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Patrick addresses the pressing concerns of education gaps in U.S. eighth graders, highlighting the benefits of Catholic schooling and homeschooling. He examines the moral complexities surrounding sterilization and contraception within Catholic marriages and offers insightful resources that are free to download. Additionally, Patrick explores how social media can rewire your brain and discovers how parenthood can keep it young and agile. 8th graders struggling in reading & math (00:43) John - Can you elaborate on 'being who you are'? How can I know 'who I am'? (06:40) Brian - Is Confiteor optional during the Mass? Is it okay to clap after the choir sings at Mass? (10:07) Study: young parenthood helps the brain stay young (20:02) Sharon - Invalid Baptism: both my daughters baptized in Presbyterian Church. Do they need to be baptized again? Vasectomy: my daughter's husband had a vasectomy. Should I try to educate him on the Church’s teaching? (23:14) Study: Social Media Rewires Your Brain (32:54) Scott – Is there a practice of only saying Sorrowful Mysteries during Lent? (35:01) Tina - How can I present NFP to my husband who has a lot of anxiety issues? (38:39)
Patrick explores complex questions from listeners about faith, marriage, and Catholic teachings. He discusses understanding the validity of marriage, the scriptural foundations of the Rapture, and the deep theology of purgatory and fasting. Patrick provides insightful clarity rooted in tradition, offering wisdom for personal and spiritual challenges. Joe - If a Catholic couple knows the birth control rules yet decides to use it anyway, does this make the marriage invalid? (0:38) Jim - How do my prayers help the Holy Souls in Purgatory? (4:18) Chandler (email) – How does 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 not allude to the rapture? (8:49) John - Can people with Alzheimer’s be dispensed from Confession? (17:34) Susan - Have you ever talked about Myers Briggs testing? (21:35) Santiago - What happens to babies who are not baptized before they die? (27:38) Tom (email) – Comment about Our Lady of Knock (35:30) Sharon - Why do we fast before Communion? (36:55) Araceli - What are your thoughts about the Litany of Trust? (48:30)
Patrick explores incredible advancements in early cancer detection, the power of artificial intelligence in medicine, and the intersection of faith and science, diving deep into Catholic perspectives. Plus, he discusses how our media choices impact our spirituality and shares personal testimonials about finding faith in unexpected places. Scientists in Barcelona have found a way to catch cancer early by reading ribosome “fingerprints” (02:41) Patrick in Wisconsin - What is the Catholic view of creation? Modern science seems to contradict Bible. (12:45) Patrick in Ohio - I was at Ozzy Osbourne concert. The Holy Spirit convinced me to leave but I was negatively affected. (22:22) John - Can someone, other than the priest, speak during the homily? (36:26) Maria - I lost my dad recently. why are we lost so many good people? Why does God take them away? (47:16)
Two Hours of trashy garage, punk, rock, soul and fury with host DJ Jdub. This week: a bunch of good stuff! It's 1974 vs. 1984.Outrage Radio playlist - December 4, 2024:1974[0:00]1. Budgie – Crash Course In Brain Surgery2. Dr. Feelgood - She Does It Right3. Status Quo – Drifting Away4. Brian Eno – Blank Frank5. Funkadelic – Red Hot Mama [22:18]6. New York Dolls – Puss ‘N' Boots7. The Rolling Stones – Dance Little Sister8. Sweet – Set Me Free9. Queen – Stone Cold Crazy10. AC/DC – Baby Please Don't Go [42:45]11. James Brown – Papa Don't Take No Mess12. Judas Priest – Cheater13. Montrose – I Got The Fire14. UFO – Rock Bottom15. Dr. John – Can't Get Enough 1984[1:04:28]16. Motorhead – Locomotive17. Feederz – 198418. Subhumans (UK) – Reality Is Waiting For A Bus19. Black Flag – My War20. MDC – Chicken Squawk21. Minutemen – Untitled Song For Latin America [1:24:00]22. New Model Army – Smalltown England23. Naked Raygun – Rat Patrol24. Decry – Falling25. The Replacements – We're Comin' Out26. The Afflicted – Here Come The Cops27. Agnostic Front – Victim In Pain28. DRI – Violent Pacification [1:42:42]29. Metallica – Fight Fire With Fire30. Slayer – Captor Of Sin31. Butthole Surfers – Mexican Caravan32. M.I.A. – Modern Way [1:57:18]33. Iggy Pop – Repo ManOutrage Radio broadcasts live from Downtown Los Angeles on Thursday nights from 9-11PM (Pacific) at LuxuriaMusic.com
"Farscape : The Peacekeeper Wars: Part 1"“A soul patch leads the charge while our favourite dominar begins to enlarge. If they outnumber us ten to one then this shouldn't take long...” (thanks Mark Nixon!)“The Cold War turns hot, we find out a method of getting pregnant that wasn't covered in sex education class and remind me, does John know how to make wormhole weapons?” (thanks Marky See!)“Hey John, Are you having fun yet?'Not Good's the best odds we ever get.Crash-test dummies,Narls in tummies,First time's the worst 'Bigboy', Don't get upset!” (thanks Ric From the Delta Quadrant!)“So we discover John Can't make a Wormhole weapon, so I guess next episode starts the Lexx retrospective?” (thanks The Derp Prime!)"First aired on Sunday, 17 October 2004, written by David Kemper & Rockne S. O'Bannon, and directed by Brian Henson"We're on Twitter, Facebook, and SoFarscape.com. Our theme music is by Leigh Collier of Give Them L.Send us your synopses, support us on Patreon or suggest a fanfic story for us to read!https://sofarscape.com/episode/501
Patrick answers questions about the movie Father Stu, Pascal's Wager, is watching the sexy parts of a movie a sin, are then any wholesome streaming services, and he shares what he would like for Christmas Patrick comments on an article saying that the root of the pro-life movement is anti-Semitism Dominic - I think the west is also responsible for what is going on in Russia. Elon Musk shadow bans an account that tracks his jets location Ale - Just watched the movie Father Stu. Can I pray to him for Miracles even though he is not a saint? Is watching the sexy parts of movies or shows a sin? Tina - Why would anyone want to pray to a priest who had a movie made of him. No one knows anything about Father Stu. John - Can you explain Pascal's Wager? Patrick - Do you know of any good wholesome streaming services?
Chartered Physiotherapist, Pilates Instructor and Elite Irish runner Eoin Everard joins us to answer listener's running questions. From injuries to getting faster, marathon training tips to advice for older runners, there's something in here for everyone. You'll hear: 10:00 Eoin gives us his background in running and movement. 111:30 Eoin's thoughts when you have imposter syndrome as a runner. 13:30 Eoin talks about rest days, pilates and staying relatively injury free. 18:00 Rob asks 'what strength work can I do to speed up my re-hab from a knee injury? 21:30 Mark's question about running as you get older, any tips? 23:30 Ali's question about doing speed work as you get older. Eoin's advice to include strides too. 26:00 Ronan: What can I do over the winter to make me a bit faster if I don't have a background in triathlon or running? 29:30 Daniel: Should you do track sessions or long interval sessions? 34:00 Daniel: Any heat acclimatisation tips for Daniel going to Kona? 37:30 Kathryn: I'm 40 next month and I've just done my first and last Middle Distance triathlon. I'd like to give age group sprint a crack, how can I bring my 5K PB down? 44:00 Peter: How can I use marathon training to get around a marathon? Under 5 hours would be amazing. 47:00 How do I train for a spring marathon when the furthest run is a 10km and I am a swimmer by background. 50:00 Tara: I'm doing a 50km ultra. I'd like to try some solid foods but I'm allergic to bananas and peanuts. 53:00 John: Can you explain the runner's high? Why do we get it? what are the causes? Find out more about this week's guests Eoin Everard https://www.instagram.com/everardpilatesphysio/?hl=en (Instagram) Eoin Everard https://everardpilates.com/ (website) Podcast Sponsors Form Swim and Presca Sportswear are sponsoring the podcast on a bi-weekly basis so you can hear the best interviews in triathlon each week. https://www.formswim.com/pages/insidetrishow (FORM Swim - $15 off smart swimming goggles). https://www.prescasportswear.com/ (Presca Sportswear) - Sustainable Sportswear. Get 15% off with the code insidetri15 Like what you heard? Let me know! Connect with Inside Tri Show across Social Media, just search Inside Tri Show or click on the icons below https://www.patreon.com/insidetrishow (GET YOUR HANDS ON AN EXCLUSIVE EPISODE!) Sign up to be a vino buddy or a training buddy on Patreon and get your hands on two patrons-only episodes a year. Or just support the show by buying Helen a coffee every month by https://www.patreon.com/insidetrishow (becoming a coffee buddy Patreon of the Inside Tri Show). Listener Discounts For $15 Discount on FORM Swim goggles: https://www.formswim.com/pages/insidetrishow (https://www.formswim.com/pages/insidetrishow) Presca Sportswear - https://prescasportswear.com/ (15 % off here )with the code insidetri15 - valid until the end of march 2023 Resilient Nutrition - Get 10% off here https://resilientnutrition.com/discount/insidetri10 (via this link). https://www.33fuel.com/ (33 Fuel) You can also get a discount at https://my.captivate.fm/www.komfuel.co.uk (komfuel.co.uk) with the code insidetri This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Patrick answers listener questions about the earth being flat, is a marriage valid if they lie about being open to life, if it's possible to sell your soul to the devil, and he gives his thoughts on if 12-year-olds should be dating Denise - My sister in law told me that the world is flat; she is Catholic. What should I do about this? Amy (09:05) - Is a Catholic Marriage valid if they lie about being open to life? Jason - I am in favor of Flat earth based on bible texts. John – Can someone sell their soul to the devil? Rachel (28:54) - How can someone live in a marriage with a narcissistic spouse? Patrick recommends https://marysadvocates.org/ for marital advice and help Evangeline - What should I tell my grandson who has a girlfriend at 12-years-old? Mary - My sister is generous with her time and money with my mom, but is living a sinful life. Will she inherit the promises in Sirach? James – Is there a revised version of the Confessions of St. Augustine that is easier to understand?
Your old iPhone could be worth over $24K David - Does the soul have a gender? John – Can the teachings of Church be changed? Lisa - Has there been an instance in which Sensus fidelium has been used to change church teaching? Over against erroneous opinions, Patrick explains the authentic meaning of the term Sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful) showing that far from being a movement to “change” Church teaching it refers to the charism of the lay faithful in preserving, often doggedly, the authentic meaning of Church teaching Connie - Son is in his 40's and married twice outside of the church. How do I relate to him? Carol - Married in the church, but wasn't a practicing catholic. My husband was previously married. Does he need an annulment for our marriage to be valid?
