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Show Notes (contains affiliate links): Tailscale and Hamcation Recap   Check out Gigaparts for all the new Intellitron ham radio gear.  Use code "JOSH" for 10% off items on my page: https://www.gigaparts.com/nsearch/?lp=JOSH   On this week's episode of Ham Radio Crash Course, a podcast roughly based on amateur radio but mostly made up of responding to emails from listeners, hosted by Josh Nass - KI6NAZ and his reluctant wife, Leah - KN6NWZ, we talk about the MFJ Long Ranger Intellitron, Tailscale and Hamcation, Detroit ice flood and Apollo 13 the movie.    Announcements: HRCC Net - https://hrcc.link.   HRCC Campout - https://forms.gle/H2gdR1pH77EwrEpr9   Gigaparts Link (get 10% with code JOSH) - https://www.gigaparts.com/nsearch/?lp=JOSH   The HRCC Coffee Club has arrived! https://hamtactical.coffee/shop   Ham Radio Minute: MFJ Long Ranger Intellitron    Ham Radio Test Study with Leah - Extra Exam HamStudy: https://hamstudy.org Support by getting something from Signal Stuff: https://signalstuff.com/?ref=622   Gordon West Ham Radio Test Prep Books with HRCC Links  -Technician: https://amzn.to/3AVHGU1 -General: https://amzn.to/4ehQ5zz -Extra: https://amzn.to/4efCqJ2   Free Fastrack to Your Ham Radio License Books on Audible (for new to Audible readers): https://www.amazon.com/hz/audible/mlp/membership/premiumplus?tag=hrccpodcast-20   Join the conversation by leaving a review on Apple Podcast for Ham Radio Crash Course podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ham-radio-crash-course/id1400794852 and/or emailing Leah@hamtactical.com. Leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts will help Ham Radio Crash Course reach more hams and future hams and we appreciate it!   Show Topic: Tailscale and Hamcation Recap   Hog Wild in the Salted Ham Cellar.    Preparedness Corner - Southwest Detroit Ice Flood https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/detroit-searches-answers-after-massive-water-break-forces-evacuations   https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/mechanic-shares-how-cars-damaged-in-southwest-detroit-water-main-break-can-be-salvaged HRCC Movie Club    Vote and suggest movies here - https://poll.ly/N7Jt2ACU1Epz5PSJmknw   CJ's Nifty List of HRCC Movie Club movies here - https://letterboxd.com/roguefoam/list/ham-radio-crash-course-podcast-movie-club/   Apollo 13   Likelihood of disaster: 5/5  Preparedness: 4/5 Realistic: 5/5 Characters: 4/5 Plot: 3.5/5 Entertainment: 3/5  Overall: /30   The 5th Wave 10/30 War of the Worlds (2005) 10.5/30 Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy 11/30 Maximum Overdrive 11/30  The Tomorrow War 11/30 On The Beach (1959) 12/30 The Postman 12/30 Soylent Green 12/30 World War Z 12/30 Waterworld 13/30 San Andreas 13/30 Airplane 14/30 The Day After (1983) 14/30 The Day After Tomorrow 14/30 Z is for Zachariah 14/30 Fall (2022) 14.5/30 Signs 15/30 Deep Impact 15/30  The Birds 15/30 Twisters (2024) 15/30  Armageddon 15.5/30 Sean of the Dead 16/30 Zombieland 16/30 The Book of Eli Ranked: 16.75/30 Love and Monsters 17/30 Frequency 17/30 2012 17/30 Greenland 17/30 12 Monkeys 17.5/30  Threads 18/30 Independence Day 18.5/30 Contact (1997) 19/30 The Towering Inferno 19/30 Don't Look Up 19.5/30 Twister  19.5/30 Dante's Peak 19.5/30 Tremors 20/30 The Road 21/30 The Quiet Place 21/30 Red Dawn (1984) 22/30 Wall-E 23/30 Blast From The Past (1999) 23.5/30 28 Days Later 24.5/30 Apollo 13 24.5/30 Contagion 25/30 I Am Legend 25/30 10 Cloverfield Lane 26.5/30 The Martian 27/30   The next movie is The Survivalist.    Email Correspondent's Tower: We answer emails with ham radio questions, comments on previous podcasts, T-shirt suggestions and everything in between.   Links mentioned in the ECT:    ARRL Education Program - https://www.arrl.org/education-technology-program   Hillsboro Academy ISS Activiation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqKx6ytN96k   Link to Cooper's BBQ - https://maps.app.goo.gl/NdWNVWbgVVWAVx999   Balloon launch info - https://amateur.sondehub.org/ Thank you all for listening to the podcast.  We have a lot of fun making it and the fact you listen and send us feedback means a lot to us!   Want to send us something? Josh Nass  P.O. Box 5101 Cerritos, CA 90703-5101 Support the Ham Radio Crash Course Podcast: Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/hoshnasi Shop HamTactical: http://www.hamtactical.com Shop Our Affiliates: http://hamradiocrashcourse.com/affiliates/ Shop Our Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/hamradiocrashcourse As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.   Connect with Us: Website...................► http://hamradiocrashcourse.com YouTube..................► https://www.youtube.com/c/HamRadioCrashCourse Podcast...................► https://hamradiocrashcourse.podbean.com/ Discord....................► https://discord.gg/xhJMxDT Facebook................► https://goo.gl/cv5rEQ Twitter......................► https://twitter.com/Hoshnasi Instagram.................► https://instagram.com/hoshnasi (Josh) Instagram.................►https://instagram.com/hamtactical (Leah) Instagram.................►https://instagram.com/nasscorners (Leah)

Today on the Sauna Talk bench, we welcome three guests who are aligned to helping veterans through sauna as a means of healing our heroes. Their stories are heartfelt, their passions are clear. And for those of us who know sauna, we know that their purpose is meaningful and their success rate undeniable. (ie sauna is good for us!)! Who is Healing Heroes Saunas? The co-founders, Mike and Josh: as introduction: Mike Lotzer On the right side of the bench we have, Mike Lotzer. Mike is the Lead Pastor of Mercy Road Church in Burnsville, MN and served in the Army Chaplain Corps. from 2004-2012. Stateside, Mike served as a Casualty Notification Chaplain, Special Troops Battalion Chaplain, and Marriage Strong Bonds Instructor.  Also, he deployed in the Iraq War.   Mike has walked with soldiers, families, and loved ones through extreme pain both stateside and in combat zones. His experiences caring for dying soldiers have birthed a lifelong commitment to serve and empower Warriors and their families. Mike has been married to his wonderful wife Erica for 18 years. The couple have three children and live in Lakeville, MN. Mike has a B.A. in Comparative World Religion and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin, a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a Certification in Combat Medical Ministry and Suicide Prevention from the U.S. Army Medical Department. Kirk Center bench, we welcome back Kirk Jensen to Sauna Talk. Kirk is longtime host and fellow board member of the 612 Sauna Society. You can learn more about Kirk as he was a recent guest to the Sauna Talk podcast. Kirk spent 34 years in the Air Force. He retired as Lieutenant Colonel with +7,000 hours as a C-130 Navigator. Kirk participated in every conflict during that time. Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia. Kirk's “day job” is flight simulator trainer for the Air Force. Today, you can find Kirk either near the Minneapolis St Paul airport, where he runs Air Force flight training or alongside the 612 Sauna Society Sauna, where he serves as longstanding sauna host. Josh On the left side of the bench, we have Josh Meisberger (42). Josh has been married for 19 years and has 2 wonderful teenage boys. Currently living outside of Minneapolis in Apple Valley, Josh and family saunas frequently (3-5 times per week) enjoying their permanent wood fire sauna in the back yard of their home. Josh and family are active members at Mercy Road Church in Burnsville. Josh spent 22 years in the military with 2 combat tours to Iraq before being medically retired for various military related injuries. Currently, Josh owns a construction company (Rare Homes Inc) where he and team do everything from small bathroom remodels all the way up to custom builds and commercial space work. Mike and he more recently started Healing Heroes Saunas as a way to give back to the men and women who serve our communities in Hero rolls including Veterans, Police, Firefighters, and all first responder, along with their families. Mike and Josh are currently working on their 501c3 filing, as well as fundraising so that they can expand our reach providing hot and cold therapy.  Josh and Mike are very close to finishing their second unit, which will immediately be deployed around the state of Minnesota. They have a long term goals of 5-10 units in the state of Minnesota, as well as being able to build more permanent saunas at their residence for Heroes on an application basis.   Currently you can find them on Instagram @healingheroessaunas.

thoughtbot's Incubator Program is back for a third round! This episode introduces founder Josh Herzig-Marks of Knect, and he will be sharing his journey from freelance work to joining the program and what happens throughout! So far, he appreciates the deliberate communication practices required for practical remote work, despite remote work already being second nature to him, and he understands the importance of proactive and transparent communication in a team setting. One critical insight for Josh so far was the misconception surrounding the term "CRM" in personal relationship management. His moment involved mislabeling a survey, which led to confusion about the project's intent. As the Incubator Program progresses and continues to scale, Jordyn expresses excitement about involving more teams with different geographic focuses. The goal is to foster a collaborative environment within the thoughtbot Incubator Slack channel, encouraging past and present participants to share experiences and advice. We invite listeners who resonate with any of the challenges heard or have potential solutions to reach out! Our next Incubator episode will introduce our other Session 3 participants, Mike and Chris, founders of Goodz. Follow Josh Herzig-Marx on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaherzigmarx/) or X (https://twitter.com/herzigma). Visit his website at joshua.herzig-marx.com (https://joshua.herzig-marx.com/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: LINDSEY: My name is Lindsey Christensen, and I head up marketing for thoughtbot. For anyone listening or joining who isn't familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy that helps you make great products and help make your team a success. One of the very cool ways we do that is with the thoughtbot Startup Incubator, which is a program that we launched this year and that Jordyn, who's with us today, has been heading up. What's up, Jordyn? And today, what we're going to be doing is catching up with one of the latest founders who's participating in the incubator and seeing what he's been up to since the kickoff over these last two weeks. JOSH: It's been two weeks. It's been two really fast weeks. LINDSEY: [laughs] Josh, could you give us a little introduction to yourself? JOSH: Sure. I'm Josh. Hi. I've been in tech product management for, like, 20-ish years, 15 or so of those were in head-of-product roles. And a bunch of those early on were my own startup, where I discovered I was a pretty mediocre founder but really liked this product leadership thing. I had a very lucky exit, which I leveraged into a series of first product manager, first head of product, first product leader roles at a series of early-stage companies across a ton of domains: B2B, B2C, FinTech, mobile, Revtech. And then, a little over a year ago, my partner and I got to do this thing we've been talking about for a while, which was we swapped who the primary parent was. We have two kids, two teens, 13 and 15, right now, so that's eighth grade and ninth grade. I wanted to take over primary parenting so that they could focus as much or as little on their career as they wanted to in the same way they had allowed me to do for the first 15-ish years of our kids being kids. And if I were a better person, I would have found some kind of job that allowed for work-life balance, but I'm not. I have a whopping case of ADD, which we'll probably come back to later on in this conversation. And the way that I knew I'd be able to actually fulfill my responsibility as a primary parent was by retiring from salaried work. So, I did that a little over a year ago, last summer. And kind of keep me busy and occupied in between 8:30 in the morning, you know, school drop off and 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon school pickup. And when I'm not doing shopping, and cooking, and lunches, and doctor's appointments, and dentist appointments, and orthodontist appointments, and play dates, and soccer practices, and basketball practices, and soccer games, and basketball games, and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and all the other things that we do, I built a very small niche coaching mentorship and advisory practice around founders, solo product managers, and first-time heads of product. And that's pretty much up until about two weeks ago what I had been doing with myself. LINDSEY: That's a great update. I especially liked all the practices that you have to go to. [crosstalk 02:54] JOSH: I do like practices. We went to a co-ed soccer game for my middle school kid. And it was the first time that the boys' team and the girls' team ever played together, and they got totally clobbered by this other team. And what I loved about it at the end was the kids weren't bummed. They were like, "That was really fun." And, you know, for a lot of these kids, they've been friends since kindergarten. So, this is, like, nine years of being friends and playing recess soccer together. And they're not very good at soccer, but they just really love all playing together so much. And they just bring so much sportspersonship to the field. It was really a pleasure. LINDSEY: Okay. So, you're doing all this fun primary parenting and going to all the fun practices. You've got a coaching business that you're working on as well. But there was this idea, this idea that's needling. What brings you to us? JOSH: I think before it was an idea, it was a problem. And I knew this was a Josh problem. And the Josh problem was that I have a really big network, you know, built over the past, you know, more than 20 years of professional life. And, you know, one of the joke lines I have is that the solution to almost any business problem is found in talking to more people. I really value being able to, you know, call people up, message them, text them, email them, get together with them, ask them lots of questions, listen hard. And I try really hard to reciprocate, doing the same thing. I don't know what your professional network looks like, Lindsey or Jordyn, over the past, I don't know, couple years, decade, however long it's been, you know. But what used to be email and LinkedIn, maybe, and maybe getting together in some local meetups, has really spiraled what, to me, feels, again, whopping case of ADD, completely out of control, right? I have my LinkedIn network, which has not gone away, right? And now I'm a member of, I don't know, Jordyn, we share these a lot, a dozen different professional networking Slacks. Those are the ones that Jordyn and I share, probably far, far more than that, right? Product management ones, entrepreneurship ones, product marketing ones, engineering ones, tech company ones, ones geographically based for the Boston area, ones that are focused on things like climate change and climate tech. So, a ridiculous number of these. And as somebody with some experience and the privilege to have some free time, it feels kind of like, I don't know, an obligation sounds too grandiose, but it feels like a nice way that I can give back is by participating and trying to be helpful inside of these. So, that's happened. And Discord became a thing, you know, certainly, it had been a thing for gamers since before that. But since the beginning of the pandemic, Discord became a thing. I'm in, like, I don't know, a dozen different similar Discord groups. And I'm in WhatsApp communities, and I'm in Telegram communities. And in-person meetups have started to happen again. And I found myself kind of losing control. I was telling people, whether, you know, over the phone, or in Zoom calls, or direct messages, that I'd make connections to them, make intros, and it was getting increasingly hard to do that. I was forgetting about people, you know, like, it's hard to remember to stay in touch with all of your colleagues when you move on from past roles. And, you know, I would try to make connections to people to be like, okay, Lindsey, you know, you wanted to meet somebody else in marketing in the Boston area. And I remember that, like, six years ago, they worked at Rocket, and now they've moved on to something else. I can't remember what it's called. And, like, how do you, like, you know, page through your email and your Slack connections and your LinkedIn to find that person? And that was really hard, too. So, I have ADD. My family would say that I'm, like, moderately functional. So, how do I achieve that? By creating systems for myself. And I did all the things which other people have tried to do. I built myself, like spreadsheets and Notion databases. I have an awful lot of, like, Notion databases now powered by forms. I'm like, just put your information in, and it'll appear magically into my database where I try to, you know, push the work onto other people. And none of it was really working for me. And that was kind of the