and there, it's the myceliated grain products. If it's grown on brown rice it lines up with brown rice. If it's grown on oats it lines up with oats. Literally the two lines run together. The way I like to think about it too is I talk to people and I tell them what they're growing is tempeh. And they say what tempeh is, it is cooked soybeans with fungal mycelium grown on it. If you look at that tempeh and it's all white that's the mycelium but if you look at tempeh and you cut it open you can see it's mostly the soybeans. And if you were to dry it out, look, Mason, mycelium is 90% water. Just like a mushroom. The soybeans are 50% water. When you dry that tempeh out the mycelium just goes "Fffft!" Just tell me, where's the mycelium? And you've got all of these dried soybeans and you're like, well, it's mostly dried soybeans, that product.   Mason: I'm sure you get it a lot as well. Yours, there's obviously a few brands in the U.S. becoming more aware of the others. I didn't go looking for them but as you move into a market. SuperFeast, I spoke to you about it the other day. We've got so many people ... like [inaudible 00:29:50] story. I've realized in business a lot of the time it's like, same with you, I like the people. I like the unique stories. People are like "Bring SuperFeast over, there's no one doing that like what you're doing over there!" I like, yeah.   Jeff: (laughs)   Mason: And it's the same. When you're upfront about the nuances although there's a lot of companies doing medicinal mushrooms like yourself and Taoist herbs like us, medicinal mushrooms. There's nuances there and the sourcing and there's nuances in the story. What I like is, which is going to get to the polysaccharide claim, and the full spectrum claim for the people growing the mycelium. Because people are in an egoic, competitive make money mentality a lot of the time. They think they have to be everything to everyone. Versus just being very upfront. I'm always quite upfront, I don't really look at that. I don't try and standardize color or anything in any way. I don't try and standardize the constituents. I don't even sell on the percentages of constituents. I don't focus on it. I'll move more in that direction because more and more people want to be satiated. I can say yes, we test for percentages of the active ingredients to ensure that they're in alignment with the Chinese cornucopia and ensure that they're actually active. And all that kind of stuff.   Mason: But going over into the States now and hearing about all these other brands and I'm with you whenever it's growing on grain I can't get behind it. Not to be disrespectful, and I'm always trying to be really amicable in my talks. There's a place for it, but less and less can I find that place.   Jeff: And I understand what you're saying too because if a person is genuine. For example the herbalists, who are at an American Herbal AHG conference. These are people that want to provide good products, they want to provide a body of knowledge to help people. That's who you wanna be, that's who I wanna be. I'm not in this to make a lot of money. I'm not in this to build some big company and go Oh, gee, isn't this great? Because I'm selling $20 million a year of this or that. That does not excite me at all. That has no meaning for me. What has meaning for me is that I'm producing a quality product that I've been working on for years and I can tell you the product is what I say it is and I want it to help you. I want you to be able to take this product and feel confidence that you're getting what the Chinese have used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. That's what I want.   Jeff: I don't want to sell you something that is not what it really is and is a placebo and expect you to buy the product from me and I walk away going "I'm managing this great at my company. I'm making so much money and it's wonderful." No, I'm sorry, that's not me. I'm not interested. Those people turn me off. It's like the difference between being in a group of people that really understand mushrooms or herbs and being in a group of people that are just talking business and numbers and all that kind of stuff. And I don't give a shit about that.   Mason: Yeah. I think it's interesting. Watching your business I can see in the beginning it probably would've started out that everyone knew Jeff and knew your level of integrity and how you just wanted a good product. In that little circle it was like 'Great, we'll just go and get Jeff's product.' Then as you grow I think what you've done really well ... just to put it as an example of why I'm bringing this up, we're getting to this point where we're growing as a company where it's beyond Mason at the markets and everyone knows that Mason has the badass tonic herbs. Or people are coming along to the talks and all the health clique. We've started emerging.   Mason: I think you would've gone through this years ago when you emerged beyond the health clique. And it's very dramatically people aren't associating directly with you or the founder, it's the company. They don't even know or care who the founder is and therefore you need to have these things in place. We're getting to the point where everyone who's a SuperFeast customer is just like, "Yeah, we don't even care about organic, we know what you guys are doing," and we're going on that old philosophy and we're documenting that and there's all those other checks in place like independent testing for pesticides and metals and all that in place and available.   Mason: But it's getting to that point now where the people on the very outside... I still don't know if we're really gonna shift because I still personally don't care and I don't change my company for perception's sake. But you can see Wow, that organic would be really, really useful for those people on the outside. Or the testing to know what percentage of what's going on inside and being able to present that. I think we'll move in that direction. I think you've done that really well and really maintained the trust in the brand of course, and in yourself. But maintaining you there as the one that's rolling this along and not then just relying, you know, the organic certification or the percentages.   Mason: I think that's what I find really commendable, because most people then they rest on their laurels. Once they change over into, not standardizing but testing for minimum constituents like beta-glucans or organic. they then rest on that. Whereas that means nothing to me at all. Being able to talk to you I'm like, Yeah, because organic, I don't know what your take on that. I know there's some terrible organic products out there. Just the fact that we know we can go organic there's five different companies we can go to, so you just go and find the company that suits you. We can go with the company that's the hardest to jump through.   Mason: I won't go into the details of what's going on, why we're probably not going to go in that direction. For us there's so many little micro-farms that we're being nimble with whom we're working with. When we're beyond mushrooms we've got a lot of other herbs going on. We need to cut that farm out if they need to move on and do something else and we'll go and we've got that team to go around and constantly go and find these people. So every time we want to nimbly adapt and go down a different direction when someone's doing a little more traditionally than the other person, all right, get the organic certify up. Or lie, which is what I think a lot of people are doing. They get the organic certification, then when they change up those little farmers, because we're dealing with independent farmers as well, not a company that can provide the organic certification. I don't know why I went on that rant. So that's why we're not going on down that route.   Mason: It's something I see. I know there's a bunch of companies who are coming to NAMMAX, which I think is just been so good for the Australian industry. For people to know that they're very quickly going to be introducing a really good quality. You can tick off the organic but I hate it when it's just organic that they are going for and not just an incredible product with a story behind it as well. So I really commend you for offering that out.   Jeff: I've always really believed in chemical-free food. Organic is more than just chemical-free it's how it's grown. When you're growing out of soil it's building the soil and not just depleting it. For me organics is a holistic way of looking at things. I've always considered that to be very important and I support that type of agriculture no matter what it is. A lot of these companies that are producing myceliated grain, they're organically certified!   Jeff: It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a great product. These companies have what I call all sorts of merit badges. 'We're big and we're organic, we're kosher, we're this, we're that,' which ultimately means nothing at all. There's a lot more to it than just that. The one thing I really like about what you're doing too is that you're introducing the philosophy of it and that's something that you really believe in. That to me is important and that's what people look at. They look at who's behind the company and what that person has to say, is that person ethical, righteous, person or not. You're not up there as a smooth talking business salesman or anything like that, right?   Mason: You should see me try and sell something I don't like. I'm a bumbling mess. I think I told you that back in the markets people used to say god-made...you could sell ice to the Eskimos. But I'm terrible if I'm not talking about herbs or philosophy behind it.   Jeff: That's because you're doing something you believe in. That's where everybody should be. Not everybody has that opportunity, but if you can have that opportunity. I was lucky enough that I followed my passion and I didn't do that because I wanted to be rich. I did it because I loved it. I always say to people, if you really like to do something, whatever it is, just do it. Follow your passion. Maybe you're going to be poor for a long time. Make something that you feel good about.   Mason: Honestly, and I really mean it not just because you're on the podcast talking it up or trying to flatter you. But when I met you, you had a happy disposition to be in business that long. In the beginning I was trying to escape the business side of things. Quite scared about having a business and not coming out the other end alive. You have a sunny disposition and you still have control of your company and the standards and you're still educating about the same thing that you're educating, of course it's evolved, but you were educating about beforehand. And there's something that I've learned a bit about in that. There's something humbling and nice about not being in that pursuit for aggressive growth while still growing at a nice, sustainable rate. But staying true to what you were doing in the first place. I educate about basics of herbalism and medicinal mushrooms in the beginning and then I'll move on and doing other things. The more I go along the more I want to settle back into doing what I did all along.   Mason: I've got a weird thing about going back to the organic, I'll almost shy away from something if it's organic because I see it as a marketing ploy a lot of the time. And I think it is a lot of the time. With little things. When growing Lion's mane there's a lot of people who will use organic fungicide because they don't pick when they're watering out to the Lion's mane. I like to use this example because we don't have a plastic covering, it's just a straw and a hut to keep it nice and dark and it gets watered. That's the only part that gets watered. And one of the things I talked about in the beginning with Lion's mane, I just heard about it through the grapevine, that fungicide is needed if you're watering straw a lot of the time in order to, all right, we know why fungus grows. But found someone who wasn't doing that and found people who were doing organic Lion's mane who were using organic fungicide on the huts. Little things like that they get me so dejected about the marketing ploy behind it. But I think you're the one organic product that I would be over the moon to use.   Mason: And the other example is Ron Teeguarden. I think we talked about him. He was such a rogue in the industry herbally. You were telling me about the acupuncture when he was offering acupuncture because he's a barefoot herbalist and all the acupuncture's guilds are like "Screw you, you need to be regulated." And he's like "Hey."   Jeff: I know, it might've been somebody when you were in LA but it wasn't me. I don't know Ron that well. He's been around a long time. He's done his own thing, he's not out at the shows or anything like that. He's very well-known and in a sense he's been the herbalist to the stars. He's in Los Angeles, right? A lot of people in Los Angeles that are into herbal medicine and living properly in term of what they eat and things like that. They would go to Ron and Ron has one of the very first herb bars where you can walk in and have this type of a drink or that type of a drink. He was really in it very early and doing stuff that nobody else was. He was an outlier in that sense. I don't think he really needed to go into the industry proper. He's done a little more now that before. He didn't have to.   Mason: He, on the level of sourcing philosophy. I bumped into him years ago. I was at that place where I was starting to grow, people are asking why I'm getting my herbs from China and people asking me if I'm organic and all these kinds of things. I want to keep on doubling down on my philosophy, what I'm doing here. One thing that I drew from yourself as well and then be proactive and educating the market. Not in pushing your own product, just generally being happy about the market being educated as well. And Ron was like...In fact I talked with him for about five minutes. More or less he was like "Listen, if you have that spark," I remember, "do not deviate from that sourcing philosophy." And it really stuck with me and from that day I did. I doubled down and I was not going to try and... I'm going to continue to not worry about what's going on and just do me. It's a lot of fun. I was at Dragon Herbs Tonic Bar about three weeks ago. I frequent the Hollywood one when I'm in L.A.   Mason: Before we go too far off the mycelium grown, one of the things you've really educated, not only the market, but businesses in the market around medicinal mushrooms in the market, is how to identify a true polysaccharide read on medicinal mushrooms. Rather than people including 60% polysaccharides or even 30%, yet when you go down into the class of beta-glucan it's actually been tested you've been hoodwinked and they've gone dry from age or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about that?   Jeff: This is something in the herbal industry too that you learn right away, and I learned it back in the 90s, was that so many herbal extracts, when you make the extract they oftentimes need some kind of a stabilizer. Otherwise they can get gummy, they can jut come together if it's a powder. Putting a carrier with a lot of extracts was pretty common. What happened was sometimes companies would cheat a little bit. The next thing you know instead of 10% carrier it was 50% carrier or 80% carrier. And they're not revealing that to anybody. You think you're getting an herbal extract, not just mushroom extract, an herbal extract and it ends up being mostly maltodextrin or dextrose or something like that, and they're not telling you, then it is really deceptive. So there's a lot of companies that were doing that in the industry.   Jeff: As I went along, the whole time that I'm working with people in China I'm like, "Look, I want extracts where we aren't using any carriers. It has to be made in a certain way," because I'm looking for the pure essence. In traditional Chinese medicine they take the herbs and they throw it in a pot and they boil it up and pour it out and "Here, drink this!" There's no carriers in there.   Mason: That's right, not sliding agents.   Jeff: That's right. If you have to put something in a capsule you've got 150 milligrams of different types of fillers and binders and flow agents. Putting it into a pouch is so nice because then you don't have to put those things in with it. It's just the pure herb. Early on in the 90s everybody's testing for polysaccharides and nobody's testing for beta-glucans. And beta-glucan is a polysaccharide. Unfortunately all these carriers are polysaccharides too. A lot of people can hide that from you that you've got carriers on their product. No, no, we don't use carriers, it's 100% mushrooms, stuff like that. That's where with any kind of supplier you have to build up a level of trust. Like I say, they show you a brown powder and say. "Here's our product, it's shiitake mushroom extract. Isn't it great?" You can test it.   Jeff: This is the thing, Mason, it's not like you can take a mushroom product other than a reishi extract, consume it, and then a few hours later or a day later go, "Wow, yeah! Did I ever get a kick out of that!" No, it doesn't work that way. You can organoleptically, I can taste the shiitake extract and I can tell you yeah, that's definitely essence of shiitake. Or with reishi it's so bitter I can taste all those bitter notes in that reishi extract, that is an awesome extract.   Jeff: I used to give a reishi extract to a friend of mine who was a deep herbalist making his own liquid extracts and a big business ultimately. He'd taste some of my extracts in the beginning and he'd go, "Not bad, but it tastes a little bit burnt." And I'm like, "Oh shit." When it was dried it was maybe in the oven a little longer, and he could pick up on it. I thought that tastes pretty good. That was in the early days when I didn't know any better. I thought it's great and high triterpenes and all this. He'd go "Yeah, it tastes a little bit burnt." Those kind of things teach you a little bit about, okay, how's it made. Let me tell you, in the 90s the facilities that were making herbal extracts were nasty. They were old facilities   Mason: Not too much GMP regulation back in those days.   Jeff: It wasn't like stainless steel everywhere, no. Everywhere was dark from all the herbs they'd been cooking for who knows how many years. Now all that's been torn down and you see nothing but brand new factories in China. Everything is stainless steel and it's beautiful and there's none of that anymore. But back then, actually, it wasn't until we got the megazyme test and I started using that. And that was in 2012 or 2013. Up until that point I thought, well, the polysaccharide number was high, that's great. Then we starting testing the products and that's where we really pulled back the curtain. My main supplier, awesome! The test results we got from that. Beta-glucan and alpha-glucan and the alpha-glucan, that was where any of the carriers were revealed.   Jeff: And then another company that was supplying me with some products, only a few, not many, fortunately. And was swearing up and down they never used any carrier. Jesus, their alpha-glucan level was way up there. I was shocked and really upset because I thought their product was good because occasionally I'd test it for polysaccharides it was 50-60% and I was thinking, great product. I could taste it, it tasted okay. Nothing but mushrooms they were producing. But here they were. They were putting them on a carrier and telling me they weren't. That's the kind of thing that you face when you're over there.   Jeff: How do you qualify these products? You can go to the factory. They can show you around, you can look at all the mushrooms in their warehouse, you can look at them cooking these things up, the final products. They don't show you the bags and bags of maltodextrin that are hidden back in the warehouse somewhere that they're using as a carrier for the liquid extract. That literally pulled back the curtain and I went and confronted that with them. They claim no. Finally they actually admitted it and I'm like, okay, see you later. I'm not buying another product from you because you lied to me. Fortunately it was a secondary supplier. They weren't my main supplier at all, but I needed a secondary supplier. I visited them and it was all mushrooms that they were doing and they were in the heart of mushroom country and it was nothing but mushroom. Yet they had all these carriers in there. I was really upset not only with them but with myself because I got taken in by it too. And that's what you have to do.   Jeff: Look, Mason, have you ever been at Ali Baba and looked at all the mushroom products being sold?   Mason: It's always funny, and as you know, everyone's jumping onto the bandwagon right now. You can see people trawling through Ali Baba going "Oh, just tell me which one is awesome." I haven't been in there in a long time. I got curious, to be honest. I think we were in the office having afternoon drinks and seeing what was on Ali Baba. It is insane.   Jeff: It's totally insane. So many companies selling mushroom extracts. Sometimes they're selling at prices where you're like, "No, wait a minute, you can't sell me that extract for $20 for a 10:1 extract. That's impossible. You load it up with starch, that's quite possible, right? That's where analysis, for me, has been very helpful. Especially the beta-glucan analysis because that gives me that alpha-glucan which is the whole carrier. That's what unmasked all of those myceliated grain products. There's definitely a place for analysis. There's also a place for getting to know the grower. I don't believe in organic pesticides. I don't give a shit. Don't use whatever it is, you have to grow this. I know it's more difficult but you have to grow this without sprays and all that.   Jeff: The thing about China is that when you're traveling through China and I've been back in the mountains in all these different places and you go back and you look down and this little valley and here's this beautiful rice fields down there and you're going "Oh, isn't it great, back here. Everything's idyllic." And then you see somebody walking through the rice field and they've got a backpack sprayer. And they're going along spraying chemicals on this rice crop. I'm like, "Ugh, shit. Really? Do you have to do that?" And I think to myself, even the smallest growers out there are using some chemicals. That's where I'm like... And I want to be sure. And that's where we test and test to make sure that everything is staying on track because these things can slip in. Somebody can cheat. You have to ride herd on the whole thing. Otherwise it can slip right through your fingers.   Jeff: That's been good for me in the sense of having an organic product that has meant that we put these constraints on the people that we work with. We say look if your product shows one of these things in there I'm sorry we're not selling it. If you and if you shipped it over to us and we find it in there after you've done the testing that's all good and we find it in there it goes the landfill I'm sorry, we can't sell it. That has been a really good quality, that's how we keep that quality up. In that sense I kind of believe in it all and think it's important. It helps us keep the product a little bit more real.   Mason: As you say said there's all these things that can go by... even though it is organic, you can get organic pesticides and all this kind of stuff. I have taken your product and of course I really love it. You know that you're going to go that extra mile with it. It's a trip around it, there's a stigma around China is isn't that whole thing polluted?   Jeff: Well, that's the other side of it right now, Mason. People are so afraid of anything coming out of China that this gives them a little bit more confidence in it. They can say what they want about organic and all but we've got pesticide tests that can demonstrate what it is and of course the always have to do heavy metals and micros and all of that.   Mason: Alpha-toxins   Jeff: For us, especially as a raw material supplier to companies large and small we have to be able to give them confidence because you know they're selling a Chinese product that they buy from us and lot of people are just like you know when it comes to China it's like no no no no it's like not going to do it so I have to talk to a lot of people. And I say, well, hey look. There's products in the United States that are absolutely full of chemicals. So it doesn't matter where it's grown. It matters where it's grown but it's not this country or that country. You can grow good, clean products anywhere in the world if you're doing it properly.   Mason: It's so good. Of course people are realizing that the ultimate Chinese herbs and medicinal mushrooms are going to be coming out of China. I really like how it's still dominating and making it really easy for people to get One thing that's organic and Two very quickly have all those things to provide so enough people are going to be able to go, Oh, okay, so it's from China and we can trust it. That's something that makes it really easy, because people are going to jump on the mushroom bandwagon. We found it as well, a similar thing. People want to come, they're like okay, tell us about Chins. Okay, tested three times for pesticides before it comes to market, each batch. Plus here in Australia the TGA facility and heavy metals and alpha-toxins and microbes. At some point people go "Hmm, shit, okay." And testing of the water. And when we can going and doing radiation testing in the areas. And then going live and seeing pictures of you at your reishi farm is magic.   Mason: When I was going live around China going, you know we're still going up while we're outside the mountains going to the fields where the eucommia bark trees were grown or up in Yunnan. Just drove five hours in the middle of nowhere to get to the poria farm, where there's wild pine and people are going "Holy shit! Look at that land! The land of the dragon. It's calling me. It's real." All of a sudden popping that thing that first of all, yes, you just need to be vigilant, that's absolutely number one. I've only changed suppliers once. In the beginning I found someone I had really enjoyed their product. And then what I've decided was one of my areas in going forth is I need someone that could absolutely school me. If I'm requesting things and they weren't able to "bang" school me on that immediately, then I'm not going to be able to do business.   