Vikings were in North America in 1021, well before Columbus, researchers say. Joan – She and her husband are going to be cremated. Do you have to have ashes buried in blessed ground. John – Can demons repent? Tammy – what is the difference between a seer, a mystic and a psychic? Connor – Can […] All show notes at The Patrick Madrid Show: October 21, 2021 – Hour 2 - This podcast produced by Relevant Radio
Vikings were in North America in 1021, well before Columbus, researchers say. Joan – She and her husband are going to be cremated. Do you have to have ashes buried in blessed ground. John – Can demons repent? Tammy – what is the difference between a seer, a mystic and a psychic? Connor – Can […]
John Saunders, Founder of 5Four Digital, honed his SEO, SEM, and PPC digital marketing skills when he started his career working for an agency that provided dealership-level marketing services for automobile manufacturers. When John figured out that he wanted to use his skills for different kinds of projects and a more diverse clientele (SMBs, tech-startups), he started his own company. Today, 5Four focuses on brand identity (logo design and brand guidelines), and website design and development on Shopify, Webflow, and WordPress platforms. In this interview, John explains how to build automated linkages that will increase customer engagement and discusses 3 “shopping” platforms: WordPress, Shopify, and Webflow. John says WordPress was a game-changer – it made CMS (content management systems) “accessible” for people with lower-level HTML and CSS skills. The platform is flexible enough that amazing sites can be built with either the supplied templates or with custom code. A disadvantage of WordPress is that it requires the use of an extensive array of plugins for website “attributes,” and these and other security measures need to be maintained. Wordpress with a WooCommerce plug-in works well for ecommerce, but John has found that Shopify allows the agency to more quickly scale stores for its clients. One Shopify app, Teelaunch, provides companies with low cost, high-quality print on demand products so customers can create an MVP (minimum viable product, Eric Ries: The Lean Startup,) and build their own brand for less than $1000. Another CMS option, Webflow, can produce outstanding websites. It has a slight learning curve but is easy to use and highly flexible. Although John currently sees Webflow as ”the future,” an organization's decision to use a particular CMS platform should be based on a number of considerations. Through the years, John has developed systems and standard operating procedures which allow him to delegate tasks to his staff or to automate processes, so the work gets done automatically. One tool he has found to be particularly helpful is Zapier, which provides a way to “web-hook” different websites, platforms, and apps. John uses Zapier to cross-integrate his company website contact form with Slack (to notify John that the form has been filled out), and then with Mailchimp to send a “thank you for your interest, here's another form.” Response to that drives another form for scheduling . . . and that information is sent to Colony. John says Zapier can be used to link Facebook to Gmail, Facebook Forms to Google Sheets, with up to 10 such linkages free. John recommends written website SOPs to facilitate task handoffs to clients if the client prefers to maintain the site. 5Four Digital was already running remotely when Covid-19 hit. John's SOPs and integrated technology continue to keep the agency operating smoothly. Many of his team use Asana to manage tasks. He notes that not everything he has done succeeded. However, the failures often provided the tools, resources, and experience he needed for subsequent projects . . . that did succeed. John recently started a company offering downloadable illustrations featuring people of color so sitebuilders have beautiful pictures that promote diversity. BlackIllustrations.com. He is also involved in digital education and sees a lot of that in the future replacing the traditional four-year degree. John can be found on his personal website at JohnDSaunders.com and @JohnDSaunders on Facebook and Instagram. His agency's website is: https://www.5fourdigital.com/. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by John Saunders, Founder at 5Four Digital based in Miami, Florida. Welcome to the podcast, John. JOHN: Hey, Rob. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here, man. Thank you. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you start us off with an introduction to 5Four Digital and where you specialize. JOHN: Absolutely. My name, of course, as you said, is John D. Saunders. I'm the founder of 5Four Digital. We focus and allocate our resources towards a couple key services. Those are brand identity, which is logo design and brand guidelines, as well as website design and development for Shopify, Webflow, and WordPress. Those are our main focus areas. ROB: That makes perfect sense. WordPress obviously has been around for a very long time, Shopify a decent amount of time. Webflow is a little newer. How has that development of competencies happened? Did you start in one of those areas? How have you decided where to keep your skills sharp? JOHN: Great question. I started in WordPress – man, it was at least 10 years ago. WordPress put CMS, or content management systems, on the map in regards to making it accessible for people that either have an entry level to HTML and CSS or high level. You create these amazing websites either using templates or doing custom code. I started doing that with WordPress, and man, it was an exciting time because I started out and I learned everything I could from YouTube videos and other things like that. This was in the infancy of WordPress, so it was before they even had all these templates and themes. I was able to build a site for my mom, who's a teacher, and we built this tutoring site. Kids were able to go on, fill out the contact form. I was able to take this idea I had in my head and make it something tangible. That's when I was hooked. As the agency grew, we really thought to allocate our resources toward a few key resources, and WordPress was that main one. As ecommerce started to build up and develop, I thought, WordPress is great. We have WooCommerce, plug-ins that integrate well. But I feel like Shopify was the perfect platform because we were able to scale out stores for clients at a quicker level than WordPress. So, we did that with Shopify. Then a couple years ago, we heard about Webflow, which is another content management system or almost like a live builder, and man, I built my first site in Webflow and I was like, this is definitely the future. It's easy to use. Of course it has a learning curve, but ultimately you can build essentially whatever you want in regards to your website, have your own custom CSS in there, and the designs and things we've been able to create with Webflow have been really, really dope. ROB: Right on. If somebody has a WordPress website, they'll probably stick with WordPress for the time being, although any given revision to a WordPress site can certainly be an entire rebuild. But if someone's starting today, how would you help them consider the decision of whether to go with WordPress or whether to go with Webflow? JOHN: That's a great question. If they're an existing business – let's say they've been using WordPress for 5 or 6 years and they just want to do a refresh or redesign their site. They already have historical data or historical SEO attributes to that website, so I probably wouldn't recommend completely changing over to Webflow unless the site was new and they didn't get a ton of traffic. If they're doing over 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 hits per month, we'd probably stay with WordPress and scale out that website in regards to building out a new design. If the business doesn't get a ton of traffic and they're not really worried about pulling all that traffic to the new site, I would absolutely recommend Webflow. One thing I like about Webflow is a lot is the transition in regards to using the platform is easier. You can build out sites how you want. You don't necessarily need a ton of plug-ins, which is one of the issues I have with WordPress; you need plug-ins for a lot of the attributes you need to add to a website. It also takes a lot of constant upkeep. Every month you have to make sure the plug-ins are up to date. You also have to make sure WordPress, the framework, is up to date, and you're open to malware and malicious attacks from people because the CMS is so popular. The good point about that is there's a ton of resources on WordPress and information out there. Thousands of plug-ins, thousands of resources, developers, designers. It's an open source platform that has a lot of people linked to it. With Webflow, it's a little bit newer, so it's smaller. But the level to entry isn't as steep as say WordPress, and it doesn't need that constant upkeep. You can build out your site, you can set up Zapier to set up web hooks between different websites and platforms, and you're pretty much good to go. ROB: Wow, it sounds like you're deep on the Zapier stuff. That's a whole other unlock there. JOHN: Oh man, it's like a cheat code, dude. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] Tell us about that a little bit for folks who aren't as familiar with Zapier and what sort of directions you can take that toolkit. JOHN: I'll give you a precursor. The first thing is I'm a big proponent of standard operating procedures or setting up systems within the business so I can delegate to either staff, team members, or create automation. That way no one has to do it and it just gets done automatically. I'm a big proponent of that. I work from home. I have five team members on our team, and I love to have the freedom to be able to focus on big picture. With that said, Zapier is a great way to connect different platforms easily through a platform seamlessly. I'll explain that. For example, when you visit our agency website and you fill out the contact form, that form automatically pushes to Slack. As soon as the form gets filled out, I get a notification that someone's filled it out on Slack with their information. That keeps me up to date. Secondly, we set up a Zapier so that it integrates with MailChimp. So as soon as someone fills out that form, they get an automatic email response saying, “Hey, thank you for your interest. Would you mind filling out this free form?” Once they fill out that form, then they get another automatic email push that says, “Hey, great, go ahead and book a time here,” and then we've connected Colony. All Zapier does is just connects different apps to each other. You can connect Facebook to Gmail, you can connect Facebook Forms to Google Sheets – the possibilities are endless. I think you can do up to 10 for free and then you can pay for different Zaps. ROB: Very nice. Thinking about WordPress versus Webflow, you get the site designed, you get it developed, you hand it over to the client – is either one of those more conducive to clients being able to manage things themselves? Or is it just the case that clients, even if you give them all the tools, aren't going to manage things themselves to make minor changes in the future? JOHN: It really depends on the client because they're both very user-friendly, especially on the client side, for the most part. It's easy to add blogs. It's easy to update pages once either you're using a third party platform like Oxygen or Divi or Elementor, the page builders. It's pretty easy to use once you get over that initial learning curve. Both WordPress and Webflow have a client-facing side so that they can make updates. So that part is pretty easy. What I like to tell people, especially agency owners, is it's a good idea to set up SOPs, or standard operating procedures, for your clients in regards to the handoff. If you're a web design agency, there's one of two things you can do. You can either manage and host that website for the client, and then they pay a fee every month, or you say, “Hey, here's a repository of my trainings on how to use the platform, how to jump in, how to add blogs. Your team can use this.” Because sometimes you'll build a project and give it to their staff. They might have a marketing team or a content marketing team that can create that content; they just need to know how to use the backend. So, you want to have that in your back pocket so that way when a client is like, “Yeah, we don't really want you to manage it. We just want you to build it out and then hand it off to us,” you already have that repository of operating procedures that you can give them. ROB: That all makes sense. John, if we rewind a few years, how did you come to start 5Four Digital? What's the origin story here? JOHN: For me, I was at an agency. I worked there for about 4 years. I moved up in the ranks and became marketing director. It was an automotive dealership agency, so we dealt primarily with a lot of the car manufacturers – Audi, Land Rover, Ford – at the dealership level. We would do the marketing at the dealership level. Being in that position taught me a lot because I was able to use SEO, SEM, PPC, all these different services under the digital marketing moniker. It helped me develop my skillset. Once I did that, I got to the point where I wanted to work on different types of projects. I got kind of burnt out from the automotive side. I wanted to work with maybe SMBs, tech startups, and that type of thing. That's when I left and I started my own company, 5Four Digital. I was focused on more so on the product as opposed to how it looked. I didn't need to have a fancy office or anything. Honestly, when I started, I didn't really have much money. I was on the ramen diet, and I was saving money because I had segued from a full-time position to doing this on my own. The biggest thing for me was to really focus and allocate my resources towards providing a great product to the client. I didn't have an office. I was working from home, and I started to build my team remotely. When other agency owners were like, “You need an office, you need this, you need that,” I was like, instead of paying $2,500, $3,000, $3,500 – because I am in South Florida – for an office, I can take those resources and I can pay a developer, I can pay a project manager to help scale this business without having to have that burden of a physical location. ROB: So, you were completely ready for the shutdowns this year. Did very much change for you as a business, either with how your team worked, or maybe with some of your clients when some of the COVID-19 shutdowns started to come through? JOHN: I do want to say that a lot of people are going through a lot currently. People are being furloughed, fired from their jobs. It's just a lot. The transition for us prior to COVID and to now hasn't really changed much because we were already running remotely. All the platforms and things that we were using were already conducive to that environment. A lot of our team and our staff work through Asana, our task management system, and that's what we work by. This is when something's due, and team members can work at night, in the day, they can take the day off and take their kids to the park. For me, ultimately you work when you're comfortable because I feel like that's when people work the best, and then we follow the structure of the due date within the task management system. ROB: That makes sense. When I look at your LinkedIn profile, some people are all-in on one thing and some people have a whole portfolio of interesting things they're involved in. What can you share about some of the other projects or businesses that you're involved in that keep your attention and you feel are worth pursuing? JOHN: For me it's about building an agency that not only works well for our clients, but for us internally also. I always recommend those that have the skillset to build an agency because (1) you can help build and develop clients, and then (2) you can build your own products or your own projects that siphon through your agency ecosystem. For us, when we have an idea and we want to build something internally, we're just taking that project or that idea and running it through our client cycle. For example, I have a business called BlackIllustrations.com, which