genesis of the idea and then trying to figure out, is this a Josh problem, or is this a broader problem? That's kind of how I got started. LINDSEY: Lots of people, lots of channels, not a lot of tracking or confusing tracking. And we chatted briefly before, you know, you were starting the program. And this really resonated for me. And I also ended up doing a user interview [chuckles] with the team about it. JOSH: Yeah [laughs]. LINDSEY: Because yeah, in my role, and moving from different companies or doing mentoring on the side, and being in investor communities and marketing communities, it gets overwhelming for sure. And I feel the pain. And I've had the embarrassing moments of not remembering how I know someone or a conversation we had, or someone I really respect asking me for an intro, and I'm like, I don't remember anything about how I know that person. JOSH: I mean, that was both gratifying and disappointing. Gratifying, like, oh, it's not just a Josh problem; we all struggle with this, and disappointing, right? And as I've had more of these conversations, just to realize, like, I know almost nobody who doesn't struggle with this. There's a few. There's a few outliers, a few weirdos, a few superheroes who are able to do this really well and who feel in control. And, like, literally, as they describe it, it sounds like...Jordyn, you're nodding, right? It sounds like a superpower as they're describing how they do this, how they kind of manage it. JORDYN: [laughs] JOSH: But for the most part, thank goodness it's not a Josh problem. The bummer is, nobody has, like, you know, the magic incantation, right? The spell or the secret or, like, the one weird trick, or the tool or, like, could I just give you money and solve this thing? And none of this really exists today. And that was kind of a bummer. I was hoping for, you know, better news that this was a solved problem. LINDSEY: [laughs] Yeah. Jordyn, heading over to you for a minute, Josh applied for the incubator with this problem that he was working on. We had a lot of great applications, I think, for this session. What made you think or you and the team land on Josh as one of our session three founders that would be a great fit for the programming? JORDYN: I'd say it was probably two factors; one is the stage. What's really tough was figuring out who's a good stage fit for us. So, like, what that means is you've identified a specific enough problem. You're not just, like, I want to solve world hunger or something, like, super broad. There's enough of a specific pain point or a problem that you're trying to solve that there's, like, we might conceivably make progress on it in eight weeks. But you're not so far along that you are basically like, "Hey, I've got the specs for an MVP. Can you just build it?" Which is, like, too late for us. And part of that is a discovery mindset of, "Hey, I've identified this pain point. I think other people have it. But I am very open to how we solve the problem or learning new things about it, learning that it is a bigger need in a market I've never thought about," like being open to the things we might learn together. So those things: stage fit, mindset fit. But, also, like, it is a problem that is addressable with software, right? thoughtbot's focus is software. Like, yes, we have worked on products that are not software products, but, like, our bread and butter is software. And my personal bread and butter professionally is software. So, is the problem on the table something that, you know, software is a big component in meeting the need? So, it's, you know, it's stage. So, I guess it's three things: stage, founder mindset, which is this combination of having conviction but being open-minded, a very weird [laughs] thing to find in a person. And then, you know, can we conceive of a way to address this with software without jumping to a solutionizing? That's sort of what we're looking for, and Josh checked all of those boxes. And I think, also, just had a problem that people really resonated [laughs] with, which is clear from [laughs] what Lindsey was saying and for me personally as well, I think I should [laughter] say. This is a problem I have. So, when Josh and I first talked about it, I was just like, yes, I would love to solve this problem. I also wish there was some spell, or incantation, or weird trick, or existing products, et cetera. JOSH: We might have spent an hour nerding out over all of the things that we've tried, yeah. JORDYN: The things that we've tried, emphasis on the nerding. JOSH: On the nerding part, yeah. JORDYN: Any of you listening [crosstalk 10:45] JOSH: Or what if we get sneakier connect Google Sheets to this, like, really weird web query and [laughs] -- JORDYN: [laughs] Exactly. And then giving up because it's totally unmaintainable or, like, [laughter] impossible, yeah. So... JOSH: Right. Oh, and it's all crap, too [laughs]. JORDYN: Right, right. So, if anyone out there listening is like, "Oh yeah, that's me," first of all, you're not alone. Second of all, please reach out to us. We would like to interview you [crosstalk 11:09] JOSH: Or, if anyone out there is like, "Oh, I have this thing solved," right? If you got the solution, please reach out to us. JORDYN: [laughs] Yes, also, please. JOSH: You can save us six more weeks of work [laughs]. JORDYN: If you know the solution, definitely tell us. Anyway, so to your question, though, Lindsey, that's how this [inaudible 11:23], and it just seemed like a great fit along those lines. LINDSEY: Yeah. So but, Josh, you mentioned...well, I think you kind of downplayed your founder history a little bit. But you've been a founder who had success, certainly a product team leader who has been very successful in the early-stage teams. What were you looking for from thoughtbot? Like, what attracted you to working with the thoughtbot team on your problem when you have all this kind of past experience already? JOSH: I think there's probably three parts to it; one is I know a bunch of people in the thoughtbot team pretty well. In past roles, I have actually hired thoughtbot; I think it was twice. And I've referred a bunch of your current and past clients as well. Like, I'm just generally a big thoughtbot fan. I think I've even used thoughtbot products long before I even knew, like, Chad or Jordyn, some of your old products from, like, you know, the early 2000s. So, we're going really OG here. So, I knew thoughtbot really well and think really highly of everybody who I've interacted with there. Number two is, I know, you say incubator, but, for me, the word that's really been resonating has been accelerator. It can be really slow the early, I don't know, weeks, months, years to go from an idea to, hey, this is really an opportunity. And I didn't want to spend weeks or years at this. I have a full-time job. It's, you know, taking care of the family. Like, that's what I wanted to be focused on. And if this was really an opportunity, I wanted to figure this out relatively quickly. And I love the fact that thoughtbot has this eight-week accelerating program. And the third one is I had this...and, you know, not every assumption I came in with was one that I'm going to leave the program with. But I came in with the assumption that a lot of the risk was technology risk. I had a rough idea. I was quickly discovering this wasn't just a Josh problem; this was a broader problem, right? There's plenty of challenges beyond that, but it's good to discover that your problem is broad. But is it something which can actually get built and built relatively straightforward? Jordyn here [inaudible 13:27] this all the time. You know, I don't like science project problems, right? And thoughtbot is really, really good at building software and partnering with somebody who could help to remove that kind of risk as a non-technical founder, as somebody with literally zero technical skills, I find that very, I don't know, comforting, exciting. LINDSEY: Okay, writes down in marketing notebook: "Accelerator resonating more than incubator." [laughs] JOSH: I wanted to get to the decision...incubator is a better word for it. But I personally wanted to get to that is this a good opportunity or a bad opportunity decision faster. LINDSEY: To quickly validate invalidate. JOSH: Right. I wanted this, like, I wanted to timebox this thing, and eight weeks is a nice chunk of time. LINDSEY: Love that, yeah. JORDYN: I want to just, like, flag here that, like, all of these words are very frustrating [laughter]. And we had a really hard time picking one. LINDSEY: I know [laughs]. JORDYN: And we really actually, like, in literal terms, I think that program is way more, like, founder bootcamp than anything, but thoughtbot can't run a bootcamp without people thinking it's a Rails bootcamp, right? JOSH: Yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] JORDYN: Like, if we just said, "thoughtbot bootcamp," people would be like, oh, as a developer, I should go to this bootcamp, and thoughtbot will teach me how to be a better engineer, which would be totally reasonable from a brand standpoint, right? So, we were like, all right, not bootcamp. And then accelerator typically comes with investment dollars, in my experience as a founder, and we don't invest cash in the companies that we work with yet. So, that was off the list. And that just left incubator, which, eh, like, I don't disagree that it's not the best word, but, whatever, we lack a good one. JOSH: I'll tell you one thing. So, I'm involved with other things in this space. I'm based in Boston but for Raleigh's brand-new Founder Institute chapter, which I think is a great program. And I'm really proud of the, you know, first cohort of founders that are going to the program down there. And I love them. And I love their energy, and enthusiasm, and focus and that we at Founder Institute are providing them with value. I think we really are, or I wouldn't be participating. But I wanted people to work alongside me. And I think that's actually one of the things which is really unique about thoughtbot's program. This isn't, like, you know, a bunch of other founders with varying amounts of experience working alongside you. This is, like, actual people who do things: designers and software engineers, developers who are working alongside you and learning alongside you. But it makes it, I would say, less of a lonely process. This is one of the things I remember. When I founded a company, the one time I did this prior, I did it with my best friend, which is about as unlonely as you can possibly get. And it still is really, really lonely. Having this like, you know, team backing you up and a company backing up that team and organization is nice. LINDSEY: Thanks for sharing that about the loneliness factor. That kind of reminds me, Jordyn; I know in the last session, you were trying out the idea of, like, this founder emotion tracker. Has that made its way to session 3? JORDYN: Not really, mostly because both of the teams we're working with, two teams, by the way, not just Josh, have been founders before. And so, the emotional rollercoaster of, like, literally every day, you know, Monday, you feel like a million bucks because you have a really great idea, and you're really excited about it. And then, Tuesday, you talk to a bunch of people who add some complexity to the assumptions that you had [laughs] made on Monday. And then you start to feel like maybe this isn't a thing, oh no. And then, Wednesday, you learn about some, like, technical thing that you didn't realize was a stumbling block. And so, by the end of Wednesday, you're like, everything is doomed. I shouldn't even be doing this. I've just wasted everyone's time. But then the team wakes up on Thursday and is like, "Actually, there's an easy solution to this. And we've found a new group of people to talk to who have this problem in a really clear way." And then you feel like a million bucks again. And then you just cycle through it. Like, that cycle is something that Josh and our other founding team have actually felt before. And so, we haven't really been, like, leaning on the emotional roller coaster timeline as much just because it hasn't been as relevant. And that's kind of what's tough about the program we're running, which is that everybody comes to it with different assets in hand. I always think of that scene in The Princess Bride when they're outside the castle, and Westley is like, "What do we have? What are our assets?" It's like you arrive to this with different assets in hand. You might have already talked to 50 people, but you have no technical background. So, you don't know what on earth to do about the information that you've learned. Or, you know, maybe you do have a technical background. And so, you've done a bunch of solutionizing, but you haven't talked to a single person about [laughs] whether they have the problem you're trying to solve. Anyway, it really runs the gamut. And so, the programming is designed to help teams find focus and find market message fit. But what people roll up with is very different. In this case, we have a cohort, so to speak, that has some prior startup experience, especially as founders. And so, they know a little bit more about how every day is going to emotionally feel different. And that emotional rollercoaster workstream is on the roadmap. But we don't spend as much time with it as we did with Ashley and with Agnes before in the first two sessions because they were first-time founders and really didn't know how they should be feeling. And that, to me, is one of the many value adds, including what Josh mentioned, like just having a team diligently focused on your problem space full-time is a huge boost of momentum and confidence. Just, like, people thinking about the same thing you're thinking about with you and bringing their earnest efforts to solving the problem has been one of the main things people have found valuable about it, in addition to the acknowledgement that, like, you're going to have a lot of different emotions. And it doesn't mean anything necessarily. Like, your day-to-day emotion does not mean that you are a failure or that this is a bad idea or that you're a success, and this is a good idea [laughs]. Like, neither of those things is necessarily true. LINDSEY: So, let's chat a little bit about what has actually been happening since kickoff. So, two weeks ago, started. Jordyn, maybe I'll start with you. What has the first two weeks of programming looked like? JORDYN: We have been really heads down on interviewing. Josh rolled up having done a survey, which yielded a bunch of conversations already, conversations [inaudible 19:34]. So, we iterated on the scripts. You know, part of the efforts of the first couple of weeks are really geared toward having our team understand the things that Josh understands already. We need to kind of get on the same page. And so, we try to talk to as many people as we can because there's nothing...One of our theses here, beliefs, I don't know what the right word is, is that there's really nothing that drives momentum quite like team alignment, and there's nothing quite like talking to customers and hearing for yourself what their pain points are. That drives alignment. So, it's like, everyone's talking to people. I'm sure people out there have been on teams where it's like one person talks to customers, and they're translating to everybody else. "Here's what I'm hearing. So, this is what we need to build." And it's like if everybody has first-hand experience with the conversations, alignment and conviction sort of grows organically out of it. It's a lot less work to align if everybody's talking to people. So, it's always, like, the first order of business is, how do we talk to people so that we know the things you know to the level that you know them? So, we've been doing a ton of interviewing. And then, that's about driving alignment and understanding, but it's also ultimately about trying to drive focus. So, as we are talking to people and listening to them, we're really trying to listen for patterns and to map those to the market segments these people inhabit. So, like, every one of us has our own network that we're bringing to this effort, and so we start there. And we start where you are with what you have, right? I think that's, like, a Teddy Roosevelt quote: start where you are with what you have. Somebody said that. Anyway, so we all do that. But really, ultimately, we want to...building software is all about a repeatable problem that you can address with a one-size-fits-all [laughs] more or less product. What we're trying to find is, like, we're trying to listen for patterns and listen for pain points that are addressable and really focus in on a narrow niche or a situation context that we can address in some repeatable way. And I would say, at this moment, we've done a bunch of that interviewing. And we're now like, okay, we're feeling the need to focus, but we have not quite started that dive. I don't know, Josh, maybe you feel the same or different. JOSH: No, I think that's right on. I mean, you know, the first thing we all had to do was develop our own [inaudible 21:45] understanding of the problem and the potential user, right? It wasn't going to happen from me talking to people. It was going to happen from us talking to people. And then, the next step is to start to align that empathic understanding, which sounds like a thing that gets finished, but really, it's only a thing that gets started and never really ends. And then, you know, we got to be