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Al and Kelly talk about Ratopia Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:24: What Have We Been Up To 00:17:46: Game News 00:25:17: News Games 00:36:08: Ratopia 01:02:56: Outro Links Tales of Seikyu Early Access Sugardew Island Sprinklers Update Outlanders “The Culinry Diaries” DLC Turnip Boy Steals The Mall Cubified Turnip Boy Plush Everdream Valley VR Contact Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:31) Al: Hello, farmers, and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al. (0:00:36) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:38) Al: And we are here today to talk about Cottage Core Games. (0:00:42) Al: Woo! (0:00:42) Kelly: Woo! (0:00:45) Al: Uh, welcome back, Kelly. (0:00:47) Al: Always good to have you. (0:00:48) Kelly: It’s always fun to be back. (0:00:50) Kelly: I feel like we talked so recently and yet so long ago. (0:00:55) Kelly: It really wasn’t that long ago. (0:00:56) Al: Let’s have a look. (0:00:57) Al: Your last episode was “Grimoire Groves”, and that was in March. (0:01:01) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:01:02) Al: For two months. (0:01:04) Al: Hmm, I have not played that game since that episode. (0:01:07) Kelly: I completed everything. (0:01:09) Al: Hmm. (0:01:10) Kelly: Everything, everything. (0:01:12) Al: Impressive. (0:01:12) Kelly: And then I put the game down and never picked it back up again. (0:01:14) Al: Hmm, fair. (0:01:16) Al: That’s how I play most games, to be fair. (0:01:16) Kelly: It was fun. (0:01:19) Kelly: Me too. (0:01:19) Kelly: But usually I don’t go full completionist mode. (0:01:23) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:01:24) Kelly: I pick things that I want to complete (0:01:26) Kelly: or give myself goals. (0:01:27) Kelly: Otherwise, I kind of lose motivation sometimes. (0:01:30) Al: Fair enough (0:01:32) Al: And then you were on the fields of then you were on the fields of mystery out before that. Have you played the update? (0:01:32) Kelly: But I was determined. (0:01:37) Kelly: No. (0:01:38) Kelly: I really enjoyed the portion that I played, (0:01:42) Kelly: but I decided that was enough and I’m just (0:01:44) Kelly: going to wait for the full game. (0:01:46) Al: I have done the same also. I was really tempted to jump in in the last update, but I’m like, (0:01:52) Kelly: Mm-hmm yep, that’s why I am I ended up picking up Sunhaven instead (0:01:52) Al: “No, let’s not do it. Let’s not do it. Don’t ruin it for yourself. Wait for the full game.” (0:02:00) Al: Yes. Well, let’s get into that then. So, just before we get into that, (0:02:02) Kelly: So I was like, you know what that’s a completed game (0:02:08) Al: we’re going to talk about Ratopia, this episode. Ratopia, this episode, because it has just come (0:02:14) Al: out in 1.0. (0:02:16) Al: Kelly has previously played it, so I thought we would talk about that. (0:02:21) Al: Before that, obviously, we’ll have our regular news. (0:02:25) Al: But first of all, Kelly, what have you been up to? (0:02:28) Kelly: “Playing Sunhaven.” (0:02:29) Al: I have questions. (0:02:30) Kelly: Woo! (0:02:31) Kelly: I also got 15 yards of dirt delivered to my driveway (0:02:34) Kelly: so I could fix my backyard. (0:02:36) Kelly: So that’s– (0:02:39) Al: Why is it measured in distance? (0:02:44) Kelly: I don’t have that answer. (0:02:46) Al: So, presumably, it’s like a set thickness, right? (0:02:47) Kelly: Do you know how I had to figure out what 15 yards of dirt was, (0:02:50) Kelly: Al? (0:02:50) Kelly: I had to go on YouTube and watch a video of a dump truck (0:02:53) Kelly: delivering 15 yards of dirt to someone’s driveway. (0:02:59) Kelly: I guess? (0:03:01) Kelly: Because they also do like– (0:03:01) Al: You’re the one that’s had it delivered! (0:03:03) Kelly: yeah, Al, this was through Facebook Market. (0:03:06) Kelly: This is just, I don’t know, the standard measurement (0:03:08) Kelly: that they use, though, because it’s cubic yards and cubic feet (0:03:11) Kelly: are used for soil. (0:03:12) Al: Oh, so it’s cubic yards, not yards. (0:03:17) Kelly: I don’t know, because they only said yards. (0:03:19) Al: Because that’s a bit– because cubic yards is a vol– (0:03:23) Al: Yeah, so it sounds like they’re just automatically (0:03:24) Kelly: It’s probably cubic yards, and I just never considered it. (0:03:25) Al: shortening it then, because cubic yards is a volume. (0:03:28) Al: That’s how you measure something like soil. (0:03:28) Kelly: Yes. (0:03:29) Kelly: Yes, that’s how I do my soil. (0:03:31) Kelly: I do soil calculations in cubic yards. (0:03:34) Kelly: I just didn’t put two and two together because it just (0:03:37) Kelly: straight up said yards. (0:03:38) Al: Yeah, that’s just laziness, I think, on behalf of people selling. (0:03:42) Kelly: Yeah. (0:03:43) Kelly: But no, I literally watched YouTube videos on dirt delivery (0:03:46) Kelly: to figure out how much dirt this would be. (0:03:48) Al: Although, I also have a question about that, because this is a thing that Americans do (0:03:55) Al: a lot, is you measure things by volume, when that can be very inaccurate for certain things. (0:03:58) Kelly: Yes. Yeah. Yes. (0:04:02) Al: It’s all very well and good measuring liquids by volume, because they stay the same. You’re (0:04:08) Kelly: Yeah. (0:04:08) Al: not going to add extra air in between grains of water. Yeah. Yeah. (0:04:10) Kelly: No, listen, I do a lot of baking. (0:04:14) Kelly: All of my baking is done by weight. (0:04:18) Kelly: I convert recipes all the time. (0:04:18) Al: Yeah. (0:04:22) Kelly: I’m pretty sure that they do it this way so that they can, like… (0:04:24) Kelly: Okay, this is free dirt, so it’s like… (0:04:26) Al: Okay, yeah. (0:04:28) Kelly: trash as it is. (0:04:30) Kelly: But it’s like, clearly they want to do it by volume and not weight (0:04:32) Kelly: so that they can give me things like a two foot long concrete rock (0:04:36) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. (0:04:36) Kelly: inside of my dirt pile. (0:04:40) Kelly: You know, like, that’s… (0:04:42) Kelly: I don’t know about the other things, (0:04:44) Kelly: because I’m assuming when people buy nice soil, (0:04:46) Kelly: they’re not getting giant rocks in their nice soil. (0:04:49) Al: Yeah, I. (0:04:50) Kelly: But I think… I think it’s… it’s a… (0:04:54) Kelly: I think that’s part of it. I don’t know. (0:04:56) Al: You weren’t buying high quality topside, well, that’s for sure. (0:04:58) Kelly: You know, it’s free dirt. (0:05:00) Al: But yeah, the baking one is funny, right? (0:05:02) Al: Because I understand the want to do it in volume, right? (0:05:05) Al: Like there’s a lot of cooking that I do (0:05:07) Al: where I do it by volume because it’s quicker, right? (0:05:08) Kelly: Yes, yeah. (0:05:09) Al: Like I quite often I quite often will make like (0:05:13) Al: I do like oat breakfast cookies quite often and I’ll just I’ll just use one (0:05:19) Al: of my measuring spoons and I’ll just like throw half a cup into a bowl, right? (0:05:24) Kelly: - Yeah. (0:05:24) Al: Because it’s quick and it’s dirty and it (0:05:26) Al: doesn’t really matter because if it’s slightly off, it’s fine. (0:05:27) Kelly: You’re getting cookies no matter what. (0:05:29) Al: Exactly, right? (0:05:30) Kelly: - Yeah, exactly. (0:05:31) Al: It does the job. (0:05:31) Al: But like when you’re if I’m if I’m baking a cake, like, you know, I’m I’m weighing (0:05:36) Al: out that flour, right, I cannot but you’ll see recipes online all the time. (0:05:36) Kelly: - Yep, yeah, oh yeah. (0:05:40) Al: And it’s like a cup of flour. (0:05:42) Al: And I’m like, first of all, first of all, there is no single standard cup. (0:05:46) Al: Did you know our cups are different than your cups? (0:05:48) Kelly: Yes. That’s what pisses me off. That’s what pisses me off when like a lot of good baking (0:05:49) Al: Fun, isn’t that super fun to learn about after I’ve spent following American (0:05:54) Al: recipes for years? (0:05:59) Kelly: recipes will include both the the grams or whatever ounces and then also yeah the ones (0:06:02) Al: Yes. You click the little button and it will change them. Yes, it’s nice. I like that. (0:06:09) Kelly: that don’t are so questionable because it’s like well did you pack the flour when you put in the (0:06:14) Al: Yeah, exactly. (0:06:15) Kelly: the cup but do you (0:06:18) Kelly: do our cups match yeah it’s very frustrating it’s very