we launched in April, which is a platform that allows folks to download illustrations for their websites, for their projects, featuring people of color. Because I didn't see the market have a lot of that, and as a website builder, there just wasn't a lot of diversity in the illustrations. Now, I've seen some beautiful illustrations, and we've leveraged a lot of them online, but I just didn't see that and I saw that opportunity. When that happened, I put together the process, I told the team, “Hey, this is what we're going to start building out,” and then it's essentially just walking them through that client lifecycle. It's almost like taking the ideas that we have and pushing them through this conveyor belt of the business and then being able to make another business that has its own separate income as an entity. BlackIllustrations.com launched in April; we've already had 40,000+ downloads, over about half a million visitors to the website. I'm really proud of that, and a lot of that comes down to creating those procedures and then running it through that cycle. ROB: That makes a ton of sense. With those different projects, you can imagine that some of them are going to thrive, some of them are going to perhaps not thrive. Some of them over time you might need to put to rest. I wonder maybe if even there's some projects that you have brought through the process, they lived a good life, and then you put them on pause. How do you think about the lifecycle and lifespan of these internal projects? JOHN: Essentially, for me it's really about learning as much as I can from the process. In one example, as an entrepreneur, you know we have a ton of failures. I'm not going to act like everything I touch turns to gold. I had one project in particular – it was a Kickstarter campaign. I was trying to raise funds for an app. This was 5 years ago, 6 years ago maybe. I went through the entire process of hiring a videographer, getting footage, walking through the process of creating this crowdfunding campaign, and it was a lot of fun doing it and experiencing it. Ultimately, we flopped because we didn't get to 100% of the goal. I think we got to around 60%. At first, I was like, man, I'm a failure. I didn't do the right thing. But, ultimately, I learned a lot through that process. I learned how to start a crowdfunding campaign, how to create engaging video that converts folks, and how to leverage an audience. So, I like to look at it as an experience as opposed to a failure, and I'm able to use those resources and those things that I came up with and allocate them later on in the next project. ROB: Each project is its own success, even if the project itself doesn't succeed. In that case, how fortunate to assess demand for an app. It's an inexpensive experiment to launch a crowdfunding campaign versus building the dang app and then hoping somebody likes it. JOHN: Exactly. ROB: Very good. John, you mentioned some lessons you learned there. When you look back over the history of 5Four Digital so far, what are some other lessons you've learned along the way and things you might consider doing differently if you were starting from zero? JOHN: I would look at delegating faster than I did prior. I think in the beginning, especially the first year, first couple years, I was trying to do everything and do it all myself. When I started the agency, we were doing SEO, SEM, Facebook ads, social media, web design, web development. It was a complete agency, full service. Which is great, especially if you have a good amount of employees, but it was just me. So I'm working with clients and one client is doing SEO, one client is doing PPC, one client is doing web design, and it's just a lot of work, especially changing your mind and doing the different things and turning off that creative and turning on the analytical side. It was just a lot. I started to get burnt out. One of the things I wish I did was niche down to a specific set of services. Not even niching down to a specific client set, but only offering a few core services. That would've helped me really streamline my process and be like, “This is the process we go through every time we take on a client” as opposed to doing all these different services myself, especially as a small agency or even a freelancer. It was just a lot. So, I wish that was one thing that I did: focus on a few core services. Secondly, I wish I would've started to make my operating procedures in the initial or in the beginning. Really start to think about, “These are the core services we have. These are the things we want to offer.” But I think it just took me time to get acclimated to providing a high-quality service to clients and then documenting that process. Then the third piece is hiring faster, hiring either a part-timer or an independent contractor in the beginning to help facilitate some of these things instead of trying to do it all myself and taking hours and hours in the wee morning trying to do it. ROB: How did you go about finding some of those fractional or independent contractors that you could trust to do the work in a way that's going to keep your clients happy? Did that involve the clients at all in the conversation of shifting who was doing the work? JOHN: Great question. For me, finding great people – and again, this is a process as well – comes down to not even necessarily their full skillset. A lot of times you'll try to find the perfect candidate in regards to their skills. I try to find a good quality designer, for example, but I also want them to be able to fit into our team dynamic. The fact that they're fun, engaging. The fact that they get their work done, but they're able to balance that and know that it's an open work environment where they'll be able to have fun and enjoy cultivating their creativity. So, for me, it's really finding someone that's a good fit for the team as opposed to just focusing on skillset. ROB: I hear a recurring passion for process. Is that something that has come naturally for you, but you didn't initially apply it to the business? Or has it been something you've discovered in some way as you've built the agency? JOHN: It's definitely something I've discovered while building the agency. There's a book by Michael E. Gerber called The E-Myth, another book by Tim Ferriss called The 4-Hour Workweek – those are two great reads – that talk about building a process so that you can delegate. For me, ultimately, in the agency right now I'm pretty much the project manager. I'm the one that talks to the client, that organizes the projects, that puts in my two cents and my recommendations and helps the team navigate through the buyer journey or the customer journey. I love being in that role because I'm able to pull out of the day to day and focus more so on big picture. I'm able to convey my ideas to the team, and we're able to implement together on what works best. ROB: I can definitely understand that, and there's probably some future date where you're thinking about that second project manager role that takes that over. That's probably a whole new round of hire. John, you mentioned in your previous agency experience that you had done some work with auto dealers. For people who don't know, that can be a whole segment. A lot of agencies that do auto kind of only do auto. It sounds like you're not doing much of that anymore. One concern I have heard from people who are heavy into that space is some different constraints to the budgets of some of the different dealerships and what they want, and sometimes even the technology. What is your experience with that then, and was there any consideration of that when you decided not to focus on that as much with 5Four? JOHN: Can you repeat the last part of the question? It cut out for a sec. ROB: Oh, sure. How much of that distinction of the constraints of automotive clients drove your decision to focus less on that when you started 5Four? JOHN: Oh man, there's a lot of red tape you have to deal with. Just getting a webpage up or going through a brand discovery session, there's so many people that it has to go through that by the time you get the thing live, it's already dated. [laughs] It was really hard to move and grow the design and the marketing side of it because we had so many constraints in regards to the industry. But nowadays, especially working more so with startups or Series A companies, they have a lot more freedom to move around and upward. If there's new technology that comes out that we want to implement, you don't have to go through three C-level executives to get it done. You can just talk to a couple people, tell them, “Hey, this is how it works,” do a small test – if it works, great. Scale it up. It's a totally different dynamic. ROB: I've also heard a number of complaints about the technology that is even able to serve the auto dealer industry. Is that true, number one? And if so, why do you think it is? I've heard often there's a completely different marketing stack for that particular customer. JOHN: I will say in the last probably 2 to 3 years, there's been a lot of companies doing cutting-edge stuff in the automotive industry. Of course, outside of that you have Tesla, which is doing phenomenal things. But there are platforms, especially like for example Dealer.com, which is an automotive digital marketing company – they crush it, man. They do a lot of these different things – it's almost like Google, but in the automotive industry. They have all these different solutions and resources. So, I will say in the last few years there's been a dynamic shift. Of course, you have startups coming out like Carvana that are doing a really great job of showcasing and making the process easier for the customer. I think the automotive industry has taken a while to understand it, but a lot of people don't necessarily want to go into the dealership. They don't want to go through that long process. They're trying to accommodate this fast shifting economy. ROB: I understand that. It's nice that there is some future that is not really, really dated marketing stacks for that industry. John, when you look ahead a little bit, what are you excited about that's coming up either for 5Four Digital in particular or for marketing more generally? JOHN: Man, I'm a tech guy, so I love being a part of this process and being in this industry. Some of the biggest things I see coming down the pipeline are one-click or headless ecommerce. A lot of folks have been talking about it. It's an ecommerce experience where you literally push one button and you're able to purchase, similar to what Amazon has and a lot of these sites that are coming out, but it actually works across the entire internet. That's something I've been hearing a lot of buzz about. In regards to the education side of digital, I'm really excited about it. As we move or shift into this new world dynamic, a lot of people are realizing that traditional college degrees might not necessarily be the best bet for us all. There are just so many options. I have my Bachelor's, but there's just so many different opportunities now. You have all of these educators, people like myself and yourself, who are great and skilled and adept that can create courses and teach other people our processes and the things we're doing. So, I'm really excited for the digital education frontier, I guess we could call it. But I think a lot of people are going to start segueing or moving towards that because it's super affordable. You can buy $500, $1,000, $50 bucks for these courses and learn these tangible skills that can pay you well into the six figures. So, I'm ultimately excited for that. ROB: Do you have some of your current projects or future projects in that online education space? JOHN: Yeah, we have a few resources. My biggest thing is providing value, value, value, value up front so that way you can position yourself as a thought leader, you can gain the trust of the people, they actually take your advice and leverage it and use it, and then creating more high-level, detailed courses for those people that are really trying to dive in heavily. We have a couple courses. We have a Web Design Studio Accelerator, which is for people that want to start their own web design accelerator, and then I have other job templates and SOP courses that people can leverage to learn and apply these skills. ROB: Solid. The SOP courses seem like something you can even also show to your team for training. JOHN: Oh yeah, that's what we do. We probably have 100+ videos for our team. We have one business – it's called IllustratorHub.com; the whole business runs on an SOP. I don't do anything with the business. It's automatically updated. Our team manages it, and it's just a great platform and a great example of creating these operating procedures in your business so that way you can thrive. ROB: Wow, that's excellent. Looping back to one thing you mentioned earlier – and I think I let it go a little bit too quickly; you mentioned beyond Webflow and WordPress – we dug into those differences there – but you also mentioned that you do work on the Shopify platform. If you look at their stock, they're not quite Zoom, but they're pretty close. This seems to have been a fairly banner year for that approachable “get an ecommerce store online” platform. What have you seen in terms of either how clients are investing differently in Shopify now or people who are putting stores online that hadn't quite gotten around to it yet? JOHN: I'm glad you brought up the Shopify stock, man, because it makes me feel like I'm Warren Buffett out here. [laughs] I bought 20 shares when it was like $60 bucks because I believed in the company and I saw what they were doing. With Shopify, I think, like you said, this year is their year. So many people are home. They want to start a business. They want something that's easy, that they can leverage, that they can create a high quality product. And that's what Shopify does. You look at some of the top stores, you have Kylie Jenner's Cosmetics, you have Allbirds, I think Warby Parker at one point was on Shopify. You have all these major brands running through this platform. It just goes to show you that it's made for commerce. People that are starting out like, “I want to sell some t-shirts” can open up a Shopify store, they can integrate it with Teelaunch, and then they can have these high-quality print on demand products with their own logo, their own brand on it. It's really low cost out of the gate. You can test and you can create this MVP, or minimum viable product, as Eric Ries would say, the writer of The Lean Startup, and ultimately you can really build your own brand for less than $1,000 bucks. ROB: Is Teelaunch a Shopify plug-in, or how does it work? JOHN: Yes, it's a Shopify app. They have hundreds of products – teacups, t-shirts. They even have air fresheners. It's ridiculous. [laughs] ROB: CafePress used to sort of let you do this, but you were listing stuff on their site. This is your own brand store. You can have your custom underpants, whatever you want. JOHN: Exactly. And they fulfill on your behalf, so if someone goes on your website and your shirt is $24.99, they go and buy that shirt – the app is integrated, so as soon as they make that purchase, it pushes to Teelaunch, they charge you the $12, $10 for the shirt and then the shipping, and then you take the rest for your profit. Then they ship it on your behalf to the customer, so you don't even have to touch the inventory. ROB: Very, very cool. John, when people want to find you and when they want to find 5Four Digital, where should they go to look you up? JOHN: They can find me at JohnDSaunders.co. That's where all of my resources and guides are. Also, I'm on Facebook and Instagram @JohnDSaunders, and that's pretty much where I'm at. ROB: Excellent. What's the “D” for in John D. Saunders? JOHN: David. ROB: Excellent. Perfect. JOHN: I have that because there's a famous ESPN newscaster who passed away a few years ago and his name is John Saunders. So, I had to put that “D” in there to add a little difference. ROB: Yep, I know that name. I remember that sportscaster. John D. Saunders of 5Four Digital, thank you for coming on the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. JOHN: Rob, thank you for having me, man. I'm happy to be here. ROB: Thank you much. Be well. Bye. JOHN: You too. 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.