willing to make some bets, right? We got to figure out, you know, what is our hypothesis? You know, what do we think are the risky bits? And what are the things that differentiate this from being a problem? Where I think we have broad agreement across the entire team. And, literally, everybody we spoke to, the only people who don't think this is a problem are the ones who have some complicated, ridiculous system they built themselves, which they will acknowledge is not going to apply to anybody else. So, the problem is broad, right? But where exactly is the opportunity? Because at the end of the day, we're looking to build a business. LINDSEY: Josh, I saw your head nodding during the alignment discussion. How has it been aligning with the team around the problem you've been thinking so much about? JOSH: I don't know, Jordyn, how you feel about it. I've found it really fun. And it's been fun for a couple of reasons. I think the number one reason that I really like it is this is a really diverse team, right? So, Jordyn and I are in Boston and have; I would say, fairly similar tech company entrepreneurish sort of, you know, hand-wavy, miscellaneous tech people, startup folks background. We have somebody in Denmark, but she's Spanish. We have someone in maybe London right now, but he's Nigerian. And we have a member of our team in Saudi Arabia. That's a lot broader perspective. And I think that comes to play in, like, at least three different ways. They come with their own perspectives, and their own world experiences, and lived experiences, and values, and ways they talk about those things, right? Number one. They come with their own networks of people to talk to you for whom it's easy to reach. So, it's not just all hand-wavy, tech startupy folks like I'd be talking to. And, like, literally, my entire list is, like, oh, they're all people like me. Like it was really easy to get 60 people to want to talk to me because they're all people I've been talking to for a while, which is awesome and maybe a little bit uninteresting. But more than that, they all bring different language. Like, we've been struggling. Like, this is what we did. We spent what? Two hours of our hour and a half meeting this morning struggling with, like, are we having a difference, like, meaning or a difference of words? And it's not an efficient way to use your time, but it really is an effective way to use your time. Because, like, that struggle of trying to communicate what we're hearing and try to communicate what we're thinking and what we're feeling, I think, has led to a much better understanding of the problem and maybe even the opportunity than we would have had otherwise. I'm a big fan of struggle. JORDYN: Definitely. And I do feel like there's an element of this where you can never understand your customers' problems in too much detail. It's like every pass we do at this, we kind of have a deeper, more granular, nuanced sense of the problems. And just in that conversation this morning, we, like, took a problem that we had understood one way and, like, were able to break it down, like, okay, what are the actual pieces of this? Oh, there's, like, many pieces of it, right? Like you said, Josh, it feels inefficient, or sometimes it just feels like you walk out of a call and you're like, what was that about? And then only later do you find, you know, maybe when we are ideating, like, ways we might solve a problem, that conversation we had that felt really murky and, like, are we just arguing about semantics here? Are we arguing [laughs]...I don't know, like, however, you might frame that, like, actually becomes really important where you're like, oh, well, I'm very glad we took the time to break this problem down because now that we're trying to develop a solution, it becomes clear that there are many, little things we're trying to solve. And we can't solve them all at once. And so, it's great that we all have a fluent understanding of the details of that because it makes those conversations much faster so [inaudible 25:30]. JOSH: Can I say a nice thing about thoughtbot? I know this isn't, like, the, you know, [crosstalk 25:34] LINDSEY: Please. Please do. Welcome, Josh. Yeah, the floor is yours. JOSH: Let me say a nice thing about thoughtbot. The last time I did this, I did this with my best friend, Ben, a person I had literally known since I was six years old, maybe five, I don't know, since first grade. And we were entering a new space. This was, like, grocery marketing. And we talked to a crap ton of people, a lot of them doing things like going to grocery store headquarters and just talking to people and meeting people who are, like, manufacturers of a grocery product and going to trade shows with 60,000 grocers all in one giant room. Remember those days pre-COVID? We would, like, you know, take the samples with your left hand and shake with your right hand, and don't get those two things mixed up because there's a lot of people in the room with you. And we talked to easily 1,000 people, and we knew how to establish that, like, shared empathic understanding of the market and the problem really well because we were side by side. We were really well-practiced at having those conversations. And, you know, after the day of, you know, shaking hands, and meeting people, and introducing ourselves was done, we'd go back to the hotel room, shared, of course, because we were young entrepreneurs who couldn't afford to get nice hotel rooms. And we'd spend the next couple of hours, like, talking about it. We, like, talked to each other all the time. One nice thing about thoughtbot is you're really good at working remotely and working asynchronously. And if, you know, it had been up to me by myself to be like, okay, you know, Josh, you have this, like, remote team in different time zones with, you know, non-overlapping hours. How are you going to, like, work together to establish this common understanding, this common semantic model, this common syntax for talking about the problem, and the users, and the needs, and the opportunity? I'd be like, I don't know, right? And this is somebody who's, like, worked remotely for the past, I don't know, 5,6, 7 years, I mean, most of his job. But, like, still, that early bit is a thing, which, you know, I've seen a lot of thoughtbot practice and skill around. And it's not an easy skill to master. And it's one that you practiced organizationally. And that's really valuable. And I don't think I fully appreciated that until we got started. LINDSEY: Oh, thanks. Jordyn, any thoughts on that? Were you thinking about remote setup of the program, or at this point, it's just everything is remote? JORDYN: Working remotely can really deepen, in good ways, one's communication practices because it forces you to be intentional about communicating in a way that when you are co-located with people, you kind of don't have to because there's people in front of you when you talk to them. So, I agree, Josh, that thoughtbot does a good job of making that work, the work to communicate and stay on the same page, like, tangible, visible, whatever it is. That's also just something I've given a ton of thought to because I've been working remotely, like, as a primary orientation since 2010. And so, this is just, like, how I work. And it's very; I don't know, organic to my mind now that it's basically, like, if I'm doing something and I don't tell someone about it, it's like a tree falls in the forest, you know, if there's no one around to hear it. If I'm working on something and I don't tell anyone about it, it's like I didn't do anything. Communication is, like, 60% of the job. And the setpoint is, oh, I did something. Oh, I emailed someone. Maybe I should tell the team about this [laughs]. Just literally because you're not in a situation where I'm going to overhear a phone call that Josh is having because he's at the desk next to mine, or I'm going to, like, ambiently be aware that, like, Carol and Toby went into a conference room to talk about something. Like, while I maybe didn't consciously think about that, it's sort of in my periphery. Like, none of that is happening because we're not in the office together, right? We don't get to do the thing that you did with Ben, where we just talk about stuff because we're near each other. So, you really have to get into this practice of externalizing very proactively the things going on in your own mind with the team. And it's a challenge. It's work. It doesn't just happen effortlessly, right? But yeah, to say it's critical or to say it's a critical piece of how we approach the work is an understatement. I don't know, it's like, it is the work [laughs]. The making of the software, whatever, that's easy [laughs]. Communicating about making software that's hard [laughs]. So, I don't know, it's very heartening -- LINDSEY: Yeah, that makes sense. JORDYN: To hear, Josh, that you think that we do a good job of that. I think we're constantly trying to do a better job of it, frankly. I don't know if you can do [crosstalk 29:28] JOSH: That's probably why you do a good job. LINDSEY: So, I know a lot of the early weeks, days has been around alignment and doing a lot of these user interviews. Have there been any moments yet, Josh, any new, like, light bulbs for you or insights, or are we not quite there yet; it's more kind of setting the scene? JOSH: I'll share one really embarrassing one. LINDSEY: Oooh. JOSH: Which keeps on coming back to bite me. When I sent out the survey and, of course, I [inaudible 29:57] for everybody listening, basically, surveys are useless, except they're really nice lead generation tools for people who are willing to talk to you. But when we sent out the survey, at the top, it says something like, "Personal CRM survey." And I'm pretty sure that when I set up the calendar invite system, which is, by the way, for folks listening out there, like, you want to get your, like, operational side of this thing done before you start sending emails out because you're going to quickly, like, lose the ability to keep track of stuff. I think the meeting of it also, I said something like personal CRM survey. And it was, I don't know, sometime in the middle of the first week, maybe later on, when, like, I think we all realized on the team that, like, CRM is the wrong framing for this thing, right? Nobody likes CRMS [laughs]. CRMs are transactional. They're tools to sell something to somebody. You know, they are tools for, like, auditing your behavior if you're a salesperson to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. They're, like, on a cadence. Like, CRMs are tools for a world, which is not what most people aspire for their personal relationships to be. And I don't think we've quite settled on what this thing actually is. And maybe there isn't a thing yet, right? Maybe that's part of the challenge that we're having, like, this thing doesn't exist, but it's not a CRM. And three-quarters of the way through the interviews is when I asked people like, "So, what question should I have asked you?" They all said, "Well, you didn't ask me about personal CRMs at all." I'm like, "Okay, that's a good point [laughs]." So, there have been plenty of pivots inside of my head around this and the way that I think about this problem, and some of these things are still embarrassing and still kind of coming back to haunt me and maybe haunt the rest of the team as well. I don't know, Jordyn, what [crosstalk 31:27] LINDSEY: Honestly, I was hoping for something way more embarrassing, but [laughs] -- JOSH: Way more embarrassing. JORDYN: If that's your embarrassing...[laughs] LINDSEY: Yeah, you're doing great. You're doing great. JORDYN: You're doing great. JOSH: Okay, the number of video calls where I'm not wearing pants. [laughter] LINDSEY: Okay, onto the next question, Jordyn –- JOSH: Embarrassing or awkward, I don't know, yeah. [laughter] LINDSEY: Jordyn, you mentioned that Josh is not the only participant in this [crosstalk 31:52] JORDYN: Great question. LINDSEY: Tell me about, why not just Josh? What's going on? What are the developments there? JORDYN: Yeah, this is really exciting. So, we wanted to scale this program from the moment that we ran single companies [inaudible 32:08] to start because we wanted to learn as much as we could in a kind of intense, focused way from developing a process and seeing what's valuable about it. So, this was always kind of on our minds to do. And the way it worked out was just that there were two teams at thoughtbot ready and willing to serve. And we had, you know, anytime we [inaudible 32:28] the application window, we always kind of have a list of folks that we're excited about. We can't take all of them. But in this case, we had the two teams. And it also kind of fell in this nice way where we've got this team with a center of gravity, you know, GMT center of gravity, essentially. And then we have another team, which has more of a, like, U.S. center of gravity. And so, the timing kind of worked out. And yeah, I don't know, it wasn't anything more complex than that. It's just we'd always been on the lookout for how we could scale this effort––bring it to more folks. And this was the first opportunity where it appeared like it would work out. I mean, TBD if it's working out [laughs]. We can decide at the end [laughs]. But it's very exciting. It's fun. And we're really looking for ways to help these teams collaborate, you know, we'll see how. Everybody's in a Slack channel together inside of thoughtbot's Slack called thoughbot incubator. And our past participants are in there as well. And we're really trying to create an atmosphere where people can help each other, share tips, talk about what they're working on. There is actually some intersection between what Josh is working on and what the other team is working on, I think, just because, Josh, what you're working on applies [laughs] to a lot of people. I think it applies to these people, too. Anyway, that's [crosstalk 33:42] LINDSEY: It's fun to see the incubator Slack start to build out and folks talking to each other, and more thoughtboters are trickling in there. Because, Josh, you mentioned you've been a client before and a thoughtbot fan in the past. And now you can officially live in thoughtbot Slack, too, and hang out with us 24/7. JOSH: Still just a guest. LINDSEY: [laughs] JOSH: Only got my two channels. Can't DM you unless you're in one of those two channels. LINDSEY: One [crosstalk 34:11] JOSH: But yes, it is very exciting. This is better than snacks at your downtown Boston office. LINDSEY: Yeah, that's great. JOSH: I think I even added an emoji to Slack. I was pretty happy with that. LINDSEY: Oh, nice. We've got a good custom emoji library. JOSH: I mean, that's what we have for company culture, right? Is company emojis. LINDSEY: To kind of finish this out here, Josh or Jordyn, do you have any calls to action for our viewers or listeners, maybe interviews or survey participants or anything else? JORDYN: Well, certainly, if the pain point we described resonates for you [laughs], reach out. We would love to interview you. Or, like Josh said, if you actually have solved this problem [laughs] -- LINDSEY: Oh yeah, that was a good one. JORDYN: Please reach out [laughs]. That would be amazing. JOSH: But I actually meant that. So, like, hey, if you out there are a software developer, an entrepreneur, own a company that you think has really solved this, I would love to learn from that if you want to talk to us. If you are a person who struggles with this and feels like you've tried really hard to solve this, I'd love to hear from you as well. You know, did you search for a tool? Did you ask your friends? Did you try to build something yourself? Do you still use that thing you built yourself? Did you try one of those CRMs? [crosstalk 35:26] Did you try a personal CRM tool out there, right? Clay, Dex, Monica, folk, if those names resonate with you, like, I want to hear, right? I want to hear about people who feel like they're doing this thing really well or people who don't feel like they're doing as well as they should but who feel like they've put, like, real effort into it. LINDSEY: Great. Well, we're going to be catching up with Josh here every other week. JOSH: Great. LINDSEY: We'll have some updates on the thoughtbot blog. And in our alternating week, we're going to be catching up with the other founders going through the incubator. So, next week, we're going to chat with Mike and Chris. And y'all will get to meet them and hear a little bit about their journey and what's led them to validating their idea in the thoughtbot incubator as well. JOSH: And strong rec people to tune in for that one. They are extremely photogenic and very funny, and they talk slower than me, too, so a greater chance for people to understand what they're saying. So, all in all, definitely tune in for that. LINDSEY: That's a great promo. If you want to stay up to date with the incubator or are thinking about applying for the next session, I think will be in the new year, you can go to thoughtbot.com/incubator. And you can also sign up for email updates. And we can make sure to send you recordings of these interviews as well as the blog updates and then keep you up to date about when applications open and end. Jordyn and Josh, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on in the early days. It's really exciting to follow along. All right, have a great day. Thanks, everyone, for watching. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Jordyn Bonds and Josh Herzig-Marx .