I do a lot of (0:06:20) Al: How irritated is your flower? (0:06:26) Kelly: math when I do baking so it’s very interesting I guess (0:06:28) Al: And this is why I don’t do much baking, because I like cooking where I can just throw things in (0:06:35) Al: and it’ll taste good. And if it doesn’t taste good, I add in something else and it tastes good now. (0:06:41) Al: But baking, if you muck up the measurements, you’re getting a pile of mush. (0:06:42) Kelly: That’s, yeah, I will say, I am definitely doing like a dirty sourdough at the moment for the starter because I used to be very anal and I would measure everything out. (0:06:55) Kelly: And after like, I guess four or five years of doing sourdough starters, I just like, I understand what the consistency needs to be. (0:07:04) Al: Yeah, yeah, that’s very different. (0:07:06) Al: If you’re doing the same thing all the time, you know what it needs to be, (0:07:08) Kelly: Yeah, but there’s definitely some. (0:07:10) Al: and you just get used to that. (0:07:12) Kelly: There are some things that I kind of like mess around with in baking where I think other people might not. (0:07:16) Kelly: And it’s like in the end, it still tastes great. (0:07:20) Kelly: And it’s my little science experiment, you know? (0:07:22) Al: Yeah, I know. For sure. (0:07:24) Kelly: But no, I love cooking and baking for the two different reasons. (0:07:28) Kelly: Like one is my little science chemistry set. (0:07:32) Kelly: And the other one is like throw whatever the hell you want into a pan and see what happens. (0:07:34) Al: Yeah, I like the idea of baking and I sit with a pack of flour in my cupboard and I (0:07:42) Al: watch as it goes out of date, because it’s just like, it’s a whole other mindset you (0:07:49) Al: have to be in before you can actually realistically do that. And that, yeah. I’ve had a recipe (0:07:50) Kelly: - Yes. (0:07:55) Kelly: - Yeah, it’s a different commitment. (0:07:57) Al: for like a specific kind of flatbread for months and I’ve not done it yet. And that’s (0:08:04) Al: all for baking. That’s just bread. (0:08:06) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. (0:08:07) Kelly: No, I’ve been meaning to make a brioche bread for months, (0:08:12) Kelly: and I just keep putting it off because I’m like, (0:08:14) Kelly: I don’t want to deal with it. (0:08:14) Al: There’s so much brain space. (0:08:16) Al: Anyway, Sunhaven. (0:08:17) Kelly: Yes, Sun Even has been a lot of fun. (0:08:20) Al: Pardon me, that’s what we were talking about. (0:08:23) Kelly: I like the different mechanics that they’ve added into it. (0:08:26) Kelly: I enjoy having magic. (0:08:27) Al: Yep. Interesting. (0:08:28) Kelly: I wouldn’t say it’s like the most thrilling farming game. (0:08:32) Kelly: I’ve ever played, but I think it’s overwhelming in a way that keeps my attention. (0:08:38) Kelly: Like having the different farms in different areas. (0:08:42) Al: It’s quite story based as well, isn’t it? (0:08:43) Kelly: Yes, yes, there’s a lot. (0:08:45) Al: How are you finding that? (0:08:47) Kelly: Um, it’s good. (0:08:49) Kelly: I don’t always pay attention to stories and games, so I’m not the best person. (0:08:54) Al: Yeah, same. (0:08:57) Kelly: I will say sometimes I look over to the characters, though, and have my eyes coped at one, I think. (0:09:03) Kelly: You guys don’t have that much clothes on. (0:09:04) Al: I’ve had, I backed this game on Kickstarter and I’ve had it in my Steam library now for (0:09:14) Al: a couple of years. I’ve not done anything with it. I have not, no. I think part of my (0:09:16) Kelly: Have you played it? (0:09:21) Al: problem is there’s like a time frame after a game comes out where if I don’t play a game (0:09:26) Al: in that time period I’m probably never playing it. (0:09:28) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that’s hard because you have games that like you want to play and also (0:09:35) Al: Let me tell you how many games have come out this year, purely farming games. We are currently (0:09:41) Al: at 20. 20 games have come out this year so far. No, actually I’m wrong. 22. No, 24. 