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We were thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to PEN America's Jeremy Young about what a second Trump administration holds in store for higher education. It was an informative—and sobering—conversation. Over the next four years, we should be prepared for a tsunami of ideologically-driven threats to academic freedom, campus free expression and the basic integrity of higher education. If you would rather read than listen, there is a transcript attached below. Show NotesPEN America's *Educational Censorship* page is a terrific resourceOn Christopher Rufo, see Benjamin Wallace-Wells, “How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory,” New Yorker, June 18, 2021 and Michael Kruse, “DeSantis' Culture Warrior: ‘We Are Now Over the Walls,'” Politico, March 24, 2023. For Rufo's take on critical race theory, in his own words, see this YouTube video. Here is the full text of Executive Order 13950, which became the template for most of the anti-CRT (or “divisive concepts”) laws passed in red states. On the Stop WOKE Act, the marquee anti-CRT law signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022, check out these two Banished episodes:The Sunshine State Descends into Darkness (Again)Will Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" Hold Up in Court?Jeffrey Sachs and Jeremy Young predict the future: “For Federal Censorship of Higher Ed, Here's What Could Happen in 2025” (PEN America, January 2, 2025)For more on the phenomenon of “jawboning,” see this page from FIRE and this page from the Knight First Amendment Institute On “anticipatory obedience,” see this excerpt from Timothy Snyder's 2017 book, On Tyranny On legislative challenges to campus DEI, see the Chronicle of Higher Education DEI Legislation Tracker. (We are quite skeptical of many conventional DEI efforts but state bans are a cure that is far worse than the disease )For a deeper dive on accreditation, see Eric Kelderman, “Trump's Vision for College Accreditation Could Shake Up the Sector” (Chronicle of Higher Education, November 26, 2024)On Title VI investigations by the Office of Civil Rights, see Zach Montague, “Campus Protest Investigations Hang Over Schools as New Academic Year Begins” (New York Times, October 5, 2024)Here is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. Kenneth Stern, one of the definition's main authors, explains why he is concerned it is being used to promote campus censorshipOn the prospect of a much heftier endowment tax for the country's wealthiest institutions, see Phillip Levine, “How Trump Could Devastate Our Top Colleges' Finances” (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 13, 2025). Levine addresses the normative question—should college endowments be taxed?—here. TranscriptJeff: So, we're looking forward to a second Trump administration.Jeremy: Are we looking forward to a second Trump administration?Amna: No…towards.Jeff: We are anticipating…I personally am dreading a second Trump administration.Amna: This is Banished and I'm Amna Khalid, along with my colleague Jeff Snyder. Jeff and I were delighted to have the chance to catch up with PEN America's Jeremy Young at the recent American Historical Association conference in New York City. He's one of the most informed and astute analysts of government driven censorship in higher education today. We started by asking him to tell us a little about PEN America.Jeremy: PEN America is a 102 year old organization that exists at the intersection of literature and human rights. It is one of 140 PEN centers around the world which are in a loose network of PEN Centers governed by PEN International. PEN America's mission is to celebrate literature and defend the freedoms that make it possible, of which two of the foremost are academic freedom and freedom of expression.Amna: And what's your specific role?Jeremy: I am the Director of State and Higher Education Policy at PEN America, which means that I oversee our Freedom to Learn program, which leads actions and responses to educational censorship legislation, largely from the state governments, but also from the federal government. Things like DEI bans, critical race theory restrictions, and various other types of restrictions on faculty governance and university autonomy.Amna: We're eager to hear your predictions on what the higher ed sector should be bracing for with the second Trump administration. But first, Jeremy, could you please remind us of the nature of the attacks against higher education during Trump 1.0?Jeremy: In the summer and fall of 2020, this really happened late in the first Trump administration, there was a national panic around critical race theory, and this was created by Chris Rufo and some others really as a response, a backlash, if you will, against the George Floyd protests, the Black Lives Matter movement, the popularity of the 1619 Project, and so on, this sort of moment of racial reckoning. And so Rufo and others (Rufo is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute) decided to use this term critical race theory, which of course is an academic term with a particular set of meanings but to, as he put it, decodify and recodify it, essentially weaponize it to mean things that weren't all that connected to the actual theory of critical race theory and were really just a sort of catchall for criticisms of DEI and other race-based pedagogies and ideas. And so Rufo was able to convince president Trump to issue an executive order 13950 called Race and Sex Stereotyping that laid out a list of nine divisive concepts which bore some passing resemblance to critical race theory, but really were vague, and general, and banned all sorts of practices related to race, gender, and identity, and ideas related to race, gender, and identity that were unclear and difficult to interpret. Originally, this was a restriction aimed solely at trainings in government agencies…the executive order never went into effect. It was stayed by a court and repealed on the first day of the Biden administration. But that language of the divisive concepts then began to appear in state legislatures aimed now squarely at education. At first, at K-12 institutions primarily, and over time, higher education became more and more of the target.In 2023, we started to see a shift toward sort of broad spectrum attacks on higher education, moving away from some of the direct speech restrictions of the critical race theory bans, in part because of court cases that had gone adversely for those restrictions, and instead restricting broad swaths of university governance, including DEI offices, the ability of a university to manage diversity work on its own as a sort of shared governance function, tenure restrictions on faculty governance, restrictions on curriculum, which I think are going to be very prominent in 2025.Amna: You mentioned backlash to the 2020 racial reckoning as a key factor driving the anti-CRT movement. Can you say something more about where this opposition to CRT and now DEI is coming from?Jeremy: I think that there are several causes that are inseparable from one another. I think there are people who actually do want to restrict those particular ideas on campus, who want to advance a sort of triumphalist Western canon narrative of America as the victor, and they're just very opposed to any discussions that paint the United States in any way that is not hyper-patriotic and perfect. There's absolutely some racism, some sexism, some, some discrimination, discriminatory bias that's involved.I also think that there is a real desire to simply crush university power that I think comes out of the educational realignment that we have seen over the last 10 years. Kamala Harris won college educated Americans by 14 points, and four years ago, Joe Biden won them by four, and prior to the 2016 election, there was essentially no difference between the parties, really, at any time in American history on the axis of college education. There is now a sense I think among some conservative forces that instead of the long-time conservative project of reforming universities, having more viewpoint diversity, think of the Koch Centers in various institutions. Instead they're a place where liberals go to get educated, so we should just crush them, right? So I think that's part of it. It's just the goal of taking away universities' autonomy on everything is a key component.And the third component is political gain. And that is the one that has fluctuated the most over this period. Glenn Youngkin won a come from behind victory running on criticizing critical race theory in K-12 schools. And Steve Bannon said in 2021, I think about critical race theory and I see 50 new House seats in the midterm elections. Now, when that didn't happen, I think it began to become clear that these attacks are not as salient as they were thought to be. I think in 2023 and 2024, there was a real move away from that, especially with, also with the collapse of the DeSantis presidential campaign, which was built entirely around this idea of him being, fighting the war on woke. There was a sense that, maybe you still want to do these things, but now it's going to be quiet, it's going to be stealth mode, because there's no political gain to be gotten from having a big press release around this, around the Stop WOKE Act. But the other two motivations, the motivation of restricting certain ideas about race; and the motivation of smashing the power of higher education, those have remained constant.Jeff: Very succinct and helpful. Thank you. You and your colleague Jeffrey Sachs recently wrote an informative and sobering piece about Trump's plans for higher ed in 2025 and beyond. Maybe you could tell us a little about your key predictions. The first one you mention is jawboning. What is jawboning and why should we be worried about it?Jeremy: Jawboning, put simply, is when government officials, instead of passing a law requiring someone who isn't a government official to do something, they simply browbeat or bully or threaten them into doing it. In some ways you can look at the congressional hearings as a form of jawbonings or making threats against presidents at Columbia and Harvard and so on. But the classic example is actually what we're seeing at the state level where lawmakers are simply going to university presidents and say, saying, okay, we're not going to pass a DEI ban or a curriculum restriction. We're going to simply request that you make one on your own or we'll cut your funding. Or we'll pass one next year that's worse than anything you could imagine. It's a very intimate form of censorship, right? It takes restrictions out of the legislative process where they can be challenged at a hearing; out of the judicial process where they can be challenged on constitutional grounds; and every single one of these bills has at least some constitutional infirmities. And instead makes it just a threat, right? We're gonna cut your budget. What are you gonna do about that? It's a very difficult position for presidents to be in because they don't have a lot of leverage.Jeff: I think it was Yale historian Timothy Snyder who coined the term anticipatory obedience.  He said it was a dynamic that's often seen under conditions of rising authoritarianism. So you've got individuals and groups that start to make concessions they think will appease the powers that be. Is there a connection here to jawboning?Jeremy: Yes, so we talk about over compliance and pre-compliance. We're not going to comply with the letter of the law, we're going to comply with the spirit of the law. There is a law in Alabama that passed in 2024 that restricts some elements of DEI, but does not actually ban outright the DEI offices. And every university in Alabama has treated it as though it is an outright ban. And that's significant, in particular, because of the nature of these laws. You know, you go look at a set of statutes in a state legislature or the federal government, what you'll notice is that most laws are very precise. Think about traffic laws. What are you allowed to do on the road? It's very specific. You can drive this many miles an hour this particular way. There's no room for interpretation. There's no room for judgment because the goal is to make you comply with the law. These laws are intentionally vague. They ban broad swaths of ideas which are never defined in the laws.What does it mean to say, for instance, one of the divisive concepts, to say that you're not allowed to say that the United States is fundamentally racist. What does that mean? It doesn't say in the law what that means. It's left up to your interpretation, which means whoever is going to enforce that law gets to decide whether you violate it. That is actually a constitutional violation. It's against the 14th Amendment. And while the courts have found all sorts of infirmities with these laws, that's the one they've found the most consistency. Not freedom of speech, not racial discrimination but vagueness. So over-complying with a vague law is, it's difficult to avoid because these laws lend themselves to over-compliance because they're so vague. But it's also vitally important to avoid doing that.The other thing that we see is pre-compliance, which is just imagining that the legislature is going to pass a law but then whether or not they do it. We intervened with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of the seven accrediting bodies because they were basically enacting what a restriction in Project 2025 that would have forbidden them to have a DEI standard for universities they accredit. And just doing it preemptively.It's not clear whether the education department is able to pass that restriction without legislation. And it's not clear whether legislation or the regulation would survive a court challenge. And they're just saying we'll just take it out. That's pre-compliance. You don't want to do that. And what we argued successfully, is that, again, even if you don't think an accreditor should have a DEI standard, we don't take a position on that. The worst time to get rid of your DEI standard is one month before a new administration that's promised to ban it tells you to. That's the moment when you put up your back and say, no, we're not going to comply with this.Jeff: Jeremy, tell us a little bit more about the new Trump administration's plans to disrupt the conventional work of accreditors.Jeremy: So higher education institutions are accredited by one of seven accrediting bodies, six of which have historically served certain regions, but now under new federal regulations the university can work with any of the seven accreditors. But they still tend to be concentrated in regions.Accreditation is really the only thing that separates a real substantive university from a diploma mill; and the way that accreditation is enforced, is that the Department of Education will only provide federal student financial aid, which 55 percent of all students receive, to schools that it recognizes as legitimate accreditors, which currently is those seven institutional accreditors. They are private or nonprofit organizations. They're run by academics. They have their pluses and minuses, but they are pretty much the guarantor of institutional quality in higher education. And if you look at Project 2025, everything that they say they want to do to higher education is focused on accreditation. They have identified these accreditors as the soft underbelly of higher education. And the simplest thing that they want to do and that they probably will at least try to do is to ban accreditors from having DEI standards, of which six of the seven currently do.But they really want to go further. What they really want to do is to undermine the system of accreditation itself by allowing any jurisdiction, any state, to either charter its own accreditor or serve as its own accreditor. So Ron DeSantis could become the accreditor for all universities in Florida. And now instead of those universities having DEI offices, he can say you cannot be accredited in the state of Florida unless you've banned DEI and basically instituted a classical curriculum, a Hillsdale style classical curriculum. It's a little more complicated than project 2025 makes it sound. Our analysis is that while they may attempt to do it through regulatory action, the process of negotiated rulemaking in the Department of Education is sufficiently complex that it would probably stop them from doing it and so that probably means that they need legislation to change the Higher Education Act, which would be subject to a filibuster.So this is something that we will be watching to see if they try to do it administratively. It may not be possible. And we'll also be watching if they try to slip it into one of those reconciliation bills that are being proposed that would be able to go through without a filibuster.Jeff: So that's how the accreditation system might be weaponized. You and Sacks also identify Title VI enforcement by the Office of Civil Rights as a key area of concern. Maybe we can break this down into its component parts. What is the Office of Civil Rights and what's Title VI?Jeremy: Sure. So the Office of Civil Rights is an office within the Department of Education that ensures that educational institutions meet the requirements of the various civil rights laws. It covers Title VI funding, which is funding that is tied to financial aid for universities, and it makes sure that institutions that are receiving federal financial aid are following these civil rights protections. It is an office does good work and we have a good relationship with the office.We have some concerns about the way that the Biden administration has been investigating and enforcing agreements with universities around antisemitism. We expect things to get far worse in the new administration. We expect that any university that has any sort of protest or any faculty member who expresses pro-Palestinian views is going to be investigated and sanctioned by the Office of Civil Rights. We expect they're going to launch lawsuits. They're going to really go after universities. So it is an office that is going to be used in some really aggressive ways to restrict speech on campus.Jeff: In terms of restricting speech, you and Sachs are especially worried about the trend on the part of colleges and universities, not to mention states and the federal government, to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. Why is this so concerning to you both?Jeremy: So the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism is a very interesting document. It starts with a description that is quite thoughtful and then it gives a list of examples of things that could be forms of antisemitism or could accompany antisemitism, and that list includes things like singling out the state of Israel for special criticism that other states are not singled out for that do engage in the same actions or just you know criticizing Zionism, things like that. Which in the context of what that definition was designed for yes, sometimes when you see those statements, it's worth perking your ears up and asking, is this accompanying antisemitism or not?What the laws are doing, and this comes from a model bill that the Goldwater Institute wrote in 2016, and it's now being suffused into all these federal and state policies, is to take those examples of possible antisemitism and change it from possible to definite antisemitism. So anytime you criticize the state of Israel, it's antisemitism. And then writing that into law, saying that universities have to treat this as any instance of this broad definition of antisemitism as hate speech or as a form of harassment. The author of that definition, Kenneth Stern has repeatedly said that it is not designed to be used in that way. In fact, he said it's unconstitutional to use it in that way. And yet that's what we're seeing. So that's the concern. It's not that you shouldn't have a definition of anti Semitism, although I will say our statutes tend not to define particular types of hate speech because it's too subjective, right? This is the reason that we have definitions like severe, pervasive, and targeted for harassment. You're looking at a pattern of behavior because each individual case is protected by free expression.Jeff: I understand that the Office of Civil Rights is currently conducting dozens of Title VI investigations stemming from campus protests over the war in Gaza. There are widespread allegations of antisemitism, many of which are accompanied by competing charges of Islamophobia. How do you think we should make sense of this?Jeremy: These are complex situations. Lots of universities are getting them wrong. Some universities are being overly censorious, some not enforcing harassment protections. And it's right and proper for OCR to investigate these things. The problem is that they are not always coming up with the right findings. That they're not always protecting free expression, balancing free expression adequately with the need to protect students from harassment. We're seeing universities implement draconian time, place and manner restrictions on speech. So just the fact that OCR and the Congress are making all these threatening noises about restricting speech leads a lot of universities to do the censor's work for them.Amna: Jeremy mentioned one other thing the new Trump administration has made ramblings about, which is ramping up the endowment tax on the country's wealthiest institutions. Please see an informative Chronicle of Higher Education article by Philip Levine, linked in the show notes.What all these attacks or interventions, depending on your point of view, have in common, is that they seek to undermine the autonomy of colleges and universities. Here's Jeremy.Jeremy: University autonomy is not a principle that is very widely understood in the United States. It's much more common in Europe where there's an autonomy index and all sorts of things as a way of protecting academic freedom. But it's a vital component of academic freedom. We think about academic freedom in the U.S. primarily as being the freedom of an individual faculty member to speak their mind or to engage in their research or teaching. But, in reality, that freedom can only be protected so long as the people overseeing it, the university administration, are free from the ideological control of the government. The key here is ideological control. We aren't saying that the government doesn't have a budgetary responsibility to oversee the university, or that there isn't a role for the government in community relations, or student success, or access and completion, or any of these things. But when it comes to ideas, what ideas can be present on a campus, whether it's in the classroom, whether it's in a DEI office, anywhere on campus, that is not the government's business, and it cannot be the government's business, or ultimately everyone on campus is simply going to be currying favor with whatever political party is in charge.Amna: Jeremy, this has been wonderful and you've been so kind to give us so much time. Thank you.Jeff: Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure.Amna: That was our conversation with Jeremy Young of PEN America on what Trump 2.0 portends for higher education. As of yesterday, Trump's second term has officially begun. Keep your eyes peeled and ears tuned for what's to come next. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to help us spread the word about Banished, and don't forget to comment and rate this show.Once again, this is Banished, and I'm Amna Khalid, along with Jeff Snyder. Until next time. This is a public episode. 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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.

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.

“All Of Their Comings” 05/29/23 Fenway Sports Group and the Penguins minority ownership landed the big front office fish they were after. Was the bait right, and if so, what gauge line did they use? Did they get the family station wagon on the road before 2am so they could have their sand spikes set up before anyone else? WHAT. WAS. THEIR. SECRET? Jeff and Jordan contemplate this and other matters of great significance, including:     - Surfcasting for goalies     - Freshwater angling for the meaning of life(It's Jordan's big 3-0 this coming weekend, so please be sure to drop her a quick HBD on the Twit-Machine. - Jeff)Thank you for listening!! Follow the podcast on Twitter: @penspod // Jeff: @penspod_JT //Jordan: @fidgenewtonThe offseason grinds on in spite of Google Maps directing it up some insanely steep Pittsburgh hills, and so we trudge on!!LETS GO PENS!!JEFF TAYLOR + JORDAN DEFIGIO

Patrick answers if someone who's had tubal ligation can still go to communion and what exactly does “taking up your cross” mean?  Mathew 19: John talks about the 12 thrones. Will Judas be on one of the thrones? If not, then who will be on the 12th throne of the apostle?  Jeff - Thank you and Relevant Radio for bringing me closer to my faith and my understanding to how I should live my Christian life!  Patrick recommends “Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart” by Fr. Jacques Philippe  Carlos - My wife got tubal ligation. Can we still go to communion?  Mark - Could you help clarify what taking up your cross means? 

In today's episode (the Season 1 finale!) we get slow and personal with Ev'Yan Whitney, sexuality doula, podcast host, and author of Sensual Self. “Sensuality” often gets lumped in with sexuality… Ev'Yan wants to change that, to tease apart these two aspects of being human and demonstrate how everyone can connect with a more sensual version of themselves.Ev'Yan's 19-minute practice is a tour of the senses. Take your time. The pacing of Ev'Yan's guidance – the way she encourages us to pause and savor each sense – is part of its sensual magic.Afterwards we have a wide-ranging conversation, from issues of sensuality and consent, to how sex changes over time in relationships, to the fundamental right of pleasure. Many of us feel guilty talking about pleasure, as though it were somehow frivolous or self-indulgent. For Ev'Yan, in a world that is continually forcing us out of our bodies, out of safety, out of softness … “Pleasure in such a world is an act of resistance.”“When we feel good, we do good … so feel good!” It's the perfect way to finish our season.Season 1 Finale Message from Tasha & Jeff:Thank you so much to all our listeners for an incredible 1st season! We've had so much fun this past year, creating these 23 episodes of mind-body adventure. We (and our awesome producer Timmy) will be back in the fall with a BRAND NEW SEASON of exploration and consciousness-expanding guests! In the meantime, drop us a note if there's a guide or a subject you're keen to explore with us.And of course, if you'd like to support our time-and-resource-intense labor of love, consider contributing to our Patreon! Have a wonderful summer ❤️Ev'Yan's Links :• Sensual Self podcast• Sensual Self book• Ev'Yan's website• Ev'Yan's instagramSupport the show

Percussion Discussion Episode - 73 - Jeff RichJoining me today is british drummer Jeff Rich.Jeff has played for some incredible bands and artists including Judy Tzuke, Climax Blues Band Stretch, Def Leppard and of course the mighty Status QuoJoin Jeff and myself as we chat about his amazing career, starting from his humble beginnings havent to scrimp and save to put a drum kit together, through to his early gigging life. We couldnt not talk about when Jeff played alongside Rick Allenof Def Leppard as he was getting to grips with playing his new Electronic Drum Kit after losing an arm in a horriffic accident. And of course, this leads us on to his time with the mighty Status Quo and his debut album with the band - In th Army Now. Jeff also shows us in the video a beautiful 1979 engraved Ludwig Drums Black Beauty Snare Drum, this was gifted to him by Rick Allen and was the snare drum used by Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich on their classic Ride The Lightening Album!!Jeff - Thank you so much for giving your time up so generously, it was a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable conversation.