Planning For Growth With Blair Ann Verrier Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. We've got Blair here from Enrich Bookkeeping Solutions and she's going to be talking today about change, planning for growth and how to become a business warrior. So Blair, tell me what is the first step that people need to be doing when it comes to planning for growth? Blair: My advice on planning for growth is anything to do with budgeting, and making sure you understand the cash flow of your business. So what's flowing in and what's flowing out, and the timings around the flow of the ins and outs. Josh: Okay. So would that be say for instance, hypothetically if I'm running an IT company, instead of having supplies that we're working on a cash basis, we move to an account basis, we could then times the bills so that we're not always I guess in arrears, so to speak with buying a product that comes out of our account that then gets shipped off to the client. And there might be like a net 30 terms or something like that with the client that then waits 30 days to pay, and then we're sort of sitting without that money. Is that kind of to sort of help out with those sort of situations? Blair: Yeah. So the sooner you can collect money from your clients, and the longer you can pay your suppliers, it’s going to help the cash flow of your business. Josh: When is the right time to do that? Like, I know that when you first start out in business, you don't necessarily have any proof of dealing with businesses. And when you have different suppliers and things like that, they might say, give me some trade references, for instance, how do you sort of jump in there? What's the step? Are you just having a cash account and then showing them that you do have some throughput before moving across? So how do you manage that? Blair: Yeah, look, the earlier you can implement that in your business the better your cash flow is going to be earlier. Some businesses will offer accounts straight up. But it may be for a smaller amount than you need in your business. So, you know, you may have part of it cash part of it on credit until you've gained that credibility and trust with that supplier. And if you've got suppliers that maybe won't do it, shop around and see who will, and have the conversation with the supplier about, you know, how long will it be until we can look at a trade account? So is it three months, six months, 12 months? What, you know, is their general rule in their business that they're looking for? That way you know you're working towards. Josh: And that's always just as simple once you know that just chucking me a calendar and having another review in three or six months, whatever they say, I guess. Blair: Yeah, yeah. Josh: One of the things we noticed when we put in accounts, I was in my teenage years and I didn't have a credit card or any sort of cash reference. And I guess to them they would have been red flags. So it was difficult to get the first account for me. But what I did find out in shopping around exactly as you said, I found one supplier that was happy to have a cash account. And they also had very, very good guarantees at the speed that they will get things out. They said we'll give you a cash count after three months or six months, can’t remember what it is now, we did work with them and what they would do is drop ship the items so that's when they have the item is in their warehouse and they'll send it straight to your customers if it's come straight from you, which means it doesn't have to bypass through you to speed things up. We found that was great because it meant that they weren't waiting for the money to go from our bank account to their bank account, and back in the day, it's a bit quicker now for a lot of the big four banks now but back in the day it was overnight, then and then they would see it, they’ll reconciled it and they'd send it out and that's normally by the time they've done that it was two or three days before the customer saw it. The moment we got the account in place. We noticed that if we place the order eight o'clock, it was at the clients at 11 o'clock. So it improves the customer satisfactions. This supplier in particular wasn't the cheapest supplier around. But the ability to get the products out quicker was more important to us than saving $5 or $10, here and there. So we found that having that relationship and having the account was great just to increase the customer satisfaction, even if it means you're spending more. Is there any other ways that you would look to I guess, when planning for growth, you said cash flow is very important. Is there any other things that you think would be those Cornerstone, milestone type items that people should definitely be having on their to do list to look at? Blair: The budget is important because the budget, I guess sets the path for where you want to go. So you're going to plan in your budget for that growth. So then it's going to show you when do I need to start looking at hiring new employees, or do I need office space or bigger office space. So you're going to see that you know, your budgeting, you can budget you know, up to five years in advance. So if you're doing that you're going to see in advance what you need to do in your business. And you can plan for that prior to then all of a sudden, oh, I need two new employees yesterday. Josh: On the employees, that's something that I've learned the hard way. And I think a lot of people out there, a lot of business owners, for lack of a better term, start off as cowboys, cowgirls and try to work out what am I doing? How am I doing this? How do I step in that direction? And before the episode started, actually, we're talking a little bit about people that kind of think they know it old but have a lot of advice to give but no experience of where that came from. When looking at these I guess different monster moments looking back retrospectively, which is great. I have a look, and I go okay, before I got employees on I should have been planning for documentation and planning for our systems and infrastructure to make sure that the IT support that we'll be able to supply to our customers was top notch before already working at 120% capacity and then bringing on some of that, take that 20% while still having to then train them up, which was very stressful. Definitely put some pressure on the family. Blair: Yeah, that's right. And even, you know, when you are just that sole operator, getting the time to do that stuff as well, like you get so bogged down in working in the business, that often working on the business gets forgotten about. But I think, you know, if you are planning to grow your business, you need to allocate time each week to be working on the business. Josh: I completely agree. We get stuck in the trenches. And it's just what happens. Again, like as I said, most business owners, they start off as cowboys and cowgirls and it just comes through. A lot of people just have this brain fart and go, I'm going to be a business owner because I can do this better than where I'm at. Or I want to have more flexibility. Or whatever the case is, and very rarely do they think that they're going to be working more than they're working. Secret. Everyone works more than 40 hours a week if you're a business owner. But it's something you enjoy doing, which is good. Unless you've stopped enjoying doing it, then stop doing what you're doing. But the big difference I think between learning to work on the business to grow your business and working in the business is the differentiator between the business owners that own a job, and the people that own an investment. I'm definitely not slacking on Avon and some of the other bits and pieces out there when people say I own my own business. I sell Avon or Tupperware and things like that. That's fine. I wouldn't really say that that's it's earning a job more in my eyes and I think you're going to be retiring and selling off your share of your ownership of Tupperware or Isagenix or whatnot, and that's where working on the business is growing your business. That's where the investment is. It's money now versus money later. Blair: Yeah. It's about also like don't feel guilty about spending that time on the business when you know, you're not working on clients or income producing for right now, because the time you spend on the business now, like you said, produces income in the future. Josh: Yeah. And I think one of the other big things that I found when we were in our growth stage, I don't think we ever really get out of that. So it's just a cycle. And a mindset change is the mindset and the people aspects of that. So we had the first contractor, and I thought that he's great, he's fantastic. And then he started getting rather sick and had a lot of health problems. I thought, oh no, what I'm going to do. I can't run the business without him. And then I got someone else in and then he moved down to Coffs Harbour. And then oh no, what I'm going to do when they're working for you. You need to make sure that they are working and doing the best things for the business and you are pulling everything in the right direction. You want to have reliance safe, but you don't want to have them have the knowledge that you are completely reliant on them because then they've got more cards than you have. And then you kind of stuffed, you sort of push yourself into a corner. What’s been your experience with businesses that you've worked with when it comes to sole operators when they go from being a solo operator to the first full time employee, it pretty much doubles their workforce. It's pretty significant as opposed to someone who has 100 employees that gets another 10 employees, it’s only 10% more workforce. It's not anywhere near as drastic. Have you found people manage that sort of growth and having to have that management aspects of their business? Blair: Yeah, I think a lot of business owners aren't prepared for that first employee. I think sometimes it happens quicker than they expect it to happen. Like their business may experience growth quicker or all of a sudden, they just wake up and they go, you know, I can't work keep working 80 hours a week and not having a day off. And so they look at hiring and that you know, they're just talking out off on sea. And then they're bogged down with hundreds of resumes and trying to decipher through who is the best fit for their business and they don't really have a good HR or hiring plan, you know, and I think sometimes without that plan, and if they do get a good employee, they just get lucky, probably more often than not, they, you know, get someone who's not necessarily the right fit and they're starting again, or that person like you’ve experienced and then, you know, again, you're starting again looking for someone else. Josh: I don't think it's any secret for anyone listening to the podcast for a while that I love automation, I hate repetition. And the thought of hiring someone, and although I sound extroverts is a learned skill. Anyone can learn to do this. I definitely love my alone time. But the thought of hiring someone scared the hell out of me. I'm sort of putting food on their table and their family's table and it's became too much thinking about it alone. Oh, this is scary. So the first full time employee I had the HR guy come in and go through. And as I was asking the questions he was looking at the, I guess, the psychological responses and body language that the person was showing when these questions were being answered. And that's something that I went who, at that stage I hadn't even really thought too much about having to look at someone listen to their answers. Look at their body responses. Did they look away? Did they look to the right or do they look to the left? Did they close their hands or did they open their hands if you reword the question three different ways was it answered three different ways or the same way? And so I was thinking far out man, there is a science behind this. And I was so happy that I did, because the person I bought on, Alex was great as the first full time employee, as I said just family stuff and he had to move down to Coffs Harbour, but it was something that I was so happy I did that. That was a stress that was removed. That comes down to I guess what we touched on a little bit earlier about cowboys and people giving advice when it’s not warranted advice. You're talking a bit about a bit earlier about GST and the right time to sign up for GST. You want to let our audience here a bit about that? Blair: Yes, as I mentioned earlier, I saw on Facebook on one of the business pages, I'm a member of. Someone who had asked about when is the right time to register for GST? They're in business. They're have not met the threshold requirements yet, but wanted to know should they register anyway. There was a lot of people commenting, you know, giving their unqualified advice, and one person commented and that they had registered prior to needing to. And if you use an online bookkeeper such as QuickBooks, it's really easy, which I found was quite an interesting comment to make. Because QuickBooks is not a bookkeeper, it's software. Josh: It’s like comparing a screwdriver to a builder. You don't need a builder to build your house, go and buy a screwdriver. It'll work. It's the same thing. They’re just going to use a screwdriver anyway. The fact that you bought a screwdriver and a hammer and you think you’re going do something with that when you didn't buy nails or screws. It's kind of just like, what are you doing? It's, I thought, yeah, we see some of these situations and it just blows my mind. Have you heard of the Dunning Kruger effect? Blair: No. Josh: So the Dunning Kruger effect. And this is a big, big problem on the internet, it's a cognitive bias, where people think that they are smarter, more capable than they really are. So it pretty much means that people with a lower ability, don't have the skills needed to recognise that they're incompetent. And so they think they know everything, and they'll go and express that to everyone but the more they learn on the topic, the deeper they find the topic is, the less confidence they have, even though they're now more experienced. Does that make sense? The smarter you are at a certain topic, the less confident you are until you've been doing this for years and years and years. And I think that the biggest problem I have on these like Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups and other online forums is people give this advice and they go I've been a business owner for six months. Use Zero, use MYOB, it's easy. You don't need a bookkeeper. Just don't worry about it. Don't worry about depreciation schedules or anything else or how that even works. It's not even something in it. Just make sure the lines line up. The chart of accountants, not something important to you at the moment. It's just go and buy the screwdriver and build the house. Blair: Yeah, yeah, I did find it to be an interesting comment and show that obviously a lot of people don't really understand the value of a bookkeeper and the value to their business. Because it's not just about inputting information into an accounting software. Josh: No, the first person that I had that came into my business after myself. So in 2007, before I started the business, I got all of the different books that I could get from the government on GST and tax and everything that I could possibly learn about how things would work. The Queensland Government, well, just generally, the Australian Government has a lot of resources available. Now, it's probably all online, but back in the day, not so much. And these resources I read cover to cover and all these terrible examples of Sam and Sally going through and buying a certain amount of apples and whatnot. But the end position was I knew more about it, which is good for business owners to know about it. But it still scared the hell out of me. And so the first person I bought in was a bookkeeper to help me out and that was in 2011, I think, 2010, and two years after I set up the trust, and I hadn't done any returns. I was freaking out, I'm like, they're going to send the police here, I'm stuffed. I don't know if I've been doing anything right or wrong, or backwards or upside down, and I thought I’m just going to be completely stuffed and I was freaking out. Anyway, I got the bookkeeper, and she's like, no, it’s so good. We'll get through it. And it was like to fix up the previous two years maybe wasn't much, like $1,000 maybe 1500 dollars. And this is again, rewinding around a decade so adjust for inflation, but oh my goodness, I could sleep better at night. Now, I could have sat