25. (0:09:51) Al: 25 games that I am tracking on this game, on this podcast, by the 10th of May. There’s (0:09:54) Kelly: By May. (0:09:59) Al: more coming out in May. There’s another three on the list that are releasing this month. (0:10:03) Kelly: Are they flooding the market? (0:10:06) Al: It’s the Stardew Effect. We’re just at that time period. We are, what is this, eight years (0:10:08) Kelly: It is. (0:10:10) Al: after Stardew got popular? So just everybody’s finishing up their Stardew clones. (0:10:12) Kelly: Yeah. (0:10:18) Kelly: That is very true. (0:10:19) Kelly: And unfortunately, Sunhaven does fall into that. (0:10:24) Kelly: But again, I think it’s not the most unique farming game I’ve (0:10:28) Kelly: ever played, but I do like some of the things that they’ve added. (0:10:31) Kelly: I also just find it comforting. (0:10:33) Kelly: I like a good micromanagy game. (0:10:36) Al: Yeah, yeah, I’ll talk about mine in a minute. (0:10:38) Al: But, yeah, I totally agree with that. (0:10:40) Al: I wonder. (0:10:40) Kelly: And I do like that you don’t spend energy. (0:10:44) Al: Oh, yeah, so we’re going to have to we’re (0:10:46) Al: definitely going to have to talk about this game then (0:10:48) Al: because I am also playing a game which doesn’t have energy. (0:10:54) Kelly: It’s a fun mechanic to like, not worry about. (0:10:54) Al: And that is. (0:10:57) Al: Yeah. (0:10:59) Al: I am very much enjoying it. (0:11:02) Kelly: It’s really nice. (0:11:04) Kelly: Like, oh, there’s still always the time, you know, crunch or whatever. (0:11:06) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:11:07) Kelly: But like, oh, I don’t have to eat 10,000 apples just because I (0:11:11) Kelly: want to hit a few more rocks. (0:11:13) Al: This is the thing that’s always annoyed me about farming games is you’ve got two (0:11:17) Al: limitations, you’ve got the time and the energy and removing one or the other of (0:11:24) Al: them, because Ever After Falls, which is what I’m playing and Sunhaven, (0:11:29) Al: which is what you’re playing, both remove the stamina. (0:11:32) Al: but Sugaju Valley, which we’ll talk about in the news section, (0:11:36) Al: it removed the time aspect where it’s essentially turn based. (0:11:41) Al: So you do your stuff and then you there’s two phases to the day. (0:11:45) Al: There’s the day phase and the night phase. (0:11:48) Al: And the night phase is when you open the shop. (0:11:51) Al: So it’s like you do whatever you want to do and then you go and open the shop. (0:11:54) Al: And then when you close the shop, it’s bedtime. (0:11:58) Kelly: that’s sick yeah yeah yeah sometimes bad games yeah it’s um which I think you (0:11:59) Al: So I like the… (0:12:01) Al: I mean, it’s not a good game, it’s a bad game. (0:12:03) Al: But it was interest that was that was an interest. (0:12:06) Al: Interesting thing and I like the games are now trying to play around with these things a little bit more. (0:12:13) Kelly: know that’s one of the things that we benefit from at like at the time point (0:12:17) Kelly: we’re in post stardew is like obviously that a lot of copies came out but I (0:12:24) Kelly: I think we’re really starting to see people like try to change (0:12:28) Al: Mm hmm. Yeah. So we’ll see. We’ll see how those things go. But OK, so you’re enjoying Sun Haven. (0:12:36) Kelly: Yes, I have put over 100 hours into it so far. (0:12:39) Al: Let me schedule that episode then. Sun Haven. Kelly. We’ll see when we do that. (0:12:48) Kelly: You know, you’re the reason I actually picked it up, I think, is because we were talking (0:12:50) Al: I’ve been meaning to play it for so long. Maybe I can event. Maybe I can finally play it if I’ve got (0:12:55) Al: a date to record on it. Aha! (0:12:58) Al: Right, OK. Was it in the news then? (0:12:59) Kelly: about it during the grimoire podcast. (0:13:06) Kelly: Probably I don’t know. (0:13:07) Kelly: I know it got mentioned. (0:13:08) Kelly: It was probably like a brief mentioning, but I think it was the news. (0:13:10) Al: many things, come on. Well I have obviously been playing Ratopia, I’ve only been playing the demo, (0:13:13) Kelly: So you influenced me, congrats. (0:13:22) Al: we’ll get to that later, but yeah I’ve been playing the demo of Ratopia. I’ve also been (0:13:29) Al: playing Ever After Falls and I have put in