SHOW NOTESSEGMENT 1Kevin talks about Rocky's Animal Rescue, a cat rescue service he named after his cat Rocky and how it all got started. Ten years ago he moved to New York City on a whim and his first job in the city was assisting with a cat rescue at a humane society. There were 36 feeding stations around the town where they would keep track of the strays. It was during his rounds that Kevin found a particularly special cat.SEGMENT 2Kevin introduces Jeff Pearlman, author of “Football For A Buck” and “Three-Ring Circus.” The latter is about Kobe Bryant, The Lakers, Shaquille O'Neal and their relationship. The book was scheduled to release eight months after Kobe passed away. It was a confusing time for Jeff. When the book was released he anticipated heavy backlash but fortunately that was not the case. Jeff is currently working on a biography about Bo Jackson. In order to research he visits libraries and buys books on ebay to learn more about them. If possible he compiles a list of people that his subject has known and from that list determines who is alive so that he may contact them.SEGMENT 3Jeff talks about the USFL, a spring football league that was an alternative to the NFL. They briefly operated from ‘83 to ‘85, only three seasons. A big blow for the NFL was when Herschel Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner from Georgia joined the USFL. The NFL tried to ignore the influence of the USFL but after signing big names like Lawrence Taylor.  Jeff talks about the major role that Donald Trump took in undermining the USFL. Trump tried to pretend that he didn't have a vested interest in the fall of the USFL but Jeff points out the numerous attempts made to buy football teams. One of Jeff's favorite Trump USFL stories is about Trump's recruitment of Doug Flutie. Trump made him the highest paid player. After signing him, Trump wrote a letter to every other owner in the league saying that he did them and the league a favor by hiring Flutie. He expected that they all contribute to Flutie's salary. Jeff called this Trump's first wall.SEGMENT 4Kevin talks about Rocky's Rescue and his work to establish it as a 501 (c3) so that it is officially a non-profit. He has also started a trap, neuter, release program. In addition to caring for his own cats, Kevin fosters many. Ultimately he'd like to start his own cat cafe, much like his friend in Rahway, NJ. Kevin would also like to start putting together a rescue plan for pets during natural disasters. He tells another story about a cat that he rescued and brought home with him. They have since established a very close trusting relationship.TRANSCRIPT00:00:27.180 --> 00:00:31.080 Kevin Barbaro Productions: hey welcome back everybody to copy talk XL i'm Kevin barbro.00:00:31.260 --> 00:00:40.650 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And you're listening on talk radio dot nyc and the talking alternative, and we are back here for the second week in my new edition of.00:00:40.980 --> 00:00:48.360 Kevin Barbaro Productions: My talk show that fourth edition that has evolved over the years and i'm excited for today's episode we're going to talk.00:00:48.810 --> 00:00:57.300 Kevin Barbaro Productions: A little bit about what we talked about last week i'm going to touch on track and field just for a couple of minutes about DK metcalf and that hundred meters that I mentioned last week.00:00:57.690 --> 00:01:05.130 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And we are also going to talk about my rescue like I have an animal rescue that I started and it's called rocky's rescue.00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:16.320 Kevin Barbaro Productions: After my cat rocky and the genesis of that how I ended up getting into rescuing animals or getting into starting my own animal rescue.00:01:16.680 --> 00:01:24.270 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And we're going to talk about that and i'm going to have a special guest on for the last hour of the show well more than last after the show very special guests.00:01:24.720 --> 00:01:33.780 Kevin Barbaro Productions: New York Times bestselling author Jeff perlman Jeff has nine best selling books on the New York Times list and he's also a record for CNN and.00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:40.500 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And the athletic and many other things he's been around for a long time as a as a journalist and as an author.00:01:40.770 --> 00:01:48.810 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And he's got a lot of great things to say he's got a brand new book out called three ring circus, which is about the Kobe bryant or excuse me yeah.00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:54.570 Kevin Barbaro Productions: coby and and the lakers during that era of Kobe and shaq and then he also has.00:01:55.350 --> 00:02:05.370 Kevin Barbaro Productions: A new TV show on HBO it's going to be coming out it's actually not his show but it's based on one of his best selling books called showtime which talks about the lakers from.00:02:05.970 --> 00:02:16.680 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Back in their heyday with a coach Riley and magic Johnson Kareem Abdul Jabbar and all those guys so it's gonna be a new show we're gonna talk a little bit about that and talk a little bit about politics just briefly.00:02:17.550 --> 00:02:29.220 Kevin Barbaro Productions: He is a pretty far left wing dude I kind of live somewhere in the middle, you know, and until we'll talk about that and actually how we ended up connecting in the first place, but.00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:37.410 Kevin Barbaro Productions: starting off, I want to talk a little bit about DK metcalf and that 100 years I said last week I said last week wanted.00:02:39.150 --> 00:02:39.660 Kevin Barbaro Productions: That.00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:52.500 Kevin Barbaro Productions: My opinion is the guys fast he's football fast for sure, but he's just not track best because the guy is from all my sports fans that that that watch my show.00:02:52.950 --> 00:02:59.880 Kevin Barbaro Productions: know that for many, many years over 20 years I was a college track coach at the highest level and i've seen some of the greatest sprinters come through.00:03:00.330 --> 00:03:16.770 Kevin Barbaro Productions: E and that went on to the Olympics World Championships and whatnot DK is just too big man, I mean the dude 642 35 and I said on last week's episode I I think best case scenario, with 1029 That was my best case scenario and.00:03:17.910 --> 00:03:34.230 Kevin Barbaro Productions: What I did say also was he may even be doing pretty well 40 meters, but it 80 meters at five meters he's going to start moonwalk and that's really exactly how it played itself out and but i'll tell you this, let me say one thing about DK Mecca okay.00:03:35.430 --> 00:03:38.220 Kevin Barbaro Productions: You you got to have some kind of.00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:45.600 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Confidence in yourself that is higher than the average person's confidence.00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:50.460 Kevin Barbaro Productions: To be able to say you know what I haven't run track since high school I wasn't even a sprinter in high school.00:03:50.820 --> 00:03:58.740 Kevin Barbaro Productions: But I want to line up against some of the best sprinters in the United States, and I just want to see how fast, I am and the guy was humble.00:03:59.490 --> 00:04:07.230 Kevin Barbaro Productions: You could see in his TV interview afterwards that he was very appreciative of the opportunity and very complimentary to.00:04:07.530 --> 00:04:17.070 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The track fans and listen, it was great for track and field, it was great for track i'd love to see even more situations like this because track, in my opinion, is is the best for.00:04:17.670 --> 00:04:27.720 Kevin Barbaro Productions: it's the greatest sports original sport and and it needs it needs and deserves more attention than just once every four years so that's my little thing on DK and last week.00:04:29.370 --> 00:04:34.950 Kevin Barbaro Productions: i'll have to talk about my animal rescue so Rockies animal rescue it's actually.00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:46.050 Kevin Barbaro Productions: In we're in the first phase of it, right now, and how this came about i'm reason why i'm excited about is, if you follow me on Facebook, or you follow me on Twitter or instagram.00:04:46.740 --> 00:04:56.280 Kevin Barbaro Productions: You would have seen that I put up for adoption, our first adoptable cat and tiger is a cat that came to us as a foster.00:04:56.760 --> 00:05:06.780 Kevin Barbaro Productions: He was in a situation where the folks just couldn't take care of them is it because they had another cat he was getting along with it and etc, etc.00:05:07.200 --> 00:05:10.680 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And, as a matter of fact they're wrestling here in the corner right now but.00:05:11.370 --> 00:05:25.530 Kevin Barbaro Productions: So we split up tiger for adoption and and thankfully, even within 24 hours we had somebody that was interested and we started the process, and now that person is is going to adopt tiger.00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:36.270 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so it's our first cat that we've adopted out and i'm very excited about that how it all started it, this is a really unique story man really unique story so.00:05:37.380 --> 00:05:42.990 Kevin Barbaro Productions: When I first moved to New York City almost 10 years ago to become an actor, so I moved to New York City on a whim.00:05:44.310 --> 00:05:52.860 Kevin Barbaro Productions: lived out of my car for 18 months and the very first job that I had was I answered a.00:05:54.240 --> 00:06:01.590 Kevin Barbaro Productions: craigslist ad somebody that wanted a to they needed somebody to help with this cat rescue.00:06:02.040 --> 00:06:15.540 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so you know what i'm an animal lover i've always been an animal lover you know to me the greatest job in the world would be to retire on a farm and just have tons of animals run around and be like a safe haven for so.00:06:16.410 --> 00:06:24.690 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I contact them that they end up hiring me and basically what it once was north of the bronx there was a.00:06:28.110 --> 00:06:41.670 Kevin Barbaro Productions: A a humane society, there are no kill shelter and they had a tn our programs with dnr is, which is what Rockies rescue is GNR seeds for trap neuter and release and so basically what happens is.00:06:42.120 --> 00:06:45.690 Kevin Barbaro Productions: That we had 36 feeding stations around the town.00:06:46.440 --> 00:06:53.640 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Where we put food and water, we would track all of the strays come in and keep a log you would assess them to see if they were adoptable.00:06:53.940 --> 00:06:59.100 Kevin Barbaro Productions: which was very easy to figure out if a catalyst adoptable it was friendly it takes about two seconds.00:06:59.430 --> 00:07:05.910 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And we would bring them in they they adopted ones will just you know let's pick them up and you spray them into the main site.00:07:06.330 --> 00:07:18.240 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And they would test them for fit and for leukemia which run rampant in the feline population fit is the feline equivalent of each one HIV, so if a pet was.00:07:18.990 --> 00:07:35.190 Kevin Barbaro Productions: If a pet if a cat was adoptable and disease free that was put up for adoption if it was adoptable but it had FN V, then what would happen is, and I see Jeff jumping in now and we're gonna bring him on in just a few minutes.00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:46.020 Kevin Barbaro Productions: If I if it had fit, but it was adoptable is friendly, then it could be adopted out to a family that didn't have any other tasks just didn't want to spread.00:07:47.010 --> 00:07:55.710 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The the other side of the program is it some Castle course are are fearful they you know they don't like humans will dude I don't like a lot so.00:07:56.160 --> 00:08:05.100 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The reality is, these cats that that live in the in the environment in the town they they're just part of the Environment okay so.00:08:05.490 --> 00:08:15.180 Kevin Barbaro Productions: once a month, we would trap the Feral cats and the trap them, just like you track your trap a raccoon you know, in a cage so we have to keep ignoring them with can't get back out.00:08:15.750 --> 00:08:19.650 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Take him to the vet they get tested for HIV leukemia.00:08:20.280 --> 00:08:29.370 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And if they were fearful, and they were disease free than they were spayed or neutered on are done and put back where we found them because they they have their own.00:08:29.640 --> 00:08:38.160 Kevin Barbaro Productions: display the camp propagate they're not spreading disease and they're adding to the environment, you know they're catching mice you know so, but if.00:08:38.550 --> 00:08:46.710 Kevin Barbaro Productions: If we found a cat that was that was Feral he wasn't friendly Andy nfib then unfortunately that's a situation where you.00:08:47.040 --> 00:09:01.200 Kevin Barbaro Productions: just have to humanely put them down because all he's going to do is go back and spread the fit to the other cats so anyway, I was working this cat rescue and the Friday before Labor day the very first year I was working with it's almost eight years ago now.00:09:02.520 --> 00:09:08.400 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I I stopped with this lumberyard and there's this little kitten jumps up there, and little black and white kitten.00:09:08.820 --> 00:09:13.230 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And we had just taken the rest of the kittens out of this lumberyard just won't get left behind.00:09:13.830 --> 00:09:22.260 Kevin Barbaro Productions: So I picked them up, you know he's friendly and I put my hand under the fence and he rams is heading to my as all right so he's friendly, so I put I put it in the car.00:09:22.860 --> 00:09:29.700 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I drive across I finished doing the feeding, because it was late at night, the humane society is not going to open up until Tuesday so.00:09:31.350 --> 00:09:39.150 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And this Friday and I don't have any cats at that point so i'm like you know what i'll go to the store I go to save a lot I go in I get a little kitty litter.00:09:39.600 --> 00:09:47.580 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And I get a green flea collar and I get like some spray stuff to kill the fleas and ticks because he has fleas on and i'm in the parking lot.00:09:48.090 --> 00:09:58.650 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I put the green flea collar on on the cat the kitten and I spray and when I sprayed him he got scared jumps under the car buttons into the woods and he won't come out.00:10:01.890 --> 00:10:12.420 Kevin Barbaro Productions: At that point i've lost it skin right i've been doing and three miles from from where I found it i'm i'm clearly the other side of this of this town.00:10:13.380 --> 00:10:20.250 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And he just ran into the woods so i'm devastated, because I know that this first one is tiny Secondly, I know it's adoptable.00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:35.250 Kevin Barbaro Productions: So I tell the lady that runs its lowest to food, water out and that'll be undefeated station, so all the September goes by no cat all of October Okay, I think about this cat every day right November goes by dude no cat.00:10:36.690 --> 00:10:48.300 Kevin Barbaro Productions: effin December row on December 10 of that so months later December 10 I was filming a TV commercial with Brett farr in.00:10:50.640 --> 00:11:01.020 Kevin Barbaro Productions: shaman commercial it Fort Lee what in Jersey city so i'm coming across the cheetah and it's not my day to help with the carrot she's not my day feed.00:11:02.070 --> 00:11:09.960 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I call it the lady that runs I say hey you know I know that the leading the supposed to do it tonight is like 80 something frickin walks the whole thing.00:11:10.530 --> 00:11:22.110 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Let me do the feeding today give her the day of no big deal i'm heading that way i'll just on the cross bronx and i'll be there no problem, so I get there today i'm not supposed to feed.00:11:23.760 --> 00:11:34.650 Kevin Barbaro Productions: It when I get there every single time i've ever done this feeding route, I always started in the same place, except this day, so I show up.00:11:35.190 --> 00:11:45.690 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I start the middle i'm doing the route i'm in a stop sign and this black and white kid goes walking across the street with a green flea collar i'm like.00:11:47.160 --> 00:11:56.040 Kevin Barbaro Productions: What are the odds in a gazillion years that another black and white kitten stray is walking around with the Green flea collar I get out of the car.00:11:57.420 --> 00:12:07.140 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I tap the ground with some some cat food this cat runs over to me lambs his head into my hand, just like he did when I found in three and a half months ago.00:12:07.800 --> 00:12:22.320 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And it's the same cat the same cat on a day I wasn't supposed to feed I wasn't even doing it in the proper way the proper order that I normally would do it, and on top of all that this cat I found them in a.00:12:23.460 --> 00:12:31.890 Kevin Barbaro Productions: lumberyard on the one side of town I lose him in the woods three miles away, on the other side of town and when I found him.00:12:32.790 --> 00:12:40.950 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Is it, this is no joke at all halfway between where I lost him and where I found it, it was almost like.00:12:41.640 --> 00:12:54.990 Kevin Barbaro Productions: This cat is kitten had been started to make his way back across the entire town to get back to the lumber yard, where it was that so anyway, I scooped him up yes and cuts and scrapes on them and scars on it.00:12:55.980 --> 00:13:05.940 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Legal was barely even hanging on and bro and took them home I call them rock and so now I have rocky and we have Rockies rescue that's how it all came about.00:13:06.330 --> 00:13:17.400 Kevin Barbaro Productions: we're going to be back here in just a couple of minutes i'm going to welcome my guest Jeff promo and New York Times bestselling author and journalist and we'll be back here on talk radio dot nyc and the talking ultra.00:13:20.430 --> 00:13:21.090 Kevin Barbaro Productions: nyc.00:16:13.260 --> 00:16:24.120 Kevin Barbaro Productions: hey welcome back everyone to coffee talk XL here on talk radio dot nyc and the talking alternative and very excited to bring my guest on my first.00:16:24.630 --> 00:16:31.470 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Second guessed that that i've had since the show came back on the year and it's Jeff perlman Jeff is a.00:16:32.220 --> 00:16:45.120 Kevin Barbaro Productions: New York Times bestselling author, he said, nine bestsellers and he is also a journalist he's written for CNN he's written for sports illustrated, etc, etc, and excited happy Jeff thanks for coming on the show brother.00:16:45.570 --> 00:16:46.980 Jeff Pearlman: yeah my pleasure happy to do it.00:16:47.280 --> 00:16:49.740 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah man dude I got your book right here bro.00:16:50.220 --> 00:16:50.610 Like.00:16:51.870 --> 00:17:11.310 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah man i'm contributing to the cause is a say now i'm actually I saw I read football for a buck and and i'm on showtime right now I haven't I haven't started even begin to start your latest book, which is available on Amazon right now, which is three ring circus but.00:17:12.390 --> 00:17:23.310 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I want to talk real quick, I actually just watched it a interview an interview that you had done recently about three rings surface Okay, and I.00:17:24.750 --> 00:17:30.870 Kevin Barbaro Productions: i'm really curious about this so for those people that don't know what three ring circus this three ring circus is.00:17:31.140 --> 00:17:51.600 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Big is about Kobe bryant the lakers shaq their relationship and that dynasty and Jeff wrote a book about it that's what's available, right now, interestingly enough, ironically, coincidentally, whatever you want to call it, it, it was getting ready to be released when Kobe bryant died and.00:17:52.650 --> 00:18:09.390 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The book is a very honest depiction of colby and their career and do tell me a little bit about what you were going through in your head, as you know that the book is going to come out, you know it's not necessarily flattering jacoby.00:18:10.020 --> 00:18:13.590 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And, as you know, and and how is that playing into everything for you.00:18:14.880 --> 00:18:16.050 Jeff Pearlman: I mean, it was a.00:18:17.820 --> 00:18:28.890 Jeff Pearlman: It was confusing you know the book The book was done or sitting in a coffee shop, a friend of mine text me and said that he had just died I didn't believe it.00:18:31.290 --> 00:18:36.330 Jeff Pearlman: I was worried, I mean my first thought was about the book i'm not just saying that like when you hear someone died is young.00:18:36.330 --> 00:18:43.140 Jeff Pearlman: And yeah your first thought is an oh my God my book, you know, like you'd rather the bright so zero copies, and this never happened so it's not.00:18:43.560 --> 00:18:56.460 Jeff Pearlman: You I don't think your first instinct is itself is instinct but then you think about it and you're like well this might not go well and I had a book came out that came out about eight years before this about, it was a biography of Walter payton.00:18:58.140 --> 00:18:59.640 Jeff Pearlman: Pictures hanging right behind me and.00:18:59.820 --> 00:19:00.720 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah sweetness.00:19:00.780 --> 00:19:01.980 Jeff Pearlman: My son's room and.00:19:03.300 --> 00:19:09.120 Jeff Pearlman: That book sports illustrated read an excerpt about three weeks before that book came out.00:19:09.540 --> 00:19:20.820 Jeff Pearlman: And the excerpt was about Walter payton the end of his life and also about infidelity and painkiller addiction and you know some tough stuff suicidal tendencies when the extrovert came out of the book wasn't out.00:19:21.900 --> 00:19:23.970 Jeff Pearlman: It was the backlash was really bad.00:19:24.090 --> 00:19:33.600 Jeff Pearlman: Who is this guy How dare you do this as Walter payton Baba Baba BA and it was not a fun experience at all so with colby and this book coming out.00:19:34.530 --> 00:19:42.300 Jeff Pearlman: My survival instinct was this is this is going to be really bad like this book is not that kind of Kobe bryant it's not a term of art book but it's a pretty otters.00:19:42.300 --> 00:19:42.690 threatened.00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:51.120 Jeff Pearlman: And I was very nervous about it really nervous about it, I they let me add an early prologue to the book just sort of addressing coby death and.00:19:51.570 --> 00:19:57.330 Jeff Pearlman: me explaining this is just a sliver of time in his life it's not the entirety of his life and take him for who he was a youngster.00:19:57.840 --> 00:20:03.870 Jeff Pearlman: And then the book came out and all that nervousness was kind of for nothing, and I think the biggest different treat copywriter Walter payton.00:20:04.710 --> 00:20:19.470 Jeff Pearlman: Is I don't think I think people knew who colby wise they knew he was kind of guy and they knew he was could be a pain in the ass and everyone knew about ego Colorado and the sexual assault case, and so I just think my my nervousness about it wasn't quite meant by the reality.00:20:19.770 --> 00:20:33.690 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Happily right and and you had an opportunity, potentially, to consider pushing back the date but basically you guys just went forward with with the September release know you know six but.00:20:34.500 --> 00:20:39.810 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Six months after after you pass basically just figuring it would be it's not going to get any better anyway.00:20:40.290 --> 00:20:44.490 Jeff Pearlman: was actually I think was eight months total and I think it was eight months and.00:20:44.790 --> 00:20:45.030 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah.00:20:45.420 --> 00:20:53.880 Jeff Pearlman: see much to sound like a decent amount of time, you know if it was like the next month I 100% no doubt in my mind when we gotta move this back, we can't do this now yeah and.00:20:54.360 --> 00:21:05.430 Jeff Pearlman: You know, there was some talk or I can reset people we talked about well do you move it up there that's no not moving up i'm not I don't want to be the guy who's taking advantage of someone's.00:21:05.430 --> 00:21:06.210 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Death yeah.00:21:07.350 --> 00:21:14.850 Jeff Pearlman: So we kept it a months, and I think it worked out Okay, there you every now and then every now and then I go on Amazon you look at your reviews all writers look at.00:21:14.850 --> 00:21:15.900 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The reviews yeah man.00:21:16.560 --> 00:21:27.420 Jeff Pearlman: You know you see someone given one Star and they'll be like this guy just attack, who will be in BA BA BA bum you know it's fine it's not it's not a big deal.00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:31.350 Kevin Barbaro Productions: hey listen bro we can't please everybody man that's that's 100% certainty.00:21:31.800 --> 00:21:43.980 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so, when you go into the process of writing these books, but when you went into the process, you know starting price okay i'm gonna write a book about Walter payton i'm going to write a book about the lakers during this time i'm going to write a book about us fl.00:21:45.330 --> 00:21:46.170 Kevin Barbaro Productions: In your head.00:21:47.700 --> 00:21:54.870 Kevin Barbaro Productions: At number one first goal do as much research as possible, obviously do you have in your mind.00:21:55.890 --> 00:22:09.390 Kevin Barbaro Productions: before you start the research, how you envision the book going and does that change as the research going because you may learn negative things that maybe you didn't know before, and how does that play into your writing.00:22:10.080 --> 00:22:11.760 Jeff Pearlman: So I kind of view it this way, like you.00:22:12.930 --> 00:22:15.510 Jeff Pearlman: As you know, i'm working on a Bo Jackson biography now and yeah.00:22:17.250 --> 00:22:26.040 Jeff Pearlman: I have a skeletal idea of Bo jackson's life like I know the skeletons of it, I know he was born in Alabama I know he was growing poor he was poor.00:22:26.340 --> 00:22:37.800 Jeff Pearlman: He went to auburn I knew he stuttered as a kid I knew he whatever could have gone play for the Tampa Bay buccaneers they drafted number one he went to the royals instead he played for the raiders he got already or does it, so I have the skeletal knowledge.00:22:38.550 --> 00:22:41.460 Jeff Pearlman: And that's sort of the Foundation that's is the basis of and that's why.00:22:41.940 --> 00:22:50.970 Jeff Pearlman: And then it's really just taking this thing and filling it up and filling it up building up and filling it up and taking all this information that you never knew before.00:22:51.240 --> 00:22:56.010 Jeff Pearlman: And filling up the details because it's all about the details it's everything is about the details and.00:22:56.730 --> 00:23:04.350 Jeff Pearlman: it's about knowing the color of the car he drove it's about knowing what the House, he lived in look like it's hearing stories from childhood friends sharing stories from teenagers.00:23:04.770 --> 00:23:13.740 Jeff Pearlman: Building this color fall, you want to tell it's like people say why would you do a book about Brett farr Why would you do a book about Walter payton everyone knows everything about them.00:23:14.310 --> 00:23:22.650 Jeff Pearlman: And my thing is no that's really not true, we know the basics of them, but these are historic figures and you know they matter in sports history, and therefore in American history.00:23:23.280 --> 00:23:31.920 Jeff Pearlman: And I just want to be the guy who like fills in the gaps so that's my thing I know basis there hasn't been the subject of onto I didn't know these knowledge, but I want to fill it up.00:23:33.210 --> 00:23:50.130 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And without how much how much time, do you think you average per book in terms of your the research part of it, and when do you have in your head Okay, I think i've found about as much as i'm going to find out, I need to start writing how long is the research part start.00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:51.090 Jeff Pearlman: X, I know you're.00:23:51.180 --> 00:23:53.250 Kevin Barbaro Productions: getting ready to start to write the book about about now.00:23:53.970 --> 00:24:02.100 Jeff Pearlman: Research is usually about a year and a half, so just for a year and a half, all do is research and that involves i'm, the first thing I always do is I go on eBay.00:24:02.790 --> 00:24:08.160 Jeff Pearlman: And I buy everything I go to eBay because, like my us, so I buy every media guide annuals.00:24:08.820 --> 00:24:19.170 Jeff Pearlman: Books about the person books about the teams, he was on etc, etc, etc, I just have I end up building these libraries for these people these invite I had a bread five library had a water main library for Bo Jackson library.00:24:19.890 --> 00:24:27.030 Jeff Pearlman: And I spent a year and a half, I mean i've yet, for example, i'll get the with Walter payton I get the old Jackson state media ads.00:24:27.540 --> 00:24:32.700 Jeff Pearlman: And I go to name by name player by flyer secretaries assistant coaches blah blah.00:24:33.180 --> 00:24:40.020 Jeff Pearlman: And if they're alive, a make file for them and then i'll try tracking him down and you just go name by name to their life trying to find people and you end up.00:24:40.650 --> 00:24:50.670 Jeff Pearlman: Probably reaching out to 1000 people per book and you hope that you get a decent number of them and then after a year and a half of just deep diving you write it up.00:24:51.630 --> 00:25:06.930 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Oh dude I, I can only imagine what about the how long is it taking you on the average to write the book, then, from the time that you Okay, I think I got as much as i'm going to go now I got to start writing wow long is that process.00:25:07.320 --> 00:25:16.290 Jeff Pearlman: Usually five to six months just writing every day right, I mean by the end of it it's like no one in this household needs to hear another story about any of the.00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:24.570 Jeff Pearlman: You know, because all you want to do you become hyper obsessive hyper about the subjects and it's not a healthy.00:25:25.320 --> 00:25:32.850 Jeff Pearlman: I don't think it's a particularly healthy way to be you know where but it's kind of how my mind works like I my wife jokes like.00:25:33.360 --> 00:25:40.380 Jeff Pearlman: years and years ago when we were first dating I picked up for like 50 cent donny osmond autobiography I don't care about like picked it up.00:25:41.070 --> 00:25:51.060 Jeff Pearlman: And I was all about donny osmond I just want to tell her facts about donny osmond or I bought like this book about blind melon the band blind melon I want to do is tell I get very single minded in my.00:25:51.750 --> 00:25:57.540 Jeff Pearlman: thinking and for books that works very well, but it can lead you in a in an institution or mentoring.00:25:58.260 --> 00:25:59.730 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Well dude your wife already.00:26:00.780 --> 00:26:03.990 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Is a saint anyway, I mean a boss married you right.00:26:04.080 --> 00:26:04.440 But yeah.00:26:06.510 --> 00:26:07.620 Kevin Barbaro Productions: But I mean.00:26:08.670 --> 00:26:19.200 Kevin Barbaro Productions: your wife donated a kidney to somebody she didn't even know bro I mean so already I mean already sheet sheet