there reconciling lines, but it wouldn't have helped me out in the situation that I was in. And the second blunder that I've had is know that your bookkeepers doing what they're meant to be doing. And they have the qualifications and they're associated with the appropriate governing body. So say you're Zero certified and you’re CPA in bits and pieces, because the bookkeeper that I had after the first bookkeeper, the second bookkeeper wasn't looking at the invoices. One of the main suppliers that we had moved over to And we'll then claiming GST on something that we weren't meant to be for a number of years, racked up like a $30,000 GST debt that we weren't anticipating on. Yeah, so definitely don't go do it yourself far out. Blair: Yeah, I know. Like I've got clients who do sort of the bookkeeping side of it themselves. And then every quarter, I check their accounts and lodge their BAS. And I don't believe there is one of those clients, that's when I do the checks. I don't have to fix something that's wrong. Mostly incorrectly classified GST. So you know, claiming GST on things they shouldn't be or vice versa. One of the biggest ones that affect most people is Telstra. So, Telstra does not charge 100% GST on their invoices. I haven't been able to work that out yet. But they don't show that. Josh: Interesting. Wait, what parts are they not charging GST on? Blair: So if you have a look at your Telstra bill, your GST will not be 10% of the total or one-eleven. Yeah, it's usually a little bit less and most business owners just claim, put it in, you know, 500 bucks to my Telstra bill this month, find the GST, $45, and it's not. It might be $30 that they should have claimed. Josh: Far out. That's that's a big one because that's like, not a small company. People know of it. Blair: Yeah, so that's probably the most common one. The other ones would be insurance. People not claiming the right amount on insurance because obviously there's a stamp duty component to insurance that there's no GST on. And yeah, people don't realise that. So Yeah, it's not just about putting the information into the system, it's about ensuring that it's correct, but also making sure that it's been allocated to the right part of the chart of accounts. And that all your accounts actually reconcile, that's going to make your tax accountants job a lot easier at the end of financial year, is if everything's in the right place and reconciling. And like you said, making sure your bookkeeper’s qualified. Like, as a minimum, you want your bookkeeper to be a registered BAS agent? Anyone who's not a registered BAS agent, legally, cannot do anything to do with GST, FBT or single touch payroll. Alright, so chances are they will ask you for your paper BAS form that you've received from ATO so they can fill that out for you. That's a huge red flag. They lodging STP under your company's name rather than under an agent's registration. A lot of things business owners wouldn't realise. And it's something that I tell people a lot is anyone can wake up tomorrow and decide to be a bookkeeper. There is nothing governing them from not doing that. So Mrs. Jones, who's done the books of her husband's building business for the last 40 years. And now all the kids have left home and she's a little bit bored, can wake up and start advertising bookkeeping services. And business owners don't realise how easy it is for someone to do that. Josh: That's terrible. Well, it's great for Mrs. Jones but it’s terrible for every other business that she's working with. Blair: That's right. And often, you know, like, I hear people say, oh, but I can get someone to do it for $10 or $20 less than you down the road. And I'm like, okay, see you in 12 months, when they've messed it up and it’s not right. Josh: Yep. money spent on the right thing saves a lot of money in the future, being cheap is very expensive. Blair: Yeah, and a good bookkeeper will save you money at the end of year with your tax accountant. Like people think they're saving money by not using a bookkeeper. But then it gets to their tax accountant at the end of the year and it's wrong. And the accountant needs to fix it. Most tax accountants are charging anywhere from $150 an hour up. Whereas you're paying a bookkeeper half that. Josh: Circling back to what we're talking about planning for growth, you can't plan for growth if you're doing your own books. It's a task that you're able to outsource to a professional that can hold that screwdriver and build that house for you, build the infrastructure out and make sure it's working. And as you said, if they're checking on the pulse and doing some reconciliation, that's fine, but it doesn't make them a doctor. They're not going to hear a flutter in your heart that you guys will pick up on. So I think anyone's foolish for not engaging in the services of qualified people to look after the items of their business that they're not qualified to be doing it. Tell me a bit a bit about your book. You've got a book called Business Warriors? Blair: Yes, last year, the book was launched first of June last year. So I was a co contributor of 11 authors in that book, so I've written one chapter of that book about my journey in corporate world as a female and, you know, some of the stuff I've seen and experienced. I believe the accounting industry is a bit of a men's club, and considering like I did a little bit of research, when I was writing my chapter around the evolvement of the accounting industry, and found that, you know, way back when that industry started, they didn't actually let women be accountants. Josh: I could see that. Yeah, definitely. Blair: Yeah. And it wasn't until the wars came and they needed to send them into war. They were like, well, what are we going to do? We've got no men to do the work. So they then started letting women do the work. But they weren't allowed to call themselves accountants, even though they were doing the same work that men were doing. Josh: Really? What were they called? Blair: I think, like, just clerks. Like, yes, something along those lines. I kind of feel that's where that men's club started. And the culture of that just sort of continued. Probably, obviously, nowhere near as bad because we now let women work as accountants and 49% of the CPA membership are women. So there are a lot of female accountants in the industry now. And we're allowed to call ourselves accountants or we're allowed to be CPAs and CAs, and, you know, part of these governing bodies that originally we were never allowed to be a part of. We were not recognised in the industry. Josh: The IT industry, similar, very, very male dominated. Now, the majority of the managing positions in IT, 55% women, so it's really good. It's good to see sort of this change. My sister is an engineer. And when she was working for different businesses, she was the female engineer of a team of 100 engineers and things like that. It was good as she saw new blood coming in and empowering that there is sort of a bit of a change here. I still can't believe like some of the shady paths that we've come from. But if anyone out there is looking to have a fantastic bookkeeper, definitely jump across to Enrich Bookkeeping Solutions and give Blair a holler. And I'm sure she'll get to talk to you about all sorts of things from how to grow your business and better your business with your numbers and make sure that if you bought into some advice that you've seen on Facebook, you can do your numbers yourself, it'd be probably a good idea for her to at least give you an audit and then see where you're at. So, if anyone out there does have any advice or would like to leave a review, jump across to iTunes, give us some love and stay healthy and stay good out there in these interesting times.

Improving Your Business Process Flow with Pip Meecham Josh: Good day everyone out there in podcast land, I've got Pip here from ProjectBox. She is an absolute wiz-kid when it comes to any automation around your business and process flow, and making sure that your systems are working the way your systems are meant to be working. So Pip, tell me, how do you know when a system is broken and how do you know when to fix it, if you've always been using a broken system? Pip: That's a really good question. The way you know it's broken is customer complaints, frustrated staff. There could be a host of extra time issues, which then all comes back to frustrated staff as well, at the end of the day. Any kind of bottleneck, generally, you will notice things are starting to go wrong, but it can take some time to kind of pick up on that as well. Pip: Something could break and then six months later you'll finally pick up on it. It can take a lot of time without having someone come in and look at how you're actually doing things to pick up that things are any kind of different, if that makes sense. Josh: Yeah, that makes sense. For me, my big rule that I tell all of my staff is, "Have I asked you once?" Josh: They say, "Yes." Josh: I said "Have I asked you twice?" Josh: They go, "Yes." Josh: "Okay. Then I don't have to ask you a third time because you've already automated it." Josh: If you've had a problem come up more than once or you think that this situation is going to come up more than once, then template it out and automate it. You're saying, complimentary to that information, you would also make sure that the user experience, not just repetition more so the user experience isn't broken. Pip: Yep, and most people don't think like you. Most people don't have that trigger to go, "Hey, we've done this three times." Or, "Hey, this has gone wrong." Pip: Or anything like that, they just keep going with what they're doing, and there's nothing to really trigger that until something big happens, which could be a customer complaint or someone within the team saying something. It's a really tough one, if you're not systems tuned, most people don't pick up on it. Josh: It comes down to people continue doing what they think they're meant to be doing for an extended amount of time. Not knowing that what they're doing isn't what they should have been doing. Pip: It's rare to find people who have that kind of continuous improvement mentality to go and actively look for things. I actively try and break stuff all the time but that's my mentality. Josh: Yep. You're a hacker. That's exactly what a hacker does. Pip: I'm a breaker, not a hacker. I don't get in, I just break it. Josh: It can be both. You and I are very similar in that regard. We try our best to work out what is the best way to achieve something the fastest, most efficient way. Pip: Yeah. A to B. Josh: Yeah, and automation doesn't necessarily have to be a piece of code with loops and all sorts of other stuff that has an input and an output. It can be an input and output, but it can also be just a procedural document that allows for you to know when a staff is following something, very similar to how McDonald's work. Josh: They go through and they create an ice cream, a burger or whatever it is. And when you get it, whether it be in America, Canada, Australia, it's always the same crappy burger, but it's the same burger. And it's being made by a different 14 and nine month year old child or teenager, but it's the same burger, the same process. That's just come through repetition and the document that they've read, and knowing that this is the way that it works, this is the most efficient way. Pip: A lot of people don't think like that. Josh: No! Pip: There's so much decision fatigue in business where people wing it all the time, and they lose a lot of time because they're doing that. Whereas if you've got a straight out, set out processes. First do this, then do this, then do this. Automation kicks in to do some of that for you. It's so simple and it's so streamlined. Whereas other people are just weighed down because they're so overwhelmed on what to do next or how to do it. Josh: I'm going to talk on behalf of all the bloody Australians out there and say, this is the best time to be looking at your processes. Everyone's in lockdown. I'm sure everyone's working 120% of what they were before. That's why Bunnings is full of people, because no one's actually working. Pip: I can hear so many hammers and chainsaws around my neighbourhood. Josh: Me too. I'm like, "Yeah, everyone's really working hard guys. Are you all labourers at home?" Josh: Anyway, everyone's working at home and they're working on the house, which is great, but you should be working on yourself and on your business. This is the best time. When everyone goes, "I don't have enough time for that." Josh: Bang, this is enough time for that. You've got the time to do it now and this is the perfect time. They should be engaging in people like yourself and seeing what you can do to help them out. And as you said, there's always room for improvement and I'm not going to say what I do is right. But it's going to be better than not doing it at all. Pip: The problem is as well, is that people get so caught up in their own business that they can't see it, outside. What they're looking at- Josh: Can't see the forest for the trees. Pip: Yeah. They've got tunnel vision, like there's nothing else going on except what they, used to doing, what they know they need to do. Whereas I would come in and something that I kind of love doing and it's really wrong, but I love going in and pulling people's processes apart, and looking at the ripple effect that everything has on each other as well. Pip: Because everyone always talks about, a lot of people are changing technology at the moment because of everything that's going on, they're going, "Right. We're going to use this. We're going to implement new tools to do this. We're going to do this and blah, blah, blah." Pip: They look at that as a single element and they're not thinking about what's happening before and what's happening afterwards. So people are putting these new things in place and they think it's fantastic, but stuff is still falling over because they're not taking into account what's going on around it. The ripple effect. Josh: Yeah, exactly. The butterfly effect, ripple effect. It comes down to a big thing that people don't do enough. I started doing it 13 years ago, 14 years ago and then didn't realise how much of an impact it's had, but business plans. Why are you in business? Why do you exist here? What do you want to achieve? What are you going to achieve in one month, one year, five years, we've all heard it. Pip: Hate it. Josh: I started writing them. I'm like, "Uh, this is stupid." Josh: Then I wrote it and then thought, okay, let's see how this goes. Then I've looked back on some of them and I thought, wow, I've got so much more maturity, growth, direction. And some of the things that I thought were really important then, are no longer important and some of the things that are important now, I would never have thought I was even going to be doing. Josh: But being able to look back on what you've been able to achieve, lets you see the growth that you've done. That's the same, when you create these processes that sit there and can run autonomously or be running by someone else that's not you. You're able to have these processes running and then look at them from a distance to go "Hmm, how else can I tweak that?" Josh: While you're not sitting there being the driver. If you're always driving around, you're never going to be able to really see the sites out the window. Pip: It's being able to remove that connection. Josh: That's right. Pip: Cut the heartstrings. Josh: Absolutely, as long as that's what you want to do in business. I will say, straight away when I started my first business, I was the main driving cog and I was the person that did all the things in business, and I earned all the money and I earned all the debt. it was interesting, and good and bad. But overall, I didn't want to be the cog. I wanted to own the cogs. I wanted to have the systems, have the process to be able to step back. Josh: That's not for everyone, if you read any book on business or any masterclass, that's what everyone apparently wants, but there's businesses that we work with. One in particular, he's a cartoonist and he's big driving motivator is he just loves drawing. He said, "It's a lifestyle business." Now, to be fair, his wife's in a lovely position where she's earning enough money that he could have that decision. So, lucky boy. Pip: Yeah, but I get it. People always ask me what I want to do with ProjectBox. I don't ever want to stop actively getting into people's businesses and looking at their processes. I legitimately love that stuff, as geeky as it sounds, and people look at me like I am just stupid and crazy, and I'm off