Join us as we discuss English serial killer and necrophiliac: John "Can't Do It" Christie. Learn about how he murdered several women in the Notting Hills community in the 1940s and 1950s and about his little Lady Cemetery where he buried the bodies. Did I mention the weird affinity for corpses yet? Oh...I kinda did, I guess. Yeah. He was into that shit.Be sure to subscribe/rate/review and why not go ahead and satisfy your curiosity and check out our Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/terriblepeopledoingterriblethings. We appreciate the continued support! Music adapted from Rafael Krux (https://filmmusic.io/artists/rafael-krux) is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
John: This is Doctor John Dacey with my weekly podcast New Solutions to the Anxiety Epidemic. Today, I have an old friend of mine, by the name of Mark. He’s going o talk to us about his own experiences with Anxiety. Good morning, Mark. How are you? Mark: Good, John. How are you? John: Fine. First of all, I’d like you to tell us a little about yourself. What work have you done and where are you at today? Mark: I was born and brought up in Massachusetts. I was in the family business, I became a truck driver for 35 years and most recently my company filed for bankruptcy. A note to my listeners: When I interviewed Mark, I had no idea which of the 8 types of anxiety he would say he had a problem with. He alleged that he had no problems with the first 7, only a serious problem with the last one. So I’m going to skip that part of our interview and go right to the last type of anxiety: Post-traumatic stress disorder. John: Having been through an extremely stressful situation and sometimes getting flashbacks from it. Mark: Maybe. John: Can you tell us a little more about that? Mark: The death of a parent. John: Oh, of course. And which parent was that? Mark: Mother. 1973. John: Ok. You say this was ] traumatic for you. Why was this such a hard thing for you to deal with, if you’d be willing to share with us? Mark: Growing up without a mother I was just a young boy. John: How old were you? Mark: I was 13 years old. John: Oh that’s really terrible. Can you tell us how she died? Mark: She died in bed. She was a sick woman, but she died at the age of 49. John: Oh, that’s really sad. It was more than just very sad for you. You think it might have been traumatic. Mark: Yeah I think it was traumatic for me. John: Is it still traumatic? Like, do you miss her terribly every day? Or have you gotten more used to it? Mark: I’ve gotten used to it. John: How do you think you got to the place where you felt pretty used to it? Mark: Can I give you credit. John: Sure. Mark: When I met you, you were just a man at an AA meeting, and then when I was 10 years sober, then we talked. John: You don’t mind saying that you were my client for a while. Mark: Not if you don’t mind. John: No I don’t. I’d love to take the credit. So we talked about your mother, didn’t we? Mark: We did. John: Can you tell us a little bit about — was that successful? Do you feel like you were able to do better after that? Mark: I dealt with my pain with alcohol and booze and I was at a crossroads in my sobriety and you helped me through that without drinking. John: That’s terrific. I’m really proud of you and I think 34 years is an incredible achievement. Do you have any children? Mark: None. John: Ok. Who is the person you are the closest to, would you say? Mark: My oldest brother. John: So he went through the same trauma. How old was he when your mother died? Mark: He was probably 15. John: Do you think he had a really hard time with it also? Mark: No- Yes. I think he had a hard time but he picked a different avenue to deal with his pain. John: Okay. I’m not going to pry into that. What about your father? Was your father around at this time? Mark: My father passed away 3 years ago at the age of 97. John: Oh my God. 97 that’s . . . So how old was he roughly when your mother died? Mark: He was a few years older I believe. John: So around 50 years old. Mark: Yes. John: Was he helpful to you in dealing with such a young kid to lose his mother? Was he helpful to you? Mark: He would’ve been, but I didn’t know how to express myself. John: So he would’ve been there for you but you just weren’t able to tell him about it? Mark: Correct. John: This was pretty much something you kept to yourself. Mark: Correct. John: Did the therapy help the most because you were able to talk about her? Mark: Among other things, yes. I can handle death better. I don’t need to drink or drug. I can walk through the pain. John: And you give a lot of credit to Alcoholics Anonymous for that? Mark: Among other things. John: It’s often occurred to me that I feel sort of sorry for people that aren’t alcoholics because it’s such a wonderful club. It’s such a great deal of help. The 12 steps says that if somebody is hurting and they’re a fellow alcoholic, you have to help them. All over the world, I’ve traveled quite a lot and if I ever got into any trouble, I call up AA and they got an English-speaking person on the phone for me. Several times I’ve met with them, several times I just talk to them on the phone but it’s a wonderful club to be a member of. Don’t you agree? Mark: I agree. John: Well, Mark, thank you so much for talking with me today. I appreciate it and I wish you the very best. From my own life, briefly, about post-traumatic stress disorder. Not my own. If you listen to podcast 3 you know the story of the fire that happened to my family that killed my mother and two brothers and two sisters. The next day, the local newspaper, The Binghampton Press, had published on the front page on the center at the top of the paper a photograph that was the most poignant I think I’ve ever seen. It is a picture of our driveway next to our burned down house with five body bags lined up on it and a very good friend of our family’s father, the Rev. Leo Crawley, standing with his hat in his hand. Next to him, kneeling on the ground, is my uncle, who is also a Catholic priest. He was delivering the last rights to the bodies and in the picture, one of the body bags has been opened somewhat and he’s reaching in, as all priests giving the last rights have to do, and he put a blessing on the chard bodies of one of my family. I don’t know of course which one. This is with his right hand and with his left hand, he’s got his hand up to his mouth, and he just looks the epitome of the grieving person. Six months later he was dead, and I would hear stories about him going into the hospital and coming back out again. I asked one of the nuns who took care of him at the local Catholic hospital. I asjed a nurse what was the matter with him and she said, “Oh he has some kind of stomach disorder.” I have never heard anybody say exactly what his problem was but I can only assume that it was alcoholism and that he had to go in the hospital from time to time to get straightened out. The nuns of course were very good to him. He was the head of Catholic Charities for upstate New York. It was a huge job. I remember that when I went into the seminary to become a priest myself after high school, I had to go and visit the bishop in Syracuse upstate New York. He never asked me any questions about myself, but only about my uncle and how he was doing. The bishop said, “He’s a wonderful director of Catholic Charities. He does a great job, but I’m very worried about him because he’s sick so much.” This is only by way of saying that not only is PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, the most serious of all the types of anxiety, but it actually can be a killer. It can be as much of a killer as the Corona Virus. And it got my poor uncle. I remember when I was going into the seminary, I went to see him and he said to me, “John, don’t do it. It’s a very hard life. Don’t do it.” I was amazed. I thought he was a very happy priest, but it was very clear to me that he was not. I think that this having to give Extreme Unction as it’s called, the final rights to my family, just pushed him over the edge. I’m sorry to tell you such a sad story but often times anxiety can be a very serious problem. I’ll talk to you next week.