or under key Joe had been married.00:26:19.560 --> 00:26:20.010 Jeff Pearlman: She doesn't.00:26:20.460 --> 00:26:21.810 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Everyone for all this stuff.00:26:22.050 --> 00:26:34.950 Jeff Pearlman: should have a lifetime of sports stories like this is not something probably signed up for see that are marrying a nice guys Jewish he's in New York i'll get married This is great then she winds up with like that 7000 bread firestorm that's not a fair trade off at all.00:26:36.360 --> 00:26:39.060 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah now what is she a sports person or no.00:26:40.110 --> 00:26:44.100 Jeff Pearlman: she's a I mean she played you know tennyson hoops in the high school but.00:26:44.700 --> 00:26:53.760 Jeff Pearlman: she's a moderate grew up a giants fan but she's a moderate sports fan, but not a major, but she reads all my books and she goes through, and she edits and she's a very good writer, and you know a great editor and.00:26:54.330 --> 00:27:00.270 Jeff Pearlman: You know, but we don't we don't watch in our House my son's room right now is right deceptive there's my son's room, but we don't.00:27:00.270 --> 00:27:01.740 Jeff Pearlman: Watch sports in our House.00:27:04.470 --> 00:27:09.870 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah and your son is he I see the reason is, I follow you on Twitter, of course, I thought we.00:27:10.380 --> 00:27:18.570 Kevin Barbaro Productions: were connected and what I love about the stories about you, is what I like about you bro I mean I I like in general right but.00:27:19.710 --> 00:27:23.550 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Your self deprecating you're not afraid to make fun of yourself and.00:27:25.290 --> 00:27:32.190 Kevin Barbaro Productions: that's kind of my own sense of humor to you know where it listen man, if I if I can't laugh at myself, you know.00:27:33.330 --> 00:27:42.630 Kevin Barbaro Productions: it's almost like I have free rein to laugh at other people, because I laugh at myself but but you're a family guy and and and that really comes out in.00:27:43.560 --> 00:27:56.760 Kevin Barbaro Productions: In all of your platforms that that i've seen you on and and to me, you know that's obviously a lot more important than being a writer or being famous or or New York Times bestseller lists, so you know kudos to that bro.00:27:57.540 --> 00:28:08.580 Kevin Barbaro Productions: But we're gonna be back in a minute when I come back with you here, I want to talk about a little bit about football for a buck and Donald trump because I don't think that people.00:28:09.690 --> 00:28:16.890 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Have any clue as to what his involvement was with us, if I grew up during that era bro I didn't even realize.00:28:17.520 --> 00:28:26.550 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Until until now, even as an adult I didn't even realize it until I read the book and man it just cast a whole different talk about negative information bro.00:28:27.360 --> 00:28:37.320 Kevin Barbaro Productions: This is this is unreal but listen we're gonna be back here in just a couple of minutes with Jeff for a moment this is Kevin Barbara and coffee talk XL on talk radio dot nyc.00:31:22.650 --> 00:31:32.070 Kevin Barbaro Productions: and welcome back everybody to coffee talk XL i'm Kevin Barbara and you're listening on talk radio dot nyc and talking alternative i've got my special guests with me.00:31:32.280 --> 00:31:41.940 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Today in New York Times bestselling author Jeff perlman you've got a brand new book out, you can get on Amazon called three ring circus he's in the process of writing a.00:31:42.660 --> 00:31:52.740 Kevin Barbaro Productions: biography about my favorite athlete of all time by far my favorite athlete of all time Bo Jackson greatest athlete I think not just my favorite APP I think he was the greatest athlete that ever watch your.00:31:53.940 --> 00:32:02.160 Kevin Barbaro Productions: But that's another story What I do want to talk about he has another book that came out what when they come out 2018, I think, maybe.00:32:02.580 --> 00:32:03.030 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I think so.00:32:03.720 --> 00:32:22.440 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah football for a buck it's about the rise and fall of the US fl and give for people that don't know me just give a reader's digest version, what was the nfl excuse me, what was the US fl what made it different than the nfl and just kind of go from there.00:32:22.860 --> 00:32:29.550 Jeff Pearlman: I was a spring Football League professionally that came along start with lasted from 8385 so that three seasons.00:32:30.210 --> 00:32:32.850 Jeff Pearlman: And it was basically an alternative to the nfl and.00:32:34.710 --> 00:32:42.240 Jeff Pearlman: Their plan, the idea was we get one or two stars per team, but basically we're going to keep payrolls down.00:32:42.600 --> 00:32:47.460 Jeff Pearlman: we're going to draft regionally, you can draft we have a national draft, but then every team has.00:32:47.730 --> 00:32:55.980 Jeff Pearlman: designated schools in their region so like the Philadelphia stars had penn state pit Delaware blah blah blah blah blah, you know, so you were the idea was.00:32:56.520 --> 00:32:59.760 Jeff Pearlman: fans of these college teams would be able to see their college players at the next level.00:33:00.690 --> 00:33:05.640 Jeff Pearlman: that a lot of innovations, they were the first ones at the two point conversion a the coach challenge on and on and on a bunch of stuff.00:33:06.240 --> 00:33:12.090 Jeff Pearlman: And they're they're big landmark was the big blow was herschel Walker the heisman trophy out of Georgia.00:33:12.720 --> 00:33:27.180 Jeff Pearlman: went to the USA, because at the time underclassmen were not allowed in the nfl so herschel Walker jumped sign with the New Jersey generals and there was a spring arrival, to the nfl and it remains to this day, even through writing a book my favorite all time sports league by far.00:33:29.190 --> 00:33:40.950 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah it was a unique league a day you know some of the cities were major markets, of course, New Jersey generals and what la but then it was a smaller markets too I think San Antonio omaha.00:33:41.010 --> 00:33:49.890 Jeff Pearlman: don't have a tome I didn't get Birmingham yeah yeah you get a lot of smart it was it was a mix of nfl cities and also mid major cities.00:33:50.370 --> 00:33:51.030 Jeff Pearlman: right message.00:33:51.090 --> 00:34:14.220 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so what ended up happening, of course, the nfl i'm assuming hated the US fl this wasn't a thing like hey man let's work together, this was it was full on heat then talk a little bit about how the nfl what what measures they started to go through to try to take now in the US fl.00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:20.640 Jeff Pearlman: Well, I mean you have to remember at that time or people who would know us avail sign three straight heisman trophy winners.00:34:21.030 --> 00:34:28.050 Jeff Pearlman: Three straight heisman trophy winners went to the USA wow so it's herschel Walker and there's micro zeroed in nebraska and then uh Doug flutie at Boston college.00:34:28.650 --> 00:34:34.980 Jeff Pearlman: They started getting players from the nfl and signing them so they start stealing nfl players and.00:34:35.460 --> 00:34:47.790 Jeff Pearlman: They got Steve young out of byu to go straight to the US about Jim Kelly, out of Miami what St people forget reggie white out of Tennessee us fl like big time big time players and they were you know scaring the crap out of the nfl.00:34:48.900 --> 00:34:58.860 Jeff Pearlman: The nfl started sort of what are we going to do here and they start coming up with these plans or we're going to have to start stealing players back and we're gonna have to.00:34:59.370 --> 00:35:09.570 Jeff Pearlman: undermine them, but it was honestly, it was really the USA felt like the nfl a lot of it was trying to ignore the US about because, once we start paying attention to them, it makes them look like they're on our level.00:35:09.990 --> 00:35:15.630 Jeff Pearlman: And the US fl meanwhile was like poke poke poke we're going to steal these guys they signed Lawrence to Donald trump.00:35:16.050 --> 00:35:19.110 Jeff Pearlman: I mean trump did some smart think Donald trump was the owner of the New Jersey generals.00:35:19.680 --> 00:35:31.200 Jeff Pearlman: And he signed Lawrence Taylor tweet futures contract, so he was under contract with the giants trump comes along and says look you contract runs out in three years i'm gonna sign you to a contract starting three years from now.00:35:31.830 --> 00:35:37.500 Jeff Pearlman: And the nfl was like what the hell is this like what is going on here and but then things went very bad.00:35:38.220 --> 00:35:39.240 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah clearly.00:35:40.470 --> 00:35:44.250 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Okay, so when you started writing this book.00:35:45.840 --> 00:36:06.060 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Did you already have an idea about Donald trump and his involvement and the in the negative impact of Islam, did you have that idea or was it through your research that you started seeing like dude this guy really was the one is for the League and how did that come about.00:36:06.450 --> 00:36:13.770 Jeff Pearlman: Right, so I just want to say, first, I am, this is a book I pry wanted to write for about 10 years and I kept getting rejected kicking rejecting kept getting rejected.00:36:14.370 --> 00:36:20.100 Jeff Pearlman: It was weird timing, that I ended up writing it when Donald trump was running for President, I was literally researching this book, while trump was running.00:36:21.750 --> 00:36:27.810 Jeff Pearlman: I knew trump ruin the US as well, I did not know the extent to which you know, so I knew he was largely responsible.00:36:28.410 --> 00:36:36.210 Jeff Pearlman: I didn't know he was almost singularly responsible and sort of lengths he went I mean basically in a very brief nutshell.00:36:36.780 --> 00:36:44.880 Jeff Pearlman: He he wanted nfl franchise and he saw the US to validate his way of getting an nfl franchise and he did not care about this league at all.00:36:45.210 --> 00:36:52.200 Jeff Pearlman: And he did things that were really, really underhanded and scummy including meeting secretly with P roselle who is in the nfl, Commissioner.00:36:52.650 --> 00:37:02.040 Jeff Pearlman: and basically making him an offer, I would throw this league under the bus if you give me an nfl franchise and resellers like I know who you are I know your reputation he literally said to him.00:37:04.050 --> 00:37:11.250 Jeff Pearlman: As long as as long as I am involved in the nfl as long as my ears are involved, the nfl you Donald trump would never have a franchise in this league.00:37:12.570 --> 00:37:30.120 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And and Donald trump makes it seem as though he really didn't have a vested interest, but how many how many teams that he tried to purchase over the course of time, I mean he tried to buy it he made a limp offer at the patriots, I believe.00:37:30.630 --> 00:37:34.500 Jeff Pearlman: So he the first time you try, but the thing is this with him.00:37:35.310 --> 00:37:41.010 Jeff Pearlman: it's always a little questionable like how much of an effort to make and how much was it just to be in the headlines, so he.00:37:41.340 --> 00:37:46.800 Jeff Pearlman: tried he reached out to the baltimore baltimore colts and Robert or say the owner at the time in like 1980.00:37:47.550 --> 00:37:54.000 Jeff Pearlman: And called a bunch of times and her say was like yeah i'm not selling my team i'm definitely not selling it to you, so that died.00:37:54.750 --> 00:38:04.860 Jeff Pearlman: He had an opportunity to buy the Dallas cowboys before Jerry Jones bought it and made the determination that the team would not be worth the money to pay now of course it's worth zillion dollars.00:38:05.580 --> 00:38:15.330 Jeff Pearlman: He tried his best moment, if you really want to be entertained if you can find it entertaining he quote unquote tried buying the buffalo bills, this is not that long before he ran for President.00:38:16.530 --> 00:38:23.040 Jeff Pearlman: sent in a lowball lowball offer and then, when the guy who actually bought the bills I forgot the family's name.00:38:23.430 --> 00:38:32.370 Jeff Pearlman: He did a press conference and trump live tweeted the press conference bashing the guy who bought the team, while the press conference so yeah.00:38:32.790 --> 00:38:40.020 Jeff Pearlman: How serious was the about getting I think he always wanted in that club, like the nfl was the old money club of the rooney's and the mares and and yeah.00:38:40.200 --> 00:38:41.070 Jeff Pearlman: we've had that correct.00:38:41.910 --> 00:38:51.120 Jeff Pearlman: yeah and trump was always had this sort of I mean to be blunt like the small penis envy of not being in that club not being allowed right, you know so yeah.00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:59.280 Kevin Barbaro Productions: yeah I mean Obviously he wasn't he wasn't any more like to then then then 10 years now me, you know, particularly within.00:38:59.580 --> 00:39:10.920 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Though the wealthy circle, because those all of those teams, as you mentioned, they were owned by all family money man, I mean even the bills, they were they were owned by the rich family.00:39:11.460 --> 00:39:23.100 Kevin Barbaro Productions: frozen meats and whatnot you know and and so he wants to be he wants to throw the US fl under the bus pete rose all he wants to get an nfl franchise.00:39:24.330 --> 00:39:42.630 Kevin Barbaro Productions: He convinces and correct me from wrong he convinces them, they need to move the usl fl to the fall and go heads up against the nfl yes talk about that in in do you think that that that was pretty much the beginning of the end, obviously.00:39:43.350 --> 00:39:49.050 Jeff Pearlman: Actually, it was um it was bonkers it's actually you know i'm not a trump fan, as I think you.00:39:49.050 --> 00:39:49.620 Kevin Barbaro Productions: might know yeah.00:39:52.290 --> 00:40:00.900 Jeff Pearlman: He is one of the best salesman i've never seen i've never seen anything like him as a salesman It is remarkable it's truly remarkable and if he could use his powers to good.00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:05.520 Jeff Pearlman: He could be an incredibly I don't think he's capable of it but you'd be an incredibly positive world force.00:40:05.550 --> 00:40:14.970 Jeff Pearlman: But you basically had teams in the US about in cities like you like euston in cities like Chicago in cities like Tampa where.00:40:15.330 --> 00:40:22.440 Jeff Pearlman: There would be no gain whatsoever Pittsburgh in moving to the fall going head to head, like you, literally would lose your franchise.00:40:22.650 --> 00:40:30.450 Jeff Pearlman: Because a pillar monsters, are not going to be able to compete head to head with the Pittsburgh steelers it just won't happen to use and gamblers are not going to be able to compete with the then Houston or there's will not happen.00:40:31.320 --> 00:40:39.600 Jeff Pearlman: And he amazingly convinced these owners, that it would be to their benefit to move to the fall it's one of the craziest things i've ever seen in my life and.00:40:40.200 --> 00:40:46.860 Jeff Pearlman: My my favorite truly my favorite trump us of our story, these are just speaks to sort of him at the time was um.00:40:47.670 --> 00:40:52.470 Jeff Pearlman: He decided they needed Doug flutie the reigning heisman trophy winner out of Boston columns.00:40:52.920 --> 00:41:02.490 Jeff Pearlman: The New Jersey generals now the quarterback of the time was Brian site, the former nfl mvp they actually didn't need him but they trump didn't know very much about football he just new shiny objects and here's Doug.00:41:02.490 --> 00:41:13.740 Jeff Pearlman: flutie shiny object and flutie I think flutie nowadays actually is a pretty high first round pick because sizes quarterback is doesn't matter back then he was probably a fourth or fifth round nfl draft pick you know.00:41:15.120 --> 00:41:19.770 Jeff Pearlman: 510 yes yeah right so trump if he's in high you so trump.00:41:21.840 --> 00:41:23.700 Jeff Pearlman: makes him the highest makes an offer.00:41:24.720 --> 00:41:28.830 Jeff Pearlman: To and makes them the highest paid player in football Doug flutie.00:41:29.880 --> 00:41:31.620 Jeff Pearlman: And the beauty of it is, is he.00:41:32.730 --> 00:41:39.000 Jeff Pearlman: He signed and he writes a letter that I got Ahold of and he sends it to every other owner and the week and it says.00:41:39.480 --> 00:41:50.490 Jeff Pearlman: I have done the League this amazing i've done all of you this amazing favor by signing Doug flutie and the dividends are already paying off I expected each of you to contribute to his salary.00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:55.590 Jeff Pearlman: So he basically as I always say he was the mud Doug flutie was the Mexico wall before the.00:41:55.590 --> 00:41:57.870 Kevin Barbaro Productions: mascot I was literally just thinking that man.00:41:58.260 --> 00:42:02.670 Jeff Pearlman: it's the same freaking playbook and i'll tell you when people were saying like.00:42:03.510 --> 00:42:12.450 Jeff Pearlman: trump conspiring with Putin, he would never do that I was like he met with the nfl Commissioner and a volunteer to throw this league under the bus so like.00:42:12.840 --> 00:42:19.680 Jeff Pearlman: The parallels are endless it was it's the bet i'm not saying this so people buy my book, I swear it's available at the library can get pregnant dollar Sir.00:42:20.670 --> 00:42:28.590 Jeff Pearlman: It is the best parallel if you want to really understand trump there's no greater parallel than his time in the USA out to his time now yeah.00:42:28.980 --> 00:42:36.450 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so the US fl ends up in we're gonna wrap up here in a second but us adele long story short, they sue the nfl.00:42:37.500 --> 00:42:42.060 Kevin Barbaro Productions: take them to court and they will be the case, but.00:42:44.040 --> 00:42:49.110 Kevin Barbaro Productions: How did they land on $1 that's that's the that's the whole thing yeah I know it's about $3 but yeah.00:42:49.470 --> 00:42:55.230 Jeff Pearlman: You know, it was $1 traveled to three under antitrust law so basically it's very fascinating I interviewed one of the jury members.00:42:56.160 --> 00:43:02.610 Jeff Pearlman: And that, with the nfl busy usl was suing the nfl saying that the nfl was a monopolizing TV and.00:43:02.970 --> 00:43:09.600 Jeff Pearlman: fall TV and and basically with the jury decided wise you're right you guys are actually at the US about you are.00:43:09.870 --> 00:43:16.560 Jeff Pearlman: Correct the nfl has a monopoly, the nfl has been trying to wipe you guys out the nfl is doing a lot of things they shouldn't be doing.00:43:17.160 --> 00:43:28.320 Jeff Pearlman: But then there was this Bible, and the but is it's your fault, like you, guys keep screwing up, you are the ones doing this and the jurors homie Donald trump made himself to start the trial he decided they'd all of these.00:43:29.100 --> 00:43:32.640 Jeff Pearlman: players who are going to testify they didn't call anyone right.00:43:33.450 --> 00:43:43.560 Jeff Pearlman: Donald trump decided, he should be the face and central figure of the trial a jury told me was a disaster, he was scowling at the jury blah blah blah and then of winning $1 trouble, two, three, and that was the death of the US about.00:43:44.310 --> 00:44:01.200 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Unbelievable listen Jeff Thank you so much for coming on the show your book three ring circus available right now on Amazon, and like this, probably at the dollar store and, if you want to know about Donald trump he republican dude i'm middle of the road guy you know this.00:44:01.200 --> 00:44:01.410 Jeff Pearlman: Right.00:44:02.100 --> 00:44:10.020 Kevin Barbaro Productions: it's fascinating bro it's a fascinating and and and I think you're a great writer best of luck and i'll have you back on the show here another time so thanks.00:44:10.800 --> 00:44:16.800 Kevin Barbaro Productions: for having me thank you and we'll be back here in just a minute on coffee talk XL on talk radio dot nyc.00:46:31.710 --> 00:46:32.580 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Welcome back everybody.00:46:32.910 --> 00:46:35.940 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Coffee talk so i'm Barbara and you're listening on.00:46:35.970 --> 00:46:49.620 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Talk radio dot nyc and the talking alternative quick little shout out on the music the intro music and music for the show to my buddy Dave carpenter Dave is musician in Toledo Ohio.00:46:50.190 --> 00:46:55.050 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I was track and field and cross country coach at the University of Toledo, many years 15 years.00:46:55.440 --> 00:47:07.860 Kevin Barbaro Productions: and gave is a musician locally, but he was also a high school track coach and a former college track Star and he wrote that song, it was the theme song for coffee talk 3.0 and and and I continue to.00:47:08.280 --> 00:47:15.090 Kevin Barbaro Productions: use it as as our theme song your coffee Doc excel so nice little shout out to my buddy Dave carpenter back and Lido.00:47:16.860 --> 00:47:37.410 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I want to talk finished up talking about Rockies rescue, so I talked about how I ended up getting rocky and that and that whole story, and so the ultimate goal for Rockies rescue is actually to a couple of things so we're right now we're working on trying to create a 501 C three.00:47:39.120 --> 00:47:48.210 Kevin Barbaro Productions: You know, establish it as a 501 C three so that it is a nonprofit and the goal here is to create and we've.00:47:48.720 --> 00:47:54.780 Kevin Barbaro Productions: already started, Korea, I mean I funded myself but a trap neuter and release program so we're I look for.00:47:55.440 --> 00:48:04.470 Kevin Barbaro Productions: You know if I see stray cats or or if somebody has a cat that they can't take care of take the cat in make sure you're getting those shots make sure it gets fixed.00:48:04.800 --> 00:48:13.410 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And then adopted out if it's if it's friendly Of course I end up becoming the crazy cat guy because I I end up fostering a bunch of cats and I have my own cats, you know.00:48:13.980 --> 00:48:28.680 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And, but ultimately, I would, I would like to do is here in myrtle beach South Carolina is to open up a cat CAFE now a friend of mine back in New York actually in in.00:48:29.580 --> 00:48:40.560 Kevin Barbaro Productions: In New Jersey in rahway New Jersey, they have a cat CAFE That was my first ever even heard of it and basically what it is, is is we're looking for retail space, right now, where the.00:48:40.980 --> 00:48:51.810 Kevin Barbaro Productions: traffic and typically older people are you know, maybe at a Plaza that as a grocery store, but essentially take the retail space, create a diner.00:48:52.590 --> 00:49:07.170 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Excuse me, create like a CAFE where people can come in, they can have coffee, they can sit and and and the in there are adoptable cats from the the Rockies rescue that are there.00:49:07.560 --> 00:49:13.740 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And they can interact with them if because there are a lot of people that want to have cats.00:49:14.580 --> 00:49:20.160 Kevin Barbaro Productions: or want to have pets, but they can't so they come and they make a donation, so they can sit and.00:49:20.700 --> 00:49:29.070 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And for an hour, they can they can they can play with the cats and and you know, feel that unconditional love that we get from pets and.00:49:29.820 --> 00:49:43.500 Kevin Barbaro Productions: It but, at the at the same time it's to fund the tea and our program so that we are trying to humanely curb the stray cat population in the Community, I mean that's really what the goal is because.00:49:44.670 --> 00:49:51.930 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Everybody is seems strange, you see, you know they they they propagate they live in the woods, they live in your backyard.00:49:52.380 --> 00:49:59.850 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And really what needs am some of them are adoptable some of them can be adopted out but really what we need to do is, we need to spay and neuter.00:50:00.630 --> 00:50:10.620 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so, this entire program is set up, so that listen cats are part of the environment, you guys stray cats in your neighborhood that means you got plenty of mice to be or they wouldn't be there.00:50:12.180 --> 00:50:21.120 Kevin Barbaro Productions: But the the cat CAFE is is kind of the second phase of it, and then the other thing too is, we want to provide a rescue.00:50:21.690 --> 00:50:33.180 Kevin Barbaro Productions: plan for pets during natural disasters, so here in myrtle beach South Carolina as an example, we are obviously in a flood zone or obviously in a hurricane zone.00:50:33.930 --> 00:50:53.040 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And there are a lot of people, particularly senior citizens, particularly retired people that live here that have pets and when we have a situation where we have a natural disaster, which happens to be me basically every other year, so a lot of times the pets are left behind.00:50:54.210 --> 00:51:02.760 Kevin Barbaro Productions: and on it's a sad situation because you have these people they there's nothing they can do they've got to pack up everything in their car they got to leave.00:51:03.060 --> 00:51:12.150 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And they leave the pets and they just hope that when they get back that that everything is okay, and sometimes it's not, and so this program Rockies rescue.00:51:12.630 --> 00:51:22.470 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The goal here is to go into and usually these poor neighborhoods as well, where people have to leave and they leave the pets to go into those neighborhoods.00:51:22.950 --> 00:51:27.810 Kevin Barbaro Productions: rescue the pets during the time of disaster during the time of need.00:51:28.320 --> 00:51:39.750 Kevin Barbaro Productions: hang on to them just foster them at Rockies rescue so that they can be reunited with their families, when everybody comes back from whatever the disaster happens to be so.00:51:40.380 --> 00:51:50.880 Kevin Barbaro Productions: It really is kind of evolved from me being just tired when I first became an actor That was my first job in New York City.00:51:51.270 --> 00:51:58.200 Kevin Barbaro Productions: To then taking in rocky and the story that I just told a few minutes ago, and then now it's evolved to where.00:51:59.130 --> 00:52:09.540 Kevin Barbaro Productions: we're taking in foster's making sure they've had their their their all their shots and make sure that they are spayed neutered make sure they're tested for if IV and leukemia.00:52:10.020 --> 00:52:17.070 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And then, adapting them out and another interesting story which added to all of this is that.00:52:17.490 --> 00:52:27.240 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Back in July of last year I was at my office so i've got a couple of bombs so i'm one of two partners in a in a small construction company.00:52:27.840 --> 00:52:34.170 Kevin Barbaro Productions: will actually not even small anymore here in myrtle beach, I also have my concert production in live event production companies.00:52:35.070 --> 00:52:43.170 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The two branches kb sports and Kevin Barbara productions, I have a separate office for that downtown myrtle beach near broadway the beach.00:52:43.800 --> 00:52:52.440 Kevin Barbaro Productions: So i'm in my office, I mean that offices, one in broadway broadway beach this calico cat goes walking across the parking lot like 11 o'clock at night July.00:52:53.010 --> 00:53:05.400 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And July of last year, not not 2000 22,019 so it's 11 o'clock and there's no residential there aren't a whole and so i'm like man somebody dumped this cat you know so.00:53:05.940 --> 00:53:11.820 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I called it over to me it comes over to me, and as soon as it gets over to me it lays down on his back was me, though.00:53:12.480 --> 00:53:19.290 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Okay, so I figured all right i'll take it, and you can be the office cat that was basically the whole plan here.00:53:19.980 --> 00:53:25.530 Kevin Barbaro Productions: That that and I named her cinnamon because she looked like kind of like cinnamon and sugar so.00:53:26.460 --> 00:53:34.260 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I have her in the office and round about the middle of August i'm like i'm like dude she's getting fat.00:53:35.070 --> 00:53:40.320 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Take her to the vet, as it turns out she's pregnant, she was pregnant when I found so.00:53:40.860 --> 00:53:50.460 Kevin Barbaro Productions: One thing about cats people don't realize is that cats are the gestation period is 90 so almost exactly 63 days and then they'll have the kids.00:53:50.850 --> 00:54:00.120 Kevin Barbaro Productions: So she has the kittens almost exactly 63 days later, my whole goal here at that point is that she had four of them three of them jet lag and one all great.00:54:00.750 --> 00:54:18.210 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And, and so my my grand master plan is i'm going to adopt so anyway very first night that that the kittens are alive so she gives birth, I make a little bed, for her in the bathroom off my master bedroom and so that they can become for like when i'm laying in bed right.00:54:19.350 --> 00:54:25.020 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And all of a sudden cinnamon jumps up on the end of the bed and she's got the runt of the litter.00:54:25.800 --> 00:54:39.120 Kevin Barbaro Productions: In her mouth, one of the black black cats she comes over no exaggeration, she lays the kitten down in like the space break by my armpit she takes a couple of steps back least down and goes to sleep.00:54:40.740 --> 00:54:50.310 Kevin Barbaro Productions: dude that's like the sweetest thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life I I don't even know that i've been anything sweeter or nicer happened to me with any relationship i've ever been in my life.00:54:51.570 --> 00:54:56.790 Kevin Barbaro Productions: But it was like it was it was the greatest thing, so I wake up in the morning and she's got them all up on the bed.00:54:57.600 --> 00:55:08.430 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Well then, I put them back down I go off and do work come back day to she's got them all back up on the video all right, I guess that's what we're doing so I create a little for.00:55:08.790 --> 00:55:12.480 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And all the the four kittens are in there and and and cinnamon.00:55:13.140 --> 00:55:20.910 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And i'm sleeping on the bed, I mean I got a king size bed i'm like sleeping over on the one side, because all the kill the kittens are in this little for that i've created.00:55:21.750 --> 00:55:36.900 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so, then you know my goal still is to adopt them out, and then I started giving them name, so the Gray, one I call them grace son because it's great it was a boy, and the runt of the litter is all black which get like a white.00:55:38.190 --> 00:55:39.540 Kevin Barbaro Productions: I catch wrestling right now.00:55:40.800 --> 00:55:52.620 Kevin Barbaro Productions: The little white patch on her so we call her Ruby and then, and then the other two black one is one is male and female is cardi B and and Jay Z.00:55:53.070 --> 00:56:07.380 Kevin Barbaro Productions: Well, the funny thing about Jay Z was that it wasn't until about three months into his life, he was actually known as beyonce but then one day about three months later, I realized beyonce is actually Jay Z.00:56:08.310 --> 00:56:19.140 Kevin Barbaro Productions: And so now, you know they live here I mean I got a big place you know it is what it is probably another reason why I am eternally going to be single but.00:56:19.500 --> 00:56:26.880 Kevin Barbaro Productions: You know rocky's rescue it's a big it's a big part of my life and and you know I I I can't.00:56:27.330 --> 00:56:36.240 Kevin Barbaro Productions: really put into words how how great It mak