with the fairies, but I love it. I get this sense of, it's like a thrill with huge endorphin rush. When you go in and you help people piece this stuff together. I don't want to lose that, but I also want to be able to grow the company. Josh: Yeah. It's always about the balance. You need to make sure that you've got that interest. As I said, why did you get into business? Work at why you're in business, and this is, you brought this up earlier, probably not everyone's mentality, but when I first started Dorks Delivered in 2007, I thought, okay, I want to do this right. I've now got a trust and I've got a company, I've got all this stuff and all these structures. Josh: Let's make sure that I'm getting rid of any of the tasks that I don't like doing. And I thought, what do I like doing? Hate doing bookkeeping, hate doing invoicing, hate doing the car logbook. I thought, this sucks, so I created a process. I created an app back then, or was it a web based app. It worked on the Symbian mobile system for anyone that's out there that cares. Josh: It allowed for you to jump in there and see, as a technician, I had contractors working with me, they'd be able to enter where they're going and would work out their home address to where they're going, the amount of kilometres, how much to charge and how much to put on that invoice. Josh: They'd then get there and they'd type any prices and it'd automatically work everything out and then click submit or come up with a PayPal and they could get credit card details straight through their phone, right then and there, and this is 2007. Josh: So I built all that out and it was because I hated all the invoicing stuff. You could take photos and attach invoices and attach expense records, all sorts of things like that. You could do all that. I built this because I hated doing it. Now, not everyone's capable of building it and totally understand that, but that's why you bring in professionals that can help you out. Josh: The actual process of building it took me several hundred hours. Now, if I looked back and thought, would it have been more beneficial for me to have just learned how to do the invoicing and just done that and in a repetitious way? Possibly, but it wouldn't have been as fun, would it? Josh: And I've learned so many more skills and that's kind of what you're getting at. You get to learn. You're always growing, expanding and being in business is about being able to delegate. Whether that be in a digital sense through scripting and automation, or through staffing and process documentation, it's being able to delegate to grow your business. Josh: If you had to pick the top three things that a business owner should be considering with the way their business is set up and what they should change, what would you say they should be? And how can they achieve those for, let's say we're in lock down 'til September, yeah? Pip: Yeah. Josh: I think that that's probably likely. So what would you say, how can they do those between now and September? Pip: Yep. The biggest one is how information is flowing from one system to another. So no double data entry, too many people, literally they'll get it in one format and then be copying and pasting it into other programs. Stupidly time consuming and massive room for human error as well, because someone has to do that. That's a really big one. Josh: Yep. If you're using a pen, remove it. Stop using a pen. Stop having customers fill out forms with a pen. Pip: Definitely another one, try and go digital where possible. Josh: Absolutely. Pip: The number of people who are still doing it, there is a place for pen and paper. As much as I'm very much a digital person, when I am holding process mapping sessions or the brainstorming creative stuff, I have a roll of butcher's paper. It ends up running down my hallway and I'm literally dragging my computer down the hallway on my hands and knees filling out this paper because that's how I work there. It's really quick for me to draw arrows and then it gets turned into obviously digital [inaudible 00:00:12:31], the paper goes away. Sounds like a waste but I know that that is how I work best. Josh: I love that because I'm on computers for hours and hours, not because I have to, because I want to. I could spend 18 hours a day on a computer just working because I love doing it. You have people like Gary Vee say, "Work harder, work smarter." Josh: Well now what? I'm like, "Well, just do what you love doing." And I genuinely love doing it, but I also love the feeling of paper in my hands. And I've got a big whiteboard inside the house, like a four and a half metre by three by two metre whiteboard. I'll write up with my partner, Sarah, any of the new processes that we're going to be going through, any of the if-then statements we're going to be popping into any of the automations and make sure that we've written that out because it's easy to modify it and it changes your perspective. And get this everyone, it removes all those, how many times have you had a push notification from Facebook while you were dealing with butcher's paper? You don't have any of that. Pip: It's no distractions. Josh: No distractions. How good is that? It's great. Pip: Yeah. But it brings out the creativity as well. It's like going back to that cave person thing where we're drawing on walls. Obviously, there are some people that entirely a hundred percent digital is going to work for them. Most people, that's not the case. I know people who will still take their to do list and then send it to a VA to transcribe it into a project management tool because that's how they work. Pip: They just can't get on and do it, so they've delegated it to somebody. Yeah, get digital where possible. The next big one, and this sounds really stupid, but clean out your computer filing systems. I'm generalising here, but a lot of people it's like going to the supermarket where all the shelves have been knocked over and everything's been stirred together and trying to find fish in the fruit and veggie aisle. It is, looking for medicine and it's down in the freezer. Josh: And after a while the whole process stinks. Pip: Yeah. So it's taking time to sort out where everything is stored so that if a client rings, same with like your CRMs and project management tools, give everything like a cleaning over. It's a really good time to be doing that now, so that you should be able to find anything within about 10 seconds. No longer. Josh: Yep. I did a podcast a few months ago on defragging your filing cabinet and then your computer, or something like that. That's probably a cooler name than what I called it. But people do, we go into people's systems, I'm not going to say who it was, but I went into someone's system, they had two monitors and they had about 500 icons now. Pip: On their desktop? Josh: On the desktop. Anyone that has two monitors, if you've ever tried to put 500 icons on the desktops, you'll notice they don't fit on two desktops. So he had icons that he couldn't even see, they were on his two desktops. And you can't scroll up and down on a desktop, so they were just in the abyss. Pip: And for a lot of people, those computers die and all of that is gone. Josh: Gone, and they use these obscure systems where they go, "Okay, let's have this cloud of files that store on the right hand side of the desktop." Josh: Then you do a Windows update and then everything rearranges to automatic, and then you go, "Oh no! This is going to take me days to fix up my icons." Josh: Just fix it up now, you've got this great opportunity. That's great advice. That's a really good one actually. Pip: Yeah, nothing should be on the desktop. Josh: No. Well, you haven't seen my computers yet but I've got eight icons and it's the things that I use commonly, and use all the time. Pip: And there's shortcuts. So the original files have safety elsewhere. Josh: Somewhere else. Pip: Stored properly, with just shortcuts. And shortcuts is a great thing too, because most people will just copy the file, so there's two copies. So I update one and then they'll go to move it and not realise what's going on and go, "What file do I use now?" Pip: And end up with three, four, five, six or 10 different copies. So creating shortcuts, it's something that not a lot of people take advantage of. Josh: Shortcuts are great and I'm not going to get into heaps of detail on shortcuts, symbolic links and other bits and pieces of IT, but shortcuts are great. People should be using shortcuts. And in a filing cabinet, traditionally, you have things sectioned and it could be A to Z, but most of the time it's warranty information, ATO letters, bank statements, all that. Pip: Categories, yeah. Josh: Your computer systems, it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. The way that I like to do it is, what would you share with your mum? What would you share with your partner? What would you share with your business partner? What would you share with your staff? What would you share with your nana and what would you share with the world? And then make sure your hierarchy has things in those categories and then from there then have projects inside those. Josh: For me, I've got family, personal, business, the three main ones. Then inside personal, it then stems off into different year categories for photos and things that used to go into your personal, it goes to photos. And then it has different years that these photos were taken inside each year, it then has different events for each of those years. And so if someone said, "Ah, do you have any photos from my 21st from way back when?" Josh: You'd be able to go, "Yeah, no worries." Josh: Click, click, bang, done. I had someone actually, and I've been a bit of a stickler for organisation for quite a while. I had someone say, "Oh, remember we did that school assignment on moths?" Josh: And I said, "Yeah." Josh: Said, "Oh man, if only I could see what my assignment looked like then." Josh: Anyone who knows me knows I'm a bit of a tricky dude. I happened to have acquired his assignment through the school systems back then, so I gave him a copy of his assignment. Pip: Wow. Josh: He's like, "What the hell? How'd you do that?" Josh: And I'm like, "Yeah, no, it's pretty weird, eh?" Josh: Having a hierarchy that works for you and the reason I say that those different categories to start off with, like the personal, and then the things you'd share with your nana or your mum and things like that is because if you are using different tools like Dropbox, you can then say, share this folder out to whoever, and it doesn't matter. And you know it's not going to have personal stuff. Pip: It gives people a great place to start because half the problem with this stuff is just getting started instead of looking at it going, "Oh my God, I've got like 10,000 files I need to sort out because they're all sitting in my downloads folder." Josh: Yep. The first five minutes is the hardest. Pip: Setting up that initial structure and then just, yep. Josh: Setting up the initial structure, and this is something I would've done on butcher's paper or would have done on the whiteboard. You just write it down and go, "Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that's sensible." Josh: And then you look at and go, "Okay, who's going to have access to what? If I give access to this folder, everyone has access to that." Josh: Obviously I'm talking a bit into the security stuff as well as just the organisation, but I just find if you start with security first and then organise around that, it'll make your life very easy and harder for people to break into your stuff. Pip: Definitely. Josh: As things become harder and harder. Pip: I guess my final one would be reviewing the tools and the software that you're using. Use the time to go in and look at all the individual platforms and work out if there's any overlap, because quite often we sign up to things or people recommend things and we don't really do a lot of research around it. So more often than not, the tools are capable of doing more than what you think and you can actually condense those down, or you can start to get them to talk which brings us back to first point. Josh: Yep. I would agree completely that and tools evolve even after you build them, they evolve over time and you look at some of the things and you go, "Man, that never did that before." Pip: It's really knowing and understanding exactly what that tool is capable of doing. Josh: It's going through it, having a look. Pip: Hey, you can't break stuff. Josh: Exactly. Just have a muck around then. That's great advice, especially as I said, while everyone's at home, hopefully with a beer in your hand, hypothetically we are having a beer, possibly, unless you listen to this at 7:30 in the morning, then we're definitely not. But it's a great time to be doing that and be jumping in and making sure that your systems are ready to go gangbusters. Pip: Exactly. So that as soon as things take back off again, you're ready to go. Holes have been plugged, you know what's what, you know what's happening by when, by who and how. Josh: Yep. And the cutovers, if there are programmes that you don't have to get rid of, you can't get rid of it because one thing does something really well and then another thing. We use ActiveCampaign internally. We're using another IT programme called ConnectWise, up until recently and ConnectWise did email marketing very poorly, but it did ticketing and invoicing really well, which ActiveCampaign didn't. Pip: That's like I said to you before, I use ClickUp for my sales dashboards because I couldn't get the data out of ActiveCampaign, But it's knowing that I could do that and understanding that. Josh: Yep. And that's where having a document on what the cutovers are, at least let you know where data is meant to be stored. The flow of data is very important. Knowing where your master, your primary, your truth data I guess, where you'd say this is where everything is pure. And then if people have entered dodgy records or transcribe things incorrectly somewhere else, then you can start to work out where the other stuff is. Pip: Go back. Josh: The last thing you want is if you've got five systems that you're running, as I've heard, or in a lot of American talks, "the silos of chaos." Josh: You have all these silos and you just can't control them and can't manage them and just everything gets out of sync, and then it gets out of whack. This is a great time to be bringing in people, especially like people from ProjectBox, that's able to look at your systems, integrate your systems and make sure that your data is staying the same between all of them, and you don't have any overlaps with your processes, and you're running an efficient shop because ultimately you don't know what you don't know until you know it. Pip: Yeah, exactly. The number of people that I've met or that I've done work with, who you ask the question, "How is this bit happening?" Pip: And they look at you and they're like "What do you mean? I know how that's happening." Pip: I'm like, "Cool. Lay it out for me. Tell me what's supposed to be happening at every step." Pip: And they either can't or we start talking, they're like, "Oh, well that should be happening." Or "I wish it could do this." Or, "Someone's supposed to do this." Pip: What they think is happening in their head is completely different to what is actually happening. Now a really good time to be looking at that stuff as well. And for the businesses who is super busy right now, this is the time where they will probably start to notice where those holes are. Josh: Yep, absolutely. It's interesting times, businesses are either crazy or quiet, or crazily quiet. I think there's a lot of good take-homes there. People need to be jumping in, making sure their systems are good. Their filing processes are good, and that you are engaging in people services. So if people did want to jump in and get a hand throughout South East Brisbane, or what is your reach with ProjectBox? Pip: So South East Queensland, Northern New South Wales, but because of what I do, I can do it remotely. So realistically, anywhere around Australia and New Zealand as well, I've got quite a few clients over there too. Josh: We're going to chuck a link down there to ProjectBox so you can check it out. Is there anything else you'd like to cover off, other questions that we haven't gone through? Pip: No, I'm pretty sure we got it. Josh: Yeah, cool. I've loved having you on the show and if anyone else has any feedback or bits and pieces, I'd like to say jump across to iTunes, leave us some love, give us some comments or a review and everyone out there stay healthy, stay well and start automating. Catch you later.  