John: Hi this is Doctor John Dacey with my weekly podcast New Solutions to the Anxiety Epidemic. Today, I am being revisited be one of my best colleagues and also respondents to this podcast. Her name is Doctor Elizabeth Bracher and she and I teach a course together. We’re hoping to teach it this fall. The last time we met, she talked about separation anxiety among college students. Today, she’s going to talk about some of the other anxieties that college students experience. I just want to say, “good morning to you.” Biz: Good morning, John. Thanks for having me. John: I was very very happy you were willing to come back again. What do you have to say about social anxiety among students? By that, I mean nervousness about going to parties, nervousness about speaking in public, raising your hand in class, that sort of thing. Especially under the circumstances that we have now. I presume you’ve been teaching by zoom, is that correct? Biz: Yes, I’ve been teaching two classes of freshmen and one class of seniors, so I have students at both ends of the spectrum. John: What’s the difference between them? That would be quite interesting. Biz: Yeah, it is interesting. Well, no one is going to parties these days unless they’re virtual zoom parties, right? I think that there was a lot of anxiety that I didn’t quite anticipate in the first weeks of social distancing and when we were sending students back to campus. It was interesting that our university made the announcement on Wednesday after classes finished that day, so about 5 o’clock, they made the announcement that students had 4 days to get themselves home. Unlike many schools, we were already through spring break so students were asked to pack up their stuff and go home for the remainder of the semester. My immediate concern was for the freshmen, my first-year students because what I was starting to see in them was a trust in the process where things start to come together in the last few weeks of their first year. At this point, they were back from spring break, they were about to start the housing selection for their sophomore year, they were committing themselves to majors - either recommitting after taking some classes and feeling confident in their first decision of major, or they were confident in having some experience in the labs saying, “I thought this was going to work and I’m not so interested in this major as I thought“ and their willingness to explore a little and try some other things out. They’ve also been through a semester so they’ve received grades and learned how to study for exams so the exam period that was approaching wasn’t as concerning or anxiety-provoking as the first semester, and friendships were starting to solidify. Clubs and organizations were starting to plan for next year, they were applying for executive board positions in organizations and clubs, they are committing their time. Everything was starting to come together. It’s coincidentally that here in the northeast, the weather was also getting nicer and the days are getting longer and winter was subsiding. For a whole lot of reasons, the spring semester is very important to the transition to college. So many people think that it’s the fall semester, but really everything starts to even out and fall into place by spring semester to the point where the majority of first-year students go home after their first year and start to feel like their university is a home. I’m not trying to submit that they’re trying to trade one home for another but it’s a place where they finally feel confident and secure. John: Let me interrupt you there for a second. Can you make a distinction between reasonable fears that they have and anxieties which are unreasonable concerns about the future? Biz: Right, well some students certainly have some reasonable concern about how this is all going to play out because they’re not in their same orbits. They might be on the other end of the country or the other end of the world in different communities. Unless you’re going to a particularly small focused conservatory or such, most of the students in this country will go to a university or college that’s bigger than any place they’ve ever taken classes before. Whether it’s a big state university of 50,000 kids or a smaller liberal arts private school that’s 2,000-3,000 kids. In most cases, it’s still the biggest school they’ve ever gone to. Some of that concern is reasonable. It’s anxiety only in that it’s new. But then there’s the anxiety that comes with worrying and the true sense of anxiety is worrying about what might happen even though it’s not likely. For example, “I’m worried I might never make friends.” You and I know that’s an extreme anxiety about belonging, but over the course of their time, they will all develop a sense of friendship with some core people in their lives, so there absolutely is a distinction. What I noticed in the first weeks of the pandemic was that the real anxieties started to come out and they showed themselves very quickly. That Thursday that I went back to my office to start to wrap things up, I had a line of students outside of my office wanting to discuss - they didn’t even know what they wanted to discuss but they needed my attention and they needed to voice their worries and concerns. So much so that some were wringing their hands and were physically agitated and others, you couldn’t even tell what their response was. They were almost paralyzed with not knowing how to put one foot in front of the other because this was so unexpected and so out of the ordinary and there was no road map for it. What people all over the country were telling them was, “Yeah, it’s bad but oh you poor seniors and oh you poor freshmen. You never had to be pulled away from your university like this.” That provoked a lot of anxiety. The students that I saw that were the most immediately troubled were students that were struggling with eating disorders, both male and female, and students that I had no idea of their eating disorder or their eating struggle. And many of them also admitted to me struggles with OCD. John: OCD being obsessive-compulsive disorder. Biz: Exactly. What I surmised by that was this lack of control. That suddenly this structure that they have always known was being pulled out from under them and they didn’t have time to think about it, many of them needed plane tickets they couldn’t organize and put their stuff away and move out. I have a son who’s in college and we ended up taking most of his roommates, he had seven roommates, we took most of their bedding home, we cleaned their kitchen out and everything because they weren’t planning on leaving. There was no order or system to it. They were just being told you need to leave in a couple of days and get home and then we’ll start online in a week and we don’t know what that will look like but just hold on. First-year students were concerned about that because they were being pulled from their university and they were just starting to get a groove and seniors were equally distraught because they didn’t see anything tethering them to the future. They were leaving campus for good. John: Can you say anything about males and females being different? Who had the most trouble? Biz: I would have thought that there was going to be a difference between the sexes and I saw equally troubling in male and female. The only difference was that I had a few females come to me because their roommates or friends brought them to me and said, “You need to talk to her. You need to process this.” And the males suffered quietly because they don’t want to admit their weakness, whereas women will talk about their emotions a little more easily. If men were brought to me it was by a female student, a female friend, but the numbers were about equal. That was at first surprising to me but then I thought to my self, “Of course. Eating disorders and OCD are about trying to have control of your life in hopes of limiting the possibility of catastrophe of some sort. John: Exactly. Biz: When I look back on it, it seemed a lot more obvious than I had expected. The other interesting thing to me was comparing the first-year students to the seniors. Over time my first-year students transitioned back home easier and into distance learning easier than the seniors did. John: I have to stop you there because time has run out but I’m hoping you can come back next week and talk some more about this fascinating view that you have of college students.
John: Hi this is Doctor John Dacey with my weekly podcast New Solutions to the Anxiety Epidemic. Today, I have a friend of mine, Patrick, who is going to talk about his own anxiety and what he’s done about them. How are you doing, Patrick? Patrick: Very good, John. Great to be here. John: Well thank you for coming. I’m just going to name the 8 kinds of anxiety and let’s start off with you saying which one has affected you the most. Is that ok? Patrick: Absolutely. John: Thank you. Those are simple phobias, which we won’t talk about those since everyone has them, separation anxiety, social anxiety, generalized anxiety, those are the 4 sort of lower ones, more common. A little less common are the 4 more difficult ones: agoraphobia, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Do any of these ring a bell with you, Patrick? Patrick: For me, it’d be a panic disorder. Yes sir. John: So tell me, what does it feel like when you get a panic attack? Patrick: Sure. I think to get a better sense of how it happened to me, what it’s been like, I’ll talk a bit about my experiences in recent years and where it lead me and where I’ve come since then. John: That would be great Patrick. That’s just what we’re looking for. Patrick: A little bit about me: I’m a senior neuroscience major at Boston College, almost graduated now, from Massachusetts. I love playing golf, love my friends, love my family, especially my pug, Charlie. For me, I had a very happy upbringing, very happy childhood. John: Where did you grow up? Patrick: Attleborough, Massachusetts. So not too far from Boston. My brothers, best two friends. Very loving and supporting parents. Middle school, high school, college, it was all very good. I loved it. Things for me came to a standstill in the middle of my junior year. So this is end of 2018 to 2019. This is when I started my experience with panic. So I never experienced anything like that before. At the time, when it first started, I really had no idea what to do. Everything was so unfamiliar and so unexpected. I didn’t think that there was any way that whatever was happening could possibly happen to me. John: Can you describe it? What did it feel like? Patrick: So I’ve thought a lot about it and what it’s like when it happens. As much as I describe it in hindsight, it’s always very different when it’s happening in the moment. It’s a lot of confusion. I can really never quite understand what’s going on when it happens. It’s a lot of overwhelming sensations. I really just lose any sense of control over what’s going on at the current moment. John: Does it come on you all of a sudden? Patrick: Yep and a lot of times for me it happened in recurring places so if I had a tendency to have a panic attack in one certain type of location, then anything that was similar or the same type of location, then I would feel that sense of panic again when I would return. So for me, my solution, early, was avoidance. I went on a pretty crazy string of avoiding things that did or may cause panic. I mentioned this to some people where I had times where I couldn’t go to certain classrooms. I felt like I had a few panic attacks in those classes and I would do anything to get avoid those classes and those places and I hated that feeling. John: Who wouldn’t? It’s an awful thing. Patrick: Another one was cars. Here I am, I’m 21 at the time, I’m a college kid, I’ve been happy my entire life, I’ve got tons of great friends, I’m handsome, modest -that’s a joke, but things are getting out of control. I feel like I can’t even get into a car. That’s when I started to think, “that’s really no way for me to be living.” Mentally, emotionally, academically, it’s affecting all parts of my life and in the back of my mind, I knew that but still, I didn’t quite know what to do about it. It basically took me hitting rock bottom, for lack of a better term, to finally make a change. I mentioned this to you, I have this friend who has this quote that he always says to me: “You know what they say about rock bottom?” I know how it goes but I’ll tell him, “What do they say?” and he says, “It makes a great foundation.” So he’s always telling me that after his favorite sports team loses or he loses a bet or something. I never really took this quote seriously, but rock bottom for me was about February 2019 so close to a year ago or so. Again, junior in college, I’m 21, supposedly the best years of my life right now but I walk out to the reservoir at Boston College. It’s February but it’s beautiful. It was one of those very lucky February days. It’s sunny, not a cloud in the sky. I sit on the bench and there’s kids laughing, there’s dogs going by, all these people. You really can’t picture a better day but I vividly remember myself sitting on a bench thinking, “I’m probably the only one thinking about God right now.” I’m sitting there, I’m born and raised Catholic - Catholic in elementary and high school, Jesuit college, mass on Sundays and that beautiful February day, I’ll never forget asking if anyone was listening up there. For me really, that was the first time I had had doubt about faith in my life, about spirituality. I learned much later that doubt is the very thing that makes faith just so beautiful. Eventually, I realized my friend was right, and rock bottom can make a great foundation, so right there, that was the perfect place to do something and make a change. That’s how basically anxiety lead me to rock bottom. Obviously now, I’m in one of the happiest places I’ve ever been. John: When you say “make a change,” what kind of change did you make? Patrick: It was a process of building a few habits, I think. After consulting with people, after telling other people about what was going on, and seeking help for myself, I had to build a few habits to get me back to where I am now. One of the first ones was I had to know that I was very far from alone in this process. Early, hearing other people’s stories, seeing other people who have gone on to live happy and successful lives, was such a great source of comfort and peace. I hope mine will maybe be one for someone too. The second was I really had to tell myself that there’s not a damn thing wrong with me. There’s really nothing more than that. One of the big faults, especially during times of panic, is thinking something’s wrong with you and thinking that you’re different or thinking that “I can’t do anything about this.” I keep telling myself that nothing’s wrong. The third habit was patience. I really wanted to rush things back to a normal version of life, if there ever was such a thing, but I had to be patient with myself. I had to let myself take little steps, whatever I could do each day, just get a little better. Things aren’t gonna go away immediately, but just be patient. It all came down to building a habit of learning. Learning to be grateful for every experience in the past and know that whatever happened in the past, I can use that for today, right now, for tomorrow, and for the future. John: Patrick, can you say a few words more about why you think this worked? First of all, do you have a theory about why you got this in the first place? Secondly, have you got a theory about why this solution worked for you? Patrick: I’ve thought about it quite a bit. I’ve mentioned this, I really thought this was something that would never happen to me. Basically, I’m stubborn as hell so, at the early on, I very much bought into the stigma of being a man in the sense of if you have a problem, I have to figure it out myself. I didn’t see other people around me who had this similar type of problem. I didn’t know that this was going on to other people. I thought if this is going on, I’ll just figure it out by myself. John: You must have felt kind of weird about the whole thing too, right? Patrick: Absolutely. That’s another big fault that I had was thinking that it was only me. I really don’t know where it came from. I never would’ve imagined it really. So it’s interesting. It’s interesting how things happen. That’s life, I guess. You never know where life is gonna take you. John: That’s for sure. I can tell you almost with complete certainty that it’s coming from a part of your brain called the amygdala. The amygdala sets off a lot of alarms for reasons we can’t really understand because the amygdala has no contact with logic or reason. When it gets fired off, we’re never really sure exactly what the cause of that is, but you can be somewhat aware that it’s coming if you’re on the lookout for it. It sounds to me like you began to realize when one was coming on sooner. Is that correct? Patrick: Oh absolutely. Over time, I’d realize that panic is really such an interesting experience. There’s a really unique paradox in the way that I’m understood to how to deal with it I believe that for me, panic, its biggest weakness is entirely disguised in what makes it seems so bad. It seems so bad because it makes you feel like you’re losing control. It’s completely taking over. In the way I feel has worked best for me to sort of deal with it is sort of let it run its course. I develop a mantra of not caring whether or not I have panic and whether or not I have anxiety in these certain situations. I say, “so what? I’ll be ok. I’ve been fine every single other time.” So I say, “who cares?” John: There’s an expert on this whole thing by the name of Claire Weekes and she calls this experience “floating.” You imagine yourself floating above yourself watching yourself and saying, “what a shame that that poor person is having this tough time.” But its not exactly you. You float above the whole thing. It sounds like that’s part of this also. Patrick: I absolutely get at the Dacey motto of not caring what other people think because they aren’t. I know nobody’s thinking about me if I’m sitting in a class and maybe I’m having a panic attack. I say, “who cares what they think of me anyway. See me in 20 minutes and I’ll be perfectly fine.” It’s worked. It really has. I give that anxiety no more power over me than it deserves and it’s worked really well. John: That’s wonderful, Pat. There are some other questions that I’d love to ask you but our time has run out on us here. Would you be willing to come back sometime and let me ask you some more questions? Patrick: I’d love to. Absolutely. John: That’s wonderful. Thank you so very much. Patrick: Thank you, John. I appreciate it.