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.

My guest today is Dr. Jeff Johnson. Jeff has been applying his background in psychology towards designing better human-computer interfaces for over forty years. He teaches computer science at The University of San Francisco, and has written several influential books on UI design. Among these, he co-authored with Kate Finn Desiging User Interfaces for an Aging Population, which is the focus of this conversation. Listen to the full conversation Download episode 46   Show notes Jeff Johnson UI Wizards Cognitive Psychology Cromemco Xerox GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Dont's and Dos by Jeff Johnson Designing With the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Guidelines by Jeff Johnson Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design by Austin Henderson and Jeff Johnson (My notes on Conceptual Models) Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population: Towards Universal Design by Jeff Johnson and Kate Finn Tesla Model S Interior Google Maps Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the full transcript Jorge: All right, Jeff. Welcome to the show. Jeff: Thank you! I'm glad to be here. About Jeff Jorge: I'm very excited to have you with us. For folks who don't know you, can you please tell us about yourself? Jeff: Okay. Well, I have a degree in psychology — not computer science — from Yale University and then I went on to Stanford in graduate school in psychology. So, it was Cognitive Psychology and my research at the time focused on understanding human problem-solving and human memory. But I found that after graduate school, I could either become a professor of psychology somewhere or I could go into the computer industry and help companies make their products easier to use, easier to learn. And that's what I decided to do. I worked for a small company in Silicon Valley named Cromemco and then I moved from there to Xerox, where I was working on document preparation systems. And then I worked for a series of companies in Silicon Valley and around the country, essentially doing human-computer interaction. While I was doing that, it became fairly clear to me that companies keep making the same mistakes over and over and over. And they were design mistakes that were causing their products to be not usable. And so, I eventually quit working for companies and became a consultant. I started working for myself, as a consultant, but my clients were companies. And so, I'd go from one company to another. And I continued to find that they were making the same mistakes over and over again. And it got to the point where I could start to categorize the mistakes. You know, this is mistake number 47, this is mistake number 19, et cetera. And so then eventually, in the late nineties, I wrote a book called GUI Bloopers, which was basically a catalog of all of the common mistakes that companies make in their design that cause their products to be less than usable. And that book was very popular. It basically made me well known in the field as the guy who wrote GUI Bloopers. People started calling me “Dr. Bloopers,” which I at first thought, “well, that's great.” But then I started thinking, “well, I don't want to be stereotyped as ‘Dr. Bloopers'.” So, I wrote another book, which came out in 2010, called Designing With the Mind In Mind, which was the psychological basis for user interface design principles. You know, where do user interface design principles come from? And that book was fairly popular. And so now, that book is in its third edition. The second edition came out in 2014 and the third edition has just come out now, in 2020. Since 2016, I've worked as a professor of computer science at the University of San Francisco, teaching introductory computer science, introductory programming, and also human-computer interaction. In particular, I focus my human- computer interaction course on user experience design. And, so that's… that kind of brings us up to the current day. Jorge: I want to call out that you've also authored a few other books. Among them there's one that's been particularly influential to me called Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design. Jeff: Right! Yeah, I neglected to mention that book. So, when I was working at Xerox, they had an approach to design that involved understanding the conceptual model underlying a user interface design before starting to draw screens and figure out what the appearance of the application on a screen or on a device would look like. And I very much agreed with that approach… their approach. And so, I, and Austin also — Austin Henderson, my coauthor — also worked at Xerox, and so, later the two of us started pushing that approach — the conceptual models approach — throughout the rest of the industry. We would give talks here and there, we wrote articles for magazines and at one point, a publisher approached us and said, would you be interested in writing a book on this topic? So, we did. And so, in 2011, the book Conceptual Models came out, as a result of that work. Then, also around that same time, I became interested in how do you design for older adults? That is, the technology doesn't seem to work as well for older adults. And there are a number of reasons for that. And so, I started doing some research on that and reading and understanding, and then a colleague and I formed a consulting firm that was called Wiser Usability, as in older, but wiser. And we would help companies make their products more friendly for older adults. And then we eventually wrote a book about that, that is called Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population. And that book came out in 2017. Designing for an Aging Population Jorge: That book is part of the reason why we're talking today. Tell me about designing for an aging population; what is different about folks who are aging and other folks in the groups of people that we design for? Jeff: Okay. Well, number of things that make designing for older adults challenging. But first let me mention the irony in this situation, which is that older adults are in a sense the population that is most in need of technological assistance, because they could benefit greatly because of limited mobility, because of limited eyesight, because of limited other things, from technological assistance of various sorts. You know, the ability to shop online, the ability to do their government businesses online, getting a driver's license, and things like that. But the irony of course, is that the technology doesn't support them very well, and they struggle with using the technology — I should not say “they,” because I am myself over 60, and therefore I should say “we” older adults — but, that's the irony: they're the population that would benefit from it the most, but it actually is least usable for them. The question is why and how can we fix that? And there are a number of reasons for that. One of them is a whole collection of things that have to do with the fact that as we age, we experience certain disabilities of various types like failing eyesight, failing hearing, failing hand-eye control and other things like that, and therefore products and services that don't take that into account can become difficult for us to use. Now, the interesting thing about that is that, of course there are people of all ages who have difficulty with vision, difficulty with hearing, and difficulty with hand-eye control. And so, really making things and products more accessible to older adults actually helps them for all of us. One of the examples I like to give is that when you're on a bus and you're riding from someplace to another place, or in a car and you're riding from someplace to another place, and you are trying to use your phone to either get the weather report or to text somebody or something like that — and I'm not assuming that you're the driver, let's say you're a passenger in a car or even a bus — and you're trying to do that while the bus is shaking, now suddenly you are like a person who has hand tremors. If you've ever tried to text someone while you're in a car, then the is driving over a bumpy road, you know what I'm talking about. Those kinds of things are one of the family of reasons why older adults have trouble with technology. We just don't take them into account. But there's another set of reasons that are perhaps in my view almost more important than that category of issues that I would call accessibility issues that I've just discussed. And that is, issues that are more about how do they think? How do older adults think about the world and how do they think about doing things and accomplishing tasks? What are their models of how the world works and how the technology should work? And that is something that's quite interesting because that problem is not going to go away. The first set of problems isn't going to go away either because people are going to continue to age and experience age-related disabilities. But the second category of problems is going to remain with us too, and for a different reason. But let me back up for a second and say something: there is an argument floating in the computer and technology industry that the problems of designing for older adults are going to go away and that we don't have to worry about them forever because, they argue, that today's older adults are “digital immigrants” rather than “digital natives,” right? So, digital natives are kids of today who've grown up with technology all their lives and they know this technology and they're comfortable with it, and, it's not a problem for them. But the digital immigrants who are the current generation of what you would call “boomers,” and people who are older than that, are going to have trouble because they weren't used to this technology. The argument goes that once all the digital immigrants die, everything will be fine, and we won't have to worry about designing technology for older adults because everyone will be digital immigrants. So, that argument is false. That argument is wrong. Because technology does not stand still and people tend to get… they grow up in whatever the dominant technology is, as people are, let's say between ages 10 and 30, is the one that they become used to, and then they got stuck in that way of thinking about the world. But the world moves on. The technology moves on, okay? One way you can think of it is that the current generation of baby boomers, they grew up when the technology was analog electronic and mechanical. There were mechanical objects, and they were analog-electronic objects. Now, these boomers were born from between 1945 and let's say 1965. That means that they were 10 through 30 in the time between the sixties and the late seventies and early eighties. And so, the technology that was prevalent then was mostly analog electronic, and some mechanical technology, not so much anymore. And that's what they got used to. And that's where they got stuck. And so, the technology that came along afterwards, which was personal computers and the rise of the internet and digital electronics, was new to them. And so, they were not natives of the digital technology world. And so, today's kids… people who are born after that, the children of the boomers… I don't remember what the name of that generation is… Jorge: Maybe Gen X? Jeff: Gen X, yes. They grew up in a world where there were personal computers and the internet was just getting born. And there were online discussion groups, and AOL had become a thing and it was popular, and the web started during their maturation years. And so, they were natives of that. But the Generation X is not natives of social networking and Google and all of that. And so, basically everyone is natives of some technology and immigrants of the next wave of technology. That affects what you know, and that's going to keep going on. You know, my students at USF don't believe that they're going to get stuck in any particular digital age, but I keep telling them they're wrong. That their kids are going to be saying to them, things like this: “Mom, why do you keep Instagramming me? Nobody uses Instagram anymore. I use Brain Link. What are you talking about? Instagram?” And then the mom is going to be saying, “Oh, this Brain Link thing. I just can't get used to it.” And my students don't believe that's going to be them in 20 years. They don't believe it, but it is. They are digital natives and they're social networking natives and they're digital music natives, but they are not quantum computing natives. They are not neural-network-driven computing natives. Those are coming along, and they will be immigrants to that technology. Empathizing with Aging Users Jorge: I want to reflect back on what you've been saying here, because there's a lot of really interesting and important ideas that I want to follow up on. One is this distinction between a set of challenges that has to do with the usability of these artifacts that we're dealing with — I use the word accessibility — and the other set of challenges has to do with trying to bring a mental model that no longer fits the reality of the ecosystem that you're dealing with or the products that you're interacting with. And the thing that strikes me about those two is that the challenges for designers in both cases have to do with an ability to empathize with the people who are unlike them, who have a different set of physical or… I don't know if to say their motor skills are different and their perceptual skills are different. And also, what I'm hearing you say there at the end with the Instagram example, is the younger folks, who predominantly I see as representing the demographic that is actually designing these products, is unable to conceive of themselves operating in a world where their mental models aren't dominant. How do you overcome that? Jeff: Well, first of all, you have to teach methods, right? Methods for design that involve building empathy into the process. The methods for design should include having older adults on your team, or at least within easy access of your team. Your design team should be able to talk to a lot of older adults and run focus groups with them and show them examples of products, in fact, even before the products are designed. You know, storyboards and things like that. Or even just have discussions about what the older adults are having challenges with. That's one way to bring empathy into the design process. Another way is kind of interesting, and some companies have used this method — and in fact, this method I'm about to mention is actually called “empathic design.” What you do is you give prosthesis to the young designers that impair their perception or their movement in various ways. Some car companies have actually done this: When they're trying to design a car that will be bought by aging boomers of today, they actually will give the young car designers clothing to wear that impairs their movement. So here put on this jumpsuit that's got straps built into it that make it hard for you to turn and twist your legs and turn your head and get in and out of this car five times in 10 minutes. Please do that. And then the designer goes, “Oh yeah! These seats are too low.” Or, “This door doesn't open wide enough.” You know, things like that. So, you can do that in the physical realm relatively easy. Perceptual realm, what you can do is you can give designers glasses that blur their vision or that darken the world. One of the interesting things about older adults is that our eyes become less capable of taking in light over our lifetimes. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is that your cornea and your lens become yellowed over time with exposure to ultraviolet light, and therefore let through less light to your retina. Now, the retina also loses light sensitive cells over the course of your lifetime and therefore becomes less sensitive to light. And so, the upshot is that the average 80-year-old needs light to be three times as bright in order to perceive the same brightness as a 20-year-old. I may not have those exact ages right because I haven't memorized them, but they're in the book. So, in the perceptual realm, you can give your designers prosthesis, or artificial impairments that will affect their hearing or their vision or their touch. For example, the example I gave earlier, right? You put someone and tell them, “Okay, you got this phone and the buttons… we think the buttons are too small, but you think they're fine. Okay, here. Get into this car and we're going to drive over a bumpy road and you try to text somebody.” You know? So, you can make people situationally impaired, and that can bring empathy. Put somebody on a camel and tell them to use their iPad. Jorge: On a camel? I love that. I'm going to try to find out where we can procure a camel for a usability study. These all seem like good methods to use for the accessibility part of the equation. I'm wondering if there are similar methods we can employ for the mental model part of this. Where these folks like you said, they might have grown up in a world where the technologies were very different, and now they're being asked to somehow operate in this world where a lot is taken for granted that just isn't available to these folks. Aligning Mental Models Jeff: Right. Well, think of it this way: When I was 15 years old, all the user interfaces I used were right there in front of me. They didn't require any kind of a concept of navigation. I did not have to navigate to the function that I wanted to do. Whereas now, starting with, personal computers, but continuing through the web, continuing through social networking and continuing through the use of cell phones, navigation through a user interface became an important concept. It's part of the design, right? There's no way a cell phone with its small screen can provide all the functionality right there on the screen that you need at any given time. But the old telephones, there was no need to navigate from one function to another. You just pick up the phone and start dialing the number. Interestingly, the concept of dialing a number… we still use that word, even though nobody has dialed a phone for 30 years. But anyway, so I guess what I should say is that our terminology often gets stuck even though the technology moves on from that, right? I keep hearing people on the news say, we have film of this politician committing bad stuff. We have it on tape. We have it on film. We captured footage. Those are all words that apply to actual physical film. Some of my students have no idea where does this term “footage” comes from and why do we apply it to movies. But anyway, that's just a little aside. So, the concept of navigation is a new thing for many older adults. It's something that happened after their maturation period, after they got stuck in their technology. And so, when I'm driving in my Tesla and I want to use the radio, I actually have to navigate from the map screen, which is showing me where I am right now in my neighborhood to the radio screen, right? And in the old days — when I say the old days, I mean, the days that baby boomers were used to, they grew up in — I didn't have to do that. There was no map on the screen. I had a map maybe on the passenger seat next to me, unfolded, that I got from a AAA. But the radio was right there on the control panel — the dashboard — all the time, and so was the ignition, and so was the air conditioner, and so were all the other functions. They were right there. I didn't have to navigate from one function to another. So that's a confusing concept for many older adults. And yes, eventually, those older adults will eventually die, and tomorrow's older adults won't be confused by that, but they will be confused by other things that will change. Jorge: I was really intrigued by these methods that you called out like the bus example earlier for the physical challenges involved… what I think of as the UI challenges. And I'm wondering if there are equivalent methods for us to use for this more conceptual challenge. Are there like the dark glasses that I can wear, but for the conceptual models that have become part of my world? Jeff: Yes and no. It's easier to impair someone's vision and hearing and physical movement than it is to impair their brain function. I mean, you can impair the brain function by giving them a bunch of whiskey to drink, but that's not the right kind of impairment, right? What you need to do is to be able to make it so that certain concepts don't make sense to them. So, that is difficult. But there are some design techniques that one could use. For example, suppose I want to make a map app and I want to make it easier to use for a wider range of people, including people who don't have the mental model that involves a lot of navigation. Well then, I just build what's called a one-screen app — and those are actually becoming fairly popular, right? So, there are lots of companies that are going with this idea of everything should be on a screen, and I shouldn't have to keep moving around in the app from one place to another. Google maps is a good example of a one-screen app, right? And there are some others that are coming along. I'm having trouble remembering them right now. But the concept of one screen apps is actually becoming more of a thing and it actually is quite useful for mobile apps on phones. Now, the problem with a mobile app on a phone is that your screen is really small. So, a one-screen app is really challenging design-wise. But what you're trying for is to eliminate the notion that people have to find their way to the function that they want, right? When I buy an airline ticket on an airline's website, there's a whole series of pages I have to go through to get that ticket. And some older adults find that quite challenging, because just when they think they're close to getting their ticket, they see a link that says, “bargain prices here” and they click on it and suddenly they're nowhere near their goal. And they go, “Oh! This is crazy. I thought I was going to get a bargain price on that flight I was just about to buy!” There's an interesting design pattern that was invented actually maybe 15 years ago, by some colleagues of mine, I'm trying to remember their names. But the design pattern is called Process Funnel. And what Process Funnel is, is the idea is that once your app knows — once your website knows — what a user is trying to achieve, guide them strictly toward that goal, do not distract them. Don't put up ads. Don't put upside links. Don't put up little bargain links that take them away from that path. Once you know what they want, guide them to their goal. Because you make money when they get to their goal, and they are satisfied when they get to their goal. And if you distract them from their goal, you've lost them. You don't make money. So, process funnel is a very useful design pattern. Try to figure out… Yeah, offer a lot of different choices for them at the start, but once you know what they want, take them there. Make sure they don't get off-path. Benefits for the Young and Old Jorge: I love what you're saying here, and I have so much that I would like to follow up with you about this topic. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. But I just want to say that the things that you're describing — the methods, the processes, and just the mindset of empathizing with folks who have different abilities than your own — sounds like something that might be valuable not just for making your products sell better, for example, among older adults, but also would bring benefits to everyone. If you do what you're describing there of optimizing the path to completion of a goal, other people — younger people — are going to also derive benefit from that, no? Jeff: Yes. One of the things I have to say since I teach introductory computer science at a university, is that I don't think it's the case that all younger adults are tech-savvy. I have lots of students in my classes who don't know the difference between WiFi and cell service. “My cell phone's not working. Why not? I have WiFi!” “Well, people can't call you on your WiFi. Don't you know the difference between WiFi and cell service?” Okay? So, there are lots of young people who are not technologically savvy. But what we're trying to do as designers is to build essentially the equivalent of curb cuts. You know, curb cuts were put in for a specific purpose: to comply with laws that people with wheelchairs needed to be able to get around in cities. But actually, more than 90% of the users of curb cuts are not people in wheelchairs. The people who actually benefit from curb cuts are… the overwhelming majority of them are people with skateboards, and pushing shopping carts, and pulling roller bags, and pushing strollers, right? So, the curb cuts actually helped everyone, even though they were mandated for people in wheelchairs. And that's what we need to do in technology, is design not strictly for older adults — because that makes no sense — we need to design so that older adults and everyone else can use the technology. Closing Jorge: That strikes me as a great summary of the topic and a fantastic place to wrap up the conversation. Where can folks follow up with you, Jeff? Jeff: Well, I have a consulting firm called UIWizards.com. So, they can look me up there. I have these books, Designing With The Mind in Mind, GUI Bloopers, Conceptual Models, and Designing for An Aging Population. They can check out those books and, you know, get in touch with me that way. I teach at the University of San Francisco. You can get in touch with me that way. Jorge: Well, fantastic. It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for making the time. Jeff: Thank you for having me.