Stewart Fleming Interview Josh: All right. Everyone out there in podcast world I've got a very special guest for you today, I've got Stewart. He is from Logan, and actually know what, I'm going to let you tell me about what it is that you do in the voodoo that you do. Learn more about the interview with Stewart Fleming at dorksdelivered.com.au Stewart: What do I do in Logan? I do a lot of stuff. I'm involved in about four or five different, organisations as a volunteer. I run multiple businesses. I'm on the board of a number of different organisations in the city and currently running for mayor. So I keep myself pretty busy, man. Josh: Do you have time to sleep? Stewart: I get probably three to four hours sleep a night. Now, I'm pretty controlled to be very consistent about making sure I get at least five hours when, when possible. but look, you know, you do what you can with the time that you got. Josh: I know I've gone through periods of time where I'm going, okay, I'm going to get something down and just working. And you, you're getting no sleep, no sleep, no. So you can get used to having no sleep, and then you have that one opportunity to have an eight hour night. And you feel like you've slipped the four days. Sometimes you have to be in the candle at both ends. Stewart: I think there's also that, if you are used to running at that speed, sometimes if you have too much sleep, you get crazy tired at that point. It's like, well, you've had that now I want that four days in a row. Like, yeah, I dunno. Let's just keep running. Josh: The way the body works. So, we've been talking a lot of different business owners through this channel and, which is something that's on people's minds, whether they're saying it or not. And that is around the recession is the recession coming isn't coming. And we want to talk about how to recession-proof your business. Today we're going to be talking a bit about specifically keeping things local. So I've been running a business for 13 years throughout Logan and been in business in one way or another for, for around 20 in Logan. I've only more recently found out about a whole bunch of advantages to making sure that you are staying local, running your business within the local area that you are running a business. So what have you seen out and about around the traps in regards to a business, the overall health of the economy. What are your thoughts on that? Stewart: Logan is uniquely positioned at the moment to grow. So obviously, we're halfway between Brisbane Gold Coast. We have a very large amount of land available to us. We've got some very good infrastructure. The M1, as much as we hate being stuck in the traffic, it brings millions of cars passed. We've got train lines coming through, and access to some pretty good infrastructure at the moment. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Can get better for sure. But from a business point of view where uniquely positioned, Brisbane and Gold Coast have come from our sort of higher socioeconomic background and are starting to shrink in, as you say, this recession, the economy is shrinking and I think it's changing. And we had someone talking to the most recent chamber of commerce about going from a materialism environment to a postmaterialism environment. And what he was talking about was the idea that we start to share resources. So rather than own a thousand shirts, you might only own 30 shirts and you switch them around more rather than own a car you use over rather than own a holiday house, use Airbnb. And I know those are two right there. Two very specific examples. But the examples sit behind our mindset and the mindset is that we don't need to own everything anymore. What you're talking about doing business locally is one of the things that we were talking about at a fairly high economic level. When I started to put my hand up to run for mayor, I wanted to reach out to those that had some fairly significant influence in the economy of Logan. So some of the more significant business owners, some of the more significant landowners, some of the property developers now. Yeah, property developers. Ooh, terrible. You can't take money from them. You shouldn't be listening to them because what they understand is some really cool stuff about how things are developing now and the changing way that we're looking at. We should be looking at economies. Sure. We should be making sure we get great roads, but if we had fantastic internet, I'm not talking good internet. I'm talking fantastic internet. Would you need to leave your house to run a business? Do you need to go to an office? If you are fully automated running from home, what does that do? Can you spend more time with your kids? Can you spend more times in the local parks? This is the kind of economy that we're moving towards and Logan is set to take advantage of that because we haven't overcapitalised yet on the infrastructure that Brisbane and Gold Coast have. We're still growing. And so the reason I put my hand up from there is because, the opportunity for a there I saw for Logan needed someone that had some innovation ideas in their head. I'm on the board of Innovate Logan. It's a little group that represents manufacturers, state government, local government, chambers of commerce, and it looks at how do we get more innovation happening in the city. There's some very, very cool stuff going on, but I think the idea of more people working locally we'll reduce the load, and it also helps us start to recession-proof our businesses. Josh: Well, I couldn't agree more. You said it perfectly at the start. From a geography standpoint, we've got the Gold Coast, they've got the beaches and bits and pieces. You've got Brisbane. It's, it's, I guess the, the original, Mecca hub for working Logan is positioned in a perfect environment where it's growing from either edges. You've got all of the manufacturing and an industry coming up from the gold coast, edging into Logan, and then you've got a lot of the other industry coming from Eight Mile Plains and so on and so forth. Building up as it's coming more and more within Logan and from an investment standpoint, it's the best place, in my opinion, to buy any, house, anything like that. Because if you do have a business that is shrinking because of the recession and you need to be tighter with your dollars. The dollars go further in Logan, the dollars allow for you to achieve more things in a localised area. With investment properties, there's a hell of a lot of people that are moving to Logan because instead of buying a place in Brisbane that's gonna set you up for $1 million or more, and then you have to, you have to walk around with traffic everywhere. In Logan, you still have beautiful parks. You can still get something that's more than living on top of each other. It's at an affordable price with, as you said, that the end one there where, and at an intersection as well, where you're able to go out to Ipswich if you need to go and go wherever you need to. It's perfect, from a location and drivability standpoint. I think innovate is fantastic. Some of the other cool stuff that I've seen around the place, Substation 33, that's something that they're using to, I haven't seen anywhere else where they're up-cycling old laptops, old gear. You think you're going to throw at that record player because no one's going to use it. There is someone down there, brainy ethics going to turn that into something cool and then they're going to upcycle and start utilising that to bring more money to Logan. You probably know more about it., some of the signs that they've made out of old, old gear and they look professional, schmick as for looking at the water levels and turning on flood signs along with, they made a bucket for giving power to third world countries. These are super innovative things. I've only just started to dip my toe into some of the cool stuff that's happening around Logan that I wasn't even aware it was happening. I've been recruiting people. Okay. So I've got a friend that was in Tenerife and I was talking to him about some of the cool stuff. Substation was doing, Substation 33. And he thought, oh, that sounds really awesome. Let me check that out. And came down and was talking to them about making PCBs and all this other electronic stuff that he's building together with them. He was so interested, he moved two streets away from them so he could be spending more time building stuff. So you've got your coffee shops in bits and pieces, in Tenerife. And he's like, no let's go to something that's making a difference and actually changing around the way people's minds are working. Stephen: Yeah, we have this, and you're,100% right. Things are changing here in Logan, and I think we're on the, on the tipping edge of an absolute explosion in business in Logan. Now, we've already been growing in incredible, rate, without population, but the business opportunities that we have here, you know, in real estate, you say, buy the worst house and the best street. Well, we're on the best street. And realistically, Logan is probably the worst house in the best street. If you look at Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan. Josh: On a 10 year plan, If you look at where Logan was 10 years ago versus where it is now versus where it was 10 years prior to that versus where it is going to be in 10 years it's all on the up and up. The worst house in the best street, so to speak. You can find a lot of bad houses and you could find a lot more before, but so many people are moving in. There's young blood moving in and it's similar to a lot of areas, I guess that did have a bit of a stigma or had had a couple of things that happen. Like we had that fence fight thing that happened years ago that was just a small thing that got blown out of proportion and overall bad things happen everywhere. One of the things that I always say, and I stand up for Logan pretty heavily off of friends who, hell, why do you live in Logan? I said, well, because if I lived in a nice house down, in the areas that you're living in, two, $3 million houses, it'd be too, too much of a reason for people to come in and break in and steal all my stuff. No one's going to come up here to do that. Obviously being facetious, but the reason why I love Logan is it takes good people in bad areas to make a change and to make an area, a good area. And you can have good people in good areas and they do nothing. But if you had these, these people that are actually the movers and the shakers, the people like Tony from Substation 33, and that the systems like Innovate where they are helping businesses locally and they are giving people the step up it really makes a difference. And, that is what it's all about. Just putting your name out there, listening to what, to what is available to help you out if you are struggling. Stewart: Yeah. We also have here one of the most giving communities I'm sure in Australia, the amount of volunteers, people that volunteer to help other people in this city is higher than anywhere else. We've got the social enterprise global forum coming to Logan. Why? Because this is where people give. It's such a given community. It's such a sense of that there is this sense of community here, but it's not integrated. And one of the things that I have done as part of this campaign is going out and talking to these various groups, finding out what their problems are. Because as a coach, that's what you do. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want as the constant question. Okay. Finding out what they want, and then talking to the next group and realising that all of these groups and whether it's a seniors group, whether it's mental health, whether it's a domestic violence, whether it's the homeless people working with the homeless, they are all working towards the same thing. Most of them have the same problems. They're not working together to solve those problems. And I think this is sort of the cornerstone of what I want to do as mayor of Logan is to create these, groups that champion and bring together the group guys that are already doing it. Like we should not be putting our hand up and saying, we're going to try and solve mental health as a council. What are we doing? What we can connect the groups that are already doing it. There are at least 13 different groups in the city, work with men's health, but then don't talk to each other. Hmm. Now if we counseled and put someone on as a men's health coordinator, and it doesn't have to be, you know, there aren't any jobs but someone has to do the administration. Because if one group tries to do that, it falls over. And this is actually what Logan together is based on, is a model called Collective Impact. 3.0 came out of California. And it talks about how you heard the cats, all of the organisations are doing fantastic things. But if you asked any one of them to coordinate with the others, it's too much. The straw has broken the camel's back. But if you have a central backbone organisation called like Logan Together, they can coordinate. They can actually do the coordination, but also they can collect the statistics. The moment we don't know how many homeless that are on the city. Now, if I talk to every organisation, I might be able to get some idea, but even then there's going to be crossovers, so we don't know how big the problem is. And as you know, you can't solve the problem unless you actually know how big it. Josh: Data in or data out If you don't have any data to work on, you can't really make a decision. Stewart: If you think the problem is 100,000 people that are homeless, you apply a solution for that amount of people. When the problem was a hundred people, if you think it's a hundred. And it was actually a thousand you've applied the wrong solution, and you're never going to get anywhere, and then you'll say, we shouldn't have even tried. You've got to find out what the size of the problem is, whether it's seniors, whether it's the sporting clubs. We don't have a peak sporting body for Logan. It’s not a hard thing to organise. Council could do that very simply because they're great organisers. The sporting club then gets representation as a peak body. I've spoken to a bunch of these sports, whether it's squash or rugby or soccer about this idea, and they're like, yeah, yeah, that'd be fantastic. We could say, would you be part of it all? We can see how it would work. Yes. The seniors groups, national centers are structuring, how do we do this? Now I've moved away from business, but the business side of it is the same sort of thing. If you've got some vertical businesses that are doing business automation or they're looking after finance for foreign companies. I know we spoke before we went on air talking about the multicultural aspect of Logan. We have access to get into 200 and over 217 different cultures. I'm pretty sure if we've got some really good to sell, we have it really big market to sell. This is the strength, man. This is, this is where I get really excited because we're doing some stuff in the schools at the moment. Mosman High has piloted a program where they're recycling all of their waste. Okay. So there was a $7,000 a month bill, now, they're making either a zero or making a small profit, or sometimes they pay $100 for it. So to outsource to ups to send that, that amount of waste to landfill 100 bucks, or they make a small profit because they're recycling the green waste, they're recycling, all the plastics are recycling the white paper. Josh: That's not just beer money we're talking about that's some serious money. Stewart: There are 17 high schools. It's now been gonna push into Mabel park. They're looking to roll it. It won't be rolling out into every school. I think, and I honestly believe this hand on heart, we could be zero waste for all our schools now. That's pretty exciting in and of itself. We're saving the planet a little bit. Yeah, but hang on, it gets cooler. The kids coming out of high school have a cert three. We could upgrade that to a cert four so they're coming out as recognized recycle experts, right. We have 217 nationalities, and I'm pretty sure that the nationalities, they are the cultures that represent all have a problem with recycling and green waste and all that sort of stuff. If we can teach our kids to do it. Then we can teach other countries kids to do it. We could be exporting recyclers. You're talking about what are the jobs are going to be, Oh no, I'm going to go big on you, man. I'm going to go big, go big or go home. If we're exporting recyclers, we are the center of recycling. If I can get the schools to be zero waste, guess what business is next. Yeah. If you get the kids that end currently in school to be lifelong recyclers, assuming they're going to live for another 60 probably 60 years, once they leave school. There are 55,000 kids in school in Logan at the moment. It works out to be about 3.3 million years worth of recycling. It's huge. 3.3 million years. If I only got the kids that are in school right now, I'm not, the ones coming in next year are the ones that left last year. Just the ones that are in there. 