Mason: And it got to this point where I was confirming no municipal water. Only springs, only well water. Only creek water in the area. Nothing from the tap every touching the crops. At one point "Okay, sometimes that's a bit hard." I was like "All right, I'm gonna change now." That's when I started going down that route and ended up... developing relationships, developing a friendship first, understanding the intent behind the philosophy behind the business, understanding who owns the business that you're going to be dealing with and what their motives are and what their history is. These are the things where people don't realize what goes into it. People go "Can you tell me your supplier?" And you're like   Jeff: (laughs)   Mason: At this point it's not about me being scared about you having access to that supplier but so much has gone into this relationship. It's not just about finding someone and sourcing off them. Although, it's nice and easy to do that. If I was beginning right now I'd love to be buying just from suppliers on NAMMAX because it's cool. All the certificates, all the independents, and then all the years of vetting and tweaking that leads to this point where trust is inevitable and you become even more switched on to what to look for if anything ever comes up. If anything slips or changes you know the questions to ask and where the slip in quality could possibly be. And large ways you know how to put things in place that would stop that from ever happening to begin with. It's an interesting industry.   Jeff: We go there every year and we'll do an audit. We'll visit farms, the factory we'll be sure we confer with our partners to make sure everything is good. This year we're at the point where we're hiring someone to be on the ground in China that will do a lot of checking and stuff for us on a regular basis. More regular than us going over there once a year. It's gotten to a point where we really need that coverage of somebody right there that we can say "Can you go out to this farm or this factory?" Also, communications because sometimes communications... although some of our partners speak English but some of them not so well and then they have to use a go-between and that's not always the best. So we're gonna have somebody now that's right there in China and can do that for us. Can you imagine going to China and traveling around without having somebody with you to help you through the liaise and talk?   Mason: I have the best intentions of getting my Mandarin up to scratch and as soon as I'm out of it, it all slips out of my head. I haven't fully entered into that poetic language realm. The language is sticking. Can you speak Chinese?   Jeff: No, I speak Spanish, but Sky's learning Chinese. He has three classes a week, an hour each class with a Chinese speaker he does it over Zoom or something like that. He's very diligent about it. We get over there. He's speaking with them in Chinese and they love it. He's learning more, but unless you actually go and live somewhere for a while it's always tough. I've been thinking about it. You go over and spend two weeks, three weeks, whatever, then you leave. That's nothing in terms of really getting in and learning a language. That's swimming on the surface.   Mason: I gotta get onto it because I'm gonna do some Taoist training there.   Jeff: Yeah, that'd be really cool. You're young enough that you still can do that. I'm way beyond doing anything like that.   Mason: Come on, they'd love you up in the temple.   Jeff: Not only that, where I love to be is in Patagonia   Mason: Dude, that's the other place my heart lies, down in Patagonia. I want to become an old Argentinian man. I want to become a cowboy.   Jeff: Exactly, I know where we can get some horses, Mason, so let me know.   Mason: All right, that's it. That's on. China this year, maybe Patagonia next year.   Jeff: Yeah, two years ago Andrea and I went out and spent the day with, we had a gaucho that took us out. We went all over this one area. It was a hot day too. We were on horseback the whole time, cruising through, very slow. Slow living at its best, right?   Mason: Yeah, that's it. Drinking, eating a lot of meat, drinking a lot of yerba mate.   Jeff: Yeah, when you're on a horse you're not going to go very fast. You're going to cruise along. It's life in the slow lane.   Mason: I love it. So before we finish up is there anything that is coming up now that's exciting you about educating people about this market and about this industry with medicinal mushrooms?   Jeff: People really still need a lot of education with mushroom. Part of what I do too which I really like is I talk about the nutritional value of mushrooms. My thing too is eat mushrooms. I think mushrooms may be the missing link in terms of food. A lot of people are like, fungus, never eat it, right? And I'm like, "Dude, you've gotta get on and eat mushrooms, it's a fabulous food. They've got great benefits, you get medicinal benefits as well as nutritional benefits." That's the key for me, I'm pushing that really hard when I talk to people, saying "No, it's a fabulous food." And in China they have this whole thing of food is medicine.   Jeff: That's in Ancient Greece too. Food as your medicine. Everything that you take into your body should be something that is beneficial. And medicine as a very loose way in terms of it's feeding you and keeping you healthy. And that's what we should all be thinking about. What we consume is keeping us healthy and we should look at our food as that. That's providing me with all of these benefits. I say if you want a supplement, you feel you need more, that's great. You can supplement. But definitely use mushrooms for food. That's a big category for me.   Jeff: As a mushroom grower, can you imagine? I'm working on an agaricus farm. For ten years every day I'm going in I'm going through the rooms and each room ultimately is producing 20,000 pounds of mushrooms. There's mushrooms everywhere around me growing and I'm stoked. I love this. I've got mushrooms that I'm eating all the time. I've even got small beds of mushrooms that I bring stuff home and I'm growing them in my house because it's so interesting to me. The farm I was on it wasn't just an agaricus, we had a scientist that was growing shiitake and maikitake and oyster mushrooms. Back in the 70s when those weren't even on the markets anywhere. And I had access to these mushrooms. Besides the wild mushrooms that we were navigating. I'm like, make them part of your diet because it's a wonderful food.   Jeff: That's my message to people is this is a forgotten food, bring it home.   Mason: I love it so much. Thanks for reaching out, I really appreciate you reaching out and having you on here. It's not only do I admire you as a person, admire what you've done and your business. I spoke to you a little bit about it. I like talking to the other people who are perceived competitors. There's so much room in this market and everyone's doing their own thing and has their own story. This whole red ocean we have to fight over a scrap of people who are going to be buying mushrooms and not focusing on educating together is absolutely ridiculous. It's always awesome to meet people who trail-blazed that attitude in the industry. Calling out people that are bullshitting and then coming together and educating together and getting the world healthy together in our little way. There's something really nice about that that makes it possible to be in business for so much time, for so long, see so much shit yet still have such a positive attitude about it.   Jeff: That's absolutely right. I really love what you're doing too and I love the whole Taoist part of what you're taking to people and bringing to people. That philosophy is really awesome. That's what brings something really unique. When I hear you talking about mushrooms up around, what's the lake up there in the mountains?   Mason: Mumbai   Jeff: Yeah, that was so cool and you're hanging out there, talking about the mushrooms really excited about it all. That is really special. I love your energy, Mason, I'm really happy that we've been able to get together and have these meet-ups, speak and let's carry it on, let's keep doing it and stay in touch for sure.   Mason: Absolutely. We'll get some videos in another podcast together, 100%. I'll go check out these dates, see if I can swing a   Jeff: I'll send you the info on it so that you can check it out. If you can come you'll have a ball because there's gonna be lots of mushroom peop

Jeff talks about going to the reading and Q&A for Frederick Smith and Chaz Lamar's In Case You Forgot. The guys also talk about their recent trip to see the musical The Drowsy Chaperone starring Bruce Vilanch. It's a Heidi Cullinan double feature this week as Will reviews Nowhere Ranch and Jeff reviews The Doctor's Secret. Jeff talks with Jacqui Greig, the creator and editor of Blush magazine. Jacqui talks about why she created the magazine and what sparked her love of all things romance. We also find out about the books that she writes and how she encourages anyone who is interested to start an online magazine. Complete shownotes for episode 197 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript – Jacqui Greig This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Thanks for coming to the podcast Jacqui it is so great to have you here. Jacqui: My absolute pleasure. Jeff: So Will and I have loved “Blush” since the first issue came out and. Jacqui: Thank you. Jeff: I love what one of the things on the website that talks about you where it says “I may or may not have started this publication and in order to fangirl my favorite authors without getting slapped with a restraining order.” Jacqui: Pretty much. Jeff: Which sounds so awesome. It’s like a mission statement. Jacqui: But it’s so true. I used to finish reading a book and then I just I loved it so much that I wanted to be best friends with the author. I wanted to know everything about them. I just you know wanted to delve into their heads I guess. And that’s kind of what “Blush” lets me do. Yeah without getting hit with a restraining order. Jeff: We feel the same way about the podcast it’s so great to just dive in with these folks. Jacqui: Yeah absolutely. Jeff: Tell us a little bit for our listeners who may not have discovered blush yet. What is the magazine kind of all about besides obviously of course romance books? Jacqui: So essentially, it’s an online magazine for romance readers. So I just wanted something that was specific for people who read romance and there’s already so many amazing blogs and podcasts that I just thought a magazine would be a fun way of getting that information across. And yeah. So it’s kind of interviewing authors, looking at the different books that are coming out at the moment, the different trends in the industry. I’m calling it an online digital platform. There’s even things like I imagine what a particular heroine in a book would wear. And I based a fashion page on that. So it’s just kind of interpreting the romance genre in different ways. Jeff: It really is because you go so much further than a Book Review blog or like what we do on the podcast because you do have, as you mentioned, the fashion thing or I believe in June it was the ‘book crush’ with Jamie Frazier which everybody can have that crush, right? Jacqui: Right? Jeff: There are elements of reviews that work their way in, but then you do some dives on the industry too, or talking about tropes and such. Jacqui: Yeah. I think that’s probably my background in journalism as well. I used to work on magazine in Sydney. I worked in a travel magazine and on a hair magazine of all things. And then I started my own magazine, a women’s lifestyle magazine, which was print – that was more than 10 years ago now. So the industry has evolved so much since then and it’s so much easier to do a digital magazine than it is a print magazine. Yes. So I just thought I’d give it a go. Jeff: How do you decide what goes in to each issue. Because there’s so many things to pick from. Jacqui: I know there’s so many things to pick from and it’s actually been a little – it’s getting easier every month because the magazine is getting more widely known and people are actually messaging me, emailing me, then giving me content ideas, which is fantastic, but it’s just whatever I like. Yeah. I don’t know. Whatever I’ve been reading or what I’ve seen or I am quite big on Instagram I get a lot of inspiration there. Jeff: Yeah. And I enjoy watching your Instagram just because it’s so creative. Jacqui: I’m a graphic designer as well so I see lots of cheeky quotes and things like that and I just redesigned them for my own purposes which is fun. Jeff: Your July issue will have been out a short time by the time this episode airs. What can readers find in July? Jacqui: So I’m super excited. In July I have three authors that I definitely fangirl over. So I’ve got Eve Dangerfield. I’ve got an interview with her. I have an interview with Sarah MacLean and an interview with Abbi Glines. Jeff: Wow. Three of them are all in the same issue. Jacqui: Yeah, well in my very first issue I had Beverly Jenkins and Kylie Scott and I thought, “Right, I’m happy to finish this right now. I’ve reached my peak.” That was epic for me. I think romance authors are so generous with their time and knowledge and it’s just such a beautiful, interesting industry to be in. Jeff: Yeah, it really is because there’s so many warm people who are just happy to tell their story and tell everybody about their books. What are the regular sections that readers look for each month? Jacqui: So I generally start with a ‘Lust-Haves’, which is just kind of products/bookish things that basically I would like to be spending my money on. I think in one issue I had a pair of cashmere socks that were like one hundred and ten dollars and I had a girlfriend calling me, she said, “You didn’t buy those, did you?” I didn’t. I’d like to. So yeah, we did ‘Lust-Haves’, we do an IG profile. I pick an Instagram account that’s really inspiring and has gorgeous images and profile them. We’ve got our author interviews. I generally have a couple of features. So for example, in the current issue we did one on the rise of rural romance. So it’s basically Australian authors writing romance set in rural settings… on farms which is really lovely. I live in a small country town myself, so I can really identify with that. We do a ‘Book Crush’ every issue. So that’s just a hero that we’ve got a bit of a crush on at the time and it’s really fun to contact the author and find out what they had in mind when they were writing that character. I get them to share their Pinterest pages with inspiration that they drew when writing, which I love. And there’s a bookshelf at the back, which features a lot of books, and it’s a really great showcase for indie authors I think. So yeah, that’s kind of it. Jeff: You say that’s kind of it, but that’s a lot. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that goes into these issues. What kind of overall timing and process goes into creating a single issue? Jacqui: Well, having done in my previous life the print lifestyle magazine that was a whole circus. So I had staff and we had an office and because that I was spending forty thousand dollars an issue just to print it. So it was big. Right. So because [Blush] is digital – it’s online – my overheads are tiny, it’s literally me sitting at my kitchen table and, I have I don’t have it here, but I literally designed up on an A3 bit of paper for weeks and split it into the days and split the jobs across it and I laminated it so that I can write over the top of it – every issue. And it’s actually not too involved I think because I know what I’m doing. And I love what I’m doing. And I think as a working mother you become… I just have to get shit done. Like I just, I’ve got no windows in between kids being at school or ballet lessons or you know all of that kind of jazz. I just have to really, really be productive with my time and bang it out. Jeff: And I think the online magazine in a lot of ways gives you a much broader design to work with than if you were locked in to any kind of website format. Jacqui: Yeah, I think it’s fun because you can flip through the pages. It kind of it feels interactive and you can, you know, I can put gifs onto the pages so there’s movement, there’s different animations that you can use. And it’s just readers really like the tactile experience of a physical magazine. And because I can’t do that, I think a digital magazine – it is still something different from a blog post and not to say that, you know, there’s some fantastic blogs out there, but this is just a different format. Jeff: Yeah, it’s a different medium, but it’s going to be interesting, I think to see if other people move in that direction. I think we’re all so used to seeing blogs that this is another similar but different way to go. Jacqui: Yeah, it’s just a bit fun, little bit different. Jeff: July is also kind of a milestone for you because it’s six months old for the magazine – issue number six. What’s your favorite thing to write about so far in those six months? Jacqui: I think the interview with Beverly Jenkins, that was kind of amazing. She’s an icon in the industry and she’s so generous and I couldn’t believe that she’s giving me the time of the day, especially because I hadn’t published a magazine by that stage. I literally had nothing to show her. She just kind of said, “Yeah sure.” So that was really incredible. I do freelance digital marketing, which I’ve just stopped, and I’m focusing all my energy on ‘Blush’ because I really want to give it a go. I felt like I was building other people’s dreams, helping them build their dreams and I wasn’t really putting any time into my own. So yeah, I’m kind of all in with this. I got skin in the game now. Jeff: That’s awesome. It’s a good feeling. Jacqui: Yeah, it really is. And I do need to say my husband is super supportive and I’m very lucky. But yeah, like this is my gig now. Jeff: What’s surprised you over the six months. Jacqui: I don’t know if it was surprise. It was probably just reinforced how wide and how deep this romance genre is and how amazing it is. I mean, if Alexa Riley can beat Michelle Obama in the rankings on Amazon, that’s huge. Jeff: And you’re right about the romance genre being so big. I have found, so far, that you try to cover seemingly all of it. You’ve featured all kinds of romance including LGBTQ romance. Jacqui: Well, that’s a that’s a big sector and it’s valid and I know that, especially in the states, you’ve been having a lot of diversity talk at the moment – and so you should. ‘Blush’ is a vehicle for the romance industry and I want it to encompass all aspects of that. Jeff: And we talked a little bit before we started recording that it was ‘Blush’ that first put ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ on our radar as the thing we needed to watch out for in the spring. Jacqui: Well, I’m sure you hadn’t seen it with me, you would have seen it very soon because it has been so well received and validly So like she’s amazing, Casey’s [McQuiston] she’s going places. Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. What got you into romance? Jacqui: So my parents owned a newsagent when I was younger. And romance novels were distributed by magazine companies, which meant that if they didn’t sell, it was cheaper to rip the cover off and throw it out than it was to send it back to the company. So I used to scavenge through the back bin and I just fell into it. I read to my heart’s content. The only problem was, that because it didn’t have a cover, I knew the title, but without that image on the top on the cover and the title, I can’t remember any of them. And probably I was reading so many of them, I was just kind of consuming them. But yes, so that’s how I got into it – scavenging. Jeff: That is awesome. What a great way to get books. Jacqui: I know right. I mean it’s so demoralizing and awful for an author to think about – that’s how some of your books may end up. I don’t know if that’s still the practice – I would hope not. But yeah, that’s back when I was 12 or 13. That’s how we did it. Jeff: On the other hand, I mean how terrific that it must be – Yes, they didn’t get paid for – but they inspired somebody to go out and create something like this later in life. Jacqui: Well that’s true. That’s a really nice way of looking at it. Oh, thank you. Jeff: You can’t remember some of the titles and authors obviously, but do you remember what tropes and what sort of elements of the story fueled your interest in the genre? Jacqui: I read a lot of the historicals, which I loved. But I kind of stopped reading for a while – going through high school and then university – and got back into it with Kylie Scott, who’s an Australian author who wrote a romance in a zombie apocalypse, which is very far removed from historical romance, but freaking awesome. She wrote two books and a novella and then found mainstream success with her Rockstar romances. But she kind of got me back into reading romance, her and Amy Andrews who is another Australian author. She’s got a ‘Sydney Smoke’ rugby series, which is a series of books set around a rugby team in Sydney and she just has the dialogue down pat, like she is so dynamic with her writing. Yeah, she is really, really incredible. I think those two got the ball rolling to get me back into it and now I don’t really have a favorite trope or a favorite genre. I will literally read anything you put in front of me. I will read it. Jeff: That’s awesome. I’m kind of the same way. Will has is his thing where he likes contemporary/low angst – may take a few diversions off that path… But if I like the blurb, I’m at least game to see where it goes. Jacqui: Exactly. Yep. I’m with you. Jeff: Now, since we are an LGBTQ romance podcast, what are some of your recent reads, kind of in that genre. Jacqui: So what I’ve really loved is that some of my favorite authors are diversifying. I guess they’re going into that queer space. So Kate Canterbury, she wrote The Walsh series – which I devoured I loved – and then it’s an offshoot. There’s a lobster fisherman who marries Aaron and Nick in book 6. And So the lobster fisherman he gets his own book and he falls in love with a tech tycoon. And honestly it was one of the hottest romances I’ve ever read. Like it was. She nailed it. And that was her first male/male book. And I just went, “Oh wow, you’ve done such a good job.” Also Tessa Bailey she wrote a male/male. What’s it called… I wrote it down. ‘Heat Stroke’. She wrote ‘Heat Stroke’ which is just really sweet. And the relationship between the two men, it was so believable and she’s really good at characterization. She’s fantastic, but my absolute favorite of mine is Sierra Simone, who wrote the ‘Camelot’ series. So it starts with ‘American Queen’ goes to ‘American Prince’ and I actually haven’t read the third one because I got a spoiler and I don’t have the emotional fortitude at the moment. Jeff: I understand how that it goes. Jacqui: But she just writes… So it’s a male/female/male, but the two guys, they’ve been in love for so long before Greer, the woman, actually comes into it and just the depth of their love for each other. And she’s, I mean, it’s kind of filthy – the writing, but awesome. It’s emotional and it’s just, yes, she’s fantastic. Jeff: Since you look at romance really from around the world for ‘Blush’, because you’re in Australia and have read so many Australian authors, do you see a difference of what romance is around the world – what gets written into the books from the native authors? Jacqui: I think that a lot of Australian authors are actually setting their books in the US. I don’t know if that’s a marketing thing or if that’s just what they read and that’s what they want to write, but then there’s a whole crop of Australian authors who are writing rural romance, which is set on an Australian farm as opposed to an American ranch. So you know there are differences in words I guess. I don’t know. Apart from that though, I kind of think everyone’s just writing their own happily ever after. And it’s and in different ways, using different tropes, different locations. I do wish that there were more Indigenous Australians writing romance novels. I think that would be amazing. There are some amazing Indigenous authors, just not so many writing romance, so that that would be really incredible to see. I actually am writing as well. I’m sure everyone who reads is trying to write as well. So I’ve just published my second book, but I would like to co-author a book with… I grew up in a small country town with a high indigenous Aboriginal population. So I went to school with all of these Aboriginal girls and I need to make contact with them and see if one of them will sit down with me and co-write a book, a romance from their point of view. I think that would be amazing. I don’t think that I would have the guts, I guess, to write from that point of view, even if I had a sensitivity reader come in and read it afterwards. I really do think that their issues and their worldviews and, you know, they have their differences and you’ve got to do justice to that. Jeff: So what do you write? Tell us a little bit about your books. Jacqui: Well my full name is Jacqueline, and my maiden name is Hayley, so they’ve written under Jacqueline Hayley. And second, which literally I published yesterday, it’s ‘Getting Under Her Skin’, and it’s set in Sydney. So they’re contemporary romances that are a little bit sexy, I don’t think I really want my mum reading them. Jeff: Yeah that’s awesome. Any chance of a male/male book in your future? Jacqui: Yeah, I think So but I think that, again, I would want to team up with a gay male author to help me do that. Like, I just I don’t want to presume that I would know their life experiences. So I think that would be super fun. Jeff: I hope you get to do that. We’d have to have you back on the show to talk about that when it comes out. Jacqui: Absolutely. Jeff: What can you tell us about upcoming issues [of ‘Blush’] for the rest of this year? Jacqui: Oh, the rest of this year. So I’m actually heading to the Australian Romance Writers Association, their annual conference is in Melbourne, and I have lined up some authors that I’m going to do video interviews with as bonus content for my readers. So we’re just finalizing the details of that, but I do think that video, which can be embedded into the magazine – in the magazine we also find YouTube clips and things as well, the digital magazine format allows for that, which I think is really fun. The video will start to become a little bit more of a thing with the magazine, as much as I don’t really want to see myself on video, I think that it would be really fun for authors, who are normally behind the pen – behind the computer – and you don’t see their faces or hear them. I think that that would be a really fun thing to do. Jeff: Very much looking forward to that. It’s great seeing how the video gets in there to really make this interactive magazine. What’s the best way for people to keep up with ‘Blush’ online and how do they get the subscription? Tell us all about that. Jacqui: So at the moment, to be able to read the magazine, you have to head to the website which is blushmagazine.com and sign up with your email address. So it’s free. And then the magazine gets emailed to you, well a link to the magazine gets sent to you, so that you can view the magazine. Previous issues are available on the website, so you can you can click through there, but probably I’ most prolific on Instagram. That’s kind of where that’s my jam. That’s what I like doing. So you know, for cheeky quotes and books that are coming up, all the behind the scenes of what I’m doing here, that’s Instagram, is where it’s at. Jeff: Very cool, and can readers of the magazine get in touch and suggest ideas? Jacqui: Absolutely. I love it. The interaction is one of the best things that I love about what I’m doing, so I get DMs on Facebook, Instagram, and my email is hello.BlushMagazine@gmail.com. Jeff: And what would you say to anybody who is like, “Gosh, I really like that. Maybe I should start my own.” Jacqui: Yeah. So I guess have a look at the different platforms that are out there to do a magazine on. I use readymag which I really love. But there’s also issu, which I’m kind of looking at as I get bigger. That might be where I go just because you can get more stats on what particular pages people are staying on longer. That kind of thing. So I guess just have a really clear view of what you want to put in your magazine, you’ve got to structure it like a real magazine. So go and get a physical magazine, you need a contents page and an editor’s letter and kind of build it from there, but just know that readers like continuity, so if you’re going to start a section, you’ve got to kind of continue it. So have a really clear idea of what kind of content you want to do. I haven’t done this and I probably should have build up content so that you’re an issue ahead of yourself so that, you know, just to for timing I guess, that would make life easier. I like making things hard for myself. Give it a go, like why not? Compared to the money that I used to put into print publishing, digital publishing… there’s barely any any cost. So yeah, give it a go. Jeff: Cool. Hopefully somebody will take up the inspiration because – at least the way we feel concerning podcasts, the more podcasts the better, the more magazines the better, the more blogs the better. Jacqui: Built this industry! Jeff: Yes absolutely. Well Jacqui, thank you so much for telling us about ‘Blush’, we’re going to link up to everything we talked about- the authors and the magazine – in the show notes, and we look forward to see what comes out in future issues. Jacqui: Thank you so much for having me. It was just the highlight of my week. Thank you so much. Book Reviews Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: Nowhere Ranch by Heidi Cullinan. Reviewed by Will. Admittedly, I’m a little late to the party when It comes to this book. When I posted online that I’d finished reading Nowhere Ranch, I got a slew of responses, “Isn’t it the best?”, “That’s my favorite Heidi book.” So, for the few that haven’t yet experienced the sexy wonder of this cowboy romance, Nowhere Ranch is about a young guy named Monroe, Roe for short. He’s the prototypical lone cowboy who’s just landed a job at Nowhere Ranch. On one of his free nights, Roe travels several hours away to the nearest gay bar. To his surprise he runs into his boss, Travis Loving. After some flirty banter and surmising that they are both definitely into each other, they spend one wild night together in Travis’s hotel room. Roe tries to keep things professional with his boss, but Travis is just too damn irresistible. After a trip to the rodeo, he gives into his desire yet again. His hook-ups with Travis are so amazing that he begins to reconsider his ‘no relationships’ policy. When it comes to the bedroom, Roe likes things a little kinky. Travis is more than willing to give him everything he wants. After a rough and raunchy tumble in a horse stall on his birthday, Roe is so turned on and turned around, that he just doesn’t know what to do. Guys, this book is incendiary. I’m no expert when it comes to Heidi Cullinan’s books, but the few that I have read, have ridden that delicious line between sweetly romantic and utterly filthy. The kink explored in Nowhere Ranch isn’t your mommas 50 Shades style slap ‘n tickle. This is hardcore stuff in the best possible way. Back to the story. Hailey, the daughter of the ranch foreman, becomes fast friends with Roe and it becomes her personal mission to tutor Roe so he can get his GED. After learning some English composition basics, Roe writes an essay especially for his boss entitled, “Why Travis Loving Should Fuck Me”. What’s wonderful is that the entire text of the essay is included as part of the story. It’s sweet, it’s funny, and it leads to some more smoking hot sex for our two heroes. Unfortunately, the course of true love never did run smooth. A letter from the family that rejected Roe years earlier, forces him to examine what “home” really means. Home is definitely Nowhere Ranch. Some drama eventually forces Roe to make an unwanted trip to deal with the backwards, judgmental people he once called his family. With Travis and Hailey by his side, he sets things to rights and accepts that he is, in fact, worthy of his very own happily-ever-after. There’s a brief time jump at the end of the story to show us just how happy the happily-ever-after is for Roe and Travis. It’s wonderfully schmoopy and surprisingly sweet for a story that is so dang filthy. It just goes to show, that in the hands of a skilled author, kink doesn’t have to equal dark or angsty. The story of two hot and horny cowboys can be just as swoon-worthy as the lightest of rom-coms. The Doctor’s Secret by Heidi Cullinan. Reviewed by Jeff. This book had me at its cover with its clean design, heartbeat along the top and the handsome doctor. And I snatched the audiobook out from under Will because Iggy Toma was doing the narration. As with my other experiences with Heidi and Iggy, this one was above and beyond. The Doctor’s Secret brings Dr Hong-Wei Wu, or Jack as he tells the staff to call him, to Copper Point, Wisconsin. Hong-Wei’s left a high powered residency and his family in Texas to re-locate to this tiny town that needs a surgeon. He also hopes to lead a quiet life here. That’s derailed almost as soon as he steps off the plane because he meets Simon Lane, the hospital’s surgical nurse and the person who was dispatched to pick him up. Simon wasn’t quite ready for the attraction either. He’s in Copper Point working alongside his two best friends who all wanted to stay and give back to their home town–a place so small Simon’s sure he’ll never find a man for him. Hong-Wei is torn from the beginning because he came to Copper Point to get away from complications, but he can’t deny the immediate attraction to Simon. He tends to put himself under a tremendous amount of pressure to always do the right thing, even if that means saying yes to things he doesn’t want. As Simon learns more about Hong-Wei–from his love of classical music as well as his dislike for most pop music, his love of Taiwanese food and even the meticulous way he wants his operating room set up–only made him fall for the man more. Simon’s incredible from the get go. Instead of using “Jack,” Simon wants to use Hong-Wei’s given name and takes the time to learn how to pronounce it. It’s super adorable too how Simon can’t believe Hong-Wei might be flirting with him–their interactions at the hospital are super cute as they both easily get flustered. Their potential relationship comes with great risk. Copper Point is a small town with small town drama and shenanigans. St. Ann’s Hospital has a stranglehold on its employees with a hospital board that attempts to rule with an iron fist. This includes a no-dating policy. As they grow closer though, Hong-Wei’s having none of it, insisting he’ll protect Simon. Simon’s friends Owen and Nick, also doctors at the hospital, help the two get together in secret. As you can imagine neither men want to live in secret, and the more they fall for each other it becomes more difficult to keep it. Beyond Simon catching Hong-Wei’s attention, he starts to fall for the entire town of Copper Point. From the owners of his favorite restaurant to his co-workers to the local orchestra. It’s far more than he ever planned for and he’s not quite sure how to manage all the feelings of peace and happiness he has here. When a medical emergency forces Hong-Wei to reveal more of himself than he planned, the major power struggle begins around the dating policy and the future of St. Ann’s. Heidi does a tremendous job about making us care not only for Hong-Wei and Simon, but for everything that’s at stake for the town. There’s so much to love in this book between Simon and Hong-Wei, their friends, the citizens of Copper Point. The book also has one of the best grand gestures ever. It gave me all the feels. Kudos to Iggy Toma for a brilliant performance, infusing everyone with strong emotions and rich personalities. The tender moments between Simon and Hong-Wei are perfection. I’m looking forward to Owen and Nick’s books in the series. Owen’s is already out but I’m hanging tight for the audio and Nick’s book releases in August.

The guys talk about the television they’ve been watching so far this summer, including American Ninja Warrior on NBC, FX’s Pose, American Masters: Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life on PBS, Grand Hotel on ABC, Good Trouble on Freeform and What/If on Netflix. Jeff reviews In Case You Forgot by Frederick Smith & Chaz Lamar. Jeff interviews Roan Parrish about Raze, the latest book in the Riven series. They talk about the research she did for the series, including going on tour with a band, as well as the eclectic music she enjoys. The origin of Roan’s collaboration with Avon Gale is also discussed along with what got Roan started with writing gay romance. Complete shownotes for episode 196 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript - Roan Parrish This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Welcome, Roan, to the podcast. It is so great to finally have you here. Roan: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Jeff: And it's a perfect opportunity because just last week, you released raise "Raze," just the third book in the "Riven" series. And for those who don't know, tell us about the series and, of course, this latest installment. Roan: Sure. So "Riven" starts out with the book, "Riven," also the series title. And it's kind of an anti-rock star romance. It's about Theo, who's the lead singer of the band, Riven. And they've suddenly hit it big and are super famous. And everyone in the band loves being famous and their success. And Theo hates it. He hates being famous. He hates being the center of attention. He hates, like, people knowing things about him or looking at him when he leaves the house. So he loves the music, but he finds fame, like, the worst thing ever. And so he's about to go off on a new leg of the tour and is sort of, like, wandering the streets of New York, feeling a little bit sorry for himself. When he hears this song coming from a bar, like, someone just strumming guitar, and it's one of the most beautiful things he's ever heard. So he goes in the bar to see who's playing this or what the song is. And he meets Caleb, who is the one playing the music. And Caleb, we learn later, has been a musician for a long time, a working musician, but has sort of gone away from the scene and hidden himself away in his uncle's house out of town because he's had some addiction issues, and he's trying to stay clean by staying away from everything that reminded him of the scene, including music. So they start to talk to each other and they bond over music. And then little by little, they fall in love. The problem being, of course, that for Theo being in the scene and being public is kind of part of his thing. And for Caleb, everything about that just brings back a lot of bad memories. So they have to sort of work together to figure out how that's gonna impact their relationship and if they can get through it. And then it kind of takes a hard left, I feel like this is the thing that I should say for people who haven't read the series, is that the series really does hang together. It has the same secondary characters. It deals with a lot of the same themes, like, the themes of ending up someplace that you never thought you would be. But then in book two, we met Reese, or we've met Reese in book one, but we have a book about Reese who was Caleb's best friend and Reese's husband, Matt. And Matt has nothing to do with the music scene. And the book is told from his perspective. So for people who go in expecting that the whole series is about music, it is in some ways, like, music as a through line. And certainly, this idea of fame and this idea of struggling with fame is a through line. But book one is sort of anti-rock star. And then book two is like working musician and person who's not involved with music at all. So I feel like that's the thing I should say. Jeff: Well, they it does hang together because you've got the working musician. Roan: Yeah, totally. And Reese, who is the working musician is someone who toured with Caleb when Caleb was still playing music. So the characters all hang together and the series hangs together, but it's not a kind of musician book, if that make sense. Jeff: Yeah, that makes sense. Roan: And then "Raze," which is book three, it also hangs together. "Raze," it's similarly about characters ending up someplace that they never thought they would be. And in this book we meet Huey, who was in the first two books, and has been a sort of a little bit of a shadowy figure who we never knew his backstory, we didn't know who he is, he just pops in and dispenses wisdom, and pops out again, he doesn't say much else. And so he was Caleb's sponsor in Narcotics Anonymous. And he's still been working as a sponsor. And he is so used to taking care of everyone else being a sponsor, helping people work through their own addiction issues, dealing with his own, that he doesn't really ever focus on his own life. He's built up this kind of wall of focusing on everyone else, so he never has to think about himself. And we meet Felix, who is doing the same thing, taking care of everyone else but him himself, but through his family instead of through NA. So he grew up and help take care of his younger brothers and sisters, and always helped his sister get whatever she wanted, and has now found himself as his sister goes off to do her music thing, found himself kind of like, "What the hell am I doing with my life? Who am I? I kind of forgot to ever notice what I wanted." And so the two of them come together. And two people who are so used to looking out for everyone except themselves, as you can imagine, when it comes down to trying to make a relationship, they kind of don't know how to do it. They don't know how to ask for what they want. They don't even know what they want from each other. And so feelings kinda bubble up and nobody knows what to do with them. And then it ends really happily. Jeff: As all romance must. Roan: That's a must. And there's even a kitten. So, yeah. Jeff: What attracted you to writing this series? Roan: I think that there's themes that go together. I love music. And I've always been a huge music fan. And one of the things that I've always thought was interesting is that music is so personal, to me, anyway. And I know for many other people, like, each of us, listens to music and feels something - has associations that are deeply personal. And something about the weirdness of something so personal, experienced on a large scale of fame has always struck me as really odd. So you can be at a concert with the band and have thousands and thousands of people there. And each person has been hit with his music in a really personal way. And yet, we're all there together in a super public space, having kind of a personal experience, like, smooshed up together with each other. And I've just always found that really strange. And I know for people who make music, the process of making music is really personal. And it's really different than the process of performing music. And so I think I was interested in what would it feel like to do something really personal in front of a lot of people and then watch as this thing that you've made gets loose on the world, and you no longer have any control over it or what people think of it. And to me being famous seems like absolutely the worst thing I can imagine outside of, like, actual torture. And I know that for some people, that's not the case. But, yeah. So I was interested in writing, like, the genre of rock star romance is a thing. And I was interested in looking at it from the perspective of what would a rock star romance look like, if instead of rock star being a desirable thing, it was a terrible thing or a thing that caused a lot of problems for the rock star. Jeff: What was the process around some of the research, because, like, you talk about this very personal thing. How do you research that? And then how do you try to read and put it in a book so everybody else gets it? Roan: You know, I mean, I don't know. I can't really claim that I did it correctly. I've never been a musician. I like singing karaoke to Paula Abdul once with five other people very drunk in college. And that's about my performance level. But my sister-in-law, my sister's wife is a musician. And she's very personal and writes very personal music and then performs it. And, you know, I've been to many of her shows, obviously. And I went on tour with her in Europe once, like, carrying her stuff and hanging on for the ride. And one thing that struck me was, like, people would come up to her after the show and tell her like, "Your music has meant so much to me. I was going through such a hard time and your music spoke to me in these really hard moments." And so I would see that and I know that people are having these personal responses and have personal relationships with the music. And I know that my sister-in-law does as well. And then, like, the moment that the two of them would be having together would be personal. But there was still this whole performance element that I kinda…yeah, just seems like a very strange crucible of the personal and the public smooshed together, and maybe the performativity of that, in some way, like, hides the personalness…or not hides necessarily, but, like, you need a little bit of distance, like, the lights and the smoke machine, and the darkness, and the space between the stage and the crowd to insulate you a little bit in order to take something that's so personal and project it out in public. Jeff: I love how you kinda had the personal research going on there that you actually went on this tour and got to see all of it kinda go down about as close to it as you could without being the actual performer. Roan: Yeah, yeah, which is awesome. And I mean, like, I've had many friends who do music. So I knew that if I had, like, specific questions, you know, I had some questions about, like, the studio stuff and how you laid out tracks that I was able to ask friends about. But I really do think it's, like, the feeling of performing that I was trying to capture and the sense of what it felt like to have something that was yours, like, the music, and then watch other people make it theirs. And although I've never been a performer in any way, I mean, that's a little bit, like, what happens with books is that I sit at home in my pajamas, like, with cat hair all over me, and I write these books. And then when they're published, it's not mine anymore, it belongs to the people who read it. And I don't really have any control over it. So that part was easy to kind of understand. Jeff: Of course, you mentioned your love of music. And your bio actually mentioned that you listen to torch songs and melodic death metal. Now, I get eccentricity because my playlists are, like, wildly, you know, strangely hooked together in some way. But these two seem very different. What attracts you to these two individual styles? Roan: I think I was trying to write my bio in a way that was, you know, like on dating sites, you wanna say the two things that seem most opposed. So you can be like, "Listen, this is what you're getting as a human being who is essentially at odds with himself," maybe that's just me. Anyway, yeah, I love both of those genres. I think they're both simultaneously really raw and really beautiful. Like, torch songs, I love because they are heartbroken, and tender, and they tell a story, and they're so vulnerable, and beautiful. And melodic death metal is like, doing the same thing, only it can't be vulnerable, or, like, it needs a really harsh bass riff, and loud guitar, and loud drums in order to do something that's that tender and that personal. And I find not like screamy death metal, but yeah, melodic death metal. I find it like one of those puppies that growls at you until you get a little bit closer, and then little by little it sorta lets you pet it. And then by the time you're petting it, it's like, "Oh, no, I really do love this. Please don't ever stop petting me," but then, like, someone else walks in the room and they're all growly again. Jeff: I love that analogy. So awesome. Jeff: Now, speaking of music, with the "Riven" series seems such an obvious thing to perhaps you write to music if you're a writer who does that. Was there a particular playlist that sort of pushed you along in the writing of the series? Roan: You know, I actually didn't listen to music at all writing the series, which is sort of strange when you say it like that. I go through phases of whether I like to write with music on or not. And there have been books that I've written where I listened to the same music over and over. Like, when I wrote...what book was it? Oh, "Out of Nowhere," which is the second book "In the Middle of Somewhere" series, I listened like obsessively to "The Civil Wars" just over, and over, and over. And for some reason, the mood of those albums was, like, exactly the mood that I needed to be in to write that book. But with the "Riven" series, I didn't listen to music at all. Jeff: Interesting. Okay. Roan: Yeah. And none of the music in the books is real. Like, I made up all the band names and all of the music. And I wonder if maybe part of it was like, I didn't want real music in my head because I was making it up. Jeff: That would make sense. Yeah. If you're having to write any kind of song lyrics or anything inside the book, I could see where you would wanna, like, accidentally just pick up something. Roan: Right. Well, it was super adorable actually because one of my best friends who reads all my stuff first is, like, she likes music a lot, but she's like a top 40 radio kind of tastes music person. And so she thought that all of the musical references in my books in the "Riven" series were real, because she knows that I like lots of different kinds of music, and she just didn't know that they were fake at all, which is totally adorable. Jeff: Oh, that's awesome. So you could have an extra career then as a songwriter if you're writing lyrics. Roan: Maybe a band-namer. I like the band names more. Jeff: So I have to ask for the audio book then that you've got song lyrics - does that mean your narrator is actually singing the lyrics? Did you make Iggy sing and Chris sing? Roan: No. And, you know, I don't think that I have a chunk of lyrics long enough to be sung. They're like a couple snippets. But I didn't even think about the fact that I could have written a song of it for the audio book. That would have been awesome. Too late. Jeff: Something to think about maybe for a future book or another installment in the series. Roan: Yeah, yeah. I could do it as like an extra or something, I guess. Jeff: And speaking of the series, is there more to come in this series? Roan: There's not. Like, The Good Place that we were talking about earlier, I have decided that book three is the end. Jeff: Okay. Time to wrap up that universe. Roan: Yeah. And, you know, I say that and obviously maybe I would go back in the future and write another one. But I think the fact that the last book is about a character whose story we've kinda been wondering about for the whole series, it felt like a good place to stop because it's sort of the wrap up of, like, solving the last interpersonal mystery. So that felt like the right place to stop. And there are definitely tendrils. Like, people who've read a bunch of my books will notice that Riven, the band, is mentioned in another book, and that some characters from the "Middle of Somewhere" series are briefly alluded to in "Riven." So there's, like, little Easter eggs for people who have read all the books because I sort of think of everything as being connected in that way. So it'll pop back up, I'm sure. Jeff: I love that. I love the broad interconnected universe thing. Roan: Yeah, yeah. Secretly in my head, all of the books are connected in lots of ways that I don't