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.

Jeff Jordan is President and Executive Creative Director of Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Rescue offers a broad range of marketing services for government agencies (public health departments, state and federal agencies) and non-profits seeking to promote positive changes in public health related behaviors.  Jeff started his agency when, as a high school student, he volunteered for his local health department's youth-targeted anti-tobacco program. He transitioned from volunteer to contractor, tweaked the anti-tobacco program to approach teens in an innovative way, and grew the agency through “a lot of referrals.” He opened his first office while he was in college and continued his focus on behavioral change for social good.  In this interview, Jeff tells us that marketing tactics that are used to sell products don't necessarily work in changing “fundamental behavior.” His team has to be expert, not just in marketing, but also in behavior change theory, psychology, and sociology . . . and know how to appeal to different subsets within targeted cohort groups. Jeff says that it can take years for a consistent message to bring measurable change, and although there is nothing equivalent to “sales data” to gauge message impact in “real time,” he has found there are some measurable interim “markers” on the path to behavior change. Tracking and measuring specific behavior-related attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge over time can predict subsequent behavior changes. About 7 years ago, Rescue won a $150 million FDA youth tobacco prevention contract. These funds allowed the agency to increase in size from 50 to 150 employees in 3 years. Today, Rescue's 175 employees work out of 6 offices around the country. They serve government agencies and nonprofits in 30 states. Rescue creates programs for these organizations, but also has a library of campaigns that can be licensed. Over the years, Jeff has learned to say “no” to opportunities that are not right for his agency. Budgets that are too small can limit a campaign's success . . . . and blame for poor results will invariably fall on the agency . . . not on the tight budget. The smaller a client is, the more they tend to demand. Jeff has observed that agencies end up over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them, tie up senior personnel in servicing these smaller clients, and underservice their larger accounts. Jeff warns that really small accounts can hold an agency down. Jeff applauds the move away from condemning people who choose unhealthy behaviors and the increasingly broad awareness of underlying lifestyle situations that contribute to these behaviors. Jeff's agency attracts employees who want to do something good in their careers. He describes the agency as “responsibly rebellious,” and explains that is manifested in the way the agency encourages clients to take risks in a responsible way. Jeff can be reached on his company's website at: Rescueagency.com. The agency runs what Jeff describes as a “pretty robust YouTube Channel” at: youtube.com/rescueagency. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Jeff Jordan. He's the President and Executive Creative Director at Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff. JEFF: Thanks so much, Rob. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us – it's right there in the title, a little bit – Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. But tell us a little bit about Rescue and where you excel. JEFF: We are a public health behavior change-focused agency. What that means is that we exclusively work for campaigns that strive to change health behaviors for social good. Almost all of our clients are public health departments, state and federal agencies. When we say behavior change, we refer to actually changing a fundamental behavior that a person is performing. So rather than changing what we would describe as a brand preference of someone who drives one car, changing them to drive a different brand of car, we're looking to change that fundamental behavior of actually driving the car and converting them to ride a bicycle instead. Or in other health arenas, things like quitting smoking or eating healthier, etc. ROB: Perfect. Is that something you've actually engaged in? Encouraging people to ride a bike instead of driving a car? JEFF: Not that one. [laughs] But it's an example people tend to understand. ROB: What are some examples, digging a little deeper, of campaigns? You mentioned smoking cessation. There's probably some other interesting things you've worked on. What are some examples? JEFF: We work from simple behaviors like quitting smoking or not using drugs or not vaping and things like that to more complex behaviors like healthy eating, where we're actually promoting specific types of foods, specific changes to what they eat, as well as mental health behaviors that are even more complicated – trying to get people to reduce stigma and recognize when to seek help, when to do something about the feelings they're having, and whatnot. ROB: Very interesting. You mentioned brand preference; in some cases, I think people think of brand preference as being kind of pliable. Maybe it is just as difficult to change as some health behaviors. How do you think about, or how do your clients even think about, measuring these behaviors over the long term? I imagine the feedback loop on one of your campaigns might be rather long in some cases, given the research required to gather those results. Or maybe there's something unexpected I'm not thinking of. JEFF: You're absolutely right. Behavior change, we usually say you need a couple years at least of consistent campaigning to really see a measurable change. Unfortunately, we don't have sales data to look at to see what's happening in real time, so we rely on self-reported surveys and things like that that either our clients perform or that we help them perform to see what people are saying about the behavior. You do have some interim steps that you can measure on the path to behavior change. Whatever your underlying theory is of what you think is changing in order to change the behavior, such as specific attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge about a behavior, you can measure those, and then those can be pretty predictive of a behavior change later down the line. ROB: One benefit it seems like you might have in your industry – is the behavior change industry perhaps a little bit more open about what works and what doesn't than maybe some particular vertical market, like marketing soda or something? JEFF: I think it's a double-edged sword there. It's more open in the sense that you can survive on theory for a longer period of time. In the commercial world, you can have a great theory, but if it doesn't turn around sales in a quarter, you're kind of out of luck there. In public health, you can survive on theory for a few years. So that does allow you to explore more options. But that also allows bad work to remain for a long time. We see that there's a lot of mistakes and common pitfalls that clients fall into, usually when they work with traditional agencies, that just happen over and over again because it works to sell a product, but it doesn't work to change a fundamental behavior. ROB: What about openness in terms of tactics? In some cases you have organizations like the UK's famous – I may be misattributing it, but their Nudge Unit there. You have probably published research in some cases around behavioral change. How much of your work is synthesizing and adapting those things to a community and to availability of resources versus cooking up something completely out-of-the-box and new? JEFF: There's a lot of theory and approaches already within public health behavior change. I think the UK is interesting in that they tend to have movements that occur there within behavior change. 10-15 years ago, they were really social marketing, and then it switched to Nudge, and they seem to all move a little bit more cohesively, maybe because it's a smaller country. Here in the U.S., we don't see as much cohesiveness in the approaches. The latest and greatest CDC strategy or FDA strategy, those do have a big influence on the work, but a lot of states are making decisions for themselves and applying the theories and approaches that they're comfortable with – everything from states that might still be using hardcore scare tactics like the '90s in their drug prevention work, all the way to other states that are more open-minded in realizing things like adverse childhood experiences influence how people make decisions about risk behaviors later in life. That's something that the state of California is really looking at. You have a really wide range of approaches and comfort level with those approaches. One of the things that we have to do that is kind of unique to our industry is we often have to share some of that education and some of those case studies from other states with potential clients so that they can understand, these are your options. You don't have to just do the scare tactics. That's not the only thing out there, and actually it often doesn't really work. So, we have to be the experts not just in marketing itself, but in behavior change theory, psychology, sociology, all these things that go into it. ROB: It sounds like there's a difference of tactics, a difference of outcomes. Are you seeking cessation? Are you seeking some sort of treatment? Are you just seeking a reduction of use in something that is now legal in certain places? It sounds like you are able to pool that expertise and help – in the ways that many agencies are, but you don't think about it so much in public health – bring those best practices and learnings from other clients. That makes me want to pull back and dig in. You're in a very unique area of focus. I think we've done probably 120 or so episodes right now, and we have not been in a conversation with an agency owner who is in public health and behavioral change. You mentioned you've been in the agency, at least, for 20 years. Did you start off with that area of focus? How did Rescue come to be? JEFF: We are definitely a unique agency. I actually started the agency when I was in high school. I was a volunteer for my local health department's anti-tobacco program. That was a youth program. They worked with a local agency, and after volunteering for about a year, I noticed that the kids we were reaching, the teenagers we were appealing to, were not current smokers, and they were never going to be smokers, whether we existed or not. These were good kids. They were leaders. They wanted to put this on their college application. There was really no change I could see that we were causing, even though we were successful from the sense that there was a lot of youth involvement and we were doing a lot of things. Fortunately, we had an advisor at the health department that was also pretty savvy in terms of youth culture. I like to joke that she was a break dancer when she was in high school, and she was maybe 7 years older than me. So, she was still pretty connected with what high risk youth culture might look like versus low risk youth culture. I said, “Why are we spending all our money on these youth?” She was open to allowing me to move from being a volunteer to being a contractor to start to provide some of these services that would change who the program appealed to. That continued for the next year or so in high school, and very quickly we started to innovate in a way that just wasn't happening in public health, particularly with teens. That turned into a lot of referrals. While I was in college, we grew a lot through referrals and got our first office when I was in college and things like that. So, we really grew organically, and from Day 1 have been exclusively focused on public health. ROB: What does the team look like today? What are some of the scale points and key hires to where the team of the agency is now? JEFF: Today we have about 175 employees, six offices around the country. We are the largest marketing agency in San Diego, but most San Diego businesses can't hire us. [laughs] Our work, though, is spread around the country. We don't have a specific geographic footprint. There's not one place where our clients are clustered. We work with about 30 different states and with the federal government, with the FDA, as well as Veterans Affairs and others. Some of the big scale points that have occurred – there's been a few. The biggest one was about 7 years ago, when we were about 40 or 50 people at the time and we won a contract with the FDA to do youth tobacco prevention. That contract was a $150 million contract for an agency of 50 people. We very quickly grew thanks to that contract. We brought on our CEO, Kristin Carroll (who's still with us today), at that time, who helped us grow quickly. Within a matter of 3 years, we went from about 50 people to 150 people. But in that time, we've continued to grow with other clients as well. Some other notable wins are the California Department of Health's nutrition campaign as well as some other states that have brought on larger contracts. ROB: You mentioned that many San Diego businesses probably can't work with you. Does that reflect a change in the overall deal size that you've pursued? JEFF: No, no, that's just mainly because we don't do commercial marketing. You have to be a public health oriented campaign. We work with the local county health department, we work with the local school district, and we also work with the district attorney's office. So, we work with a lot of local government agencies, but we don't have any commercial customers here or anywhere else. ROB: I see. Once many agencies scale, and especially north of 100 people, I think a lot of times they become very focused on just the FDA size deals. How do you manage that different granularity of client size within one organization and not become really fixated on hitting those homeruns? JEFF: That has definitely been a problem of scaling up. There aren't that many FDA size deals in our space, so we're forced to continue our more modest deal size – which we're very happy with. But I think the biggest challenge that has occurred is being careful not to try and apply universal lessons to the entire agency. Some things that we do for our largest client don't necessarily apply to our smallest clients. We've gotten in trouble sometimes in starting to do things for our smaller clients the way we do it for our larger clients and then going over budget and overcomplicating things when they don't need to be. And vice versa, also making sure we don't get too simple with our biggest accounts. We have to operate in this limited budget standpoint for some of our accounts and then a more open budget to explore different things with our largest accounts. That's probably the biggest thing we have to remind ourselves of and be cautious with. Really, we're operating like two different agencies within one. ROB: We are chatting here right in the middle of the spring 2020 COVID-19 epidemic. How has that changed your mix of business? Do you have clients that are working within – do you have some stay home campaigns running and that sort of thing as well? I imagine any work you've done, you've had to learn very quickly. JEFF: Surprisingly, we haven't gotten into any stay at home work, mainly because we tend to focus on long-term campaigns so that we can measure these long-term changes. It does affect COVID because a lot of the reasons that people are passing away because of COVID is because of preexisting conditions that we're trying to prevent with some of our other behaviors. So in a way, they're all connected. But when there's an emergency like this, communications get out pretty quickly and go viral pretty quickly. You don't really need the traditional long-term campaign to figure it out. The one thing that has changed the most for us is the production of new creative and new messages. Right now we're focused almost exclusively on creating animated work and infographics and things like that. Our clients still want to produce the work, still want to put new messages out there. Right now, people are consuming media more than ever before, so we're still cranking away new stuff. ROB: That's excellent. Jeff, you've been at this for a little bit; you've built the largest agency in San Diego, which is quite a thing. What are some things that you've learned along this journey that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting Rescue all over again? JEFF: There's so many lessons you learn, but you almost need to learn them in order to grow from them. I think that one of the things that we learned was not to be afraid to say no to an opportunity if that's not the right opportunity. I have to teach this lesson to every new business development person we bring on or client service person we bring on. It might feel weird to say no to a small client, but keep in mind that if they don't have enough funds for us to do a good job, they won't blame the budget; they will blame us for not doing a good job. And without fail, the smaller the client, the more they ask for. Oftentimes I've seen a lot of agencies get stuck in this world where they are over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them and underservicing their larger accounts, and it's usually top-heavy. It's usually more senior people that are servicing these smaller accounts, who are now not able to go out there and pursue bigger work. So, you really have to be careful of the really small accounts holding you down. ROB: How do you think about positioning and communicating the scope with the small accounts so that their expectations are aligned? Or have you found it's hard to manage them and you just have to pick the right ones and let someone else have the ones that are going to ask for the full buffet for 5 bucks? JEFF: We definitely let someone else have those. [laughs] It's about being transparent upfront and saying, “Look, this is what it takes to do good work, and this is why. These are all the components that need to go into something.” We have found ways of being able to accept smaller accounts with different strategies. For example, something that's completely unique to our space is we actually license campaigns. We have about four different preexisting campaigns that governments can license from us and that are reused over and over again across the country. That has allowed us to open the door to some smaller – not the smallest, but some of the smaller accounts that don't have the funds to create new campaigns, but do have enough funds to implement a licensed campaigns. That's something that could never happen in the commercial world; no one would ever want to share anything. But in our space, the government loves to share, and they actually love the reduced risk that comes with knowing this has already run somewhere else. ROB: Right. I can see you coming with some results, and they can see what the campaign looks like out in the world. They can probably even go and visit and see in some other place how this campaign looks in the wild, which you can't do, to your point, for most businesses. Maybe you could get away with it in – I don't know, if you were just serving one lawyer per market, or one plumber, or something crazy like that. But even then, they probably wouldn't want to share. JEFF: Right, exactly. There's so many things that we do here because we are focused on this space that would just not be possible if we were a generalist agency. And that's part of our argument for potential new clients: look, you can hire your local ad agency that everyone has heard of that has done all the car dealerships and local banks and things like that, or you can hire a specialist in public health. What's going to happen if you hire a specialist in public health is you're going to get all this institutional knowledge about how public health marketing is different from commercial marketing and be able to be more effective, more efficient, and have all this research and tools at your disposal. ROB: Jeff, at 175 people, you're up above that 150-person Dunbar number that many people talk about as that maximum number of people you can be in relationship with, or people might phrase it differently. How have you thought about structuring, organizing, and persisting culture as you break through dozens and then triple digits and then over 150? JEFF: We had a pretty strong culture before I knew that company culture was a thing. It comes from the culture being embedded in the work. A lot of times, folks try to put this layer of culture on their organization that doesn't really have anything to do with anything. That's where culture tends to fail or feel shallow. Where culture is really strong and real is where it manifests through the work. For example, one piece of our culture is that we describe ourselves as “responsibly rebellious.” What that means is that we want to push our clients to take risks within a responsible way. That is manifest through a lot of decisions that we make for our clients, things that we present to our clients, ways that we approach how we work with our clients. Then, when we say that's a part of our culture, it's true. It is a part of our work. It's part of what we do. When we talk about being science-based, we have a giant in-house research team that does presentations for us that is then infused in the creative and in the strategy. So, I think the best way to maintain culture is to just have an identity that is real and that you truly apply every single time you do the work. ROB: It almost seems like some of the culture would be self-selecting. Not to say that people might not view Rescue as a very attractive place to work, but it seems like an odd company to sign up for unless you have a real interest in messages of public health and in helping people and helping communities. Do you find that in the interview process? JEFF: Yeah. This millennial generation that's now dominating our workforce, we are the ideal kind of company to work for. They want to cause social change. They want to have an impact, and we can allow them to have that impact. So, definitely the people that come in are people who have an interest in doing something good with their career. And that helps. Everybody in the agency wants to have a good outcome from that campaign on a deeper level than just simply delivering for a client. ROB: That makes sense. Jeff, what's coming up for Rescue that you are excited about? Or maybe it's even something in terms of either broad messages that you're seeing trends in, or even tactically? JEFF: One thing that's pretty exciting is that we're seeing a broad awakening of the underlying lifestyle situations that lead people to choose unhealthy behaviors. The best example of this is what's happening in California with the new – California has a Surgeon General for the first time, and she is focused on infusing adverse childhood experience understanding, which is this area of health research that talks about if you had these really, really big things happen to you when you were a kid – things like divorce or a parent dying or domestic violence or mental health in the family, these heavy things – those things set you on a trajectory to take on much higher risks later in life. And if you can embed an understanding of who people are and where they come from in your work, you can be more effective with these populations. So, an understanding of that, an understanding of mental health, an understanding that people don't do risky things in isolation. They do them from a complicated equation of everything that's happened in their life. That was just not existent for the past 20 years, particularly in things like drug and alcohol prevention, where it's like “people who use drugs are just making a bad choice, they're just stupid, they're just bad and they need to be told to stop doing bad things.” [laughs] That's just not how it works. It's really nice that a lot of public health is moving away from that perspective and instead moving towards a deeper understanding of the complexity of human identity. ROB: Absolutely. It brings to mind for me – you have a responsibility; the messages you're putting out there are not messages for any particular – you probably work with governments of every political party possible. JEFF: That's right. ROB: But we live in a world where – what you're saying even hearkens back to partisan politics. How do you think about putting messages out into the world that have to transcend politics and party? JEFF: I think we all suffer, across industries, across topics, from talking to ourselves and not understanding someone who's different. One of the things I like to say that I feel makes this so different is applied empathy. It's not just that we have more empathy than someone else, but that we actually apply that empathy to how we create our messages and can articulate, when we're going to create a campaign for rural men, why that campaign has to be so different from a campaign, for example, for African American women. What is different about their life experience, their attitudes, their worldview, their values that will change the way we communicate to them – but also change what we're saying. A great example of this is that we do a ton of tobacco prevention work, still, with teenagers, and you can talk to an alternative teen in an urban area who listens to rock and things like that – you can talk to them about the evilness of the tobacco industry and all the horrible things they've done, and they will get fired up. They'll say, “I don't want to support an industry that's destroying the world and manipulating people.” So, you can motivate them not to smoke just by talking about the tobacco industry to them. But then you take a rural teen, a country teen who maybe is a younger version of the right side of our political spectrum, and you talk to them about the tobacco industry and it just doesn't even faze them. They're like, “Well, that's their right as a company and you have the right to choose what you're going to do, whether you do that behavior or not. It's all about personal responsibility.” If you don't know that difference and if you don't know that they are processing information differently and caring about different things, then you're just speaking to yourself. You're just speaking about what you care about. And that can apply to so, so many different things. Within politics, its' so interesting to see people just yell within their bubbles about things that they care about and are baffled by why no one else cares about them or why the other side doesn't care. All you have to do is just spend a little bit of time on the other side and you'll understand why they don't care about what you're talking about. ROB: It's a great thought for all of us on meeting people where they are instead of where we think they are. Jeff, when the audience wants to get in touch with you and with Rescue, where should they look for you? Where should they find you? JEFF: Yeah, definitely. Rescueagency.com is our website. There's contact information there for different folks. But also, if you're just interested in what I was talking about and learning more about public health marketing and behavior change and things like that, we have a pretty robust YouTube channel, youtube.com/rescueagency. Lots of actual workshops and videos that we've done explaining our approach and research and some examples of the work. ROB: Perfect. Jeff, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the thoughtful work that you do. We're grateful for it, and look forward to a lot more of it in the future. Congrats on all the success. JEFF: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

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.