3.3 million years of recycling. Someone said to me, how are you going to change global warming and the certificate four at a time and seriously, no, no, and the guy that was moderating said he's running for mayor. He can't do that. I'm like, let me try. Maybe try. I honestly believe we can be the center for recycling. But that's just one of the innovations we've got in the city. As you mentioned, some safe station 33 and the upcycling and stuff that's going on there. Josh: They're replacing back to the TVs to create filaments to 3D print stuff. How sick is that? Stewart: Cool. You know there's a manufacturer in Logan that creates the nuts for nuclear reactors. If you want to build a nuclear reactor anywhere in the world, you will buy the nuts. For those nuclear reactors from Logan, how cool that is, and that is something that should Josh: There's been over the years, obviously some, some stigma around Logan and some of the different names that happen to rhyme with the word Logan. Stewart: It should be a new slogan for Logan. Is that what you're trying to say? Josh: Sounds much better Stewart: Anew slogan for Logan. Josh: I did exactly that. That is where we have these cool stories, like these nuclear nuts and the flow hive. It's been a huge, huge success or being manufactured within the Logan and that, that's something that was developed within Australia. That's been a fantastic new way of harvesting honey. There are all these really, really cool bits and things that people are doing that needs to be really pulled together to have people go, Oh wow, this is what they're doing. And we sang on recycling 200, so 217 different pods, Watts of life's ways, backgrounds and belief systems that have all been bought together underneath one roof. The spans, I don't know what the radius is of Logan off the top of my head. But it spans the theory that Logan does and, and all these different people will be eating different things and have a different idea on the foods that they're buying and the different plastics, and they're all be able to take that back to their Homeland to talk to them about how they would be able to do this. Maybe there's a, a certain enzyme within Rogan Josh, for instance, that gets broken down differently to what it would if you'd be having a kebob. And so that is what is awesome. Being able to have those many minds work to that. And that's an advantage that you, you don't have it anywhere else in Australia. We are the most multicultural area within Australia. Stewart: I don't think we've taken advantage of it though. And look, there's some, some things that I've done. I'm a businessman, but on the community focus, business matters. How are we going to do five different things? But one of the things I looked at was one of the questions I got asked was, where is the CBD? Where's the CBD? Logan, what's the center? Josh: If I had to pick a spot, it wouldn't be the bit that I would say would really represent Logan as much as I'd wanted to, but I guess it'd just be with it. The council building is, I guess. Stewart: Logan central. Yep. Okay. Right. What about Springwood? What about Beenleigh? What about Jimboomba? We have opportunities. We are, uniquely placed to have three, possibly four, possibly five different hubs within our city. Now you've got Chermside for Brisbane, which is sort of the Northern hub, and you've got Mount Gravatt, sort of the Southern hub. We had the opportunity to do the same sort of thing, and so what I did was I actually went and found a guy that's created. I managed to meet Joe Versey who set up a park road, several fair, the coffee culture. He created the coffee culture for Brisbane. Late-night coffee was not a thing until Joe came along and created it. Now Joe drives Ferrari's and he still does that sort of stuff. He was instrumental in getting James straight off the ground. He has bar spritz on Kangaroo Point cliffs and was talking recently to council about putting a zip line between the top of Kangaroo Point cliffs and the botanical gardens because he is a visionary that sees things before they exist. Yeah. I brought him down and drove him around Logan Central. We went to Springwood, Logan Central and Beenleigh and I've got his take on what do you do to create a scene? Yeah. What do you do to create a precinct and it was interesting because I've taken the ideas that he gave me and then I've taken them to the businesses in those areas and the property guys that own the land in those areas and the residents around those areas to see does this actually make any sense to you guys in front of Springwood? The Springwood hotel. The very large copper, which you can see from the highway. Yup. If there was a function there every Friday night with a live band and laser lights and spotlights and food, you've got to have food. You've got to have beverage. We would get people coming off M1 on a Friday night. I may meet my mates at the Gold Coast or Brisbane, let's meet in the middle. Let's meet at Springwood. Make it easy to get off, easy to get back on, great food, great entertainment and know it's there. Yup. You've now got a precinct. Now that precinct will grow because corporations will want to have their office workers where they can let off steam on a Friday, Saturday night if it's open longer. There's an opportunity being lean, different perspective. Logan central. The global food market at Logan central should be the entire area of Logan central. But what it was saying was you don't let just any old person come in and start stumping up. You have to foster culture. You have to get, if you want to have a food present, you get a restaurant that's already really good somewhere else. They know how to run a business and know how to market. They, they've got that bit sorted. Bring them in. Entice them in, bring a few in, and then make the local businesses come in around them and learn from them. Yep. So you're fostering local business based on the models that actually currently work. People will come for the big, big ones, and then they will also visit one of the local ones. And so what you do is you start to build this presenter and everyone wins. Everybody wins. Logan is so uniquely placed to do this sort of thing. But you've got to have someone with a vision that can drive that vision forward, and that's why I ran for mayor, not for one of the divisional seats, because the mayor is the person that sets that big vision and then brings everyone along for the ride. For the last eight years, I've been doing executive coaching, working with the leaders of TAFE or Queensland government or Domino's. Big organizations to work out how they fix their culture, and that's what I teach them how to do the culture in the council. It needs some work, right? So again, applying my skills to my schools then better serve me. Representing the people as a divisional counselor, what do my skills better serve me at the top? Trying to set the culture from the top down. Because when you try and set the culture from a mid-level, it really is hard if you've got toxic people at the top. Then what tends to happen is that they learn really good lessons about managing up, but there's a struggle and you're never going to get there until you've got the right person at the top. Josh: Richard Branson and the more close to home Dick Smith. Had the idea of the culture of a business and how it should run and that that is. Dick Smith said one day, a month, no matter what level of business you're in, you need to be in one of the stores looking and servicing the people to make sure you're making the right decisions for the right people and see the impacts and the effects of a decision that you've made. You know, just pushing paper and ticking boxes. You're actually able to see the flow-on effects and how that has affected that business with the council and with the people that, that sits within that council. There is a, I don't know if the right terms or hierarchy, but there is definitely, if you've got a, a toxic environment that will flow down and if you have a great environment, the people within the environment will promote and back up that that council or business or boss or whatever the case till the cows come home. And that's where there definitely needs to be a bit of a shift in the mindset of, of the people that are making these big decisions that are impacting the smaller guys. And definitely the smaller guys will, we'll carry that through and have a lot more respect for the location that they're in. And as I said, I love Logan. I see no issues with Logan. I'd love to see more people have the same approach and the same thought on it. And anyone that has lived in Logan, they got, you know, it's not that bad. It was Stewart: It’s not bad, it's awesome. One of the things I think we're missing though, and I'll finish up here, is that the Logan has to be the easiest place to do business. We want our economy to grow. We've got to be the easiest place to do business at the moment. Brisbane is giving a wave waivers to business. They are waiving application fees. They're doing all sorts of stuff to attract more business. We're not. Yeah. We have to not only match them, we have to get smarter at that than them. Then we have to use things like your business automation skills and get that. How do we get that into 100,000 businesses? We've got 15,000 businesses in the city, but let's say I went big, well, let's say there's 15,000 businesses. How do we get 15,000 businesses? And this is one of the things that I've learned very early on work the solution to the size of the problems we spoke before. If the solution is 15,000 businesses, and you said, I'm gonna run a workshop and you can put 15 people in it. Yeah. You've completely messed them up. What are you doing? You know, you've turned on the light. I want you to get hit the sun. How do we do that sort of stuff. And I think that's the big vision thing that I'm trying to bring into council. The guys that I'm running at currently they're all set in the past. They're talking about the 80s. They're talking about the 90s that they're, they don't realize things like, Josh: I'm investing in the yellow pages. Stewart: Drone buses are coming, you know, two years away. We'll be able to get in a little pod, a drone. We'll pick it up and we'll take you somewhere. So, uh, we were doing, uh, measuring distances. It's so crazy. Yeah. You're planning by big league, big arose and the, the. Academia will tell you that smarter roads, if you manage the roads with a different way, like you think about how to make the roads, who's carrying what lanes they're in, all this sort of stuff, you get a 30% return on your investment versus a 3% return building a bigger road. Josh: Yup. Man of my own heart. I was going to say, you've touched on a topic that, I think if we actually had smarter control of the way that the lighting for traffic flats worked without, throughout the area, along with not throughout the area being pretty, well, Queensland, probably Australia, but then also took advantage of paint. It sounds like such a weird thing to do, but that made the lanes a little bit narrow, except for, as you're saying like a heavy haul vehicles that might need the left lane. It's a wider lane. If we did things like that, you'd be able to squeeze, if you look at the road from here to Brisbane and extra lane, the entire distance along. Now, I think if you look and you said 15,000 businesses throughout Logan, if you are running events fantastic, absolutely jaw, jaw-dropping, amazing business in Logan. People would come from Brisbane to Logan, and the beautiful thing is they'd be coming to work at a time. You'd be burning those greenhouse gases. You wouldn't be burning the brakes. You wouldn't be burning in either of the, the other resources around your car and run consumables there. You'd be running a more efficient lifestyle and be able to spend more time with your family and friends. So that's, that's, that's my sort of 2 cents on that. Stewart: Look, I think if we can, if, if we can hit the goal of making Logan the easiest place to do business, the economy will look after itself and we've got to set those big priorities zero way schools. Let's try and do that. The upside is all acute, or a lot of our kids will come out with some, a little bit of an extra certificate and maybe we can export that. Like it's big, I get, it's a big dream. Josh: It carries onto their mentality and mindset at home. And that then carries through the parents and see what their children like doing and why they like doing it. And that then affects the whole community. The home is located close enough to the school. So you know that. The impact of changing around the, their mindset within the schooling system will change around the mindsets within the homes, which are change around the amount of landfill that's going to change around the amount of rubbish, It's just a carry on effect, butterfly effect, domino effect. Stewart: If we do it really, really well. We become the center that others copy. I don't want to do this just for Logan. If we do this really, really well, we can show Townsville how to do it with all your schools. We can be the template for how, who changed the planet. There's this idea of life one recycling. You're absolutely right, the parents start picking it up. But we're also starting to talk to the schools about how to get more entrepreneurship into the schools. So we've got Logan cha junior chamber of commerce kicking off. So it's how to get the kids, and not only just get them to think about it now, but provide a pathway for them to move into the adult world of business. Josh: That's perfect. And that, that's going to get it, set them up for success. As someone who went to school in Logan. Stewart: What school did you go to? Josh: I went to winder high school. While I was there, I had my ups and downs, but overall it's set me up with information, technology, and it put me into an environment or I started doing the IT work for the school. I was very, very happy to be able to automate and better a lot of the processes there and have people come underneath me and learn, learn what I had to do and, and what I was doing. And it's, it's something that is a great opportunity. Things, as I said again, that are just there that you, your kids can start doing now. It was much better for mum and dad, to be honest. I was doing the training ship instead of a friend's going off to McDonald's and having to do the backwards and forwards driving. Then you get traineeships, upskill them and all the good stuff. Is there anything else, any finishing notes, final thoughts? Stewart: No. Look lower than amazing. I really hope that whoever wins. Hopefully, it's me, but whoever went actually has the vision and that brings innovation in. If we can bet the innovation and tie that to the multicultural tie, that's the precincts, tie that to the schools. It's kind of the same thing. It's not like I'm not trying to invent seven different things just to solve seven different problems. It's the same sort of problem. Staring at the same, yeah. Rinse and repeat. Let's keep going here. I think in, you know, in three to four years, Logan will be. The place that people travel to for work. Logan will be the place that, sorry, you should've invested four years ago. We're not the worst house in the best street anymore. We're not a drive through. We're a destination. Josh: I could not have said it better. Well, it has been great talking with you and I'm really happy to have had you here. Anyone else that's listening, if you'd like this, jump across to iTunes. Leave us some love. Give us some feedback. Leave us a review. Let us know what your thoughts are. Other than that, Stay good.

PC Perspective Podcast #521 - 11/08/18 Join us this week for discussion on AMD's new Zen 2 architecture, 7nm Vega GPUs, SSD encryption vulnerabilities, and more! You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE. The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends! iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store (audio only) Video version on iTunes Google Play - Subscribe to our audio podcast directly through Google Play! RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader (audio only) Video version RSS feed MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file Hosts: Jim Tanous, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, Allyn Malventano, Ken Addison, and Sebastian Peak Peanut Gallery: Alex Lustenberg Program length: 1:42:27 Podcast topics of discussion: Join our spam list to get notified when we go live! Patreon Merch! http://joshtekk.com/ Week in Review: 0:05:10 Corsair H115i RGB PLATINUM 280mm Liquid CPU Cooler Review 0:15:30 AVerMedia Live Gamer Ultra and Live Gamer 4K Review: 4K HDR Capture for the Masses 0:23:15 Steelseries Rival 650 Wireless and Rival 710 Gaming Mouse Review 0:26:10 BitFenix Nova TG Tempered Glass ATX Mid-Tower Case Review Thanks to Casper for supporting our podcast! Save $50 on select mattresses at http://www.casper.com/pcper code pcper News items of interest: 0:37:45 Intel unveils Xeon Cascade Lake Advanced Performance Platform 0:48:20 SSD's firmware encryption is pretty floppy 0:56:00 Meet the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 and MI50 accelerators 1:04:25 AMD Shows Off Zen 2-Based EPYC "Rome" Server Processor 1:15:15 Western Digital Launches 15 TB Ultrastar DC HC620 SMR Hard Drive Picks of the Week: Jeremy: A solid B450 board for $90 Josh: On sale last week… still interesting. Ken: Destiny 2 - free Until November 18th Allyn: Jump start your car - without a battery! Jim: N7 Day! Amazon - Origin Sebastian: Creative X-Fi HD USB Sound Card

We never thought when we set out to record a podcast called 2 Jews Talking that our title could potentially become worrisome for us. We never thought we'd have to do an episode about the rise in anti-semitism in this country, but here we are. Tune in as we discuss our very real fears, anxieties and anger about living in Donald Trump's America. This episode is a long one so feel free to jump ahead to: *Erika's premonition that Trump would win: 07:49 *Josh's first experience with fake Internet news in 2007: 12:38 *A dad joke to make you feel better about Donald Trump: 18:51 *On being the product of great-grandparents who fled anti-semitism in Europe: 27:30 *Josh on Jews and Jewish organizations who've supported Trump: 32:42 *A lesson on fascism by Professor Josh: 39:00 *On channeling anger through activism: 48:28 *On being an outsider in America: 01:00:00 *Josh On why "Jews are no longer white people.": 01:02:45 *The "But Ivanka is Jewish" argument: 01:07:45 *Erika on the emotional toll the fear has taken on her and on the most important thing you can do for yourself this week if you're going through the same: 01:21:00 Reach out and connect with us (unless you're "Nazi Punks") 2jewstalking@gmail.com or 323-JEWS-018. We want to hear from you and how you're coping in the face of a Trump presidency. Let us know how we can help you!