necessarily put on the page. But, like, I like to get a couple in there. Jeff: Nice. Now, you also co-write with Avon Gale. What got that collaboration going? Roan: You know, that collaboration happened completely by accident, or on a whim, I should say. And I'm so glad it did. So I was living in New Orleans a couple years ago. And Avon and I were friends on the internet. And she offered when I was moving back from New Orleans to Philadelphia, she was like, "I love a road trip. What if I fly to New Orleans and drive with you," because it's a many day drive and you have a cat. I had like my truck and then I had my car hitched to the back of the truck, and it was a whole big thing. So I was like, "Oh, great. This will be fun." So we started driving from Louisiana to Pennsylvania. And it was, like, a torrential downpour. And we couldn't hear the radio. We couldn't do anything. And so Avon was like, "Okay. Well, I'll just tell you about this book that I've been working on. And I am really stuck on it. I can't get the plot right." So I was like, "Okay." And I'm pretty introverted and Avon is very extroverted. And we going in... Jeff: And it's very true, she is. Roan: Yes. And, you know, I really just love a clear communicator, so I loved it. She was like, "Basically, I talk constantly. And if you want me to stop, you have to tell me to stop." And I was like, "Oh, that's amazing. I run out of steam socially in approximately two-and-a-half hours, and I'm still listening to you, but I won't respond." And she was like, "Okay, great." And thus, it was. And so she basically narrated to me the entire plot of this book that she was trying to write, and she was having trouble with it. And I kept doing this probably obnoxious thing where I was like, "Oh, what if you did this?" Or, "What if you did that?" Or, "Oh, my gosh, it's so funny, because if that were me, I would totally do this." And she, instead of being annoyed, was like, "Well, you should obviously write this book with me." And that book was what it turned into "Heart of the Steal," which is the first book we wrote together. And it was so fun because then as we were driving, we just plotted the whole book. And she had her little, like, computer that she was typing on while we drove. And I drove the truck the whole way. And so I would like yammer at her and she would take notes, and then in the hotel rooms at night, we would kinda hash it out. And so it happened on a total whim, and then turned out to be really fun. And so we planned it on that trip. And then I went and visited her months later, I guess. Yeah, some months later, and we actually wrote "Thrall," which was the second book that we co-wrote together, like, in the same place. So we wrote it, like, together, even though we don't live in the same place. So it was two very different writing experiences, but both equally awesome. Jeff: That's fantastic. And I have to imagine it's a nice way to kill the time in a road trip to just write a book. Roan: Oh, yeah, totally. And it's really fun because I don't know about you or about other writers in general, but, like, I find that traveling is one of the best, like, brain, what do you call it? Like, catalyzers, brain catalyzers, something about moving through space constantly, whether it's, like, on a train or just walking or whatever. It's, like, the rhythm of moving through space makes my brain also work in a forward rhythm. And I find myself, excuse me, getting so many ideas when I'm just, like, walking a long distance, or on a train, or on a bus, or something. And so something about driving and plotting the thing together was, like, super, some word… Jeff: Awesome. Roan: Yeah, awesome. Jeff: Probably better than awesome, but awesome was the first thing that popped into my head. Roan: Yeah, yeah. Jeff: And then I totally get what you're talking about there, too, because I've done a lot of plotting and some writing on planes. Because it's like, yeah, there's something about just that that just you've got the time, and, like, the brain is working, so use it. Roan: Yeah. And it's, like, looking out the window of something moving through that kinda space with everything passing so quickly, it almost feels like it changes the rhythm of thoughts or something. Jeff: Yeah. And kudos to Avon for being able to type in a moving vehicle because I don't know that I could do that. Roan: Oh, my God, she has, like, motion sickness proof. I swear to God. Jeff: That's just crazy. Roan: Oh, I know. Jeff: But we definitely got to talk a little bit about "Thrall." I reviewed it back in Episode 157. I was just blown away by it. For folks who don't know, tell us about what that book is and what in fact does make it so special? Roan: So "Thrall" is our modern "Dracula" retelling, basically. And for anyone who's read "Dracula," you'll remember that "Dracula," it's an epistolary novel, so it's told through letters, and diary entries, and, like, newspaper clippings, telegram, stuff like that. And so we did "Thrall" in the same way, we made it an epistolary novel. But since ours was modern, and that one was 19th century, instead of letters and journal entries, and stuff like that, we have emails, and g-chats, and tweets, and podcast descriptions, and stuff like that. So the whole thing is written in that way, this combination of different print media. So we have the main characters that people will recognize from "Dracula." And Mina, and Lucy, who are the two characters that people will know from "Dracula," in our version, have a podcast, a true crime podcast in New Orleans. And they get caught up in basically trying to solve the mystery of Lucy's brother who seems to have disappeared. And so in getting caught up in that mystery, they stumble upon this a role-playing game kind of thing, where they use an app, and they go to different places, and they try to solve clues, hoping that it will take them to Lucy's brother. And so in addition to it being an epistolary form in general for the whole book, then kind of within that epistolary form, there's this mystery that they're trying to solve on a computer, I mean, on a phone app. So it's like a game inside an epistolary novel that's an adaptation of another epistolary novel. Jeff: And epistolary just not something you see very much. At least I don't, especially in the romance genre that I tend to read in general. What was it like as a writer, and just plotting to take on such a different narrative format? Roan: Yeah, it was awesome. It was really, really cool. I love form, like, I'm super interested in what different things you can do with form. And one of the things that, like, when I'm reading other things I'm always interested in is what form did this author choose, whether it's something simple, like, short chapters, or long chapters, or, like, flashbacks versus telling everything in order, all of that stuff, I think, has such an impact on the way the story gets delivered. And so I was really excited to play with the form. And I think that with the genre of romance, one of the reasons why we don't see epistolary stuff so often is that it's, like, an additional level of remove between the two characters. And romance seems, to me, to be all about intimacy and connection. And sure, it can be really romantic or sexy to write a love letter or love email, I guess, in 2019. But there's still something where you're not in the moment. There's no, like, tracking a touch as it happens, or a kiss, or whatever it is. And so I think that going into "Thrall," we were like, "How the hell do we make a romance happen when the characters essentially are never in the same scene?" Like, in order to be texting each other, they probably aren't together. In order to be chatting each other, they're probably not together. And so any evidence of an encounter, which is all we could show, also demonstrated their distance. So that was a challenge. And we got around it in a couple of different ways, including characters literally writing out sex scenes that they wished would happen like fantasies, having chats that were more intimate. But yeah, the romance part, I think, was actually the hardest to portray via the epistolary form because it introduces that necessary distance, which is sort of the anti-romance. It was much easier, for example, for the mystery, or the suspense parts because those things can be portrayed that way no problem. But, yeah, the romance part was tricky. Jeff: Well, as I said the review, I think you guys pulled it off so amazingly. If people have not read "Thrall," they should really pick it up and give it a try. Roan: Oh, thanks. Jeff: Because maybe a little much to call it a breath of fresh air, but it's certainly gonna be something very different than what I think most people tend to read. Roan: Yeah, it definitely is different. And it's one of those books that Avon and I knew going in, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. It's an adaptation. It's an adaptation of "Dracula." It's an adaptation of "Dracula" without vampires. It's a romance where you don't ever see the characters touch necessarily. But like, I feel, like, for people who are interested in form for people who are interested in Dracula or interested in suspense, and all that stuff, we were really excited to just do something totally new for us. Jeff: Yeah. It was super cool. Please do more of that sometime. Roan: I would love too. Jeff: So laying a little bit of your origin story, how did you get involved in writing M/M romance? Roan: You know, at the risk of making, it sound completely accidental, it was kind of accidental. My good friend from graduate school, got a job in Phoenix, and didn't know very many people. She didn't have many friends. And she and I both started reading both young adult and M/M mysteries in grad school. And so I went to go visit her and she was having a hard time. Like, I said she didn't know very many people, didn't have any friends, and she just wanted like, escape reading. And we were, like, in the kitchen cooking dinner or something, and she was saying that she just wished that there was, like, a romance novel that she could read about someone who was in her situation. So someone who was a new professor in a new place, didn't know very many people and was kind of struggling to fit in. And because she's my friend and I wanted to make it all better, I was like, "Oh, no worries, I'll write you a story. Everything is gonna be okay." So on the plane home from Arizona, I wrote the first chapter of what would eventually be "In the Middle of Somewhere," my first book, thinking that, like, I would send it to my friend, and she would read it and be like, "You are such a nerd. I can't believe you actually wrote me this story. I was just complaining. You're weird." But instead, she read it and wrote back and was like, "Oh, a story. Oh, my gosh. What happens next?" And, of course, I didn't know what happened next because there was no next. I thought that it was going to be a little one-off thing. But then I wrote the next chapter and I emailed it to her, and she wrote back and was like, "What happens next?" And I actually wrote the whole first half of the book that way just chunking out a chapter, emailing it to my friend, and I was really writing it for her. I never thought I would show it to anyone. I never intended to send it to a publisher. I didn't even have a plot, I just was writing these little sections. And around halfway through the book, I suddenly realized that, like, it was getting kinda long, and I should probably figure out how it was gonna end. Otherwise, I would just end up writing this, like, email missive to my friend forever, which was really fun. But also, I thought she would get sick of it eventually. And then when I finished the book, I thought that was gonna be the end of it. And it was my friend who was like, "No, you should totally try to publish it." And I owe it all to her, I never occurred to me to send it to anyone. And I would never have done it if she hadn't made me. Jeff: Well, kudos to her for making that happen. And that's the best accident story ever. I mean, just amazing. Were you writing before that at all? Or was this just really like, "Hey, I could write. I'll write you something. No worries." Roan: Well, you know, I've always written different things. I was a poetry major in college of all the super useful things to pursue. And so I wrote poetry or some short fiction. And then I did my PhD in literature. So, you know, I wrote a dissertation, I wrote nonfiction for years, and years, and years. But I've always loved to write. And I love reading novels. And so sitting down to write a novel, I think it actually helps that I wasn't thinking of it as writing a novel. I just thought of it as writing the story for my friend. So I didn't have any of the self-consciousness or like that internal editorial voice that I'm sure if I had planned to send it out, would have like, killed me as I was trying to start. And in terms of, like, as we get back to your original question, which I don't know that I actually answered in terms of, like, why M/M romance specifically. I hate misogyny, and sexism, and can't deal with stories where I read female characters and feel intensely alienated from them. And I find often in romance, not all by any means, there are some amazing, amazing, like, revolutionary really amazing people writing romance with women, but I've often found that reading romance novels that are, like, heterosexual romance stories make me feel alienated, and angry, and the opposite of anything that I associate with romantic. And so, yeah. Jeff: Who are sort of your author influences? Roan: Oh, man. Well, you know, growing up, I read everything. I'm a real, like, moody reader. So I go through phases. And when I'm in that phase, that's all I read. So, like, when I was in elementary school, I was obsessed with S. E. Hinton Hinton, "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish," those books. And she writes with this very kind of, like, spare style, but lots of sensory detail. And I think that that's definitely something that I've always really admired was the ability to evoke feeling even while being very spare. And then when I was in middle school, I was obsessed with Anne Rice, obviously, because middle school. And I read her books over, and over, and over. And I think that she is like the master of the kind of Baroque sentence structure that when you're deep in, reading one of her books, you don't notice that she's, like, in a strange Yoda way, like, flipping a subject and predicate to make things sound, more flourishy and purple prosy. You don't notice it because you're so deep in it that, like, of course, that character would talk that way. But if you go and you read another author or another book, you realize suddenly what she was doing. And so I think from her, I got just, like, I really respected this immersive detail-rich all the senses engaged kind of writing. Also, I really love long books, and the ability to sustain a story over 800 pages, and keep going with this level of detail. I mean, I know it's not everyone's bag, like, some people really like a short one and done, but I mean, I will read a series that goes on forever if I'm still engaged. And I just think that she does that incredibly well. Then, oh, gosh, I'm taking you on a tour. I don't know if this is actually answering your question, but I do think... Jeff: It is actually. Yeah. Roan: Oh, okay, good. The real answer is, like, I learned things from every single author I read. And sometimes, it's things that I don't ever wanna do. And sometimes, it's things that my mind is blown because I'm like, "Holy crap, I didn't even know you could do that." Sometimes it's like I feel like I'm weak in one area at a moment. And so I wanna go read someone who I think does something really well and try to learn it. Oh, Francesca Lia Block was a huge influence when I was a teenager. She writes this kind of magical realism that is, like, very urban set - in LA, deals with real world problems, but has this, like, pink fog over the entire thing. And I was really, really taken by that. That way of combining urbanity with fantasy, and so that's definitely something that I took from her. I went through a really deep, like, epic historical fiction kick, which maybe is that same kind of, like, very immersive detail, huge cast of characters, all that stuff. And, oh, gosh, I'm totally blanking on her. Oh, Sharon Kay Penman is her name. Okay. Sorry, this is maybe a tangent. But this story blows my mind and is, like, one of the more impressive things I've ever heard in my life, if you'll indulge me for a moment. Jeff: Of course. Roan: So Sharon Kay Penman writes these, like, hugely epic, 1,000-page long, British Isles historical fiction. And she wrote this book called "The Sunne in Splendour," in, like, I wanna say the early 80s, maybe mid-80s. And the book is epically long, and just detail, and hundreds and hundreds of characters, and like tons of things translated into Welsh. It's about Welsh civil wars, or wars with England. Anyway, she wrote the book and, like, on a typewriter, and had it in one of those, you know, the boxes that reams of paper come in…you would put your manuscript in this box. So she was going to drive her book to her publisher. And she stopped at the bank to, like, deposit a check or something. And when she came back out, her car had been stolen with the copy of the book inside, the only copy of the book, which I don't even know how that happens. So the car stolen, she's just sure she's never gonna get it back. And whereas, like, I don't know, I would probably immediately go home and, like, order seven pizzas, and you wouldn't see me for a month. She drove home and started writing the book again. Jeff: Wow. I would have done the seven-pizza thing and then walked away for, like, at least a week. Roan: Yeah. Like, I would have told every single person who would listen that my life's work had been ripped from me. And it was the worst thing that ever happened to me and which, you know, I think that's actually speaking pretty well of my life that that would be the worst thing. But, yeah, I just, like, that level of tenacity and dedication to a project, it just blows my mind. Anyway, she's amazing. Jeff: Yeah, that's awesome. And just, like, I can't even imagine, it speaks so well to these days where we're like, "Did you back that up on Dropbox?" Roan: Yeah, at least someone's like, "Oh, man, I just spent, like, 20 minutes writing that email and it got wiped." And I'm like, "Sharon Kay Penman." Jeff: So what's coming up next for you? What's yet to come this year? Roan: Well, do wanna be the first person to know because I actually just found out yesterday? Jeff: Oh, breaking news. Roan: Breaking News. Yeah, I just sold a new book, which I'm pretty excited about. Okay. The concept is, there is a guy who has a bunch of animals. He's like, kind of antisocial, kind of pissed off at the world for reasons that I will not divulge yet. And he likes animals better than people. So he has all these rescue dogs and a bunch of cats that hang around. And basically, all he wants to do is take his dogs on these long rambling walks and think about how fucked up his life has gotten. It's the only thing keeping him sane, it's just, like, rambling walks with these dogs. And one night he is walking with the dogs and one of them starts chasing something. And he starts chasing the dog and falls down a hill and breaks his ankle. So all of a sudden, he can't do the one thing that he's liked, which is walk his dogs. So he goes online, and he finds this app that, like, match makes pet owners with people who wanna hang out with animals, but can't have pets of their own, because he's looking for someone who could help him walk his dogs, since he can't do it anymore. Then you have this other character, who's super shy lives with his grandma is, like, husband saving up to try to, like, get a new apartment so that he could have a dog. And then his grandfather dies, he has to move in with his grandmother, and he can't have an animal because she's desperately allergic. So he goes on the matchmaker app, and gets matched with this dude who needs someone to walk his dogs. And so the Meet Cute is a dog walking app, and a grouchy meets a shy guy, and lots of animals, and love. Jeff: Well, this sounds awesome. When do we get to see this? I'm guessing 2020 sometime? Roan: I think so. I don't have a date on it. I'll start working on it soon. But, yeah, I think it's gonna be, like, cute-ish in tone. And I don't know, I keep, like, accidentally writing animals into every single one of my books. And I don't even mean too. And this time. I was like, "Well, I mean, I keep doing it by accident. Maybe this time, I'll just, like, actually do it on purpose." Jeff: And what's the best way people can keep up with you online and find out when this next thing comes out? Roan: Well, they can check out my website, roanparrish.com, where I post all things that exist. And then in terms of social media, I've been very active on Instagram stories lately. I just bought a house, my first house, like the first non-one-bedroom apartment that I've been living in. And I've been doing all these, like, garden planting, and baking, and projects, and stuff. So I've been really liking Instagram stories. So people should follow me there and tell me all the things that I'm doing wrong in my garden. Jeff: They may not think you're doing wrong. Roan: I mean, it's my first time and I feel, like, I'm doing everything wrong. But we'll see, it might grow. Jeff: I bet it does. And congratulations on the first house. That's such a huge thing. Roan: Oh, thank you. I really went, like, in the space of one month from a person who thought that they would always live in one-bedroom apartments to a person who bought a house. And so it was very shocking for me. I keep wandering to the extra room and being, like, "What's gonna go in here? I don't know." Jeff: It's part of the fun of home-ownership. Roan: Yeah. Mostly, it's like my cat goes in there. And that's what happened. So I mean, I'm on all the social media things. I'm everywhere as Roan Parrish and people can find me. But Instagram stories is totally the most fun. And for people who, like, wanna know about when books are coming out, but don't dig the social media vibe, BookBub is a great place to find me because they'll just get emails when I have books coming out or on sale. Jeff: Fantastic. Well, we will link up to everything we talked about in the show notes. We wish you the best of luck with the release of "Raze." And thanks so much for hanging out with us. Roan: Oh, thanks so much. It was a blast. Book Reviews Here's the text of this week's book reviews: In Case You Forgot by Frederick Smith and Chaz Lamar. Reviewed by Jeff Frederick Smith and Chaz Lamar are new to me authors and I loved reading their first collaboration, In Case You Forgot. Frederic and Chaz are two black gay men writing about two black gay men living in West Hollywood. This year in the life story left me wanting sequels because I want to read even more about these two interesting characters. Zaire James and Kenny Kane are in similar positions. Coming up on his 30th birthday, Zaire decided it was time to separate from his husband, even though a lot of his family and his friends thought Mario was perfect for him. Kenny, approaching 40, was dumped by Brandon-Malik via text as he was en route to his mother’s funeral. Both of these guys need a reboot. For Zaire that means moving into WeHo--it happens that he moves in across the street from Kenny. He’s got a new job at a social media firm and he’s looking for what comes next. He’s got a family that wants him to find it too--the James Gang siblings--brother Harlem and sisters Langston and Savannah--are always on him to get his life together and find his happy. Kenny, on the other hand, is working on getting his consulting business off the ground since he’s recently finished his doctorate. He’s trying to mostly focus on the business, but he also wants to find Mr. Right. Kenny also carries the weight of having watched his first boyfriend, Jeremy, die after a stabbing. He’s working on his life with some therapy. So what happens in this book? Life. Kenny and Zaire, at times together and at others separate, look for a good date that may lead to more, celebrate birthdays, experience success and failures. The last line of the book’s description captures this perfectly: “...they hope new opportunities, energy, mindsets, and connection will reinvigorate what is missing in their lives--drama and all.” That’s exactly what I liked about In Cast Your Forgot, the slice of life feel. It’s happy, sad, angry, messy and full of great triumph and really bad mistakes. It takes a lot to make this kind of loose plot work, especially since the two lead characters aren’t always together as the year progresses. Frederick and Chaz made it work though. One of the reasons it works is the cast of supporting characters from family, friends, roommates and co-workers. Among my favorite parts of the book was the use of social media to plan their lives and sometimes even to stalk their exes, at times to the chagrin of the friends trying to help them move on. There’s also a Labor Day trip to Palm Springs that was one of my favorite parts of the book because of the realness of how it unfolded and how it tweaked Kenny and Zaire’s relationships. The characters reminded me of Noah’s Arc, a show I loved that ran on Logo in 2005 and then was a movie in 2008. The show focused on queer men of color in various states of life and relationships. Kenny and Zaire would fit right in there. I do want to set some expectations around this book. As you may have figured out, it’s not a romance. It’s categorized that way on the Bold Strokes Books site as well as at retailers. I think that’s wrong. It doesn’t have any of the typical romantic story beats and, most importantly while Kenny and Zaire date for a bit in the middle of the book they don’t get an HEA or HFN as a couple….although the book does end with both characters in good places. If you want a great look at a year-in-the-life of some terrific characters who are trying to get their lives together, I highly recommend In Case You Forgot. And I’d love to see sequels to this book. Frederick, Chaz, please write romances for these guys...