Jeff Neumeister, Founder and CEO of Neumeister & Associates, joins us today to talk about cryptocurrency taxes, a confounding area of tax law (what isn’t?) and one that you should master if you are an investor in digital currency. Because what you don’t know could have an adverse impact on your pocketbook. That’s what happened to one U.S. college student in 2017 who invested $5,000 in Ethereum and somehow would up owing the IRS $400,000 in taxes. Yes, you stand to benefit greatly from understanding how the IRS views crypto (Hint: It’s in the same category as your house). And you’ll learn the cardinal rule of crypto taxation: The buck stops with you.   This is specially important this year after the 2018 market crash since many investors are selling their cryptocurrency and fleeing the market, without full knowledge of the tsunami of capital gains liabilities that these transactions may be triggering.   A forensic accountant by trade, Jeff brings great credibility to the task of walking us through the minefields of crypto taxes. He offers practical tips on everything from what constitutes a taxable event to what makes crypto taxes so challenging and how mined coins are taxed. That’s just a few of the questions Jeff answers in this episode. You’ll come away feeling a lot more confident about understanding your tax burden as you stagger into your tax prep marathon.     Topics Covered in this Conversation with Jeff Neumeister   What makes crypto taxes so challenging. What constitutes a taxable event? What is the difference between short-term and long-term gains? How are mined coins taxed? What happens if I give some coins as a gift, or someone gives me crypto? Do I have to pay tax on coins that were hacked? What happens if I lose some coins? What are the acceptable ways to report coin gains? What are the biggest obstacles to easily filing crypto taxes? Increasingly, there are charities that accept crypto. Is that something that would be helpful at tax time?  How are exchanges doing in terms of making it easy for investors to file taxes? Can crypto losses be balanced against traditional fiat capital losses. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen or heard with it comes to filing or not filing crypto taxes. Let’s step back a bit and look at the process involved - let’s look at two scenarios: Scenario A: Let’s say you are Sally Fey, a beginner investor in 2017 and you got all caught up in the buying and selling during the Bull Market and you didn’t track all the coins you traded across multiple exchanges nor did you jot down the buy/sell price  for each transaction. Now your taxes are looming and you have your head in your hands. How do you regroup? Scenario B: Unlike Sally Fey, you are Matt Jones -- a beginner investor in 2019 and it’s a Bear Market and you’ve been told now is the time to buy. You’re starting with a clean slate. You’ve set up your exchange accounts, you are ready to trade. What’s good tax hygiene you should follow from Day One and on to Day 365 to simplify your tax headache for the year? Can you get away with NOT paying crypto taxes? What are the penalties for non-compliance? Any closing thoughts on how to make our crypto tax lives easier?   Questions and Comments? chasingunicorns@gem.co   Guest Contact Information Jeff Neumeister Website | LinkedIn | Twitter Resource Links: 3 Ways the IRS Is Taxing Cryptocurrencies Taxes and crypto Turning your 2018 Bitcoin and Crypto Losses into Tax Savings What You Don’t Know About Crypto Taxes Can Hurt You Tax Nightmare: Student Invested $5k in Ethereum & Now Owes $400k in Taxes 4 things to know about your cryptocurrency at tax time Year-End Tax Tips And Strategies For Cryptocurrency Investors IRS Guidelines Transcript: Interview with Jeff Neumeister Interview Recorded On: November 12 Topic: Crypto Taxes Chitra: Hello, and welcome to Running with Unicorns, your portal to the world of cryptocurrency. I'm Chitra Ragavan, Chief Strategy Officer at Gem. It's that time of year again, and your crypto taxes are looming. Here's what you can do about it. Our guest today is going to walk us through the ins and outs of crypto tax filing. Jeff Neumeister is CEO and Founder of Neumeister & Associates, an LA-based tax advisory firm with a growing practice in crypto taxes.   Jeff, welcome to the program.   Jeff: Thank you.   Chitra: What makes filing crypto taxes so challenging?   Jeff: It'd be probably because there are so many different things that are happening in the crypto world. It's not just mining coins or just trading coins, but there are forks, airdrops. There's just a lot happening. Because it's a new space, it's a lot that the taxing authorities are still trying to wrap their heads around.   Chitra: Let's start with the basics. What constitutes a taxable event in cryptocurrency?   Jeff: A taxable event is anything that results in a tax obligation or a potential tax obligation. That could be selling something, it could be generating income, it could be incurring a expense.   Chitra: Is it different than in regular taxes? What are the differences and similarities?   Jeff: It's similar in concept, except with cryptos there's just, again, so much more going on. Normally, if someone is just, say, a W2 earner, they have a paycheck, and that's the sole source of income that is subject to tax. With cryptos, however, if you're mining and trading in the ICO world, there's so many things that are happening that you're constantly subjected to different types of taxes.   Chitra: One of the basic things one needs to know is short-term and long-term gains. How does that work?   Jeff: Short-term gains just refer to anything, anytime you hold an asset or a piece of property for less than 12 months. Long-term is anything above that. Now, they also come along with different taxable rates. With long-term capital gains, it could be anywhere from 0 to 20%, so much better than what most of us pay with taxes for our income earnings. For short-term gains, it's anywhere from 10 to 37%. Short-term capital gains are essentially the same as ordinary income tax rates.   Chitra: Let's look at different types of crypto and how they will be impacted by taxes. Let's start with if you're mining cryptocurrency. How do you account for those?   Jeff: Mining's interesting, because it's kind of two things at once. When you mine a coin, or a fraction of a fraction of a coin, you're generating ordinary income, so whatever the value of the mined coin was, or fraction of a coin was, you have to pay ordinary income taxes on that. Then, that also establishes your cost basis in the coin that you now hold. If you do something else with it later on, trade it or sell it, you'll have capital gains on top of that.   Chitra: Then, let's look at crypto gifts. If you get a gift of Bitcoin, or Ether, or EOS, how do you handle that when it comes to tax time?   Jeff: If you're the receiver of a gift, then you just need to be aware of what the holder's or the donor's cost basis was. If they acquired something for, say, $100 and gave it to you, you need to make sure that you have that down in your records that your cost basis is $100.   There's no tax owed on a gift received. However, if you're the gift giver, you might have to do a informational filing, a form 709. What that is is anytime you gift more, at least in 2018, more than $15,000, you have to file a form 709. You don't have to pay gift tax on that, but if you exceed your gift-giving of $5.6 million during the course of your lifetime, then you have to start paying gift taxes.   Chitra: If only we could all be so lucky.   Jeff: Right. Most of us will never have to worry about that, but make sure that you file a form 709, because there are penalties with not filing.   Chitra: Then, can you give crypto to charity? I see that increasingly, there are a lot of, even the Red Cross and other organizations accepting crypto. When that happens, is that a good thing to do, when it comes to tax time? Obviously, it's a good thing to do in any case, but it probably helps with taxes, doesn't it?   Jeff: Absolutely. It's just like any charitable contribution, except instead of giving clothes, or fiat, or artwork, or jewelry, you're giving cryptos, yeah.   Chitra: It's taxed similarly?   Jeff: Yes, mm-hmm (affirmative).   Chitra: Then, if you're hacked, what happens? You're losing a bunch of coins because you got hacked. Do you have to pay taxes on that?   Jeff: No, but you have to make sure that it's documented. It's the same thing as if someone came into your house and burglarized it, right? It's a casualty loss. That would be an itemized deduction. You have to make sure that you record those things. Chitra: What if you just lose your crypto? Like, they're on some exchange, you don't know where it is, or you've lost the password. Can they figure it out that you have this crypto? How do you account for the missing crypto?   Jeff: That's a little bit more challenging. If you no longer have access, say, to your key, and you'll never obtain access, then that could be construed as a casualty loss, as well. If you just say, "I don't know which exchange it's on," hopefully that won't come up if you're audited, yeah.   Chitra: And if you are?   Jeff: Then, as long as you show a good faith effort in being consistent and transparent with taxing authorities, and they could see that you're not trying to hide anything, then you should be okay.   Chitra: Do you hear of people that are trying to hide crypto by claiming losses, that they've lost it?   Jeff: Some folks, yeah, yeah. More egregious than that, though, we've had, there was one gentleman that was seeking out a CPA, who made a little over 2.5 million in cryptos, and said, "No, I'm just not going to file. If they want the money, they have to come after me."   Chitra: Did they?   Jeff: Well, that's what's going to happen over the next couple years, yeah. The IRS has started mounting a task force specialist specifically to investigate cryptocurrency filings.   Chitra: Is that going to be an easy task? Will they find people that are scofflaws?   Jeff: They will absolutely find people, right? It's going to be interesting in the tax world for the next couple of years, and tax courts, people fighting them.   Chitra: You're seeing a lot of new developments in tax filings, in tax law as a result of this?   Jeff: Not yet. Really, they're just kind of testing the waters, now. The last, about a year ago, they started issuing subpoenas to exchanges, and they were winning, to get transaction records from them, so they could see what people are trading and how much people are earning, so they could compare that with individual tax returns, to find evidence of those that are evading their taxes. They're just starting to institute those audits now and will be taking these folks to tax court as needed. There's a lot of things that will come out of it, but it hasn't happened yet.   Chitra: Because I think, particularly in the early days, there were probably a lot of people who weren't filing taxes. Is there like a statute of limitations, or does it matter if like 10 years ago you weren't filing taxes, and now the IRS is starting to think about this and starting to do these audits?   Jeff: There is a statute. It's, generally speaking, three years from the date of which a filing was due, but that's only if it was an innocent mistake. If you're intentionally evading, there's no statute on that.   Chitra: How do you report, typically, gains and losses? What's the process?   Jeff: The process is usually, you want to have everything calculated, all the transactions. Coin for coin, coin for fiat, and those will be itemized on a form 8949, and summarized on a schedule D, which are attached to the tax returns.   Chitra: Having done my crypto taxes this year, it's fairly complicated. It's just, you have to look at every single transaction. Talk a little bit about what that process is like. It's fascinating for me to see the level of detail and how you actually go about finding those records, if somebody hasn't kept those records, and being able to trace the flow of that currency from the exchange to your wallet, or if you're trading, you've got all of these multiple transactions that have taken place, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.   Jeff: Yeah, it could get very complicated. That's why a lot of our clients have come to us, to help them untangle these complex array of transactions, ranging from, if they have a few hundred coins that they're trading across multiple years, you can end up having thousands and thousands of cost pulls, because you have to trace every single transaction to its cost basis. Its cost basis depend on whether you used FIFO, LIFO, or HIFO.   Chitra: Explain that a little bit.   Jeff: Sure, yeah. Those are the manners in which you inventory the cells of different coins. LIFO, last in, first out, that's saying, when you sell a coin, you go to the last time that you had acquired that coin, and you sell it out of that pool. If you're buying and selling coins all day long, go across multiple months, you have many cost pulls, even thousands or tens of thousands of cost pulls.   FIFO, first in, first out, is where you sell your oldest coin. What that does is it will result in fewer long-term capital gains, but you're kind of eating up your tax obligation now, versus deferring it to later on.   Chitra: Let's say I'm trading, okay? I'm on exchanges, and I'm trading. I'm not really thinking about ... It's not something you think during your trading process, right? It's something you do after the fact. I'm not thinking LIFO and FIFO when I'm like, "Let me find what's my oldest Bitcoin, and let me trade that for Ether." I'm just like, trading. Am I doing the right thing? Is this something you go after the fact, and start to look through it and make those calculations?   Jeff: The easiest thing is to maintain good records, so that whoever, whether you're doing it yourself or outsourcing it to a professional like us, then they could go through those records a lot easier, because it does get complicated. As long as you have the information, it could be all untangled.   Chitra: What's the largest number of transactions you've done, filing taxes, that you've seen? Thousands, hundreds of thousands?   Jeff: Probably in the hundreds of thousands. I think our largest client had a little shy of 200,000 transactions across about 2.5 years. It was a lot. It took a massive amount of manpower, because there isn't a way to fully automate it, yet. We've established a proprietary method to semi-automate portions of it, but not the whole thing. There's still a lot of manual touches that have to be done to it.   Chitra: Were you able to do it?   Jeff: Yeah, yeah. We were able to untangle all of it. He had a massive tax obligation, but most importantly, it'll keep him compliant with the IRS. He had the cash, right? If you make a million dollars in cryptos, and if you have to pay a few hundred thousand in tax, you know, you're still coming out ahead.   Chitra: This is true. What are some of the biggest obstacles today for average investors, when it comes to filing taxes?   Jeff: I think having an understanding about how complex the tax aspect is with cryptos, if you're trading, mining, doing anything else. I think just being aware and mindful of that.   Chitra: There's also the issue of documentation, right? For example, different exchanges can give you different levels of information about your trades, so at the end of the year, some exchanges will give you a lot of information. Other exchanges give you virtually no information. How do you start to do the detective work to find all of your records?   Jeff: That's one of the tricky parts, yeah, because there isn't really any sort of regulation about what all the exchanges have to provide users. There's going to be, and it's moving that direction. For now, it's kind of up to the individual to maintain their own records. If the exchange only provides piecemeal stuff, or in the case of Bittrex that just up and deleted people's information, it's still your obligation to make sure that you're tracking things.   Chitra: What happened in that instance where the information was deleted?   Jeff: Well, they up and decided just to remove information.   Chitra: This was an exchange?   Jeff: Yeah, yeah, Bittrex. It's still the user's responsibility to maintain the records. The individuals that were subjected to that, had they downloaded their transactional information, let's say, every week or every month, they would have been okay, right, just in case something does happen to an exchange. That's something we advise our clients to do is don't wait till the end of the year to start pulling your information, even if you're using a CPA like us, right? Pull the information maybe once a month, just in case something happens.   Chitra: That's interesting. That's something I've never thought to do. It's kind of surprising that they're allowed to even delete information. Is that going to change, in the future?   Jeff: Yeah, there's definitely more pressure in regulation around what the exchanges are doing. Also, keep in mind that a lot of these are foreign exchanges, too, right? The IRS and the federal government only has so much control over what they do.   Chitra: Because this is such a global flow of money.   Jeff: Exactly. It's a global thing. Right.   Chitra: How does the US government, or how is the US government attempting to get a handle on this? Do you feel like the government is kind of playing catch up, now?   Jeff: A bit, yeah. I think there was too much downtime from 2014 to now. You know, the last time the IRS issued any formal guidance was in 2014.   Chitra: What was that initial guidance?   Jeff: It was maybe like a five-page notice, 2014-21, which pretty much just said that it's not legal tender, and to pay your tax on it. There really wasn't much guidance beyond that.   Chitra: What happened before then, like 2009 through '14? Was there any guidance?   Jeff: Nothing formal.   Chitra: What were people doing then?   Jeff: I think, at the time, IRS and other government agencies probably just assumed that this is just a fringe thing, it's a temporary thing, it's not going to last, but look at us now. There are industries being built around blockchain and crypto, and they realize that, now, and the amount of money that people have earned in the sector. They see it as, like, it's a huge nest egg waiting to be tapped.   Chitra: Build your highways and all of that stuff.   Jeff: Right, yeah.   Chitra: Now, when you're filing taxes, can your crypto losses or gains, be balanced against your traditional portfolio?   Jeff: Yes, yeah. The way it works is short-term gains and losses get netted against other short-term gains and losses, regardless of if they're crypto or not. Then, the same thing with long-term.   Chitra: Great. Now, what are the penalties for noncompliance?   Jeff: For failing to file a return, it's a flat 5% of whatever your tax obligation is. For not paying the total amount of taxes owed, it's one half of 1% per month. If it's just one month late, half of 1%, it's not a lot, but if a couple of years go by, a few years go by, it can add up really quick, plus interest.   Chitra: Can you go to jail?   Jeff: Absolutely, unfortunately. If it's deemed that it was tax evasion, like in the example that I gave you of the gentleman that was looking into using our service and decided, no, they can just come after me, a couple million dollars, if they find evidence of tax evasion, then it could be subjected to a felony, which leads up to up to five years in prison and up to a quarter million dollars in penalties.   Chitra: Now, there's a lot of money laundering also going on, right? Does that play a role at all in this?   Jeff: Not so much with the taxes, but it is something that they're mindful about, out there. I see that more in the banking sector, that being an issue. In fact, one of our clients in the crypto space, their bank account was just abruptly closed with no notice. They said, "You can't bank with us," because they are concerned about potential money laundering.   Chitra: What is their fear?   Jeff: I think because they don't know where the money is coming from, right? If you have crypto-related money, it's so easy for it to be maneuvered from overseas. I think that's the concern, because there isn't enough regulation out there yet, right? Some people are just distancing themselves.   Chitra: It seems like there's a whole bunch of areas in which the federal government and governments around the world are now grappling with, how do you make people accountable for all of this wealth that they're generating, and how do we get a piece of that action?   Jeff: Right, that's what it is. They want their cut. As long as you give them their cut, they're not going to bother you.   Chitra: Now, let's look at two scenarios. Let's say you're a Sally Fay, you're a woman investor. You're just starting out. You're super excited. It's 2017. The bull market is in full swing, and you've learned how to trade, and you're just buying and selling without any regard for keeping tabs on your cost basis or the proceeds that you're making. Then, come December, you're stuck with having done thousands of transactions, and you have no idea how to go about finding those records, because every trade that you've done is potentially taxable, correct?   Jeff: Correct.   Chitra: What do you do?   Jeff: In those kinds of situations, because it's a lot of cleanup, the best thing to do is consult with an expert like us, so we can get you cleaned up and caught up. Then, going forward, you're on the right path, right? And to be mindful just about all the tax consequences of all that trading activity.   Chitra: Do you just sort of systematically start to go back and look at every trade you've made?   Jeff: In order to calculate all the gains and losses, historically, yeah. We have to kind of start from inception. If someone started trading in 2014, right, we have to go back to square one.   Chitra: That's pretty daunting.   Jeff: It is, yeah, yeah. At least once we get you caught up, then you should be okay, right?   Chitra: Let's look at scenario B. Let's say that I am a young man, Matt Jones. I'm not in the crypto market yet. It's the bear market, and people are telling me, "Hey, now's the time to come in. Buy low, and you can sell high." I have a clean slate. I've set up my exchanges, but I haven't done any transactions. What are the kinds of things I need to put in place to have tax hygiene, so to speak?   Jeff: Some best practices.   Chitra: Yes.   Jeff: I'd say, first, be mindful that you do any sort of trade coin for coin, that's all going to be a taxable event. Have at it, but just be mindful that there could be a lot of tax compliance to deal with at the end of the year. That affects some people's volume activity.   Another thing, to make sure to pull their records on a consistent basis. We usually, we're advising our clients now to download their transactional history from each exchange they use about once a month. Just make it a month-end practice, just in case either they got locked out, the data is deleted, or something is hacked, just in case anything happens, at least you have the records.   Then, outside of transactions like that, if you're trading on an exchange, if you're gifting coins, jot down somewhere on a Excel sheet or a Word document who you gave it to, when you gave it to them, and how much you gave, right? Just in case if there's any gift tax compliance to do, we could do that as well.   Chitra: Is it advisable to have a notebook and a pen, and when you're making these trades, to actually just jot it down, or put it on an Excel sheet that on this date, I bought X amount of Bitcoin, or I sold X amount of Ether for X amount, and to have that? Is that going to be helpful at the end of the year?   Jeff: It could, but like all the transactional data within the exchanges usually is going to have all that information. If someone wants to just separately track it, and if they're not doing a lot of trades during the year, that could be just as efficient and make their process easier at the end.   Chitra: Now, tell us some war stories. What are some of the anecdotes that you tell people about folks having challenges in filing taxes, or cases that you've seen, or what the government is doing to come to terms with this new source of income?   Jeff: Sure. Probably a couple examples. We have clients that were trading back from, the oldest one is 2013, maybe about a little over $4 million, and of course, they never reported any of it. Thankfully, in contrast to the other individual I was referencing, he said, "You know what, I just want to be compliant, right?" He came to the table. We went through everything, all the records, and got him up to speed.   Going forward, if he's audited, or maybe I should say when, because it's a lot, a big amount, we have work papers in place that we could provide in response to an audit. 90% of the time, that'll just make it go away, almost immediately. As long as the IRS can see that you've made a good faith effort, that there's been due diligence in being compliant, and you have work papers and a CPA to back it up, the audit will go away, right?   Another example, well, with the IRS, it's not so much a war story, but it's come to my attention that they've selected around 1200 to 1300 cases already from the 2017 filings that they're going to move forward with audits. Now, I don't know which ones those are. That comes from a source I have within the audit community, but we suspect that those are probably the larger ones, mostly, people that have generated hundreds of thousands, if not millions.   Chitra: Is the IRS not only trying to get revenue back from these taxable events but also trying to set precedence in some way?   Jeff: Yeah. It serves both purposes, yeah. One, it's a huge amount of revenue just sitting there for the government that hasn't been tapped yet. The second is going through this process, and going through these audits, and taking some people to tax court will set precedence, so that it's clear to everyone else that, one, you need to be compliant. Don't play games with them. I wouldn't be surprised if they send at least a few people to jail over this that have evaded their taxes.   Also, it allows them to kind of establish authoritative guidance, because they're going to take everything they find. They will undoubtedly issue some pronouncements about, "Here's how you calculate this. Here's why you file things this way," which right now, we don't have.   Chitra: What about moving out of the US, like just moving abroad so you don't have to pay your taxes, or even moving to Puerto Rico. You hear a lot about that. Is that going to help you or hurt you, in the long run?   Jeff: I think for taxes, temporarily, it would help, right? But, do you really want to expatriate yourself, denounce the US, in order to just save some money temporarily on taxes? I don't know.   Chitra: Depends, I would say.   Jeff: It depends, yeah, yeah.   Chitra: On what the amount is. Are you hearing about people who are actually doing that?   Jeff: No one I know has actually done it. Some folks that we know have been debating it, and they asked to do some research on expatriation process.   Chitra: It's a fascinating area. When you're doing the forensic work, you've been asked to help, I think, with investigations and things like that. How do you go about collecting the forensic evidence on these cases?   Jeff: Really kind of the same way we do crypto calculations for our clients, right? We pull all the underlying third-party documents. In this case, transactional records. We get their narrative about what happened, hear the story, because any forensic case, anything that we do, it's not just the numbers. It's also the context. It's also what happened, the story, if you will.   With forensic cases, there's usually a lot of other moveable parts, as well, particularly like divorce cases, where people are sometimes hiding funds. Partnership disputes, where one partner is embezzling money. We see that kind of stuff a lot more often than what people realize.   Chitra: What happens in the case of a divorce? Who gets the crypto? How do you actually even split the proceeds, if that's what happens?   Jeff: Same thing with kind of like a house, right? If it was community property, assuming it's a community property state like California, then any assets would be split 50/50, unless it was bought with separate property. If you don't want to cash out the portfolio, then usually one partner would buy out the other half from the other partner, just like a house. If you don't want to literally split the house in half, one person wants to keep it, one partner would buy out the house from the other.   Chitra: Well, that actually raises an interesting question, because let's say one partner is very crypto-savvy and the other partner is not crypto-savvy. It probably is pretty easy to hide your assets in the form of crypto, because the other person has no way of finding out how much you have and where you have this.   Jeff: True. Yeah, there's an opportunity there for someone to try to take advantage. Part of the divorce proceedings process is to come to the table and be transparent with both partners. Usually, like, you're essentially signing off to the court that let the partner know 100% of the assets out there. To try to hide it is essentially perjuring with the court.   Chitra: Where do you see all of this going in the next few years, as more and more people get into the space? There is a prediction that you're going to have a billion new crypto investors, over the next five years, entering the market. Where do you see the field of taxation going?   Jeff: Yeah, definitely, I see a second adoption, as well, coming in the coming years. I think, by the time that happens, there'll be a little bit more infrastructure in place with the taxation piece. One, with the exchanges. They'll start being a little bit better about what they record for their clients and what they issue out at the end of the year. I think we'll get to a point where exchanges are very, very similar to brokerage accounts, where you just get a 1089 of, "Here's your cost basis, here's your proceeds, here's what you report on your tax," and make it much easier for folks.   Chitra: Just as the industry is growing up, the tax piece will grow up, as well.   Jeff: Yup.   Chitra: Yeah. Great. Is there anything I haven't asked or anything really important, closing thoughts?   Jeff: One closing thought, just, I think it's good for everyone to remember that almost everything is a taxable event. If the question is, "Do I have to pay tax on this?" 9 times out 10, it's yes.   Chitra: Sadly.   Jeff: Yes.   Chitra: Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people learn more about you and find out more about the work that you're doing?   Jeff: Sure. Our website is neumeistercpa.com, that's N-E-U-M-E-I-S-T-E-R-C-P-A.com. We're a full-service accounting consulting firm, but we specialize in things like cryptos.   Chitra: Great. Thanks so much for joining us.   Jeff: All right, thank you.   Chitra: That's all for now. Join us again next time for another edition of Running with Unicorns. Until then, enjoy your crypto journey, unicorns.  