about 60 hours in that game so far, so it hooked me. (0:13:34) Kelly: What, what’s, what’s that one? (0:13:37) Al: So that’s just another stardew clone, but it um (0:13:40) Al: Obviously, as I said, it doesn’t have the stamina aspect, but it’s, let’s see, how would I describe, so it’s premise is slightly different, where you die at the beginning of the game, and then wake up and turns out that your real life was a simulation, and now you’re in another world with a farm. (0:14:06) Kelly: Oh, interesting. So really planning on people’s simpsychosis fears. (0:14:11) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And it’s very solid, I would say, probably much like what you’re talking about with Sunhaven. It’s like a solid farming game, and it has definitely caught that bug that I have for I must do this thing, and I’m building up this farm, and that is what I’m doing. (0:14:37) Al: And I’ve been enjoying that. (0:14:40) Al: And I have some things to talk about it that I’m going to talk about in a future (0:14:43) Al: episode that I found interesting, but I think if you’d like Stardew and you’ve (0:14:49) Al: been like, I must have another one and I’m done with Stardew, (0:14:52) Al: I want a different list. (0:14:54) Al: It’s a pretty solid one. (0:14:55) Kelly: The graphics look really cute. (0:14:57) Al: Yeah, that’s what initially grabbed me in. (0:14:59) Al: And the animation of it is fun as well, like your character’s arms are not (0:15:03) Al: attached to the body and they can swing really funny as you walk around. (0:15:08) Al: And there’s a few other things like you’ve (0:15:10) Al: seen these that you can catch and put them on things and you’ll get like wood or (0:15:14) Al: or without actually cutting the thing down. (0:15:17) Al: And that’s kind of like around it’s trying to encourage sustainability. (0:15:18) Kelly: Oh, that’s cool. (0:15:21) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:15:22) Al: So, yeah, there’s a few bits and pieces. (0:15:22) Kelly: Yeah, but it’s that solid game. (0:15:27) Kelly: Sometimes you don’t need anything innovative or crazy (0:15:29) Al: Yeah. Yeah. (0:15:30) Kelly: different. (0:15:30) Kelly: It’s just a nice, comforting game. (0:15:34) Al: So that’s what I’ve mostly been playing. (0:15:37) Al: I have also, so two picks earlier came out and I had backed that game. (0:15:42) Al: So this is like a life sim in a kind of stardew style, (0:15:48) Al: but it’s much more, it’s almost, I guess, GTA-esque. (0:15:54) Kelly: I was gonna say it looks like kind of reminds me of like I don’t want to say sim city but like (0:16:00) Al: I guess it would be some city if you were actually controlling an individual. (0:16:00) Kelly: something like that (0:16:04) Kelly: yeah that’s that’s which I guess is kind of like the ratopia of also (0:16:10) Al: Yeah, I think it’s different from that in so much as like you don’t have any control (0:16:15) Al: over anyone else. You’re just living your own life, but you can you can do crime and (0:16:16) Kelly: Mmm. (0:16:20) Al: stuff like that. What I will say is I’ve not properly played it because it doesn’t have (0:16:21) Kelly: Okay, that’s cool. That’s fun. (0:16:27) Al: controller support. So later, I play on my Steam Deck. (0:16:30) Kelly: Oh, you don’t do mouse and keyboard. (0:16:35) Kelly: Ah, that’s crazy. (0:16:36) Kelly: I didn’t consider that, that… (0:16:38) Kelly: Why would they put anything on the Steam Deck (0:16:40) Kelly: that doesn’t have… (0:16:40) Al: Well, anything on Steam goes on the Steam Deck by default, and most games coming out (0:16:43) Kelly: Yeah, no, I understand that, but like… (0:16:47) Al: now will have controller support. It’s a good question as to why it doesn’t have controller (0:16:52) Al: support yet, and I do not know the answer. They have said that they’re adding controller (0:16:56) Al: support soon, but yeah, I’m just like, why, why, why? (0:16:57) Kelly: okay hopefully like I get what you’re saying like obviously they push everything from steam to it (0:17:03) Kelly: but like you would think that there would be like some kind of filter like (0:17:08) Al: They have a compatibility thing and it’s and it currently has an unknown compatibility (0:17:12) Al: for