The guys talk about their past week as Jeff worked on revisions and they saw a production of Oklahoma, which they both enjoyed. They also welcomed the new listeners that have found the show during the past month. Jeff reviews Something Like Gravity by Amber Smith and Will reviews Annabeth Albert's Arctic Wild. Will and Jeff talk with Annabeth Albert about the Frozen Hearts series, including getting a sneak peek of Arctic Heat, which comes out in September. Annabeth also talks about the research that goes into the Frozen Hearts books, the latest in the Out of Uniform and Rainbow Cove series plus she discusses her next series about smoke jumpers. Complete shownotes for episode 195 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript - Annabeth Albert This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: We are excited to welcome back to the show, Annabeth Albert. She was last here, way back in December 2017 in episode 115, talking about "Wheels Up". You have written so much since then. It's so great to have you back to catch up. Annabeth: Hi, happy to see you. Jeff: Now, the most recent thing you got out is the "Frozen Hearts" series. Tell us a little bit about this series and what its inspiration was. Annabeth: So I started reading in the late '80s, early '90s romance. And I love the Alaska set Debbie Macomber's and Nora Roberts. And so my inspiration for this series would be, what if we went back to that sort of setting but made it LGBTQ and fun and that big, sweeping feeling - the big scenery, big emotions, mountain men? I wanted to capture all that feeling of Alaska. And also all the Alaska shows that I like watching, "Man Versus Nature," all those sort of shows. And so I thought, let's bring that sort of big scenery to life in a series that also has LGBTQ characters. And so it was really fun for me to get to bring that to life. And it's a three book trilogy, and each book stands alone really well because we kind of did it so that there's very little overlap in the storylines for this particular trilogy. With "Out Of Uniform", they were a little more closely linked, you saw more secondary characters popping up, back and forth. And here, they stand alone a little bit more. Will: Aside from the inspiration itself, did you have any experience with Alaska? Have you ever been there? Annabeth: That's what's the funny part. No, I haven't actually been there. I feel guilty admitting that right now. But I have done a ton of research. And I also had Alaska beta readers for each of the books. I had people who actually live in the area in Alaska, who are able to give me feedback. "Oh, this is wrong. The coast is over here. This is..." But I did a ton of reading books set in Alaska and documentaries and message boards. And then like I said, using the beta and the sensitivity readers too from Alaska. Jeff: It's so good to have readers in your readership who can be those beta people when you need them. Annabeth: Yeah. I think that it's really important. In Book Two, I have a hero who's native Alaskan. And so it was really important to me to get a couple of beta readers and sensitivity readers who themselves identified as native Alaskans so I can have that perspective come in. And so that's really important to me. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right beta reader for that particular project. Like with book one, we had some alcoholism and some eating disorders being dealt with in that book. And so what I was able to do is get beta readers for that issue. Like I had an eating disorder beta reader, I had an alcoholism beta reader, I had some sensitivity readers kind of about trauma and stuff like that. So I tried to really bring in a lot of perspectives, so that it's both authentic and it feels true to the character, but also is sensitively done. Will: I agree with you about the sensitivity. I mean, because you're dealing with some pretty, you know, heavy, serious subjects. But they're handled in an intelligent and thoughtful way that doesn't make it like preachy or a downer. So I really enjoyed that in the first book. And I wanted to go back to the second book, "Arctic Wild", which I really, really loved. Can you talk to us a little bit about the ideas and inspiration behind that particular book? Especially the themes kind of like, you know, there's like hurt-comfort going on, there's kind of May-December going on with that particular book. What was the inspiration behind book two? Annabeth: So each of the books, I wanted a different fish out of water, so different characters kind of coming. And so I wanted to do a character who was a little bit older, more settled in his life, and confident in who he is. And so I knew he was going to be older, I knew he was going to be a lawyer, I knew he was going to be fairly well off. And I wanted to do a silver fox sort of character, but I call him my silver bear, because he's also a little bit of a larger guy. I wanted something a little outside the norm for him kind of...and then I was like, "Well, so who is he going to get paired with?" Well, obviously, he's got to get paired with someone who's fun and younger, and kind of his opposite in a lot of ways. But I knew that I wanted the hook that kind of bonds them together to be this plane crash, because I knew all along that book two was going to have a plane crash, because every book kind of has its own thing. And I knew that book two's thing was going to be bush pilot, an emergency situation, we've got a crash landing. How are these guys going to deal with it, and who is the most unsuitable guy I could put with the bush pilot in the wilderness having to deal with this emergency? So I did that. And so that was kind of the thing that kind of spurred the book forward from that point. But as I started plotting, I realized that the bulk of the book was going to come after the plane crash. Because at first I was like, maybe I'll do a really tight timeline, I'll get the whole book into a week. And that just wasn't working for these heroes. They really resisted a tight timeline. So I ended up expanding it and I was like, okay, they're going to have to deal with this aftermath together. And so because they have to deal with it together, they kind of bond in a deeper sort of way, spending the summer together as opposed to just 24 hours in the wilderness. And so to me, that was a real joy to watch them evolve and change. And it's my longest book to date. You can see how thick it is. It's a monster. But part of why it's so big is kind of the scope of it. I was able to bring in the secondary characters, Reuben's daughter, and then Toby's sister and father. I have a lot of secondary characters happening in this one. And it was just really fun for me to take that initial idea--there was going to be a plane crash with these opposites attract guys, and they're going to have to deal with it--to this more sweeping sort of story where it does become, like you said, a hurt-comfort story. How do we cope with the aftermath? And the changes that it brought within each of us. So I think that's kind of what I think the book ends up doing. Jeff: You mentioned the Native Alaskan aspect in book two. And before we hit record, you mentioned that book two is also the most research-heavy of these. What kind of research did you do to get it all to work out right? Because I imagine bush pilot, plane crashes, there's research to do there, too. Annabeth: Yeah, each element, like each sort of...and a lot of times what I do is I work in Scrivener. And in Scrivener I'll have notes for each chapter. And in a short story, like I might have like a line or two of notes per scene. In something like this, I'll have a long list and it'll have the research questions for each chapter that's going to come up. Like, okay, I need to know how a pilot would handle this sort of altitude disturbance in his thing. And what would that actually mean? What do the instruments look like? What sort of plane is he flying and what's the weather like? I have to do a lot of research into that. For that, I look at message boards, I look at small plane businesses, I look at write-ups of past disasters, news reporting. I look at a lot of stuff to kind of get that one detail. Like, I won't just, you know, get one thing. I'll look at a couple of different things to kind of get a couple of perspectives. And the same thing with the Native Alaskan details. Obviously, it's not my own lived experience and I'm really aware of that. So I had the two beta readers who were themselves identifying as Native Alaskan. I did a lot of research with blogs, blogs written by people who identify as Native Alaskans. Autobiographies, I did a couple of phone interviews, I really tried to get a variety of experiences so that I could bring Toby to life in a way that was both sensitive and well-rounded and that reflected a variety of sort of different opinions and different ways that sort of their lives end up unfolding. And so I'm very proud of the amount of research that went into both Toby and the book as a whole because like you said, the bush pilot, the plane crash. I had a floor plan at one point of their rental house, I have a floor plan drawn on my office wall of exactly what this rental house would look like, where it's located, what the driveway...all this stuff. Like, I really go into the minutia. Jeff: I like that attention to detail. Because as you said, it just brings everything more to life as it goes. Now you did mention it was a trilogy, and in September, it wraps up with "Arctic Heat". What's coming in that book and can you give us a little sneak peek? Annabeth: So I am so excited for this one. I love the whole trilogy, each book was its own sort of joy to write. But "Arctic Heat" is the one that I was probably most excited about. It's close proximity. We have a ranger who's handed this volunteer and who's going to be snowed in for the season. And this does happen actually. In Alaska, there are volunteer positions where you can basically go and stay in the State Park over winter. And so you're able to basically experience an Alaskan winter with a ranger. And it's kind of cool. So I was like, "Yeah." When I heard about this, I was like, "Oh, yeah. This has got to be a romance." And so the one hero who comes from California, he's kind of a free spirit and he has no idea what he's in for. Even though he's been around snow a little bit, but he has no idea what he's in for. And then we have the older cranky ranger who also is like, he's lost his longtime partner. She's gone on to be back in the city and he's really kind of cranky about this. And he's been handed this guy, and so they're going to spend the winter snowed in together. And along the way, they're going to catch some feelings, and it's going to be really fun. And so they meet each other at training. And they're really not sure about each other. We have Quill, who's the ranger and Owen, who's the younger guy from California. And Owen has a feeling about Quill kind of from the beginning. And he's got his number. And so they end up going out to dinner. And at this point, Quill doesn't know yet that they're going to be snowed in together all winter. So Quill is kind of in the dark about that. But Owen is sure about kind of, he likes Quill, and he likes Quill a lot. And so I was going to give you guys...now if you read "Arctic Wild" in the back of "Arctic Wild" there's the first scene for this one, for "Arctic Heat". So I didn't want to read to you from that scene, because if you read "Arctic Wild" you've seen it. So I'm going to give you a little snippet of their first kiss. And it just kind of shows they're dynamic. I think it's just a couple of paragraphs and I'm just going to read it to you. And I'm not as good as my narrators, I have awesome narrators but we're just going to see. So they're leaving a restaurant here. "They each paid their share and then headed outside. The light had started to fade, the midnight sun of the summer long past. The crisp bite to the air making Owen wished he had grabbed more than his hoodie. 'Cold?' Quill asked as Owen rubbed his arm. 'A little, yeah. Warm me up, please. I know a shortcut through the alleyways back to the hotel. Lead on.' Owen followed him as he ducked down the narrow alley, both of them walking too fast for much conversation. 'Whoa!' Quill's arm shot out holding Owen back as an SUV unexpectedly backed into the alley. Yanking Owen into a dark doorway with him, Quill frowned at the vehicle which took it sweet time vacating the alley, long enough for Owen to sense Quill's warmth and nearness. More of that classic intoxicating scent, the harshness of their breathing that much sexier in the close quarters. The charged air around them was made worse with every brush of their arms. "You sure there's nothing on your bucket list?" As the SUV finally moved on, Owen turned to block Quill from an easy exit. 'Nothing I could help with?' 'Not sure,' Quill hissed out of breath which was decidedly not a resounding no. So Owen moved closer. 'I am very open minded and discreet. You could tell me.' 'You're something else,' Quill whispered. But his tone was more awestruck than censuring. 'So I've been told.' Taking a chance, Owen put a hand at his shoulder and was relieved when Quill didn't immediately flinch away or tell him off. 'Come on. Take a chance. Nothing you're curious about?' 'Like what?' Owen's voice with a harsh whisper. 'Mmh.' Owen pretended to think as he leaned in close enough to brush his lips against Quill's neck. Quill was taller but not by so much that Owen had to overly stretch. His skin tasted good, warm, ever so slightly salty. 'This maybe,' he moved to flip Quill's ear lobe with his tongue, 'Or this, so many delicious possibilities.'" And that's the look at kind of what's happening between them when they get started. And you'll have to see the rest. But I loved writing Owen and Quill. They were so much fun, it takes place over a couple of months. So we get to kind of see their progression. It's a little bit of a slow burn, each of the books in the series has been a little more slow burn. But once they get going, there's a lot of heat. And so it was a really fun one for me. And I really enjoyed kind of, whereas "Arctic Wild" had the bigger cast of characters, this is mainly the two of them, dealing with the elements of nature, dealing with each other, dealing with roommates issues. It's kind of the 'Odd Couple' in Alaska. And so it was just a lot of fun. I can't wait for you guys to get to see this in September. Jeff: Have you pre-ordered this yet? Because that forced proximity is so your jam. Will: I have enjoyed each of the books up to this point. But book three hits pretty much everything that I'm looking for in a romance. I mean, listeners, longtime listeners know, forced proximity is my absolute most favorite thing ever. So yes, that reading you just did it's like, whew, I can't wait. Jeff: I think you mentioned that this is a real thing people can do to opt to go snowed-in with a ranger. Annabeth: Yeah, they do. Yeah. So there's volunteer positions all year long with the Alaska state parks. And with the National Parks too, though, those are a little more competitive. But you can go for the summer, you can go for the winter, and they have like little yurts or tiny cabins. Pretty rustic conditions but they're looking for volunteers to basically help the paid rangers out because without the volunteers, they couldn't get nearly as much done as they can. So basically, you become a winter caretaker or a summer caretaker at one of these parks. And you get to help the Ranger but you also get to spend winter in Alaska, with all the snow and a tiny yurt. So stuff like that. And each of the sites has its own housing situation. And so that was some of the research I had to do was figure out, what would the housing situation be like at this particular site, as opposed to other sites? How are they going to get their heat? How are they going to get electric? Do they have access to the internet? All those little questions come up? Jeff: It's fascinating. Would you ever consider doing such a thing? Annabeth: I have small kids. And so sometimes that seems really appealing. Like, "Oh, I could go for three months." And other times, it's like, "No, they'd miss me and I'd miss them and the dog would pine." Jeff: Research trip. Annabeth: I'm going to say my next series is back to Oregon. We're going to be back in Oregon but we're going to be in Central Oregon. And so we are actually taking a research trip as a family towards later in the summer. We're doing a research trip to go into Central Oregon to see some of the places that will be in that series. So I'm excited about that. Jeff: Oh, cool. Not quite the same as snow in a yurt. But, you know, research trip nonetheless. Annabeth: Yeah. Well, I get to bring the kids on that one. So it'll be fun. Jeff: They might enjoy snow in a yurt. I don't know. Annabeth: They would. They would. Yeah. Jeff: You've had a prolific year, even before the "Frozen Hearts" books started coming out. You had new stuff in the "Rainbow Cove" and "Out Of Uniform" series. Are there challenges working across so many series that are so close together in release times? Annabeth: So what I tend to do is I tend to write in blocks. So all three Alaska books were written back to back to back. But in between two of them, I took a little tiny "Rainbow Cove" break. I gave myself five days to write a novella. I was like, "Okay, I'm kind of burned on Alaska, just a little." And so I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to give myself five days because I'm supposed to be writing these books back to back and I'm going to write a "Rainbow Cove" novella. And I did. I wrote 20k in five days. And that became "Lumber Jacked". And obviously editing it and stuff took more than the five days. But I got the basic draft down and then I worked on the edits for that while I went on to Alaska three. And that's how I worked a "Rainbow Cove" in. Because it's not a full length, it's a novella. And then the "Out Of Uniform", that wrapped, actually wrote that last April. So I wrote it April 2018. Then I started Alaska after that. But then it didn't come out until January because that's how publisher schedules work. And so I wrote it as part of Camp NaNoWriMo 2018. It was really fun. Loved writing "Rough Terrain". So it coming out in January was just a joy. But that kind of wrapped up a period of finishing up "Out Of Uniform" and then moving into the Alaska universe. And so I kind of go from universe to universe. I try not to hop back and forth anymore, because I've done that in the past. And I ended up having to reread a lot of my stuff a lot more when I'm going back and forth between series. And so I think the biggest challenge for me has been working in time for "Rainbow Cove" because that one doesn't have publisher deadlines. And so I tend to be overly optimistic with my publisher deadlines, and I'm like, "Oh, I'll get this book done early." And then I'll get another "Rainbow Cove" in. And lately that has not been happening. The books have been going long and complicated. And I love that. I love writing long, I love writing complex books. But it has made it a challenge in terms of working more "Rainbow Cove" in. Jeff: What is going on in "Lumber Jacked", that people who are reading "Rainbow Cove" might want to check out? Annabeth: So that one, like "Rainbow Cove", is set on the Oregon coast, and all the books are. So it has a honest to goodness lumberjack as the hero. He makes a brief appearance in book two but this stands alone. If you haven't read book two, you're fine. And it's just 99 cents and it's also in KU. It's a fun little...it's under 30K because I ended up adding a little bonus epilogue to it. But so it has a lumberjack who is an amateur photographer on the side. He likes to take bondage pictures, and so like rope, like Shibari pictures. Like, there's some really neat artwork done with Shibari. And so he meets this makeup blogger, and the makeup blogger is like, "Maybe I would like to pose for one of these pictures." And so their courtship kind of unfurls from there with photos and lumberjack plaid. And it's a lot of fun. But I really liked the chance to write my makeup blogger hero because there's been so many amazing male makeup bloggers recently, becoming even the face of some major brands and stuff. And so I wanted to show that sort of side of masculinity as well. These guys have embraced more of the makeup loving, glitter loving sides of themselves. And so I wanted to do a hero on that sort of spectrum. And so that was really fun for me to get to do him and contrast him with our big burly, older lumberjack guy. And so it's fun. Jeff: That's cool. And for "Out Of Uniform", is "Rough Terrain" the end of the line for that series? Annabeth: Well, I never say never and I do have more military in Alaska. One of my guys is a former Air Force pilot. And in the 'Heart To Heart' charity anthology coming up this fall - I'll have a marine in that one. So I haven't left military romance completely. But I think "Rough Terrain" kind of brought "Out Of Uniform" full circle in a lot of ways. It felt like book seven, a natural sort of stopping point for this part of the series right now. But I'm not ruling out more SEALs in the future. We'll just have to see what the future brings. There's a lot of things I want to explore and a lot of series I want to do. And so, we'll just have to see. But I think fans that like the "Out Of Uniform" will really like something that's coming from me in 2020, which is going to be smoke jumpers. So I've got the band of brothers again, but they're firefighters. And they're in Central Oregon, like I said. They're in Central Oregon fighting forest fires. And it's going to be really...I'm looking forward to the research and I'm really looking forward to being back with a band of brothers kind of group of friend heroes. And it should be really interesting and fun. Jeff: Is that some of the research you're doing on the Oregon trip this time? Annabeth: Yeah. So we'll be actually going to some Oregon fire stations. We'll look at like both the little towns that they live in. We'll also go to some of the state forest areas there, see some actual forest damage and stuff. I've got some different things planned for us to kind of really...I want to really get my five senses into that area, because I live in Oregon, obviously. But I live more in the valley. And so I'm going more into that Central Oregon terrain, it is way different, like you said. It's way different terrain. And so I want to really immerse myself in that to really get that flavor for readers. Jeff: That's very exciting. You've hinted at some stuff in the future like with "The Smoke Jumpers". Of course, "Arctic Heat" comes out in the fall. Anything else you can tease out in the universe? Fill us with what's coming up. Annabeth: So I have a book coming...so "The Smoke Jumpers" will be coming summer 2020. And in between, "Arctic Heat" and "The Smoke Jumpers", I have my first book with Sourcebooks coming. And it is a YA-NA crossover, little bit lower heat, but a lot of the same fun and energy that a YA-NA...you'd expect in a YA-NA crossover. I think fans who have liked some of the lower heat ones that have been rising up the charts like "Red, White, and Royal Blue", that sort of book, I think they might like this sort of tone. And it's a road trip romance, which I love road trips. Like I just said, I love road trips. And so I'm really excited. It's a road trip romance with gamer guys. They're in college, and they're going to a big gaming convention. Like imagine ComicCon, but it's for a card game that they both play. Like, Magic The Gathering, but I kind of invented a fake card game for them. So they're like these gamer guys who have to make the convention on time to get their chance in the big tournament. And it's going to be a lot of fun. I don't think they've gone public with the title yet. But it is coming in April 2020. And so I can't wait to see the cover they're doing and it's going to be really fun. It's going to be in bookstores, which is...I'm really excited about. So it's going to be in the trade paperback. Jeff: Yeah, we were excited to see...I believe it was the first of the "Frozen Hearts" series that we found in our local Barnes and Noble. Annabeth: I know. I'm so stoked. Readers keep tagging me in pictures in the wild of these books. And it makes me so happy. And readers, if you see the books in the wild, take a picture for me. I do love seeing them, I love...and if you like your local bookstore carrying more LGBTQ fiction, let the bookstore know. Even if you're not buying a book that day, say, "Hey, I'd like to see more fiction like this." Not just mine, but a lot of other authors that are coming into mass market and stuff. The more appetite there is for that, I think the more we'll see that in bookstores and stuff and airport kiosks and stuff. And so I'm excited for that. Jeff: Yeah, it's an exciting time. And it feels like "Red, White, and Royal Blue" may lead some of that too. I know that's not a mass-market book. But the fact that they're getting picked up in Target is pretty exciting. So definitely ask for those books. Annabeth: Yeah. I think the more you see that and my...and Sourcebooks has a lot sort of planned around the release of this road trip romance. That should take it to a broader audience. So I'm really excited to see some of what they've got planned and coming. And so it's been really fun to work on that. And that may end up being a series. We just have to see. Jeff: Cool. I'm thinking on your backlist, is this kind of a first for YA for you? Annabeth: Well, they're college age. And so I've done college age with a high heat level in "Winning Bracket". And then I did college age with a lower heat level in one of my freebies, "First In Line", which is set in the same universe as "Winning Bracket". And so that's a sweeter one, it just has a kiss. The one that I'm talking about is somewhere in between there. There are some love scenes, they're just not quite as graphic. And so it was kind of fun to go back to the college universe and kind of...I love that age of hero and I really enjoyed kind of being in that universe with them and that age for a little bit. And so that was fun. But it's not like YA is typically considered senior in high school and older. So that's why they're calling this kind of a crossover because they are in college but upper YA readers will probably enjoy this. Jeff: Cool. Awesome. I'm excited for that one. Will: Yeah, that sounds... Jeff: I love YA new adult so much. So what's the best way for everyone to keep up with you online? Annabeth: So I'm on Facebook. I have Annabeth's Angels as our Facebook reader group. I welcome everyone into there, whether you've read me or not. If you want to talk about fun books, we welcome people in there. I'm also on Facebook myself. I welcome people to follow me on Facebook. I'm on Twitter and Instagram, little bit less than Facebook. Facebook's kind of my big addiction. But I am on Instagram and Twitter. And I also do playlists for all of my books on Spotify. So if you're on Spotify, you can follow me on Spotify and see kind of the music that's influencing the different books. Jeff: Fantastic. We will link up to all that stuff in the show notes. For sure. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We wish you the best of luck with everything you've got coming out later this year and into 2020. Annabeth: Thank you. Book Reviews Here's the text of this week's book reviews: Something Like Gravity by Amber Smith. Reviewed by Jeff. This was the summer book I didn’t know I was looking for. Not only is it set during the summer, but--in the best way possible--it moves like a lazy summer, filled with all the best things. It’s hard to explain that aspect of it, but it’s one of the things I loved about this book with the feel that with everything else that happens there was the vibe of the lazy summer. Something Like Gravity opens as summer break from school begins. Chris has just arrived at his Aunt Isobel’s where he’ll stay as he tries to reset after being assaulted the year before as he came out as transgender. Meanwhile, Maia, who lives across the field, is still reeling from the death of her older sister. Over the course of the summer, Chris and Maia find comfort and love with each other, reveal their secrets and are able to heal--although it’s far from easy. The meet cute for Chris and Maia is nearly fatal and sets the tone for how their early relationship works--rather adversarial. Chris goes out for a drive with the car that he gets to use for the summer and he practically runs over Maia, who was stopped on her bicycle in the middle of the road. The two hardly speaking in the aftermath but after that gravity starts to pull them together. In the hands of a lesser writer, building a story of first love set amongst loss and trauma would likely be a disaster. Amber, however, crafts a story that I had a hard time putting down because I wanted to see how things would go--both the cringy difficult moments as well as the super sweet ones. I enjoyed both Maia and Chris’s journeys. Maia’s loss of her sister looms large over her family--Maia, her parents and even the family dog haven’t figured out the way forward. Maia tries to learn more about here sister by looking through all of the photographs and the places in them. Carrying her sister’s camera nearly constantly has many in the small town thinking that she’s trying to become her sister. It’s even something she lets Chris believe--that she is a photographer and has been taking pictures even though the camera has no film. Chris’s family is also under stress. His coming out didn’t go well. Not only was he assaulted, but his mom hasn’t adjusted well and his dad seems to be overcompensating for that. He’s come to Aunt Isobel’s to figure out what he wants to do for the next school year, to give his parents time and to find himself--including getting back to running which he enjoyed so much before the attack. He also has to decide what he wants to share with Maia. Chris and Maia have a lot of internal dialogue and it works so well. There’s a lot for them to work out for themselves and it’s some of the most powerful parts of the book. Some of the lazy summer vibe plays into the romance between Chris and Maia. Amber writes their falling for each other in such a wonderful way. There’s a perfect build up as they learn more about each other--at the same time it’s complicated by big secrets. The moments of meltdown and tremendous emotional stregnth provide significant growth moments for them. The way Amber resolves all plots--Chris and Maia’s relationship as well as between them and their parents--were so well done. I loved the meaningful talks the teens had with their parents over the span of a few days. There was much to handle and, like the rest of the story, the pacing was perfect. Chris and Maia end up in a good place too as they prepare for another year of school. I’d love to see more of these two and how their story continues. Arctic Wild by Annabeth Albert. Reviewed by Will. Buttoned up east coast lawyer Ruben is forced to take a vacation by himself in the wilds of Alaska. Needless to say, the prospect doesn’t thrill him, until he meets Toby, his handsome bush pilot tour guide. Toby has dealt with tough customers like Ruben before, and soon enough they’re enjoying each other’s company while exploring Alaska – until an unexpected storm sends their plane crashing into the remote wilderness. After they’re rescued, Toby needs time to heal from his injuries. Rueben comes up with the plan that he’ll stay in Alaska for the summer, rent a house for himself and his teenage daughter and have Toby stay with them. Ruben can care for Toby, while Toby can come up with activities than Rueben can use to reconnect with his daughter, Amelia. Amelia is no cutesy romance novel kid, she’s realistically surly and constantly annoyed by her dad – but she gradually begins to enjoy her vacation, just as her dad is enjoying all the time spent with Toby. Love is definitely in the air for our two heroes, but both are unwilling to admit that it’s more than just a fling – primarily because they’re both stubborn in their own ways, as well as an unending number of outside obstacles to their happily ever after. Both of them have complicated family and work situations to deal with. After weeks of nighttime cuddles and furtive blowjobs, Toby’s injuries are finally healed enough that he and Ruben can sleep together, it’s magical – and then, as it must in all romance novels, the black moment arrives. A serious issue with Toby’s dad forces him to take a look at his obligations – he wants happiness with Ruben and Amelia, but that doesn’t seem possible. It takes some serious soul searching until Toby finally realizes that he can’t let a misguided sense of pride keep him from accepting help when needed. By the same token, Ruben can’t swoop in and solve everyone’s problems with his money and influence. As with the previous book in this series, the author takes the time to let the story breathe – giving the characters time to know and like one another, before falling in love with each other. This extra time spent on the story also gives readers a chance to know and understand the unique and complicated situation our heroes find themselves in, primarily concerning their obligations to their respective families. Annabeth Albert has written yet another winner with Arctic Wild, giving us a terrific romance featuring two dynamic and interesting heroes that readers are sure to root for.

Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum and I’m back with Nachi Gupta for your regularly scheduled monthly dose of evidence based medicine. This month, we are tackling an incredibly important topic – Assessing abdominal pain in adults, a rational, cost effective, and evidence-based strategy. Nachi: This incredibly important topic was chosen to mark the 20th anniversary of Emergency Medicine Practice. It is actually a revision of the first issue of Emergency Medicine Practice in 1999, now with updated evidence and recommendations. Thanks Robert Williford and Dr. Colucciello for getting this all started 2 decades ago! Jeff: Wow – 20 years – that’s amazing considering Emergency Medicine as a specialty hadn’t even been around all that long at the time and as Dr. Jagoda writes in his intro “evidence based education was still finding its footing.” Nachi: As a tribute to the man who started it all, EB Medicine again turned to Dr. Colucciello, who is no longer wearing his editor in chief hat, but instead is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, to update his original article with the latest evidence. Jeff: Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this month’s issue, let me also recognize Drs. Taylor and Shaukat of Emory and Coney Island Hospital respectively for their efforts in peer reviewing this huge topic. Show More v Nachi: For a number of reasons, this month is going to be a little different. You will notice that we will focus more on safe disposition instead of on diagnosis. Which is reasonable, as that is the crux of our job as emergency physicians. Jeff: Indeed. So for those of you who can’t wait, here’s a quick spoiler, The CBC isn’t all that useful. CT is good but you really should learn ultrasound, and lastly, sick patients need prompt consultation and resuscitation, not rapid trips to radiology. Nachi: All valid points, but let’s dive in too some actual detail. Jeff: Abdominal pain is the one of most frequent complaint in US emergency departments, representing 8% of all adult ED visits, with admission rates for all patients with abdominal pain ranging between 18-42% and reaching as high as 60% for the elderly. Nachi: With respect to the elderly, statistically speaking, 20% presenting with abdominal pain will undergo surgery, and 5% will die. Jeff: Often the etiology of the abdominal pain is never determined. This happens up to 40% of the time by the end of the ED visit. Nachi: I feel like that needs to be restated for emphasis – nearly half of patients who present to the ED with abdominal pain will have no determined etiology for their pain. Clearly, that doesn’t mean you are a bad ED physician – it’s just the way it goes. Jeff: Definitely still a win to be told you aren’t having an intra-abdominal catastrophe at the end of your visit! Nachi: Moving on to pathophysiology. Visceral pain results from distention or inflammation of the hollow organs or from ischemia from any internal organ, while the more localized, somatic pain is typically from irritation of the adjacent peritoneum. Jeff: And don’t forget about referred pain. Due to the movement of organs and stretching of nerve pathways during fetal development, pain may be referred to distant sites, like diaphragmatic irritation presenting as shoulder pain. Nachi: Let’s talk differential diagnosis. The differential for abdominal pain is tremendously broad and includes both intra-abdominal and extra abdominal pathologies. Check out table 2 for a very thorough list. Jeff: Table 1 is also worth reviewing while you’re on page 3 as it lists a few of the common dangerous mimics that often lead to misdiagnosis on initial presentation. To highlight a few – a AAA can masquerade as renal colic, diverticulitis, or a lumbar strain; an ectopic may present similar to PID, a UTI, or a corpus luteum cyst, and mesenteric ischemia may present shockingly similar to gastroenteritis, constipation, ileus, or an SBO. Nachi: Though misdiagnosis is certainly possible at any age, one must be particularly cautious with the elderly. Abdominal pain in the elderly is complicated by a number of factors, they often have no fever, no leukocytosis, or no localized tenderness despite surgical disease, surgical problems progress more rapidly, and lastly, they are at risk for vascular catastrophes, which don’t typically afflict the younger population Jeff: Dr. Colucciello closes the section on the elderly with a really thought-provoking point – we routinely admit 75 year old with chest pain and benign exams, yet we readily discharge a 75 year old with abdominal pain and a benign exam even though the morbidity and mortality of abdominal pain in this group exceeds that of the chest pain group. Nachi: That’s an interesting perspective, but we still have to think about this in the context of what an admission would offer in either of these cases. Most of the testing for abdominal pain can be done in the ED, CT being the workhorse. This point certainly merits more thought though. Jeff: Most clinicians have a low threshold to scan their elderly patients with abdominal pain, and the data behind this practice is quite compelling. In one study, CT altered the admission decision in 26%, need for surgery in 12%, the need for antibiotics in 21%, and changed the suspected diagnosis in 45%. Nachi: That latter figure, 45% change in suspected diagnosis, that was also confirmed in another study in which CT revealed a clinically unsuspected diagnosis in 43% of the elderly. Jeff: And it’s worth mentioning, that even though CT may be the go-to-tool - biliary tract disease, which we know is best visualized on ultrasound, is actually the most common cause of abdominal pain, especially sudden onset abdominal pain in the elderly. Nachi: The next higher risk group to discuss are patients with HIV. While anti retroviral therapy has certainly decreased the burden of opportunistic infections, don’t forget to keep a broader differential in this group including bacterial enterocolitis, drug-induced pancreatitis, or AIDS related cholangiopathy Jeff: Definitely make sure to check to see if the patient has a recent CD4 count to give you a sense of their disease and what they may be at risk for. At less than 200, cryptosporidium, isospora, cyclospora, and microsporidium all make their way onto the differential in addition to the standard players. Nachi: For more information on HIV and its management, check out the February 2016 issue of Emergency Medicine Practice, which covered this and more in depth. Jeff: The next high risk population we are going to discuss are women of childbearing age. Step one is always the same - diagnose pregnancy! Always get a pregnancy test for women between menarche and menopause. Nachi: The pregnancy test is important not only for diagnosing an intrauterine pregnancy, but it’s also a reminder, that we need to consider and rule out an ectopic. Jeff: Along similar lines, you also need to consider torsion, especially in your pregnant population, as 20% of cases of ovarian torsion occur during pregnancy. Nachi: Unfortunately, you cannot rely on the physical exam alone in this age group, as the pelvic exam may be misleading. Up to a quarter of women with appendicitis can exhibit cervical motion tenderness -- a finding typically associated with PID. Sadly, errors are common and ⅓ of women of childbearing age who ultimately were found to have appendicitis were initially misdiagnosed. Jeff: To help reduce your risk in the pregnant population, consider imaging, particularly with radiation reduction strategies, including using ultrasound and MRI, which is gaining favor in the diagnosis of appendicitis in pregnancy. Nachi: Diagnosis of appendicitis, in a pregnant patient, ultrasound vs. mri. Sounds familiar. Didn’t we just talk about this in Episode 24 back in January? Jeff: We sure did! Take another listen if that doesn’t ring a bell. Nachi: That was focused on first trimester only, but while we’re talking about appendicitis in pregnancy - keep in mind that during the second half of pregnancy, the appendix has moved out of the RLQ and is more likely to be found in the RUQ. Jeff: As yes, the classic RUQ appendix. As if our jobs weren’t hard enough, now anatomy is changing… Anyway, the last high risk group we are going to discuss here are those patients with prior abdominal surgery. Make sure to ALWAYS examine the patient's exposed skin to look for scars. Adhesions are the leading cause of SBOs in the industrialized world, followed by malignancy, IBS, and internal or external hernias. Nachi: Also keep a high index of suspicion for patients who have undergone bariatric surgery. They are especially prone to surgical causes of abdominal pain including skin infections and surgical leaks. Jeff: For this reason, CT imaging should be done with IV and oral contrast, with those having undergone a Roux-en-Y receiving oral contrast on the CT table. Nachi: Perfect. Let’s move on to evaluation once in the ED! Jeff: As we mentioned a few times already - diagnosis is difficult, a comparison of initial and final diagnosis only has about 50-65% accuracy. For this reason, Dr. C suggests taking a ‘worst first’ approach to forming your differential and guiding your workup. Nachi: And as a brief aside, before we continue… Missed appendicitis is one of the three most common causes of emergency medicine malpractice lawsuits - with MI and fractures being the other two. That being said, you, as a clinician, have either missed appendicitis or likely will in the future. In a study of cases of misdiagnosed appendicitis brought to litigation, several themes recurred. For example, patients with misdiagnosed disease has less RLQ pain and tenderness as well as diminished anorexia, nausea, and vomiting. Jeff: Well that’s scary - I know I’ve already missed a case, but luckily, he returned thanks to good return precautions, which we’ll get to in a few minutes. Also, note that in addition to imaging and the physical exam, history is often the key to uncovering the cause of abdominal pain. Nachi: Not to harp on litigation, but in malpractice cases brought up for failure to diagnose abdominal conditions, deficiencies in data gathering and charting were often to blame rather than misinterpretation of data. Jeff: As no shocker here, getting a complete history remains tremendously important in your practice as an emergency clinician. A recurring theme of EMplify for sure. Nachi: In order to really nail this down, consider using a standardized history form -- or memorizing one. An example is shown in Table 1. Standardized forms have been shown to improve patient satisfaction and diagnostic accuracy. Jeff: An interesting question for your abdominal pain patient is to ask about the ride to the hospital. Experiencing pain going over a speed bump has been shown to be about 97% sensitive and 30% specific for appendicitis. So fairly sensitive, but not too specific. Nachi: That’s interesting and may help guide you, but it’s certainly no replacement for CT. And remember that you can have stump appendicitis. This can occur in the appendiceal remnant after an appendectomy and is found in about 0.15% of all appendectomies. Jeff: Alright, so on to the physical exam. Like always, let’s start with vital signs. An elevated temp can be associated with intra abdominal infection, but sensitivity and specificity vary greatly here. Always consider a rectal temp, as these are generally more reliable. Nachi: And remember that hypothermic patients who are septic have worse outcomes than those who are hyperthermic and septic. Jeff: Elevated respiratory rate can be due to pain or subdiaphragmatic irritation. However, it can also be due to hypoxia, sepsis, anemia, PE, or metabolic acidosis, so consider all of those also in your differential. Nachi: Moving on to blood pressure: frank hypotension should make you immediately think of a ruptured AAA or septic shock 2/2 an intra abd infection. You can also use the shock index, which as a reminder is simply the HR/SBP. In one study, a SI > 0.7 was sensitive for 28-day mortality in sepsis. Jeff: Speaking of HR, tachycardia can be a response to pain, anxiety, fever, blood loss, or sepsis. An irregularly irregular rhythm -- or a fib -- is an important risk factor for mesenteric ischemia in elderly patients. This is important to consider in your differential early as it may guide your imaging modality. Nachi: With vitals done, we can move on to the abdominal exam - it is rare that a serious abdominal condition will present without tenderness in a young adult patient, but remember that the elderly patient may not present with much tenderness at all due decreased peritoneal sensitivity. Abdominal tenderness that is greatest when the abdominal muscles are contracted is likely due to abdominal wall pain. This can be elicited by having the patient lift their head or let their legs off the bed. This finding is known as Carnett sign and is about 95% accurate for distinguishing abdominal wall pain from visceral abdominal pain. Jeff: Though tenderness itself is helpful, the location of tenderness can be misleading. Note that while 80% of patients with appendicitis have RLQ tenderness, 20% don’t. The old 80-20 rule! So definitely don’t let RLQ tenderness be your sole guide! Nachi: Voluntary guarding is due to fear, anxiety, or even a reaction to a clinician’s cold hands. Involuntary guarding (also called rigidity) is more likely to occur with surgical disease. Remember that rigidity may be a less common finding in the elderly despite surgical disease. Jeff: Peritoneal signs are the true hallmark of surgical disease. These include rebound pain, pain with coughing, pain with shaking the stretcher or pain with striking the patient’s heel. Rebound historically has been thought to be pathognomonic for surgical disease, but recent literature hasn’t found it to be all that useful, with one study claiming it has no predictive value. Nachi: As an alternative, consider the “cough test”. Look for evidence of posttussive abd pain (like grimacing, flinching, or grabbing the belly). Studies have found the cough sign to be 80-95% sensitive for peritonitis. Jeff: In terms of other sings elicited during the abdominal exam: The murphy sign, ruq palpation that causes the patient to stop a deep inspiration -- in one study had a sensitivity of 97%, but a specificity of just under 50%. The psoas sign, pain elicited by extending the RLE towards the back while the patient lies on their left side -- in one study had a specificity of 95%, but only had a sensitivity of 16%. Nachi: Neither the obturator sign (pain with internal rotation of the flexed hip) nor the rosving sign (pain in the RLQ by palpating the LLQ) have been rigorously studied. Jeff: Moving a bit further south, from the abdomen to the pelvis - let’s talk about the pelvic exam. Most EM training programs certainly emphasize the importance of the the pelvic exam for women with lower abdominal pain, but some recent papers have questioned its role. A 2018 study involving 288 women 14-20 years old found that the pelvic didn’t increase sensitivity or specificity of diagnosis of chlamydia, gonorrhea, or trichomoniasis when compared with history alone. Another study questioned whether the pelvic exam can be omitted in these patients with an early intrauterine pregnancy confirmed on ultrasound, but it was unable to reach a conclusion, possibly due to insufficient power. Nachi: While Jeff and I do find it valuable to elicit as much as information from the history as possible and take value in the possibility of omitting the pelvic in certain cases in the future, given the current evidence based medicine, we both agree with the author here. Don’t abandon the pelvic for these patients just yet! Jeff: While on this topic, we should also briefly mention a reminder about fitz-hugh-curtis syndrome, perihepatic inflammation associated with PID. Nachi: As for the digital rectal exam, this can certainly be of use when considering and diagnosing prostatitis, perirectal disease, stool impactions, rectal foreign bodies, and gi bleeds. Jeff: And let’s not forget the often overlooked scrotal and testicular exam. In men with abdominal or flank pain, this should always be considered. Testicular torsion often presents with isolated abdominal or flank pain. The scrotal exam will help diagnose inguinal and scrotal hernias. Nachi: Getting back to malpractice case reviews for a minute --- in a 2018 review involving testicular torsion, almost ⅓ of the patients with missed torsion had presented with abdominal pain --- not scrotal pain! In ⅕ of the cases, no testicular exam was performed at all. Also, most cases of missed torsion occured in patients under 25 years old. Jeff: Speaking of torsion, about 6% occur over the age of 31, so have an increased concern for this in the young. Of