TVI Toolbox: Success Stories, Tools for Success - #BeMyEyes App, Meet Jeff Mihiletch  Blind Abilities presents the TVI Toolbox. Where the collaboration between Teachers, Counselors, Parents, Agencies and the Students themselves help enhance the opportunities for success. Transitioning from high school to college and the workplace is  a major step and the beginning of lifetime goals and aspirations. As Jeff Mihiletch, this month’s featured interview in the Success Stories portion of this podcast, puts it, “Braille is a tool he wished he would have given a better chance.”    From the TVI’s to the Agency counselor’s and program specialist, working together along with parents as well, is creating more opportunities and successes for Transition age students. Sharing experiences through Success Stories, sharing programs that make a positive impact, sharing ideas, findings, upcoming events and the Tools for Success all play a part in making the transition process a natural progression and better understood by all.     On The Horizon is a bulletin space for upcoming events, information and resources submitted by listeners and our staff. You can submit to On the Horizon by emailing Jessica Hodges. The Success Stories feature an experience of a Transition Student, whether they are attending college, preparing for college or are now employed, the Success Stories brings a positive and a sharing of the experience of transitioning from high school to college and the work place.   Here are the links to the information we bring to this episode.   Scholarships from the National Federation of the Blind   Perkins Program for Students   Blind, Inc Summer Programs   Summer Transition Program (STP) Extended School Year Program Deb Peterson at DPeterson@916schools.org     Check out your State Services by searching the Services Directory on the AFB.org web site.   State Services for the Blind of Minnesota   We offer tools and training for employment and for helping seniors remain independent and active. As Minnesota’s accessible reading source we also transcribe books and other materials into alternative formats, including audio and braille. We assist Minnesotans who are blind, DeafBlind, losing vision, or who have another disability that makes it difficult to read print. I hope you find what you need here. We've also created a Tips for Using Our New Website page. If you’d like to apply for services, learn more, or have more questions, just give us a call. You’ll find contact information for all of our offices on our contact page, or you can call our main office at 651-539-2300.   You can submit to the On The Horizons segment by email to jessica.Hodges@state.mn.us Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.   Full Transcript:   TVI Toolbox: Success Stories, Tools for Success - #BeMyEyes App, Meet Jeff Mihiletch (Music)     Dacia: It's your job, disability or not, to know what you bring to the table, and sell that. That's your job.   Narrator: Welcome to the blind abilities TVI Toolbox. I'm Jeff Thompson.   Dacia: Because they don't have any experience with vision loss, so they're thinking to themselves, "I don't know if I could do that if I couldn't see right. I'm not sure that they're going to be able to do that." That's what... there inner monologue isn't about you, it's about what they think that you can't do, and their bias.   Narrator: TVI toolbox is a tool for teachers, for agencies, for clients to enhance the opportunity and the understanding of transition services. Professionals talking about the services they provide. Teachers of the visually impaired talking about topics of transitioning from high school, to college, to the work place. Students talking about their journeys, there successes, and some of the barricades and brick walls that were in there way, and solutions, tips, and tricks on how they got through it.   Dasha: We try to help them develop resumes right from the beginning. We would like some body that even as young as fifteen sixteen to have a resume that they can continuously add to, to build on. It really puts in front of them a more realistic view of "Ok, well I can add this to my resume. I can do this because I can add that. This is going to bring value." It kind of gives them more of an ownership of there experience.   Narrator: That's (probable spelling mistake here,) Dasha van Alstine. She's an employment program specialist at state services for the blind, working with clients, counselors, and employees, to optimize the opportunities for successful employment.   Dasha: I always tell people, if you go into an interview, and you're thinking that you're not the best candidate, you're probably not.   Narrator: On this episode of TVI Toolbox, we'll be talking about employment. We'll be hearing more from Dasha van Alstine, and the success story today features Jeff Mihiletch, with A BS degree in Business Administration. And Jessica Hodges with On the Horizon, where she brings you recent news and events with particular interest in the transition process with a blindness perspective. And the tools for success spotlight is Be My Eyes. It's an ap that, well, kind of speaks for itself. Now, here's employment program specialist Dasha van Alstine. Dasha, welcome to blind abilities. Can you tell our listeners what your roll is at state services?   Dasha: Hi Jeff. I am a program specialist for the employment team at state services for the blind.   Narrator: Tell us a little more about the employment team.   Dasha: The employment team works with various counselors and customers on anything from the very beginning of how to choose a job goal, all the way up to when it's time to close your case. So are you ready, do you have everything you need, do you need additional training, we're there all along the way. Whereas a counselor looks at an entire situation, we look at everything from absolute employment   Narrator: Dasha, for a transition student, what would a first meeting with the employment team look like?   Dasha: That can be at any type of stage, it depends on... if somebody has done a lot of research various...market information on their own, we might not meet with any of us until later. Someone who really needs some help and some direction with trying to figure out what they want to be, and what that's going to look like, and where the doors are going to open, they might meet with us right away.   Narrator: So first they work with state services, then when it comes time to think about employment, that's when they get handed off to the employment team?   Dasha: Well, preferably, they wouldn't just get handed off to our team. We would want to have some sort of relationship with them from the beginning. I'll give you an example. A college student, someone who knows that they're college bound know they want to go to college to get to a career, we'll look at them right before it happens and say, "Ok, what is your job goal? What do you want to do? What are the various avenues to get there." We'll work on what is the most appropriate way from point A to point B, for you, with college in the middle there. And then, in college, a lot of times there will be some check ins. We'll check on them, hey, how's it going? Have you thought about an internship yet? Are you working during school? Do you need help finding something. You know, what can we do to assist you?" We make connections for them, and sometimes we help them find part time employment, or find there internship. A lot of times, we'll work with the school to try to figure that out with them, to try to get them more independent and not depending on us. And then, when they're getting ready to graduate, sometime before the last semester, we help the figure out, you know, it's time to start looking. Because ideally, you want a job before you graduate, you want that job to be ready for you.   Narrator: Dasha: With the age of transition students, I imagine that a lot of them have not had too much job experience. Does the employment team have a component for people to learn about job interviews and filling out resumes?   Dasha: It's different for each person. That begins whenever appropriate. Some people, especially our young people, We try to help them develop resumes right from the beginning. We would like some body that even as young as fifteen sixteen to have a resume that they can continuously add to, to build on. It really puts in front of them a more realistic view of "Ok, well I can add this to my resume. I can do this because I can add that. This is going to bring value." It kind of gives them more of an ownership of there experience. Every aspect of every case is so different. There are some people that need us to do the resume and then walk them through what we did. There's other people that we just give some guidance to, and they do it. you know, everything is so individualized, it's wherever it's appropriate for each individual case.   Narrator: That's great. Dasha, there's a saying, don't judge a book by it's cover, but in the employment situation, in job interviews, can you tell us a little bit about first impressions?   Dasha: First impressions are really important, especially if you have a vision loss, because there's a really good chance that whoever you're meeting has never met someone with a vision loss before. There's no back ground there. They're going to base whatever experience they have with you, and project that onto every other person that they ever meet in the future who has a vision loss. When you meet somebody, especially if you're going in for an interview, you want to make sure that first of all, you're nice to the receptionist, because if you're not nice to the receptionist, the person interviewing you is going to find out, and you're not going to get that job. Just saying, the receptionist, that's the barrier there. Be nice to them. And second of all, once you do meet somebody, and if you have to follow them, make sure that you're comfortable, and don't be afraid to ask for information. Left or right? Where's the room? Don't be afraid to ask those kinds of directions.. With first impressions, you want to make sure that you are well put together. You want to make sure that you don't go into a business with saggy clothes, or with dirty clothes. You want to make sure that your hair is, you know, presentable, that you're not wearing baseball caps. You also want to make sure that you can speak clearly, concisely, have some confidence, that's going to be really important to an employer. Even if you're just walking in to pick up an application. Just go to the receptionist, be nice, "Hi, you know, my name is so and so. I was wondering if you're hiring. Can I get an application? Even something as simple as that. That goes a a long way. You also want to make sure that when you do talk to somebody, especially if it's an interview, you're going to get that, "Tell me about yourself." You could even get that when you meet an employer at a job fair, or an internship fair. Tell me about yourself. You want to make sure, especially if you have more of an obvious disability, you want to make sure that you kind of address that in a way that makes it so they're not thinking about that, they're thinking about your skills. A lot of people make the mistake of never saying anything, and then an employer, the whole time that they're talking is thinking well... Because they don't have any experience with vision loss, so they're thinking to themselves, "I don't know if I could do that if I couldn't see right. I'm not sure that they're going to be able to do that." That's what... there inner monologue isn't about you, it's about what they think that you can't do, and their bias.  So it's up to you to make sure that you sell yourself. Sell your skills. Tell how you do things. Go into it with confidence. Know what your skills are ahead of time. Know what you have to offer  the employer, and just go into it that way. And this is not just with employers. This is also useful with your professors.   Narrator: Dasha, I was just doing an interview with a business owner, Susan Robinson. She said that she'd never hired a person because they had sight. She always hired a person because she felt they could best do the job that she needed to get done   Dasha: Yes, it's all about the what can you do for me. Employers hire because they have a job that they have to get done. They don't hire because they want to feel good. They don't hire because they want to spend a bunch of money. They do it because they have a job, and they have to get it done. So your job is to make sure that they know you can do that job, and not only that, but you can bring stuff to the table so you're the person can help them get that done. You're the best candidate, and this is why I always tell people, if you go into an interview, and you're thinking that you're not the best candidate, you're probably not. If you're going into an interview, and you can't even think of what you bring to offer to the table, the employer's not going to know. It's your job, disability or not, to know what you bring to the table, and sell that. That's your job.   Narrator: Selling it!"   Dasha: "Selling it."   Narrator: "That's what it comes down to, selling yourself, letting the employer know that you have a set of abilities that will help their company succeed. Well, there's that sound, so let's turn it over to Jessica Hodges with On the Horizon.   Jessica: "Good day to you all. There are many, many lovely events coming up on the horizon. First of all, the national federation of the blind has some awesome scholarships for students both nationally and state wide. To find out more about scholarships both in your state and at the national level, you can visit www.nfb.org. On the subject of college, Perkins has a program for college students where you live on there campus for nine months, and attend school close to them. It's a good way for college students to kind of get there feet underneath them and make sure that they are really ready, and it's a great way to get started with college. You can visit there webcite to find out more. The national braille press has a guide for those who are interested in apple watches called, "You and Your Apple Watch," by Anna Dresner. You can find that on their webcite, nbp.org. Blind incorporated, the well renown training center for the national federation of the blind in Minnesota has there summer programs coming up, and that means they are looking for both students and counselors. For more information on those, you can go to their webcite, www.blindinc.org. For the style program, ,they're looking for people from July Tenth through August fifteenth, and the buddy program is also looking for people from July Tenth through August Fifteenth. For the prep counselor positions, they are looking for people from June Tenth, to August Fifteenth. The prep is the young adult program, the style is a young adult program here in Minnesota, and the buddy program is the younger children. So, if you would like to know more about that ,visit their webcite, www.blindinc.org. Minnesota has a lovely program for transition aged students called the STP program. An extended school year program, the STP, or summer transition program, is a program designed for students between tenth and eleventh grade who are planning on working competitively and working independently. To get a brochure or have paperwork sent to your school, contact Deb Peterson, dpeterson@916schools.org. If you have any events you'd like included on the next horizon, please email jessica.hodges@state.mn.us. Thank you for staying tuned, and please listen to next time, as we'll have more events on your horizon.   Narrator: Well thank you Jessica Hodges. And for more information on all the events mentioned, check the show notes. for the links. And now, our tools for success spotlight. We bring you Be My Eyes. It's an application that hooks the phone to a person that will see through your camera what you're looking at and describe it for you. It's a personal assistant. It's free from the app store, and on Android. So we're going to demonstrate the iOS device on Apple, here's Be My Eyes. Siri? Open be my eyes.   VoiceOver: Be My Eyes. Call first available volunteer, button.   Narrator: It's ready to go. With a single finger double tap, you're activated, and you're ready to call. But lets swipe right, single finger swipe left to right.   VoiceOver: Settings, button.   Narrator: Double tap here   VoiceOver: Settings, heading.   Narrator: Now a flick to the right.   VoiceOver: Done, button.  Profile, heading. Personal details, Jeff Thompson, button   Narrator: Swipe to the right.   VoiceOver: Change email, button. Password, button. Languages, heading. Primary language, English, button. Other languages, button. Send us feedback, button. Frequently asked questions, button. Terms and privacy policy, button. Share be my eyes, button. Rate be my eyes, button. Connect with us, heading. Facebook, button. Twitter, button. Instagram, button. Youtube, button. Version: 2.1   Narrator: So this is upgraded, and as you can see you can share this, you can go follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of the stuffs there. But one important thing here is this.   VoiceOver: Send us feedback, button.   Narrator: Send us feedback. This allows you to connect up right with the developers of the app in case you have an issue. You don't have to tweet it out on Twitter and complain or anything like that on Facebook. You can just go here, and send it straight to the main office. There you go. So let's go back. I'm going to do a four finger single tap, near the top of the screen.   VoiceOver: Settings, heading.   Narrator: Swipe once to the right.   VoiceOver: Done, button.   Narrator: Single finger double tap.   VoiceOver: Call first available volunteer, button.   Narrator: All right, so at this point, if I single finger double tap, I'm getting online, so I'd better have something ready for them to do for this demonstration. I think it's coffee time.       VoiceOver Using the rear camera. Please wait. Finding the first available volunteer.   (ringing sounds)   Narrator: And this is where the be my eyes app. ..   VoiceOver: We are still trying to find an available volunteer.   Narrator: searches for someone that speaks English, someone that's in my time zone. So it searches the world basically, and tries to come up with someone who is best suited for answering my questions. Now this time varies. I've had people pick up in twelve seconds. I've had people pick up in... oh...two minutes. But typically, it's around that thirty second mark. And for privacy reasons, I've changed the voice of the volunteer so it's not detectible.   VoiceOver: Connected.   Volunteer: "Hello." (there was another word there but I couldn't for the life of me make it out.)   Narrator: Hello. Hi, how are you?   Volunteer: I'm all right, how about yourself?   Narrator: I'm all right. I have a question. I have a kurig machine here, this one.   Volunteer: Yep.   Narrator: And when I push this down, it's supposed to give me a choice here for ounces.   Volunteer: The light is hitting in a way I can't read. I think the... ok, that's better. You have... it says it's ten ounce, and there's an arrow at the top and an arrow at the bottom.   Narrator: So down here?   Volunteer: Up a little hire. Right there is where it says ten ounce, yep now it's at eight ounces. You're pushing the down button. How do you want it to be?   Narrator: I want it at eight. Is that it?   Volunteer: Ok.   Narrator: So then the other buttons up here, what are they?   Volunteer: Well, that would be increasing the amount,   Narrator: Ok,   Volunteer: and when you're ready, then you move your finger to the left   Narrator: Ok.   Volunteer: And use this button to make it go, let's see what happens.   (kurig noises)   Volunteer: It's brewing.   Narrator: Well there we go. Thank you very much.   Volunteer: You're very welcome.Have a good day."   Narrator: You too.   VoiceOver: End call, button. Alert. Are you sure you want to disconnect? No. Yes. Yes button.   Narrator: And that was a very nice volunteer. And it wasn't mini mouse, believe me. That voice was changed. And there we go. We got hot cocoa coming. All right, so after the experience is over, this is what we get.   VoiceOver: Review your experience, heading.. Thanks for your call. Please let us know if you had any problems during this call, be it either technical or personal. I experienced problems, button. I had a good call, button.   Narrator: And that's it. that's all there is to this free app. it's be my eyes in app store, and be my eyes on android in the google play store. And in this success story, we bring you Jeff Mihiletch, who has utilized the services of state services for the blind for many years, from elementary school, high school, college, and the work place. Jeff has found success, and is currently employed, and invited us down to his south Minneapolis office to chat with us. So please welcome Jeff Mihiletch. We hope you in joy.   Narrator: Welcome to blind abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson, and I'm downtown south Minneapolis with Jeff Mihiletch, and he is employed and has used state services for the blind before. How are you doing Jeff?   Jeff: Good morning, I'm doing good.   Narrator: Can you tell us a little bit about your job and what you do?   Narrator: I am Jeff Mihiletch. I work in the snap employment and training program, and that is about people that receive food support, snap benefits that they used to call food stamps. If you are an able bodied adult without dependants, it's mandatory now that you be job searching, and my team does the job searching orientation classes and case management for clients that are in that sector of the snap program. I was originally hired for data management, so my job is to look at the referrals every day of new clients coming in, all the different elements, who they are, nationality, when there orientation class is, location and time, and I put it all in a spreadsheet. Then I take that spread sheet, move it into a different spread sheet so it's statistically meant for the entire year, and that's my daily task that I do. I also have broadened my job duties a little bit. My team does orientation class three times a week for new people that are coming onto the snap EMt program. I help out here at the sabathanie center with the Tuesday morning orientation class. So it's a chance for me to get up in front of a group and talk, and move around, helps give my coworkers a little break, because they need to do that orientation class three times a week, and as you can imagine it gets a little repetitive, so they were totally thrilled when I decided to volunteer myself to help out with that orientation class.   Narrator: So Jeff, on a daily basis, what kind of accessible devices or tools do you utilize for your job?   Jeff: I use Jaws extensively. I have a little bit of vision, so I do use zoomtext sometimes, but only for spot reading, if I can't find a formula or something in my excel sheet with jaws. Primarily though, it is Jaws, almost probably ninety five, ninety eight percent of the time.   Narrator: What about in your personal life. Do you use a smart phone with access to it?   Jeff: Yeah, in my personal life I have an iPhone seven. I use VoiceOver, a couple different voices, one for Siri, one for the VoiceOver functionality of it. My work, I have a phone for my work, because the phone that is in everyone's laptops, the soft phone from Sisco, is not screen reader accessible, and so that's a reasonable accommodation, my employer provides me an iPhone for my work. So I feel kind of a little geekish, because I walk around with two phones when I'm at work, my personal phone and my work phone.   Narrator: that's status isn't it?   Jeff: I'm glad that they were able to make that accommodation and provide an iPhone for my work phone calling.   Narrator: Now Jeff, when you applied here, how did you  get the job? how did accommodations work for you and what was that process like?   Jeff: The way I found the job was I had a friend of mien who was blind who works for the county, has been with the county for almost thirty years, and he got a phone call from someone, my boss, who was looking to fill a position, a newly created position. My job did not exist before. And she specifically was looking for someone that had a visual disability. And so she reached out to my friend who was blind and worked for the company to find out and assess any barriers that their were, to see how successful he was at doing his job, and to see how many barriers there were, and from there, he told me about the fact that she was looking for someone who was visually impaired to take this new job. I kind of jumped on that band wagon, and followed up with her, and long story short had an interview, and was hired. My job is not a permanent job. It's a two year contract. I'm a limited duration person, and the snap program, the food stamp program is federal funded. So the county writes my check, but salary comes from the feds, from the agricultural program.   Narrator: So Jeff, in your career, education, did you utilize state services for the blind?   Jeff: Yeah, I did. All through my education. Elementary school I had a rehab counselor that used state services for the blind all the way through that, through college went to (spelling) babija university, BS in business administration, and minor in psychology and chemical dependency. And state services for the blind helped me out with tuition and books, and that type of thing.   Narrator: Great. What is transportation like for you, working in south Minneapolis here?   Jeff: In he morning to go into work, I take metro mobility, because it's a relatively direct shot, although sometimes I can get to work in ten minutes, and sometimes two hours, so that's the downside of metro mobility. Going home at night, I do take a city bus. I have to go downtown, and transfer to an express. That's how I do transportation. Not looking forward to winter time, I will say.   Narrator: Great. So Jeff, Being someone that has used state services, who has transferred from high school to college to the work place, what suggestions would you have for someone who is in those shoes today looking towards there future?   Jeff: I would say if you are a braille user, or have the potential to be a braille user, but also use screen readers, I would really highly recommend still doing the braille thing.   Narrator: You said you use Jaws and PC. Now, in the workplace, there's always the debate, you know, should people have a PC or a Mack, and I found out myself that most businesses are Microsoft based, so what would you suggest for someone who's learning technology?   Jeff: The county uses PCs, HP brand. Actually, we just rolled out new laptops and we moved to Microsoft 2010 and office 2016. I mean it all depends on the work environment, but you are correct most of the time that it's PC based.   Narrator: Jeff, do you want to talk about some of your past jobs?   Jeff: Sure. A lot of my job history is kind of broken into clumps. The first is social service, working with developmentally delayed adults, and the second chunk of job history is kind of more customer service type. So the first part, the social service, I kind of fell into that. I moved to Minneapolis after finishing my degree at Bemidji state university, and was really-really desperate for a job, couldn't find one, and it was to the point that I couldn't afford my apartment. I took a job as a live in in a group home for developmentally delayed adults. A good chunk is a little more customer service related, I worked in a large call center for computer hardware dispatch, so I was doing in bound calls with customers and technicians out in the field. Some other jobs I had over the years. I had a really really short gig. I was a very small commodities broker. I found the job through one of the venders that state services for the blind hires. They were looking for someone to do phone work and I was hired and given the job. But the screen reader didn't work at all with their customer management web page that they had. We tried to make it work. After six weeks they let me go, just because it wasn't working out. I also worked for a guy who ran one of the vending stands in saintpaul, and I would fill in for him in the concessions stand while he was out in the field filling vending machines. Did that for a while, and some other kind of odd jobs. I actually at one time was self employed. I went to massage school, became a massage therapist, and tried to do that to make a living. It's a really hard field. It's very seasonal. So that's a little overview of some of my job history.   Narrator: Sounds like you're a real go getter. people feel insecure about going into job interviews and that process. And it can be daunting to someone that hasn't done it before. What's your experience like when you go into a job interview?   Jeff: The interview process itself, I mean, I'm a partial vision, and it's always difficult to know whether to disclose that up front or not. And though there were times in my life when I would disclose that on the phone up front, and then there were other times when I did not. And it's hard to know if disclosing it up front would automatically disqualify me even before I walked in, or if walking in with a white cane and bumping against a desk or a coffee table or something would have disqualified me. It's always a big debate when you're a partial whether or not to disclose it. that was the one nice thing about my current job. My boss is aware of my current disability and I did not have to deal with that disclosure type thing. I had to deal with coworkers a little bit, and that was a challenge. Again, because I'm partial, I can see to navigate a little bit, but you know, I can't figure out who people are until they say something. When you're a partial, it's harder for other people to grasp of what you can and can't see.   Narrator: Jeff, did you ever go through a training center?   Jeff: I did. When I was in seventh grade I did a summer school thing at fairbolt. As an adult I did a couple different stints at VLR, adjustment to blindness training program. The focus for both of those times when I went was Jaws and screen readers. But I also did cooking class, the independent skills, worked in the wood shop, which was a really eye opening experience so to speak. I'd never used a table saw. I'd never used a router, that kind of thing. And it was so cool to actually create something myself out of a chunk of wood and have the skill set to do that. Yeah, I've been to VLR a couple times, they do really good stuff. I highly recommend them. And they were the ones the second time through. They were the ones that got me to Jaws. Because before, I would really try to use zoomtext as much as I could, and it was causing headaches and back strain, because I was leaning forward too much. So the second time I went through, I said, "I really want to get to the point where I can faze out magnification and just do jaws mostly. And so they got me to the point where I could use it exclusively and functionally. Yeah, the adjustment to blindness centers were very helpful.   Narrator: That's vision loss resources on Franklin and Lyndale down in Minneapolis. Well, I want to thank you for coming on to blind abilities and sharing your story, your journey, thank you very much.   Jeff: You are welcome. Hopefully my perspective is useful and helpful for you young people out there, you know, in the path of education and early job searching. Good luck to you, and I wish I would have had this technology when I was going to college. It would have made my college experience much easier, much less stressful, maybe a few less gray hairs.   Narrator: I don't think we can get around the hairs, we can blame it on whatever we want but... well thank you very much Jeff.   Jeff: Thank you very much   Narrator: It was a real pleasure talking to Jeff Mihiletch and learning about his transitional journey from high school to college to the workplace, and his experiences job to job. And you can find out more about state services for the blind and the services they can offer you on the web at https://mn.gov/deed/ssb. And in other states, be sure to contact your state services, and see what services they have for you. And be sure to check the show notes for the American foundation of the blind. They have a link to all the state services in all the states. Stay tuned next month where we bring you episode three of TVI toolbox. And a big thank you goes out to CheeChau for his beautiful music that we use for the podcast. Thank you CheeChau. You can follow Cheechau on Twitter @lcheechau. Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time, by by.