John: A good friend of mine, Nancy Alloway, has been a teacher for all her career, and she’s going to be talking about her own and her fellow teachers’ anxieties. Let me start off by asking Nancy to give you just a thumbnail sketch of her career. Where did you teach? Nancy: So I taught for 35 years in public and private schools in the United States and I taught 1st through 5th grade. I enjoyed my teaching very much. John: Thank you. I wonder if you could tell me about the kinds of things teachers typically are concerned about these days. Make a distinction between reasonable worries like the school not having enough money to do what it wants to do and anxieties which are fears that are probably exaggerated or not entirely true. When you think about your fellow teachers, what are some of the major things that they’re concerned about that would probably count as anxieties? Nancy: I think most of the teachers that I have worked with would say that the emphasis on testing creates a lot of anxiety among the teachers, the students, and the administrators. I think that testing is one of the things that bring out maybe the worst in people because we’re all trying to do the best for our students but when that means testing, prep, and examining past years test scores and looking at improvements and so much emphasis on the data, I think that that’s a very big anxiety producer, especially among young teachers. John: I’m not surprised to hear that. I was reading in a report the other day that something like 150 teachers in a southern major city were fired because they were caught changing the responses on the test and the superintendent, as I was reading the article at least, had been the supervisor of the year nationally the year before and this year she’s going to jail because she helped the teachers change the results. What occurred to me is that if I were a 45-year-old teacher with a master’s degree and I’ve got one of those classes that just aren’t working very well and my students do very poorly on the state exams, I could be fired for that. I suddenly realized that if I were fired at 45 with a master’s degree in education, I not only probably wouldn’t get a white-collar job, but I couldn’t get a blue-collar job either. I probably would be unhirable. That’s a very scary kind of thing because suppose I have the standard two kids and a family. What do I do about it? So I could see why teachers would be worried about that. One of the things I want to talk to you about is that I volunteered at Nancy’s class for some lengthy time because I wanted to learn about 4th graders and what kinds of things made them nervous and what made them edgy. One of the first things I noticed in Nancy’s classroom is that the teacher’s chair was piled high with books and teaching materials and Nancy never sat down the whole time. Why is that Nancy? Nancy: Well I didn’t sit down because I was always interacting with students. I think any good teacher does that. In 4th grade, kids are moving around and I was moving around with them and I wasn’t the kind of teacher who ever sat at my desk. During independent reading, for example, I would go conference with individual kids and any other time that they were working independently I was interacting with a small group or someone so I sat at a table with students but I never sat at my desk when students were in a classroom. John: I want to go back to the new teachers’ anxiety for a moment. Can you think of other things that they were nervous about besides the testing? What other concerns would new teachers have? Nancy: I think in any high-pressure school system the concern with the way parents interact with the teachers and the pressure that parents put on teachers is pretty immense and until you learn how to listen and understand and take time to not be defensive and learn how to control that until you learn to get some of those skills under your belt, it’s very very intimidating for young teachers. John: You just said one of the words that certainly occurs to me and that’s defensiveness. When I was a kid if you came home and said, “the teacher hit me,” you’d probably get hit again because the teacher was God in the classroom and whatever the teacher said was the case, they believed. That’s not true anymore, is it? Nancy: No, I don’t think so. I think that parents have anxieties and that build up on wanting their kid to be the best and to do the right thing and to be the best student and that sometimes comes across as really pushing teachers to do things with the kids that they either aren’t ready for or is just not something that is done in the school. For example, in the high power system that I taught in, there were students who were really doing all kinds of math outside the school so when they came into 4th grade, they weren’t in a position to understand the way we were teaching math. Parents didn’t believe in it so there was a lot of pressure on teachers to instead of extend what they were learning but to add more to onto the students’ plate and I think i learned to handle that by talking and listening and trying to explain the philosophy and what we were doing and how I was extending creative ways of doing math with kids. But a new teacher has a lot of trouble making that statement because they don’t have a lot of experience working with that kind of parents that really are pushy. They always want the best for their kid and I can really understand that but as a teacher, you often sometimes see the child in a different light and sometimes that light is that there’s a lot of anxiety on some kids that are really pushed in any area. John: I know that the two major areas that students get tested in and therefore you get tested in, in a way, is language arts skills and what is now called STEM. One thing that I’ve heard about from a number of sources is the time you and your class started a pretzel manufacturing unit You researched how to make the pretzels, and you made the dough, you shaped them, you put salt on them, you baked them, you packaged them, and then you had them figure out who you were going to sell them to and how you were going to sell them. Then you had to give a report to the superintendent of schools. They don’t let you do that anymore, do they? Nancy: Well, I haven’t been teaching lately and I think the last 10 years - even 15 years ago they started the board of health idea that kids would make something in school, even though we were really really careful about cleanliness, I think there were probably reasons that’s true, but it was a fantastic learning experience and kids loved it. We sold stock in the company and I had kids come back and tell me 10 years later that they went into business because they really liked making money in the pretzel company. What we did was we earned the money but I said as the CEO that you had to figure out a way to give some of this money back. So we would come to the consensus where we would put this money for a good social action cause. And it was really kind of fun and kids learned a lot and they loved it and they loved school. We did a lot of it before school but some of it happened in school hours too. John: This sort of brings us over to the anxiety that the administrators feel because I couldn’t agree with you more, that sounds like such a wonderful idea but because they’re only testing in what we used to call English and Mathematics, those are the two big subjects for teaching - and science too, I suppose. Then the superintendents and principals are not going to want you to do such a broad-brushed activity because it’s not clear how that’s going to show up on the test and I think that’s too bad. Nancy: Yeah, I agree with you. John: Can you think of anything that you yourself had to deal with in terms of anxiety. Was there anything special that made you nervous in your years of teaching? Nancy: Well, I know that there are some teachers who can go home and stop thinking about students, and I really had a hard time doing that. If I had a child who had special needs or was really bright but wasn’t performing or I didn’t quite understand what was going on with them, sometimes those kids would really make me lose sleep because I would wake up thinking about them and then I couldn’t go back to sleep so I think that was an anxiety that was probably stronger when I was younger but definitely became something I would think about. And of course, if you had parents with situations that were difficult I think that sometimes caused anxiety just thinking about “what do I do?” and “how do I handle this situation?” I really do think I got better at that as I had more experience. John: Okay. Well, as I told you before we’re trying to keep these interviews between 10 and 15 minutes and we’re about at that point right now so I’m going to release you. So thank you so much for participating in this and I hope you come back and talk to us again sometime. Nancy: Of course, John. My pleasure.
Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Ward Bell Special Guests: Ilya Bodrov & Roman Kutanov In this episode, the Adventures in Angular panel talks with Ilya and Roman. Ilya is a professor, writer, and developer. Roman is a cofounder, and a CEO, of a small startup company. Roman is making an application for small businesses, and he also was a CEO of a Russian startup, too. Check-out today’s episode where the panel talks to the guests about Angular, their startup companies, Test Cafe, among others. Show Topics: 1:20 – Guests’ backgrounds. 2:31 – Chuck: Let’s talk about Angular. In your opinion why is it a good option for startups? 2:55 – Guest: Angular is a very good choice. 3:55 – Guest: If you are not familiar with these concepts or a seasoned developer then it can be difficult and complex to get started. It really depends on what you are trying to build. 4:47 – Chuck: Once you get rolling with it then you run into limitations with it. If you need something simple and fast it’s really nice. 5:08 – Guest: Yes. Trying to find your market niche. Angular is very simple to transfer. Angular has a great community. There are some problems, and we know it. Like the whole mess with versions also... 6:27 – John: Can you elaborate a little? 6:34 – Guest: Yes, if you want to be in the latest technologies...so sometimes you get into a situation when you wan to have some libraries installed and you cannot do that. If you are on one version and this one isn’t supported, then it was a huge mess. 7:43 – Guest adds in more comments. 8:26 – Guest: Currently I have Angular 1. It is too complicated to rewrite. 8:40 – Guest adds comments. 8:57 – John: There would have to be a compelling reason for me to go to Angular 6 at this point. Going from 4 to 5 or 5 to 6 – the one feature – boy that is so amazing. To have it to update your app, and update your code then that’s awesome. If you didn’t know that a command changed then you were in trouble. I agree version control has always been a challenge. 10:20 – Guest: What I like about Angular is the community – it drives it in the right direction. They try to make it more productive and that’s what I like. 10:43 – Chuck: What is it like to run a startup? 10:56 – Guest: I started to write the application. What you see is what you get. I use Angular 1. JavaScript is a heavier language. 14:54 – Guest adds comments. 16:02 – Panelist: What kind of server are you using for your startup? 16:19 – Guest: I have Angular 1 as a backhand. The main application right now is... 17:11 – Panelist: What has the experience been like for people? 17:26 – Guest: Yes... 17:32 – Panelist: What were the benefits of using Angular? 17:40 – Guest: Angular was very helpful. The performance is much better. Important for startups is to know how to write functionality. 18:53 – Panelist: What forms were you using? 19:01 – Guest: Template driven. In Angular 1, I created “what you see is what you get.” 19:52 – Panelist: I am torn about forms. The Reactive side but you move a lot of code that doesn’t feel all that intuitive to me. There are pros and cons of each, but it’s not exactly where I want it to be. I would love to mix the 2 together. Have you dealt with validation in the forms? 21:04 – Digital Ocean’s Advertisement. 21:41 – Guest: I have an editor. I send it to the client. Each input is having some sort of validation. 23:17 – Panelist: How do you make them look good? Yeah, I can do it but how does it not look generic? Do you have a layout? 23:53 – Guest: I throw it into the screen – I try to keep it simple. 25:04 – Panelist: That makes sense. I didn’t know if there was a crossover of complexity. I want a balance between... 25:38 – Panelist: Reactive or Template driven? 25:45 – Guest makes comments. You want to have some custom checking. 26:13 – Panelist: Why was it hard? 26:21 – Guest: Not sure...I experimented a lot. 27:27 – Panelist: I gave up on Reactive. One of the killers for me was the nested components. It seemed to fall apart in my hands. It was extremely difficult. The outer form lost contact to what was going on. That was one of the biggest decisions to walk away from Reactive all together. 28:25 – Guest: Now I remember why I dropped templates. 28:44 – Panelist: Not true, but it’s doable! It’s also easy! You have to know what’s going on. Let’s change the story on this – I don’t want to hijack the podcast. 30:55 – Panelist: It makes your ears stand up. John’s objection was that he was putting a lot of stuff into HTML. 32:43 – Panelist: Every time I see some try to decorate the HTLM – no you don’t have to do that. The rules aren’t there. There are exceptions, of course, but real validation is not screen validation. Interestingly, we have written one for this application. It belongs to Marcel. This isn’t Breeze specific – maybe we an get people to working on it. For sure, even if you didn’t have this framework, you can create one on your own. It turns out that it has more models than you think it does. 34:55 – Panelist: Aside from forms, what mattered in your app? 35:22 – Guest answers the question. 36:01 – Panelist: Lazy Loading. In some apps lazy loading doesn’t make sense in all areas. You don’t always have to use. 36:53 – Guest: Yes, when you work for your employer you sometimes have more time available. When you have a startup it’s a race. Your startup doesn’t have any money. 37:24 – Panelist: You had money? 37:33 – Guest: You have to try new things and makes things right. When users really start really using your application. You can fix everything and make the perfect app or you can learn new things about your users. What problems do that have? 38:50 – Panelist: Question asked. 39:40 – Guest answers question. 40:38 – Protractor. 41:51 – Problems that you/we ran into. 42:21 – Panelist: “We” are using Test Cafe. 42:58 – Cypress. 44:10 – You do not need web driver and... 44:29 – Test Cafe is free. 44:39 – I would pay ten’s of dollars to use a piece of software. It’s a budget buster. 45:15 – Sounds like you guys have a great product there. 45:24 – Thanks for having us. 45:30 – Chuck: Let’s go to picks! 45:39 – Code Badges! 46:13 – Picks! Links: Microsoft’s Azure JavaScript Ruby Angular Test Cafe Cypress Ilya’s GitHub Ilya’s SitePoint Ilya’s Twitter Roman’s Crunchbase Roman’s LinkedIn Roman’s Twitter Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job course Picks: Charles Microsoft Ignite Microsoft Connect Follow me on Twitter! Apple Event John Pipelines – Azure VS Code Ward Test Cafe Ilya Framework Event Roman Michael Seibel’s Building Product MLcourse.AI – October 1st next session starts – it’s free
Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Ward Bell Special Guests: Ilya Bodrov & Roman Kutanov In this episode, the Adventures in Angular panel talks with Ilya and Roman. Ilya is a professor, writer, and developer. Roman is a cofounder, and a CEO, of a small startup company. Roman is making an application for small businesses, and he also was a CEO of a Russian startup, too. Check-out today’s episode where the panel talks to the guests about Angular, their startup companies, Test Cafe, among others. Show Topics: 1:20 – Guests’ backgrounds. 2:31 – Chuck: Let’s talk about Angular. In your opinion why is it a good option for startups? 2:55 – Guest: Angular is a very good choice. 3:55 – Guest: If you are not familiar with these concepts or a seasoned developer then it can be difficult and complex to get started. It really depends on what you are trying to build. 4:47 – Chuck: Once you get rolling with it then you run into limitations with it. If you need something simple and fast it’s really nice. 5:08 – Guest: Yes. Trying to find your market niche. Angular is very simple to transfer. Angular has a great community. There are some problems, and we know it. Like the whole mess with versions also... 6:27 – John: Can you elaborate a little? 6:34 – Guest: Yes, if you want to be in the latest technologies...so sometimes you get into a situation when you wan to have some libraries installed and you cannot do that. If you are on one version and this one isn’t supported, then it was a huge mess. 7:43 – Guest adds in more comments. 8:26 – Guest: Currently I have Angular 1. It is too complicated to rewrite. 8:40 – Guest adds comments. 8:57 – John: There would have to be a compelling reason for me to go to Angular 6 at this point. Going from 4 to 5 or 5 to 6 – the one feature – boy that is so amazing. To have it to update your app, and update your code then that’s awesome. If you didn’t know that a command changed then you were in trouble. I agree version control has always been a challenge. 10:20 – Guest: What I like about Angular is the community – it drives it in the right direction. They try to make it more productive and that’s what I like. 10:43 – Chuck: What is it like to run a startup? 10:56 – Guest: I started to write the application. What you see is what you get. I use Angular 1. JavaScript is a heavier language. 14:54 – Guest adds comments. 16:02 – Panelist: What kind of server are you using for your startup? 16:19 – Guest: I have Angular 1 as a backhand. The main application right now is... 17:11 – Panelist: What has the experience been like for people? 17:26 – Guest: Yes... 17:32 – Panelist: What were the benefits of using Angular? 17:40 – Guest: Angular was very helpful. The performance is much better. Important for startups is to know how to write functionality. 18:53 – Panelist: What forms were you using? 19:01 – Guest: Template driven. In Angular 1, I created “what you see is what you get.” 19:52 – Panelist: I am torn about forms. The Reactive side but you move a lot of code that doesn’t feel all that intuitive to me. There are pros and cons of each, but it’s not exactly where I want it to be. I would love to mix the 2 together. Have you dealt with validation in the forms? 21:04 – Digital Ocean’s Advertisement. 21:41 – Guest: I have an editor. I send it to the client. Each input is having some sort of validation. 23:17 – Panelist: How do you make them look good? Yeah, I can do it but how does it not look generic? Do you have a layout? 23:53 – Guest: I throw it into the screen – I try to keep it simple. 25:04 – Panelist: That makes sense. I didn’t know if there was a crossover of complexity. I want a balance between... 25:38 – Panelist: Reactive or Template driven? 25:45 – Guest makes comments. You want to have some custom checking. 26:13 – Panelist: Why was it hard? 26:21 – Guest: Not sure...I experimented a lot. 27:27 – Panelist: I gave up on Reactive. One of the killers for me was the nested components. It seemed to fall apart in my hands. It was extremely difficult. The outer form lost contact to what was going on. That was one of the biggest decisions to walk away from Reactive all together. 28:25 – Guest: Now I remember why I dropped templates. 28:44 – Panelist: Not true, but it’s doable! It’s also easy! You have to know what’s going on. Let’s change the story on this – I don’t want to hijack the podcast. 30:55 – Panelist: It makes your ears stand up. John’s objection was that he was putting a lot of stuff into HTML. 32:43 – Panelist: Every time I see some try to decorate the HTLM – no you don’t have to do that. The rules aren’t there. There are exceptions, of course, but real validation is not screen validation. Interestingly, we have written one for this application. It belongs to Marcel. This isn’t Breeze specific – maybe we an get people to working on it. For sure, even if you didn’t have this framework, you can create one on your own. It turns out that it has more models than you think it does. 34:55 – Panelist: Aside from forms, what mattered in your app? 35:22 – Guest answers the question. 36:01 – Panelist: Lazy Loading. In some apps lazy loading doesn’t make sense in all areas. You don’t always have to use. 36:53 – Guest: Yes, when you work for your employer you sometimes have more time available. When you have a startup it’s a race. Your startup doesn’t have any money. 37:24 – Panelist: You had money? 37:33 – Guest: You have to try new things and makes things right. When users really start really using your application. You can fix everything and make the perfect app or you can learn new things about your users. What problems do that have? 38:50 – Panelist: Question asked. 39:40 – Guest answers question. 40:38 – Protractor. 41:51 – Problems that you/we ran into. 42:21 – Panelist: “We” are using Test Cafe. 42:58 – Cypress. 44:10 – You do not need web driver and... 44:29 – Test Cafe is free. 44:39 – I would pay ten’s of dollars to use a piece of software. It’s a budget buster. 45:15 – Sounds like you guys have a great product there. 45:24 – Thanks for having us. 45:30 – Chuck: Let’s go to picks! 45:39 – Code Badges! 46:13 – Picks! Links: Microsoft’s Azure JavaScript Ruby Angular Test Cafe Cypress Ilya’s GitHub Ilya’s SitePoint Ilya’s Twitter Roman’s Crunchbase Roman’s LinkedIn Roman’s Twitter Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job course Picks: Charles Microsoft Ignite Microsoft Connect Follow me on Twitter! Apple Event John Pipelines – Azure VS Code Ward Test Cafe Ilya Framework Event Roman Michael Seibel’s Building Product MLcourse.AI – October 1st next session starts – it’s free
Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Ward Bell Special Guests: Ilya Bodrov & Roman Kutanov In this episode, the Adventures in Angular panel talks with Ilya and Roman. Ilya is a professor, writer, and developer. Roman is a cofounder, and a CEO, of a small startup company. Roman is making an application for small businesses, and he also was a CEO of a Russian startup, too. Check-out today’s episode where the panel talks to the guests about Angular, their startup companies, Test Cafe, among others. Show Topics: 1:20 – Guests’ backgrounds. 2:31 – Chuck: Let’s talk about Angular. In your opinion why is it a good option for startups? 2:55 – Guest: Angular is a very good choice. 3:55 – Guest: If you are not familiar with these concepts or a seasoned developer then it can be difficult and complex to get started. It really depends on what you are trying to build. 4:47 – Chuck: Once you get rolling with it then you run into limitations with it. If you need something simple and fast it’s really nice. 5:08 – Guest: Yes. Trying to find your market niche. Angular is very simple to transfer. Angular has a great community. There are some problems, and we know it. Like the whole mess with versions also... 6:27 – John: Can you elaborate a little? 6:34 – Guest: Yes, if you want to be in the latest technologies...so sometimes you get into a situation when you wan to have some libraries installed and you cannot do that. If you are on one version and this one isn’t supported, then it was a huge mess. 7:43 – Guest adds in more comments. 8:26 – Guest: Currently I have Angular 1. It is too complicated to rewrite. 8:40 – Guest adds comments. 8:57 – John: There would have to be a compelling reason for me to go to Angular 6 at this point. Going from 4 to 5 or 5 to 6 – the one feature – boy that is so amazing. To have it to update your app, and update your code then that’s awesome. If you didn’t know that a command changed then you were in trouble. I agree version control has always been a challenge. 10:20 – Guest: What I like about Angular is the community – it drives it in the right direction. They try to make it more productive and that’s what I like. 10:43 – Chuck: What is it like to run a startup? 10:56 – Guest: I started to write the application. What you see is what you get. I use Angular 1. JavaScript is a heavier language. 14:54 – Guest adds comments. 16:02 – Panelist: What kind of server are you using for your startup? 16:19 – Guest: I have Angular 1 as a backhand. The main application right now is... 17:11 – Panelist: What has the experience been like for people? 17:26 – Guest: Yes... 17:32 – Panelist: What were the benefits of using Angular? 17:40 – Guest: Angular was very helpful. The performance is much better. Important for startups is to know how to write functionality. 18:53 – Panelist: What forms were you using? 19:01 – Guest: Template driven. In Angular 1, I created “what you see is what you get.” 19:52 – Panelist: I am torn about forms. The Reactive side but you move a lot of code that doesn’t feel all that intuitive to me. There are pros and cons of each, but it’s not exactly where I want it to be. I would love to mix the 2 together. Have you dealt with validation in the forms? 21:04 – Digital Ocean’s Advertisement. 21:41 – Guest: I have an editor. I send it to the client. Each input is having some sort of validation. 23:17 – Panelist: How do you make them look good? Yeah, I can do it but how does it not look generic? Do you have a layout? 23:53 – Guest: I throw it into the screen – I try to keep it simple. 25:04 – Panelist: That makes sense. I didn’t know if there was a crossover of complexity. I want a balance between... 25:38 – Panelist: Reactive or Template driven? 25:45 – Guest makes comments. You want to have some custom checking. 26:13 – Panelist: Why was it hard? 26:21 – Guest: Not sure...I experimented a lot. 27:27 – Panelist: I gave up on Reactive. One of the killers for me was the nested components. It seemed to fall apart in my hands. It was extremely difficult. The outer form lost contact to what was going on. That was one of the biggest decisions to walk away from Reactive all together. 28:25 – Guest: Now I remember why I dropped templates. 28:44 – Panelist: Not true, but it’s doable! It’s also easy! You have to know what’s going on. Let’s change the story on this – I don’t want to hijack the podcast. 30:55 – Panelist: It makes your ears stand up. John’s objection was that he was putting a lot of stuff into HTML. 32:43 – Panelist: Every time I see some try to decorate the HTLM – no you don’t have to do that. The rules aren’t there. There are exceptions, of course, but real validation is not screen validation. Interestingly, we have written one for this application. It belongs to Marcel. This isn’t Breeze specific – maybe we an get people to working on it. For sure, even if you didn’t have this framework, you can create one on your own. It turns out that it has more models than you think it does. 34:55 – Panelist: Aside from forms, what mattered in your app? 35:22 – Guest answers the question. 36:01 – Panelist: Lazy Loading. In some apps lazy loading doesn’t make sense in all areas. You don’t always have to use. 36:53 – Guest: Yes, when you work for your employer you sometimes have more time available. When you have a startup it’s a race. Your startup doesn’t have any money. 37:24 – Panelist: You had money? 37:33 – Guest: You have to try new things and makes things right. When users really start really using your application. You can fix everything and make the perfect app or you can learn new things about your users. What problems do that have? 38:50 – Panelist: Question asked. 39:40 – Guest answers question. 40:38 – Protractor. 41:51 – Problems that you/we ran into. 42:21 – Panelist: “We” are using Test Cafe. 42:58 – Cypress. 44:10 – You do not need web driver and... 44:29 – Test Cafe is free. 44:39 – I would pay ten’s of dollars to use a piece of software. It’s a budget buster. 45:15 – Sounds like you guys have a great product there. 45:24 – Thanks for having us. 45:30 – Chuck: Let’s go to picks! 45:39 – Code Badges! 46:13 – Picks! Links: Microsoft’s Azure JavaScript Ruby Angular Test Cafe Cypress Ilya’s GitHub Ilya’s SitePoint Ilya’s Twitter Roman’s Crunchbase Roman’s LinkedIn Roman’s Twitter Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job course Picks: Charles Microsoft Ignite Microsoft Connect Follow me on Twitter! Apple Event John Pipelines – Azure VS Code Ward Test Cafe Ilya Framework Event Roman Michael Seibel’s Building Product MLcourse.AI – October 1st next session starts – it’s free
GRP 62- Back on for this week's podcast is my good friend retired British Army Combat Medic Chantel Taylor. We discuss the process of becoming a Combat Medic in the British Army, as well as discuss some of her experience's as an Army Medic, and as a Medic working as a contractor in several conflict zones post military. The second conversation I had is with a former U.S. Navy Corpsman named Cris, who spent the duration of his career attached to the U.S. Marine Corps for multiple combat rotations into Afghanistan. Chris shares a story of a mass casualty event in which he was leading the quick reaction force into a potentially dangerous situation. Cris has since retired from the Navy and is now working with an incredible organization called the Global Surgical Medical Support Group (GSMSG). The GSMSG is an organization that provides medical training and treats soldiers fighting ISIS in Northern Iraq, and elsewhere. They have surgeons, doctors, and military medics working around the clock to train the Kurdish Peshmerga medics, as well as performing surgery on Peshmerga soldiers, as well as Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF). GSMSG is now recruiting SOF Medics for a trip into Syria. If you’re interesting apply on their website http://www.gsmsg.org Below is an excerpt. John: Can you share a story of a time you treated a casualty in combat? Cris: My second deployment to Afghanistan we were supporting the Afghan’s as they took the lead in the fighting over there. We had a lot of mass casualty events. A couple of their vehicles struck an IED and we were the quick reaction force. I was with three other Marines. They could all do the basic interventions to help save lives. Putting on tourniquets, occlusive dressings, needle decompressions. There were 20 casualties total. When we got there the scene was total chaos. We started triaging. Who's alive? who needs care right now? we got everything from a triple amputee to minor burns. Having all my Marines trained to the standard that they could all perform casualty care efficiently was great. Each of us had four casualties. We were able to get them medevac'd and taken to a higher level of care. Global Surgical Medical Support Group: http://www.gsmsg.org Facebook: Global Surgical Medical Support Group Instagram:Global_Surgical_Medical_Support_Group Chantel Taylor: Facebook: Battleworn Instagram: Mission_Critical
GRP 61- The one-year anniversary of the passing of Staff Sergeant Matthew McClintock. Matthew was an Army Special Forces Engineer Sergeant. With news of his passing circulating through the United States, the online military community really came together to contribute what they could to support his wife and young son. I remember feeling proud to see how Americans rallied around a gold star family. Co-hosting for this week's episode is Tim Kolczak, the creator of the Veterans Project. Our special guest for this episode is one of Matthew's Special Forces teammates a retired Special Forces Medic named Chris. Chris talked about some of his experiences with Matthew as they had gone through the Special Forces selection course together, and eventually ended up on the same team deploying into a war zone together. Chris took out the time out of his busy schedule to record with us while he's in Afghanistan working as a contractor. We also talked a lot about Trauma medicine, bleeding control, and how the lessons learned from 16 years of hard war on the medical side are now being applied back here in the States raising the level of knowledge to new heights. We also touched on the veteran transitional process and what veterans can do to be successful as a civilian. Below is an excerpt. John: Can you share a story of when you treated a casualty overseas? Chris: This happened within the first week that I'd set up a VSO (Village Stability Operations) site in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. I was still setting up my clinic, and it as told we had a patient at our gate. They told me he'd been shot in the foot. The guy comes in, and he'd been hit by an RPG. He had shrapnel sticking out of his skull. He had through and through gunshot wounds to both thighs. He had a partial evisceration of his stomach, so his intestines were sticking out. All of these obscure medical techniques that they teach you in the 18 Delta course (Special Forces Medical course) I got to experience on my very first week deployed. We got em out of there completely bundled up. The helo was there in 45 minutes he survived, and he was back with his unit when we left country 9 months later. I wasn't prepared, but the training I'd done over the past two years took over at that point. Chris: www.readywarriorllc.com Social Media: SpecialForcesMedics Tim Kolczak: www.thevetsproject.com Social Media: The Veterans Project Music provided by Caspian: www.caspianmusic.net
GRP 58-A lot has been going on in the past 24 hours with Russia's ambassador to Turkey being assassinated in Turkey, as well as a terrorist attack in Berlin. We are proud to announce that we're revamping the article section for the website and have put together a solid team of writers to release content very soon. On with me for this week's podcast is active duty Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD) Damian. We discuss what led him to join the Navy and talk about his career throughout. Damian gives you guys a combat story from his first rotation, and most importantly we talk about those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice. We discuss what it's like to lose someone you love, and how it can motivate you to work extremely hard as it has done for both of us. Below is an excerpt. John: Can you share a deployment story with the audience? Damian: This is from my first deployment. It taught me a lot. My platoon was supporting an ODA from 7th Special Forces Group clearing villages in Panjwayi in southern Afghanistan. We infilled at night. Had an Afghan Commando Unit with us. The commando's said they wanted to go through the doorway. Wasn't my favorite idea, but I said ok. They cleared the doorway. I went into the doorway and was doing a secondary clearance checking for IEDs. I didn't find anything so we made entry. The last two Afghans who went through initiated an IED. He was brought inside one guy lost 3 limbs, with the other guy suffering blast injuries. The MEDEVAC bird comes in and another IED went off as the bird came in. The rotor wash set it off. We were able to get a hoist dropped into our compound. The Afghan Commando didn't make it. We finished our mission and had to bring his body out upon ex-fil. Come day break I did a post-blast analysis of the IED strike. It went off right where I was kneeling. I have no idea how I didn't trip it. I saw it as a mistake, and it changed how I did my job in the future.
GRP 55-First and foremost I want to send my condolences to the family of Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott Cooper Dayton, 42. Dayton is the first American service member to die to fight the Islamic State in Syria was a decorated and highly experienced Navy explosive ordnance disposal specialist. On with me for this podcast is Australian SAS Major Dr. Dan Pronk. Dan did multiple deployments and was the regimental medical officer for both 2 commandos and SASR (Special Air Service Regiment). Dr. Dan completed his medical schooling on an Army scholarship and served the majority of his military career with Special Operations Units, including four tours of Afghanistan and over 100 combat missions. Dr. Dan was awarded the Commendation for Distinguished Service for his conduct in action on his second tour of Afghanistan. We discuss bleeding control, how to treat internal bleeding, and prolonged field care. Major Pronk is the Medical Director for Tac Med Australia which provides training for civilians, military, and police tactical units in Australia. Below is an excerpt from the podcast: John: Can you share a deployment story with the audience? Major Pronk: We'd been given the role of hitting a target in a known enemy stronghold. We went in with a significant force. The 160th SOAR dropped us in. We decided we'd land right on target and assessed that we would get engaged once we hit the deck. We ripped off the back and ran towards this target village. We had our compounds of interests pre-designated and within 30 seconds of landing, we got engaged by machine gun fire. We didn't sustain any serious casualties on the first night. We stayed on target for over 48 hours. It was near constant combat. They were probing us to assess where we were at. The second day we got into close quarters combat. Sustained some casualties but nothing too serious. We had a small detachment moving forward to clear a couple of machine gun positions. One our guys stepped on an IED. We put together a quick reaction force and got to them. I and another medic worked on him, unfortunately, he didn't make it. We lost our mate there. A fantastic warrior.