course, if concerned for torsion, consult urology immediately and consider manual detorsion. Nachi: And if you, like me, were taught to manually detorse by rotating in the lateral or open book direction, keep in mind that in a study of 200 males with torsion, ⅓ had rotated laterally, not medially. Jeff: Great point. And one last quick point here. Especially if you are unsure about the diagnosis, make sure to perform serial exams both in the ED and also in the next few days at their PCP’s office. In one study, a 30 hour later repeat exam for patients discharged with nonspecific abdominal pain resulted in a clinically relevant change in diagnosis and therapy in almost 25% of patients. Nachi: So that wraps up the physical. Let’s get into diagnostic studies, starting with lab work and everybody’s favorite topic... the cbc. Jeff: Yup, just the other day I was asked by a consultant “what’s the white count.” in a patient with CT proven appendicitis. Man, a small part of my soul dies every time this happens. Nachi: It appears you must have an evidenced based soul then. According to a few studies, anywhere from 10-60% of patients with surgically proven appendicitis have an initially normal WBC. So in some studies, it’s even worse than a coin flip. Jeff: Even worse, in children the CBC is less helpful. In children, an elevated WBC detects a mere 53% of severe abdominal pathology - so again not all that helpful. Nachi: That being said, at the other end of the spectrum, in the elderly, an elevated WBC may imply serious disease. Jeff: So let’s make this perfectly clear. A normal WBC should not be reassuring, but an elevated WBC, especially in the elderly, should be very concerning. Nachi: The CRP is up next. Though not used frequently, it’s still worth mentioning, as there is a host of data on it in the setting of abdominal pain. In one meta analysis, CRP was approximately 62% sensitive and 66% specific for appendicitis. Jeff: And while lower levels of CRP do not rule out positive findings, increasing levels of CRP do predict, with increasing likelihood, the chances of positive findings. Nachi: Next we have lipase and amylase. The serum lipase is the best test for suspected pancreatitis. The amylase adds limited value and should not be routinely ordered. Jeff: As for the lactate. The greatest value of a lactate level is to detect occult shock and sepsis. It is also useful to screen for visceral ischemia. Nachi: And the last lab test we’ll discuss is the UA. The urinalysis is a potentially misleading test. In two studies, 20-30% of patients with appendicitis also had hematuria with leukocytes and bacteria on their UA. In a separate study of those with a AAA, there was an 87% incidence of hematuria. Jeff: That’s pretty troubling. Definitely not great to diagnosis someone with hematuria and a primary GU problem, when their aorta is actually exploding. Nachi: And that’s a great reminder to always avoid premature diagnostic closure. Jeff: Also worth mentioning is that not all ureteral stones present with hematuria. At least 6% have no hematuria on microscopy. Nachi: Alright, so that brings us to imaging. First up: plain films. I’m going to quote this directly from the article since I think it's so important, ‘never rely on plain films to exclude surgical disease.” Jeff: This statement is certainly evidence based as in one study 40% of x-ray findings were inconsistent with the final diagnosis. In another study, 43% of patients with major surgical disorders had either normal or misleading plain film results. So again, the take home here is that XR cannot rule out surgical disease, and should not be routinely ordered except for in specific settings. Nachi: And perhaps the most important of all those settings is in the setting of possible free air under the diaphragm. In this case, an upright chest visualizing the area under the diaphragm would be the test of choice. But again, even this doesn’t rule out surgical disease as free air may be absent on plain films in ⅓ to ½ of patients who have already perfed. Jeff: Next we have everybody’s favorite, the ultrasound. Because of it’s low cost and ease of use, bedside ultrasound is gaining traction. And we’ve cited this and other similar studies in other issues, this is a skill emergency medicine physicians must have in this day and age and it’s a skill they can learn quickly. Nachi: Ultrasound can visualize most solid organs, but it is best suited for the Right upper quadrant and pelvis. In the RUQ, we are looking for wall thickening, pericholecystic fluid, ductal dilatation, and sonographic murphys sign. Jeff: In the pelvis, there is a role for both transabdominal and transvaginal to rule out ectopic and potentially rule in intrauterine pregnancy. I know the thought of performing your own transvaginal ultrasound may sound crazy to some, but we both trained in places where ED TVUS was the norm and certainly wasn’t that hard to learn. Nachi: Ah, the good old days of residency. I’m certainly grateful for the US tech where I am now though! Next up we have CT. CT scans are ordered in just under 30% of patients with abdominal pain. Jeff: It’s worth noting, that while many used to scan with triple contrast - oral, rectal and IV, recent literature has shown that IV contrast alone is adequate for the diagnosis of most surgical conditions, including appendicitis. Nachi: If you’re still working in a shop that scans for RLQ pain with oral or rectal contrast, definitely check out the 2018 american college of radiology appropriateness criteria that states that IV contrast is generally appropriate for assessing the RL. Jeff: And while we are on the topic of contrast, let’s dive a bit deeper into the, perhaps myth, that contrast leads to contrast induced nephropathy. Nachi: This is another really important point. Current data show that being ill enough to be admitted to the hospital is a risk factor for acute kidney injury and that IV contrast for CT does not add to that risk. In 2015, the american college of radiology noted in their manual on contrast media that the concern for the development of contrast induced nephropathy is not an absolute contraindication for using IV contrast. IV contrast may be necessary regardless of the risk of nephrotoxicity in certain clinical situations. Jeff: Ok, so contrast induced nephropathy may be real, but more studies and a definitive statement are still needed. Regardless, if the patient is sick and they need the scan with contrast, don’t hold back. Nachi: I think that’s a fair take home. As another note about the elderly, CT should be almost routine in the elderly patient with acute abdominal pain as it improves accuracy, optimizes appropriate hospitalization, and boosts ED management decision making confidence for this patient group. Jeff: If they are over 65, make sure you chart very carefully why they don’t need a scan. Nachi: Speaking of not needing a scan, two quick caveats on CT before moving to MRI. Unstable patients do not belong in a radiology suite - they belong in the ED resus bay to be resuscitated first. Prompt surgical consultation and bedside ultrasound if indicated are both a must in unstable patients. Jeff: The second caveat is on the other end of the spectrum - not all CT scanning is created equally - the interpretation depends on the scanner, the quality of the scan, and the experience and training of the reading radiologist. In one study, nearly 13% of abdominal CT scans may initially be misread. Nachi: So if you’re concerned, consider consultation or an extended ED observation to monitor for any changes in the patient’s status. Jeff: Next up is MRI - MRI has an ever expanding role in the ED. The accuracy of MRI to diagnose appendicitis is very similar to CT, so consider it in all pregnant patients, though ultrasound is still considered first line. Nachi: And finally let’s touch upon the ekg and ACS. In patients over 40 with upper abdominal pain, an EKG and troponin should always be considered. Jeff: Don’t be reassured by a response to a GI cocktail either - this does not exclude myocardial ischemia. Nachi: Next, let’s talk the role of analgesia in treating the undifferentiated abdominal pain patient. Jeff: While there was formerly a concern of ‘masking the pain’ with opiates, the evidence says otherwise. Pain medicine may even aid in the diagnosis, so definitely don’t withhold it in the setting of acute abdominal pain. Nachi: Wait I get that masking the pain is no longer considered a concern, but how would it aid in the diagnosis? Jeff: Good question. Analgesics might facilitate the gathering of history and allow a more complete physical exam by relaxing the abdominal musculature. Nachi: Ahh that makes sense. So certainly treat pain! Both morphine at 0.1 mg/kg and fentanyl at 1 mic/kg are appropriate analgesics for acute abdominal pain. In those that are a difficult stick, a recent study showed that 2 micrograms/kg of fentanyl via a nebulizer was a safe alternative. Remember, fentanyl is quick on, quick off, which may make it desirable in certain situations. It actually has the shortest time of onset of any opioid. It’s also safer in patients with a “marginal” blood pressure. Jeff: And just like the GI cocktail - response to opiate analgesics does not exclude serious pathology. These patients need serial exams and likely labs and imaging if their pain is so severe. Nachi: Few things are more important prior to discharge of an abdominal pain patient than documenting repeat exams and a PO trial. Jeff: True. You should also consider haloperidol for patients with gastroparesis and cannabinoid hyperemesis as a growing body of literature supports its use in such settings. Check out the August 2018 EMP or EMplify for more details if you’re curious. Nachi: The last analgesic to discuss is our good friend ketamine. Low dose ketamine at 0.3 mg/kg over 15 minutes is gaining traction as the analgesic of choice in many ED’s. Jeff: The key there, is that it must be given over 15 minutes. Ketamine has a great safety profile, but you make it so much safer and a much better experience if you give it slowly. Nachi: Before we get to disposition, let’s talk controversies and cutting edge - and there is just one this month - and that’s the use of the Alvarado score. Jeff: In the Alvarado score, you get two points for RLQ tenderness and 2 points for a leukocytosis over 10,000. You get an additional point for all of the following; rebound, temp over 99.1, migration of pain to the RLQ, anorexia, n/v, and a left shift. The max score is therefore 10. A score of 3 or less make appendicitis unlikely, 4-6 warrants CT imaging, and 7 or more a surgical consultation. Nachi: A 2007 study suggests that using the Alvarado score along with bedside ultrasound might allow for rapid and inexpensive diagnosis of appendicitis. Jeff: I don’t think we should change practice based on this just yet, but more ultrasound diagnosis may be on the horizon. If you want to start using the Alvarado score in your practice, MDcalc has a great easy to use calculator. Nachi: Let’s get to the final section. Disposition! Jeff: As we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, the diagnosis is less important than proper disposition. For patients with suspected ruptured AAA, torsion, or mesenteric ischemia - the disposition is easy - they need immediate surgical consultation and likely operative intervention. Nachi: For others, use the tools we outlined above - ct, us, labs, etc, to help support your decision. Keep in mind, that serial exams are a great tool and of little expense - so make sure to lay your hands on the patient's abdomen frequently, especially when the diagnosis is unclear. Jeff: For those that look well after a work up, with no clear diagnosis, it may be reasonable to discharge them home with prompt follow up, assuming prompt follow up is plausible. The key here is that these patients need good discharge instructions. Check out figure 2 on page 20 for a sample discharge template. Nachi: But if the patient is still uncomfortable, even after a thorough workup, there may be a role for ED observation units. In one study of 220 patients admitted for to ED obs units for serial exams, 39% eventually underwent surgery with only 5% having negative laparotomies. Jeff: This month’s issue wraps up with some super important time and cost effective strategies, so let’s see if we can quickly breeze through some of the most important points before closing out this episode. Nachi: First - limit your abdominal x-rays as they offer limited value and are rarely helpful except in the setting of perforation, when an early upright chest film should be used liberally. Jeff: Next - limit electrolyte testing especially in young adults with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. In those 18 to 60, clinically significant electrolyte abnormalities occur in only 1% of those with gastro. Nachi: With respect to urine testing, urine cultures are rarely indicated for uncomplicated cystitis in young women. Along similar lines, don’t anchor on the diagnosis of UTI as other lower abdominal conditions often lead to abnomal urine studies. Jeff: In your alcoholic patients, although all should be approached with an abundance of caution, limit testing to repeat abdominal exams in your non-toxic appearing patient who is already tolerating PO. Nachi: For those with suspected renal colic, especially those with a history of renal colic, limit CT use and instead consider ultrasound to look for hydro. This approach is endorsed by ACEPs choosing wisely campaign. Jeff: But as a reminder, this is for low risk patients only. Anyone with signs of infection should also undergo CT imaging. Nachi: And lastly - consider incorporating bedside US into your routine. The US is fast and accurate and compares similarly to radiology, especially in the context of detecting acute cholecystitis. Jeff: Alright, so that wraps up the new material for this episode, let’s close out with some key points and clinical pearls. The peritoneum becomes less sensitive with aging, and peritonitis can be a late or absent finding. Be wary of early diagnostic closure and misdiagnosis with a mimic of a more severe and dangerous pathology. The elderly, immunocompromised, women of childbearing age, and patients with prior abdominal surgeries are all at a higher risk for misdiagnosis. Elderly patients can present without fever, leukocytosis, or abdominal tenderness, but still have surgical abdominal pathology. Consider diagnostic imaging in all geriatric patients presenting with abdominal pain. Consider plain film if you suspect a viscus perforation or for certain foreign body ingestions. Do not forget the pelvic exam, testicular exam, and rectal exam as part of your physical, when appropriate. Testicular torsion can present with abdominal pain only. If suspected, consult urology and consider manual detorsion. A normal white blood cell count does not rule out appendicitis or other intra-abdominal pathology. Serum amylase should not be used in your assessment of the abdominal pain patient. Lack of microscopic hematuria does not rule out renal colic. CT of the abdomen with IV contrast alone is enough for most surgical conditions including appendicitis. Oral and rectal contrast does not need to be routinely administered. The 2018 American College of Radiology (ACR) Appropriateness Criteria discuss concern for delay in diagnosis associated with oral contrast use and an increased rate of perforation. There is recent literature to support that IV contrast does not cause nephropathy. The ACR 2015 Manual on Contrast Media states that concern for contrast induced nephropathy is not an absolute contraindication, and IV contrast may be necessary in many situations. Ultrasound can be used to evaluate the aorta, gallbladder, kidneys, appendix, bowel, spleen, pancreas, uterus, and ovaries. Consider bedside ultrasound and emergency surgical consult for all unstable patients with abdominal pain. For stable pregnant patients with concern for appendicitis, start with an ultrasound. If inconclusive, order an MRI. Epigastric pain in an elderly patient should raise concern for ACS. An EKG and troponin should be considered. For analgesia in patients with gastroparesis or cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, haloperidol is considered first-line. Low-dose ketamine (0.3mg/kg over 15 minutes) may be a better choice than opiate analgesia for abdominal pain. Nachi: So that wraps up Episode 29! Jeff: As always, additional materials are available on our website for Emergency Medicine Practice subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber, consider joining today. You can find out more at ebmedicine.net/subscribe. Subscribers get in-depth articles on hundreds of emergency medicine topics, concise summaries of the articles, calculators and risk scores, and CME credit. You’ll also get enhanced access to the podcast, including any images and tables mentioned. PA’s and NP’s - make sure to use the code APP4 at checkout to save 50%. Nachi: And last reminder here -The clinical Decision Making in Emergency Medicine Conference is just around the corner and spots are quickly filling up. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity and register today. Jeff: And the address for this month’s cme credit is ebmedicine.net/E0619, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the [DING SOUND] you heard throughout the episode corresponds to the answers to the CME questions. Lastly, be sure to find us on iTunes and rate us or leave comments there. You can also email us directly at emplify@ebmedicine.net with any comments or suggestions. Talk to you next month!   Most Important References 18. Gardner CS, Jaffe TA, Nelson RC. Impact of CT in elderly patients presenting to the emergency department with acute abdominal pain. Abdom Imaging. 2015;40(7):2877-2882. (Retrospective study; 464 patients aged ≥ 80 years) 38. Kereshi B, Lee KS, Siewert B, et al. Clinical utility of magnetic resonance imaging in the evaluation of pregnant females with suspected acute appendicitis. Abdom Radiol (NY). 2018;43(6):1446-1455. (Retrospective study; 212 MRI examinations) 41. Lewis KD, Takenaka KY, Luber SD. Acute abdominal pain in the bariatric surgery patient. Emerg Med Clin North Am. 2016;34(2):387-407. (Review) 57. Wagner JM, McKinney WP, Carpenter JL. Does this patient have appendicitis? JAMA. 1996;276(19):1589-1594. (Review) 67. Magidson PD, Martinez JP. Abdominal pain in the geriatric patient. Emerg Med Clin North Am. 2016;34(3):559-574. (Review) 83. Macaluso CR, McNamara RM. Evaluation and management of acute abdominal pain in the emergency department. Int J Gen Med. 2012;5:789-797. (Review) 94. Bass JB, Couperus KS, Pfaff JL, et al. A pair of testicular torsion medicolegal cases with caveats: the ball’s in your court. Clin Pract Cases Emerg Med. 2018;2(4):283-285. (Case studies; 2 patients) 106. Kestler A, Kendall J. Emergency ultrasound in first-trimester pregnancy. In: Connolly J, Dean A, Hoffman B, et al, eds. Emergency Point-of-Care Ultrasound. 2nd edition. Oxford UK: John Wiley and Sons; 2017. (Textbook)

Happy Pride Month! Jeff discusses the awesome Pride Month video from the NHL. He also talks about all the things that happened during release week for Netminder. Members of the Queer Sacramento Authors Collective had a reading this past week at the Lavender Library and will be reading again this coming week at Time Tested Books. The live streams are available on the podcast’s Facebook page. We talk about the Coastal Magic Convention 2020 lineup of m/m romance featured authors. We review the Elton John biopic Rocketman. Jeff reviews Max Walker’s A Lover’s Game. Will recommends books for Pride month: Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders, Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution by Rob Sanders, The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets by Gayle E. Pitman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America by Martin Duberman and The Stonewall Reader curated by The New York Public Library. Jeff interviews C.B. Lee about the latest book in her Sidekick Squad series, Not Your Backup. We also discuss the origin of the Sidekick Squad, what C.B. hears from readers and what’s coming up next. Complete shownotes for episode 191 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript – C.B. Lee This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Welcome C.B. to the podcast. It’s great to have you here. C.B.: Hello, thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here. Jeff: Yeah, it’s very exciting. We got to see you last year at the LA Times Festival of Books for a little, teeny, tiny interview. But we’re thrilled to have you back as we start to talk about “Not Your Backup” which will come out on June 4th, just the day after this airs actually. C.B.: Oh my gosh, that will be really exciting. I actually got to touch the advanced copies for the first time last week at YALLWEST, which due to this fun time jumps of podcasting… Jeff: Well, actually a bit about a month ago. C.B.: Right, right. But, yeah, it was really interesting just to, like, hold it for the first time and see it in print. Granted, the advance copies have typos since, you know, I went through and did all the pass through the typos. But it’s fun, it’s fun. It’s great that, you know, it exists, it’s in physical form, hasn’t quite felt real till now, but now it’s a real book or will be very soon, or tomorrow for your listeners and readers. Jeff: There is something about holding that physical copy, even if you see it, you know, even if it’s on your tablet as an ebook. It’s like there’s nothing like that paperback when it gets there. C.B.: Yeah. Jeff: Now, “Not Your Backup” is book 3 in the “Sidekick Squad Series.” And, for those who haven’t experienced this series or heard of it, tell us what this series is all about. C.B.: Sure, it is about a group of queer teens that take on a corrupt government superhero agency. And they live in this sort of post-dystopian world where superheroes are kind of treated like celebrities. And there’s, you know, shadowy government organizations and mysterious heroes, league of heroes, that kind of dictates who gets to be a hero and who gets to be a villain. And our protagonists all kind of uncover this huge conspiracy, and then they work together to build a resistance and take it down. Jeff: It’s quite the world that you’ve built here. I mean, you hit so many things that are dystopian, U.S. future, superheroes, villains. What was your inspiration for all of this? C.B.: So I’ve always been fascinated by kind of the, like, post-apocalyptic or dystopian worlds. But a lot of the media that I’ve read mostly focuses on kind of the…when you’re in the middle of the disaster, when you’re in the middle of the catastrophe, when everything is going wrong, how are people struggling to survive. So I really wanted to see a world that was…you know, so this is more of like a solarpunk take where the world has started to move forward, where it’s 100 years after all of these disasters have happened – kind of the impetus for the superpowers. And my book is a really extremely intense solar flare that catalyzes latent gene in people. And then after the flare, which knocks out a bunch of nuclear power plants, also, it starts kind of a chain reaction of a bunch of environmental disasters. So 100 years later the governments of the world have kind of shifted and changed, there’s been wars, there’s been fights over resources, so the United States is now part of the North American collective, which is the entire continent of North America, which is now the habitable places. There’s, you know, 24 regions, which is, you know, kind of what’s left of the states. So there’s different areas all across North America, which are now the regions in which people live and, you know, continue to move forward with, like, their amazing technology, and hover tech, and all this amazing, clean technology. But, at the same time, you have all of these like high-tech cities, but outside of those regions, everything else is like the unmaintained lands. So, you know, the government is claiming there’s radiation danger and don’t venture out, but, of course, our heroes are like, you know, what the government tells us isn’t necessarily true. So a lot of…actually, the fun of writing “Not Your Backup” is one of my working titles was “Not Your Road Trip,” because there’s a lot of road tripping in this book. Jeff: Yeah, I noticed. There’s a bit of a road trip in the sneak peek that I got to read too, that they’re out on this road trip, essentially on a mission. C.B.: Right, right. Yeah, there’s the heist in the beginning of the very first chapter. But, yeah, there’s a lot of fun. We get to see a little bit more of the country outside of the cities in this book, so that’s exciting. Jeff: Now, each of the books deals with one of the main heroes, if you will, or the sidekicks, if you will, given the titles of the book, but they’re really the heroes. In “Not Your Backup”, we focus on Emma, who is really the only one of them without the powers. What’s happening to our heroes this time out? C.B.: So at the end of “Not Your Villain,” we have destroyed the registry, which…the big name of everyone