Highlights Getting ready for training camp  - War Department issues 30 lesson manifesto |@02 :00 RG Head on the War In The Sky - 1917 overview |@06:00 Richard Rubin & Jonathan Bratton on the Storyteller & The Historian on the Naval Reserve Act |@12:40 Mike Shuster on the war in the middle east |@18:45 Speaking WWI: “Thingumyjig” |@25:20   Anne Taylor & Ruth Edmonson Johnson on 100 Cities / 100 Memorials |@26:20 Professor Jeff Jakeman on Penrose Vass Stout: Aviator, architect and artist |@32:15 The eclipse of 1918: What comes around, comes around |@37:00 Susan Werbe on telling the WWI  story with the voice of people |@37:50 And more...----more---- Opening Welcome to World War 1 centennial News - It’s about WW1 news 100 years ago this week  - and it’s about WW1 News NOW - news and updates about the centennial and the commemoration. Today is August 16th, 2017. We have a big lineup today with six guest joining us. You’ll hear from… RG Head, former Air Force General, fighter pilot, author and historian   The Storyteller and the Historian, Richard Rubin and Jonathan Bratten    Mike Shuster from the great war project blog, Ann Taylor and Ruth Edmonson Johnson from the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project in Jackson, California Jeff Jakeman, Professor Emeritus from Auburn University And Susan Werbe (WERBY), independent scholar and artist   WW1 Centennial News is brought to you by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. I’m Theo Mayer - the Chief Technologist for the Commission and your host. World War One THEN 100 Year Ago This Week Preface The following section comes from the headlines and pages of the Official Bulletin - the government’s daily war gazette published by George Creel, President Wilson’s Propaganda Chief - We are republishing the daily issues on the centennial anniversary of their original publish dates at ww1cc.org/bulletin. So for those who would like to follow the events of 100 years ago in the words and headlines of the times, as presented by the US government, we offer a unique and powerful way to follow the War That Changed the World.  We have the link in the podcast notes.   So now let’s jump into our wayback machine and take a look at one of the themes that pervaded the official bulletin 100 years ago this week. link:http://ww1cc.org/bulletin   [MUSIC TRANSITION] It’s the week of August 12, 1917. Starting on the Monday of this week the Official Bulletin launches a new series of articles - 30 lessons issued by the War Department over five weeks - written for the benefit of men selected for service. The lessons are informal in tone - and designed to “define” the image and more importantly - the “Self Image” of the American Soldier. It is philosophy, attitude, behavior, morality, personal hygiene and more… It is a manifesto for what it means to be an American Soldier… Listen to a few random excerpts taken from the first 6 lessons…   From Lesson 1: Your post of Honor Quote: Other things being equal, an army made up of self-reliant, thinking men has a great advantage over a merely machine like army, and this is especially true in present-day warfare. Quote: The American soldier fights fairly and treats even the enemy with as much humanity as his own conduct will permit. As for slaughtering or enslaving the civilian population of captured territory, attacking prisoners, or assaulting women, American soldiers would as little commit such crimes in time of war as in time of peace. Quote: America has fought always and everywhere in defense of principles and rights—never merely for territory and for power. [DING] From Lesson 2: Making good as a soldier: Quote: Loyalty, obedience, and physical fitness are the three basic qualities essential to the making of a real soldier. [DING] Lesson 3: Soldierly qualities Quote: Intelligence, cleanliness, cheerfulness,confidence, spirit, tenacity, strength and self-reliance are the qualities of an American Soldier [DING] Lesson 4: Getting ready for camp Quote: Don’t take a last fling. It may land you in the hospital. At the best, it will probably bring you into camp in an unfit condition to take up your duties! [DING] From Lesson 5: First day at camp Quote: As the men in the National Army, which must get ready in record-breaking time your training will be more strenuous than that of soldiers in peace. You will find there is plenty of hard work ahead of you. The average energetic young American will be glad of it. [DING] Lesson 6: Cleanliness in camp Quote: The good soldier is almost “fussy” in the care of his person, his clothing, his bedding, and his other belongings. Personal cleanliness includes using only your own linen, toilet articles, cup, and mess kit.   And so go the first 6 of 30 1-page lessons defining what it means to be an American Soldier for 10’s of thousands of young men, many of whom have never been away from home One of our listeners who joined us during the live recording of this epsisode  commented that these lessons were not only “new” for the recent draftees, but new for the army at large. Bill Betten from California mentioned that, until now, The US Military consisted of a professional career soldiers whose reputation was considered, shall we say -  “a bit rough” and so this “rebranding” of what it means to be an American soldier is a seed change in the world view and self image for our military and another key example of the war that changed the world. To learn how to join the live recording of the podcast, go to WW1CC.org/cn - charlie / nancy all lower case. [SOUND EFFECT] War in the Sky Interview with RG Head Moving to our War In The Sky segment, we are joined today by RG Head, retired Air Force Brigadier General, fighter pilot, military historian and author. RG offers us a retrospective of the past 6 months in the Great War in the Sky and a preview of what will happen over the coming months. Welcome RG [greet one another] Q: RG - a lot has happened over the past months in the skies over Europe, how would you characterize it in overview?   Q: RG - we have reported a lot about the US and allied belief that overwhelming US air power could be a linchpin in hastening the end of this terrible war. How does that play out over the coming months? Q: So your are saying that the strategy did not work out because we couldn't pull the manufacturing together - Is that right? Q: So just before we wrap up, your book on Oswald Boelcke just came out in German… How did that happen? Thank you RG That was RG Head, Retired Air Force brigadier general, fighter pilot,, military historian and author. His latest book is a biography of Oswald Boelcke, often referred to as the father of combat aviation. RG Head is also the curator a comprehensive - nearly day-by-day “War in the Sky” timeline on the Commission website. We have links to the book, timeline and RG’s facebook page in the podcast notes Link: https://www.facebook.com/rg.head/ www.ww1cc.org/warinthesky https://www.amazon.com/RG-Head/e/B01M59UA64 Storyteller and the Historian From the war in the sky to the war on the water - we are joined by the Storyteller and the Historian - Richard Rubin and Jonathan Bratten. Today they’re going to explore the Naval Reserve Cct - which creates an unprecedented window of opportunity for women to enlist into the military.   [RUN OPENING] [RUN SEGMENT]   Thank you gentlemen! That was - the StoryTeller - Richard Rubin and The Historian - Jonathan Bratten The Storyteller and the Historian is now a full hour long monthly podcast. Look for them on iTunes and libsyn or follow the link in the podcast notes.   Link: http://storytellerandhistorian.libsyn.com [SOUND EFFECT] Great War Project Next we are joined by Mike shuster, former NPR correspondent and curator for the Great War Project blog. When thinking about WW1 - People often focus on the Western Front of France and Belgium, but this world war was truly Global. Today Mike’s post is an update on the Middle East, where the Turks found themselves in a difficult situation. Welcome Mike! [Mike Section] Thank you Mike. That was Mike Shuster from the Great War Project blog. LINK:http://greatwarproject.org/2017/08/13/crisis-for-the-turks-in-the-middle-east/ The Great War Channel For videos about WW1, our friend at the Great War Channel on Youtube have been producing great videos about great war since 2014.. This week’s new episodes include:   Despair Everywhere - The Great War Week 159 War weariness - the Great War Summary part 10 And  a hardware piece - Italian Pistols of WW1   Follow the link in the podcast notes or search for “the great war” on youtube. Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar And now we are going to move forward in time to the present! World War One NOW [SOUND EFFECT] Welcome to WW1 Centennial News NOW  - This part of the show is not about history but how the centennial of the War that changed the world is being commemorated today. Activities and Events [Sound Effect] We are going to start with Activities and Events selected from the U.S. National WW1 Centennial Events Register at WW1CC.org/events where we are compiling and recording WW1 Commemoration events from around the country. Uniformed Women in WW1 Smithsonian Our pick of the week is from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC. The exhibit is called: “Uniformed women in World War One”and explores the active and sometimes overlooked role played by women throughout the war. Their roles were seminal both as a part of the preparedness effort before 1917 as well as uniformed members military and civilian organizations. Even If you can’t make it to Washington DC, the Smithsonian offer a wonderfully detailed website featuring American women, their service and their uniforms. Take a virtual visit with the links in the podcast notes. If you are involved with any WW1 centennial events, you are invited to submit them to the National WW1 Centennial Events Register. This not only promotes them to the WW1 community of interest, but also puts them into the permanent national US archival record of the centennial. Go to ww1cc.org/events. Click the big red button and fill out the form. link:http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/commemorate/event-map-system/eventdetail/37666/smithsonian-s-national-museum-of-american-history-presents-uniformed-women-in-the-great-war.html http://americanhistory.si.edu/uniformed-women-great-war http://ww1cc.org/events [SOUND EFFECT] Education Newsletter Issue #8 is out In our Education Segment, we wanted to let you know that the latest issue of the education newsletter is out - “Understanding the Great War - Issue 8 is all about “Propaganda” with lesson plans, source materials, links to youtube videos and other resources all designed to let educators create memorable learning experiences for their students. Follow the link in the podcast notes to the newsletter archives or to register to receive the semi-monthly publication. Link to view online: http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1112454519225&ca=c9cccca5-72a6-4420-bad8-038155085c7a http://ww1cc.org/subscribe [SOUND EFFECT] Speaking WW1 In our newest feature “Speaking World War 1 - Where we  explore today’s words & phrases that are rooted in world war I  --- This week’s selected  word  is “thingumyjig”. Can you spell it!? T-H-I-N-G (thing) U (uh) M-Y (ma) J-I-G (jig) Thingumygig…. Although it appears to have existed prior to the war, it became cemented in common use during the conflict. Soldiers were confronted with many new objects, parts and things -- and so the word thingumyjig became a quick easy way for soldiers to refer to those new bits and pieces around them. Other words for “that thing I don’t know what to call” include the Canadian’s favored “hoozamakloo”! Read more about the many ways soldiers referred to those things they couldn’t quite remember the names of, by following the link in the podcast notes. link: https://books.google.com/books?id=Vz4uDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT142&dq=thingumyjig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2uancqNnVAhVF4SYKHRHGDPEQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=thingumyjig&f=false 100 Cities/100 Memorials [SOUND EFFECT] Ann Taylor and Ruth Edmonson Johnson 100 cities Every week we are profiling one of the many amazing projects submitted to our $200,000 matching grant giveaway to rescue ailing WW1 memorials. The program is called 100 Cities / 100 Memorials. Last week we profiled the Veterans of World War I of the U.S.A. Monument in Phoenix, Arizona. This week we are heading to Jackson California to profile the Albert Harry Bode Gravesite project. To tell us about it, we’re joined by Ann Taylor, Regent of the Sierra Amador Chapter of the NSDAR, the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and Ruth Edmonson Johnson, Honorary Regent and National lineage Research Chair - Southwest. Ann and Ruth - Welcome! [exchange greetings] You know - what I love about the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials initiative is the range of projects it has drawn. Last week Neil Urban was with us, and he works for the state of Arizona. Today you are here from Jackson, California - a beautiful little hamlet located between Yosemite and Sacramento! And there are only 3500 of you!   I have read your grant application and you have a great story, why don’t you share it with us! [interview] Well, you know that was one of the core objectives when we created the program - to act as a catalyst for communities to rediscover their heritage - and it sounds like project is doing exactly that in Jackson California! That was Ann Taylor and Ruth Edmonson Johnson from the Sierra Amador Chapter of the NSDAR  telling us about Albert Bode’s military plaque and headstone restoration in Jackson, California We will continue to profile the submitting teams and their projects on the show over the coming months. Learn more about the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials program at ww1cc.org/100memorials or follow the link in the podcast notes. Link: www.ww1cc.org/100memorials Updates from the States Hawaii [SOUND EFFECT] Welcome to our Updates from the States - starting with some exciting news from our friends in the Aloha State!  Hawaii Governor David Ige (EEGAY) has signed a letter, pledging state support to Hawaii's World War I Centennial Task Force. This is a great group of people that have been working diligently over the past several years to present and expose Hawaii’s role in the war that changed the world. Visit their website at ww1cc.org/hawaii all lower case - or follow the link in the podcast notes to read the story about this good news.. link:http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/hawaii-wwi-centennial-articles/2971-hawaii-s-world-war-i-centennial-task-force-gains-state-support.html   Interview with Jeff Jakeman next, from Heart of Dixie -- Alabama,  we are going to be joined by Jeff Jakeman, Professor of History, Emeritus at Auburn University, to talk about a unique WWI aviator who was also quite an accomplished architect and artist - Penrose Vass Stout!   Welcome Jeff! [exchange] Q: Jeff what can you tell us about Penrose… Q: Jeff tell us about the exhibit at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art about Vass stout? Jeff - Thank you so much for joining us That was Professor Jeff Jakeman telling us about aviator, architect, artist and alumni of Auburn University - Penrose vass Stout and the exhibit - “Sketching the Skies: Penrose Vass Stout which runs through September 10th. Montgomery Museum of Fine Art Learn more by following the link in the podcast notes. links:http://mmfa.org/events/from-alabama-to-the-skies-of-france-1917-1918-penrose-vass-stouts-improbable-journey/ http://mmfa.org/exhibitions/sketching-the-skies-penrose-vass-stout-alabamas-wwi-artist-aviator/ http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/commemorate/event-map-system/eventdetail/47084/sketching-the-skies-penrose-vass-stout-alabama-s-wwi-artist-aviator.html http://digital.archives.alabama.gov Articles and Posts It is time for our Articles and Posts segment - with new posts from our website at ww1cc.org - Eclipse 99 years ago In the news section, you’ll find an article that parallels current events with news from 99 years ago. And the subject is ------ Eclipses! In 1918 newspapers -- across America --  tucked in among reports about U.S. regiments fighting overseas and war bond propaganda,---  were reports about the Total Eclipse casting the moon’s shadow over the country. Just as in 2017, in 1918 the path of the eclipse started south of Japan, went across the Pacific Ocean, and then across the United States. AND, just as in 2017, Americans were avidly interested in the amazing cosmic phenomena. Read more about it by visiting ww1cc.org/news or following the link in the podcast notes. link:http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/3001-2017-eclipse-across-u-s-recalls-wwi-eclipse-99-years-ago.html Spotlight on the media Interview with Susan Werbe For our spotlight on the media section, we are being joined by Susan Werbe (Werby),  an independent scholar and artist with a focus on -- the social and cultural history of World War One. She is the creator and executive producer of The Great War Theatre Project: Messengers of a Bitter Truth, recently performed in Boston, New York, and Letchworth in the UK.   Susan wrote about this project in a recent article on our WWrite blog, and is here with us today to tell us more about it and about another project she has been working on. Welcome, Susan! [exchange greetings] [Susan, Could you give our listeners an idea of what your theater project “Messengers of a Bitter Truth” is about?] [Now Susan, your newest project isn’t theater, it is music project called Letters You Will Not Get. What inspired this one?] [Susan I know you haven’t recorded the music for “Letters you will not get” at this time, but you do have the libretto - can you give us a sample..?] Thank you so much Susan!   That was Susan Werbe (Werby),  an independent scholar and creative artist with a focus on the social and cultural history of World War One -- Learn more about Susan’s work and research by following the links in the podcast notes. Link: http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/2504-a-journey-of-commemoration-the-great-war-through-the-lens-of-art.html The Buzz - WW1 in Social Media Posts That brings us to the buzz - the centennial of WW1 this week in social media with Katherine Akey - Katherine - what do you have for us this week? U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services commemorates the WWI Centennial with new webpages highlighting the history of immigration and naturalization. link:https://www.facebook.com/uscis/photos/a.408896322454927.106414.228759177135310/1632639103413970/?type=3&theater https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/our-history/world-war-i Thank you Katherine. Closing And that is also IT for WW1 Centennial News for this week. In closing, we want to thank our guests: RG Head, author and historian giving us a retrospective on the War in the Sky The Storyteller and the Historian, Richard Rubin and Jonathan Bratten talking to us about the Naval Reserve Act Mike Shuster from the great war project blog highlighting the situation in the Middle East 100 years ago Ann Taylor and Ruth Edmonson Johnson from the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project in Jackson, California Jeff Jakeman, Professor Emeritus from Auburn University talking to us about an Alabaman aviator-architect and artist Penrose Vass Stout Susan Werbe (WERBY), independent scholar and artist telling us about her projects highlighting the voice of people -  both men and women - during the war Katherine Akey the Commission’s social media director and also the line producer for the show. And I am Theo Mayer - your host.   The US World War One Centennial Commission was created by Congress to honor, commemorate and educate about WW1. Our programs are to-- inspire a national conversation and awareness about WW1; This program is a part of that…. We are bringing the lessons of the 100 years ago into today's classrooms; We are helping to restore WW1 memorials in communities of all sizes across our country; and of course we are building America’s National WW1 Memorial in Washington DC. If you like the work we are doing, please support it with a tax deductible donation at ww1cc.org/donate - all lower case Or if you are on your smart phone text  the word: WW1 to 41444. that's the letters ww the number 1 texted to 41444. Any amount is appreciated.   We want to thank commission’s founding sponsor the Pritzker Military Museum and Library for their support. The podcast can be found on our website at ww1cc.org/cn   on  iTunes and google play ww1 Centennial News. Our twitter and instagram handles are both @ww1cc and we are on facebook @ww1centennial. Thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to share the stories you are hearing here with someone about the war that changed the world! [music] Hey Halsey - pass me that thingumyjig! Thanks.

The translation and localization industry has seen some impressive innovations over the past decade, but in many ways, it has remained stubbornly resistant to change. Today we sit down and talk with Jeff Sandford co-founder of Wovn.io. The Wovn team has developed a way to take the pain out of web localization and translation. They promise to do it all with a single line of code. We talk a bit about the mechanics of web-site localization and state of the industry as a whole, and we also discuss some important but surprising differences between with makes compelling UI/UX design for Japanese and for Western users, and what kinds of tasks machine translation can really be trusted with. Jeff also explains why he decided to start a company with someone he had never meet. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why website translation is important but often overlooked Why Jeff chose to start a company with someone he had never met  How to combat Japan's "Design by Committee" problem Why you should not trust machine translation for e-commerce When you need to change from a bottom-up to top-down sales strategy The challenges of working with Japanese enterprise customers as a startup Advice for foreign engineers and founders who want to come to Japan Why Japan needs to get uncomfortable Links from the Founder Wovn.io homepage Wovn.io on Twitter Wovn.io on Facebook [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Disrupting Japan, episode 86. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Today we’re going to talk about something that you and I, and probably everyone else listening right now has struggled with. Translation and localization. It’s been an industry that has both seen some impressive innovations over the past decade, but is also somehow quite resistant to change. Localization is a part of business that almost every firm has to deal with, but almost no one looks forward to. It’s a lot like dealing with lawyers in that way, I suppose. Well, today we sit down with Jeff Sandford, cofounder of Wovn.io who say they’ve developed a one line of code method for taking the pain out of localization and translation. We talk a bit about the mechanics of website localization and the state of the industry as a whole, of course. We also talk about the important and surprising differences between what makes great UI/UX with Japanese and western users. And what kind of tasks machine translation can really be trusted with. And Jeff shares a story of what made him decide to start a company with a cofounder who he’d never even met before. But you know, Jeff tells that story much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsor, and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] [Interview] Tim: Cheers. Jeff: Cheers. Tim: So I’m sitting with Jeff, cofounder of Minimal Technologies and the creator of Wovn.io. And thanks for sitting down with me today. Jeff: Thank you very much. Good to be here. Tim: Wovn.io at a high level is simply localization for a website. But it’s more than that. It’s more interesting than that so why don’t you tell us a bit about what it is. Jeff: So often people when you tell them you do website localization, they think translation, which it actually isn’t. Translation is a very integral part of it, but what we focus on is the system of localizing a website. So let’s say you have an English website, and you’ll like to create a Chinese version or Spanish version of that website, we handle all of the details of actually creating those versions, and also managing them and serving them to users. Tim: Now there’s a lot of companies that are doing that,