who’s ever registered with powers that Captain Orion was planning to use to kidnap people and use for experiments. At that point, our heroes have been looking for the resistance the whole time. And they find a mysterious group that’s been leaving messages on encrypted channels. But then, at the end of the book, they realize that this is actually like a group of nerds that have been joining together to watch movies like “Star Wars,” and “Harry Potter,” and stuff. So they realize that they need to start the resistance. So that’s where we are at the beginning of “Not Your Backup,” where Emma and Bells are back in Nevada, and they are kind of in the midst of this fledgling resistance group – meanwhile, Jess and Abby are at the villain’s guild hideout in the Rockies and they’re trying to corral all the other meta-humans into taking action. So, the beginning of the book, you know, where kind of everyone has different goals, but then they all come together. It’s more about like building the resistance and finding… For Emma, it’s her journey in finding who she is. And, really, she’s a very natural leader, she loves coming up with plans, and she’s definitely a Gryffindor. She’s the first to jump in and try to take action. Her default is, like, fight me. But she also is, as you mentioned, she doesn’t have powers, and so when she’s trying to take a more active role in the resistance, she kind of butts heads with a few of the other members as they have different ideas about who is and who isn’t part of the resistance. Jeff: She just needs to remind them that Batman didn’t have powers either. He just had a really good utility belt and brains. So she could definitely fill that role. What’s been the driving force behind deciding the type of character that you have at the forefront of each book? Because the three books have very different, distinct character types and personalities, and just everything about them is just…they’re just very different from each other. C.B.: So, from the beginning, I wanted to tell this story about, you know, this fun adventure story with queer protagonists. So each book would center on another one of them in the main four. So there’s…and then after “Not Your Backup”, there’s one more book which will be Abby’s story, and so she will round out the quartet. But each of their…you know, they have very different personalities, but it’s been interesting writing their stories because each of them are on their own journey in what makes them a hero and finding how do they define success, and how do other people see them, and how do they see themselves. So, for each story, because we’re moving forward in time, as we get to see who is really, you know… It’s been interesting, because all four books will fit together as a series, but in each book, everyone gets to have their own journey. Jeff: Which I really like because we’ve been introduced to all of them all the way back, you know, back in the first book, but then they get to their own story, which could essentially be read as a stand-alone, if you wanted to, I guess, although reading all of them together is much better. What was the bigger challenge to come up with the trajectory of these four diverse characters or to build this alternate universe of the U.S., or were they kind of equal challenges? C.B.: I feel like the challenge for me is I’m not like a great outliner or I haven’t ever really been a planner. So I’ve always been more of the pantser in the writing style. So when writing a series, when I wrote “Not Your Sidekick,” I didn’t know, up until I think I was about 50,000 words in when I realized that I could not basically solve the problem in that one book, you know, because when I pitched it, it was one book. And then I was like, “Well, I really love all of these characters.” There’s a huge…there’s a bigger story here that I’ve introduced, and I will need more than one book to solve it. And so, from the get-go, I knew the next story after Jess would be Bells because you get into, like, the backstory of the meta-human training and the heroes, league of heroes. And so, I think, overall, just planning a series is really challenging. Some people are great at it, where, you know, they have very detailed outlines, they know, from the very beginning to the very end, what the key points are going to be. And so, as I was writing book 1, I kind of had a panic attack and I was like, “Oh, no, I have to figure out what’s going to happen in each of the books.” And then as I restructured things and then writing book 2 and then 3, it’s kind of come to a point where I’m working on book 4 and now, like, everything that I… One of the reasons why it took me a longer time between book… So “Not Your Villain” came in 2017 and “Not Your Backup” is coming out in 2019. So I didn’t have a book come out last year because I was still working on crafting the storyline because whatever I did or didn’t do in book 3 would determine what would happen in book 4. So everything had to fall into place, and I had to like figure out a lot of stuff. So it was challenging, but I think, you know, it’s still challenging, but that’s part of the joy of writing is to figure out how to tell the story you want to tell. Jeff: If you do a series again, do you think you’ll try to do outlines more in the upfront or now that you’ve had this experience, do you kind of know how to do it and keep your pantser ways going on? C.B.: I don’t know if I’ll ever… Like, I feel like with each book, I’m like, “Oh, do I know how to write a novel now?” But like every book is its own challenge. I do have a better sense of like, okay, you know, how do I plot as a pantser? And then plotting for pantsers, and like learning how to like… For me, I just tend to think of an outline like a road map where I have these destinations I wanna hit, but I’m not committed to – I don’t have to see everything and if I go off track or take a different route, that’s okay as well. So as long as I kind of get the same…like, it’s all in the journey of how I get there, and then the destinations that I pick along the way, if I get to them or not, that’s cool. I kind of have these benchmarks that I want to reach. But I really like thinking of the framework in which I think about my books as a roadmap. So I’ll try to plan out, you know, all the cities I want to visit, but I’m open to discovering places along the way and kind of building up on that. Jeff: How does the pantser sort of method work while you’re world building? Or do you try to, at least, before you start writing, “No. This is my world. This is what’s happened. This is what the U.S. looks like now, and how all that works?” Or does that come organically as you go as well? C.B.: I actually thought like, really early on established the world and what it looked like. I drew a map of which countries were left and which, how, who, what alliances were made in probably much more detail than you’ll ever see in the books because basically I plotted out what happened in that World War III, and what areas were no longer habitable, and all of these things, and all the different lines of, like… I probably spent way too much time figuring out the socio-economic holes, ramifications of which country is now aligned with what country and which countries refuse to join a union or…and they’re all new countries. So there is this whole political backstory of, like, which country fought….you know, which alliance was at war, which alliance and what’s still happening overseas. Some of which you’ll see, but it is the world itself. I’ve always enjoyed world building, and I think it’s really fun to come up with the…I think once I wrote book one where I established, like, how do the powers work. Every power level is different. For example, like the A class, B class, or C class, depending on how…basically, I wanted all the meta-humans in my world to…their powers basically are dependent on…like, they have a limited number of time per day that they can use their powers. So once they’ve used it, then they can’t use it for the next 24-hour period. So it’s a different sort of look at superpowers and abilities because you have to be more mindful about how you use your powers. And so that was an element that I established early on, but overall, I think for me, world building, there are some details I discovered along the way, but I pretty much plotted the world building which is a funny like…and it’s interesting to think about, even though I do consider myself a pantser, how much of this series I did very much envision out from an early stage. So like some of the confrontations and the fight scenes, and the stuff that… I’ve been planning one particular scene in book 3 since book 1, and I didn’t get to do it until… And, so that was like a fun way to be like, “Oh, yes, I’m finally going to like write the scene that I’ve been waiting for.” But I’d had a lot of these moments in my head, and just planning it out and getting the opportunity to like, “Okay, yes. Now, I’m getting to that chapter. I’m getting to the point in the whole series where we’re getting…you know, it’s coming full circle.” So that’s very satisfying. Jeff: It sounds like you’d have a lot of bonus material too if you ever wanted to release it, if all the stuff that you’ve got of the world itself, and the disaster, and how it’s split up. C.B.: Yeah, I mean, potentially, I have a whole timeline that I could release. And then I did these fun… For “Not Your Villain,” I did all the deleted scenes, well, deleted as far as they were cut for length. But I still consider it part of the story, the cannon. So those are an extra that are available on my website. I’ll probably do something similar for Backup, but I’m not at that stage yet. Jeff: Right. It’s good to know about the Villain extras. I’ll be going to check those out. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, they’re fun. They’re all in one PDF. And my book designer, C.B. Macera, was amazing. And she formatted them the same way as the book because we have a lot of extra art as well because she does these amazing, like, chapter headers for each chapter. She’s so talented and amazing designing the covers and the interior of the book, really, you know, capture that feel. And so, “Not Your Villain” actually, in the edits, went from…yeah, it was cut a lot. So, you know, it’s really sad as a writer to kind of see these scenes go, but, you know, as far as, yes, and my editors are great about, like, “This scene is great. But, you know, it kind of slows down the pacing,” or like, “This scene takes us in a different tone or direction, and, like, while they’re great, they don’t fit in the story at that moment and kind of take us away from the main action.” So I understand why they had to go. And, yes, the story is stronger overall, but I like them as an extra. Jeff: Yeah, we’ve all gotten used to those on DVDs over time, so there’s really no reason books can’t have them too. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, it’s a fun extra to have the deleted scenes. Jeff: So you mentioned one more book in the series, the fourth one, is that gonna be it for these heroes? C.B.: Yeah, I can’t say for sure that the door is completely closed. But for this arc, this storyline, that will be the series. It will be completed with Abby’s book. Jeff: We could treat it like the Marvel Universe. Now, if phase 1 is over, and there could be a phase 2 eventually, once you figure out what that is. What got you started in writing? C.B.: I love telling stories. And think I was very young when I tried, like, writing a story for myself. I had an old notebook that I would scribble this adventure story in when I was in sixth grade. And then I’d kind of start and then every recess, I’d pick it up or I’d work on it when I was supposed to be doing homework or stuff in class. And so I’ve always wanted to tell stories. I didn’t really think of it seriously as a career. And then, after college, I went to school for science. And so I was going to get a PhD and do all this stuff, and I, you know, ended up going a different route. And really writing has been a journey where it kind of comes…it ties back to, and I guess like the “Sidekick Squad Series” and the titles were all, you know, the titles are all about, like, hey, I’m not who you think I am, I’m not the person that you’re claiming that I should be or expect me to be. It comes back to where, as a queer woman of color, I didn’t really see a lot of myself in books growing up. And so what I really hoped to write was, like especially when I was writing Sidekick for the first time, I wanted to write a book for my 16-year-old self. So this is the book that I wanted to read. And I wanted it to exist. And so writing…and then I also just like telling stories. So I wanted the story to be fun, I wanted them to be happy and have, you know, there’s drama in them. But overall, I wanted to see kids like myself, and kids who looked like me, and other kids, that reflect the world that we live in because trans kids exist, asexual kids exist, mentally ill kids exist. And there aren’t enough stories where they get to be part of something that’s a superhero adventure, or something fun and fantastic like this. And so I wish that I hope…and I think there are definitely now, in the past, you know, 5, 10 years, there’ve been a lot more stories, and I think that’s great. So I’m just really excited that now people are writing more and more and reading more and more, and there’s a lot of great books to come. Jeff: And one of the things to not…I don’t want to knock the coming out story because those are very important and very needed. But in these books, that’s not really part of it. I mean, this is a much bigger adventure these teenagers are on that just doesn’t revolve around their sexuality so much, that just, there’s so much more going on, which I think is awesome and gives everybody something different to read. C.B.: Yeah, I love that…like, I want us to have the breadth of different types of genres and stories that there are for, like, able-bodied heterosexual people. Like, I want there to be so many stories to choose from. And so, you know…and I really love…I think there’s a lot of power in having joyful stories as well and stories where, yes, sexuality is a part of it, but, you know, who I am is not just my sexuality. Like, every person is multitudes where who you are is made up of so many things like your passions, your dreams, your hopes, your hobbies, your friends. Who you are as a person isn’t just one thing, and we’re all…I love being able to explore that and getting to see… I want people to see that people in the LGBTQ community are like fully nuanced people that get to be complicated and have flaws and go on adventures, or fall in love, or discover more about themselves in the way that all straight people can. Jeff: Well said. I like that for sure. Who were some of your author influences as you got started on your writing journey? C.B.: So I really love the “Harry Potter” series growing up. That’s a huge influence for me. That was one of the first ways I started writing was “Harry Potter” fan fiction because I loved that world so much. And just a lot of…I read so much fantasy like Ursula Le Guin, Diane Duane, Eoin Colfer, like tons of fantasy, Jane Yolen. I started to read a lot more widely. I think when I was a kid, there was a point when I would like go to the YA section and just read like everything in the library. So I would pretty much read everything, but I tended to love fantasy and sci-fi the most. Jeff: Nice, and now you get to write your own. C.B.: Yes. I’m really lucky. Jeff: Is there a genre you want to branch into as you close up the “Sidekick Series?” C.B.: I’m excited to write more fantasy. So the “Sidekick Squad” is more sci-fi, speculative. So I’m working on some fantasy stuff. I’m excited to share it. I have some contemporary stuff. I have a short story coming out next year in the next “All Out” anthology. So that’ll be fun. It’s like a very fluffy high school romance that’s just set in like… The only magic is the friendship and the romance so… Jeff: Aww, sometimes that’s all you need though. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, it’s fun because when I was writing it, I hadn’t written just contemporary in a long time. So that was really fun to try and explore that. Plus, I got to put a lot of puns in there, so it’s all good. Jeff: You seem to travel a lot. I feel like every time I see you on social media, it’s like, “I’m going to this event” or, “Here I am at this event, come see me over here.” What drives you to be out on the road so much? C.B.: So I like the opportunity to see, meet readers. I live in Los Angeles, and I’m really lucky to have the opportunity to go to a lot of events that are fairly local. I also think it’s really important to travel when I have the opportunity to, and I’m lucky that I’ve been able to, and sometimes I will just commit to doing it out of my own pocket because I want to meet readers in those areas. So I love…yeah, I already said it, I love meeting readers. But, especially in places where you don’t get a lot of, you know, LGBTQ resources, or teens don’t necessarily get to see a lot of authors or books with this content come their way and getting to meet teens in, you know, small towns or getting to meet people even though I do a lot of web chats. And so that’s fun chatting with libraries or classrooms through the power of the internet, which is amazing. But, part of being on panels and having these conversations is important to me just because, you know, I get to share with people that might not have heard of my books before or are just learning about it for the first time. And so that’s always a very special moment to me when someone’s like, “Oh my gosh,” like, “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t know it exists, but now I do.” And so that’s very meaningful. And sometimes I get to meet people who have already read the books, and that’s very important to me. And that’s a part of the most rewarding things to me as a writer is knowing that your work has made an impact on someone, whether it’s just making them smile, or, you know, to the depth of having someone like… I’ve cried over several really long emails just because sometimes people are really sweet and talk about like, “Oh, this is my coming out experience”. I want people to see that they’re valid. And so knowing that someone else has read my work and recognize themselves, that’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I was in Seattle recently, earlier this year, and one of the events I did was with the Seattle Public Library where we went to the LGBTQ Youth Center. And that was really powerful just to, like, hang out with kids and chat with them and what are they looking forward to as far as like, “Hey, what’s powerful to me, what’s fun to me?” A lot of this is stuff that I totally resonate with when they connect with a character on TV or are upset that, you know, that character got killed off in one season or whatever, because of TV. But, you know, it’s always great to chat with people. Everyone’s always going through something. Jeff: Yeah, for sure. So we’ve hinted a little bit about some stuff that’s coming up for you. You’re working on Sidekick 4, you’ve got a short story coming out next year, anything else we should know about? C.B.: I’m also writing the new “BEN 10” original graphic novels with BOOM! Studios and Cartoon Network. So one is already out. It’s called “The Truth Is Out There.” It’s where “Ben 10” is part of the Cartoon Network show where Ben can turn into 10 different aliens. So it’s fun. It’s a fun, middle-grade romp. So I’m doing a number of those graphic novels with BOOM! So those will be available throughout…I can’t recall the dates off the top of my head, but another one is coming out in July, and then one more in October of this year and then the next year, there will be some more coming as well. Jeff: What’s it like writing for graphic novel because, I mean, that’s a different sort of animal, a novel that, you know, is 60,000 or 70,000 words long? C.B.: It was definitely a new experience. It was a lot of fun trying a different medium. Like, definitely writing a script goes differently as far as…and I catch myself like “Oh, I’m being too descriptive. This is literally…the only person who will see this is the artist.” And it’s also a great collaborative process. So it’s really fun to work with the artists and editors and bring together this story that exists in its own medium. It’s not just me, the writer, but what the artist is bringing, and collaborating with them, and getting to like…you know, I’ll write the dialogue and the action. And then they’ll imagine it in a certain way of like, “Oh, I didn’t think of that,” and that’s really fun. I really like the graphic novel format. I’m hoping to do more. I’m really excited to be working on these projects. And, yeah, hopefully, I’ll be able to share more upcoming projects. Jeff: Pretty cool. And speaking of, what is the best way for people to keep up with you online? C.B.: You can always find me on Twitter and Instagram at, C-B-L-E-E_C-B-L-E-E, because it’s double the trouble. My website is cb-lee.com, and then you can find more links to other ways you can connect with me. Usually Twitter and Instagram, where you can find me the most – that’s where you can connect with me. So in my website, it has like fun stuff. I try to update it with writing resources and my upcoming events. And I also have a newsletter, which will have some special tidbits probably like the deleted scenes, which is the very first place I offered the “Not Your Villain” extra scenes. Jeff: Pretty cool. Well, C.B., thank you so much for hanging out with us. We wish you all the success with “Not Your Backup” when it comes out on June 4th. C.B.: Thank you so much for having me. And I really appreciate it. I’m so excited. And I hope everyone enjoys the book. Book Reviews Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: A Lover’s Game by Max Walker, narrated by Greg Boudreaux. Reviewed by Jeff I was so happy that this fourth book in Max’s Stonewall Investigations series released in audio just a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the final installment of the series and I was not disappointed. The series has been working up to the final showdown between private investigator Zane Holden and the Unicorn Killer. The Unicorn has loomed large over the series–a serial killer that terrorizes the gay community in NYC. The killer’s gone after partnered gay men and Zane’s husband was aomng the victims. In the first book we find out the Unicorn’s returned and now in the fourth one Zane’s obsessed with bringing the reign of terror to an end. At the same time, Zane is preparing for his wedding to Enzo, the defense attorney who captured his heart in that first book. Unfortunately, Zane is so occupied with the case, he’s missing things, like cake testing and venue selection, and he hasn’t told Enzo that he’s even back on it. Zane thinks he’s protecting Enzo by keeping his activities a secret, but Enzo feels it puts him more in danger not knowing. And boy does everything hurtle towards a massive, satisfying conclusion. Max had me super stressed in this installment. He always does a great job of creating suspense. Here though I suspected everything. Is the Uber driver a killer? Is that bottle of wine spiked with something? What does it mean that someone looked at them on the street? Is the person providing information or misinformation? I suspected everything and also never figured out who the Unicorn was ahead of the reveal. I love that! While Zane and Enzo have been featured in the middle two books of the series, it was great to see them returning to the spotlight. Their dynamic as the move towards their wedding date was wonderful to watch. The quiet, sexy moments they share along with their wedding planning and time they spend with Enzo’s family shows their strong relationship and amazing friends. And, man, are there some super sexy times in this book. There’s always steamy scenes in this series, but these were the best yet. Max contrasts these happy times with how they handle the increasing threats–they want to be strong for each other and also do what’s necessary to keep the other safe. They find it’s hard to maintain the balance and that only increases the tension. I both hated and loved what Max put them through because it was so realistic. Is it weird to say that I liked the terrible choices were made? Despite being great at their jobs, Zane and Enzo sometimes do things that are terrible choices and what makes those so good in the story is that I could see myself doing the same thing. These two are flawed and make bad decisions like anyone can. It makes them human. It makes you scream at them to not do something. It makes you cheer when it all works out too. Kudos to Greg Boudreaux. He’s done a great job with this series overall but I have to shoutout his work voicing the Unicorn. It’s a creep, calm yet evil voice that made me shudder. The spin off for Stonewall Investigations Miami is set up here too. That first book, Bad Idea, just released last week and I can’t wait to pick it up as soon as there’s an audio version.