Steam Deck. (0:17:13) Kelly: okay (0:17:14) Al: So. (0:17:15) Al: But whatever. (0:17:16) Al: Yeah. (0:17:17) Al: I opened it up. (0:17:18) Al: Went. (0:17:19) Kelly: yeah that’s that’s fair that’s very fair (0:17:19) Al: Yeah. (0:17:20) Al: Nope. (0:17:21) Al: We closed it. (0:17:24) Al: I’ll try again once you’ve added controller support, please and thank you. (0:17:28) Al: So, yeah, that’s. (0:17:30) Kelly: Interesting concept though. (0:17:31) Al: Yeah. (0:17:32) Al: Yeah. (0:17:33) Al: Well, I want to try it. (0:17:34) Al: That’s the thing. (0:17:35) Al: Like what it is saying it’s doing (0:17:38) Al: It has mixed reviews on Steam just now. (0:17:40) Al: So who knows how that will go, but (0:17:42) Kelly: Well, you know. You gotta try stuff. (0:17:43) Al: we’ll see. (0:17:46) Al: All right, let’s talk about some news. (0:17:48) Kelly: Yay! News! (0:17:50) Al: Tales, Tales of Saikyu. (0:17:56) Kelly: I think sake you, but like, also, I’m not a- (0:18:00) Al: This is the game where you turn into Yoko, Yoko, Yoko. (0:18:06) Kelly: Yokai? (0:18:08) Al: This game is where you turn into Yoko for getting around and dealing with your crops and stuff like that. (0:18:09) Kelly: Taseku, mess you up. (0:18:21) Al: You have a whole bunch of different abilities for turning into different Yokai that have different abilities to do these things. (0:18:30) Al: Yeah, yeah, I haven’t decided whether I want to play this or not, but it is a thing. (0:18:36) Al: and they’ve announced that their early access is coming. (0:18:38) Al: I don’t think this was a Kickstarter, so I won’t have backed it, so don’t buy it. (0:18:40) Kelly: Oh, very soon. (0:18:53) Al: I’m telling myself that, not other people. (0:18:56) Al: I can’t be trusted. (0:18:57) Al: Yeah, not much else to say about that, they’ve just announced their early access is coming. (0:19:03) Al: One thing I didn’t check is what they’re expecting in terms of how long. (0:19:08) Al: Because that’s always an interesting thing is how long they say they’re going to be in (0:19:11) Al: early access for. (0:19:13) Al: They’re expecting it to be about a year, so I suspect two and a half years. (0:19:18) Kelly: That sounds like good math. (0:19:24) Al: Next we have another update for Sugaju Island. (0:19:27) Al: So this game is bad game, don’t buy this game, don’t play this game, but they are making (0:19:32) Al: it less bad. (0:19:34) Al: Maybe someday it will be less bad enough that it will be worth buying, it probably won’t (0:19:38) Al: be. (0:19:39) Al: So in this update they’ve added sprinklers, so you can have sprinklers on the farm. (0:19:45) Al: Yay. (0:19:46) Kelly: And you can discover seashells. (0:19:46) Al: It’s such a, yeah, wow, I just, what, well, lackluster updates for lackluster game, that’s (0:19:47) Kelly: How exciting. (0:19:53) Kelly: This is like really lackluster updates. (0:19:55) Kelly: I’m sorry. (0:19:59) Al: what I would say. (0:20:02) Al: I don’t, they’ve also added key bindings support, so you can change your key bindings, which (0:20:06) Al: Good, I’m glad. (0:20:08) Al: You should have had that at lunch. I find this game so fascinating, (0:20:14) Al: because it feels so much like we need to do a farming game, so let’s do a farming game. (0:20:21) Al: And the only interesting thing about it was the turn-based time in the day. It is, (0:20:28) Kelly: Which is like a really cool concept, which is that sounds so interesting. (0:20:32) Al: but… but he’s just not good. (0:20:34) Kelly: They put all their effort into that one concept and nothing else. (0:20:38) Al: They’ve marked this as a major update on Steam. That is something. Uh, yeah. (0:20:46) Kelly: I mean, I’m going to just say this like then I think the name alone implies to me that there’s not a lot of effort going on here. (0:20:54) Al: Oh Kelly, you probably haven’t listened to last week’s episode have you? (0:20:57) Al: There were two new games in last week’s episode that were called Sunseed Island and Starsand Island. (0:21:08) Kelly: We got to start like putting a ban on certain words for farm game (0:21:14) Al: Known, known, island or valley. Yeah, this is… (0:21:18) Kelly: If you have “do” in your name. (0:21:24) Al: Good changes to the game, but that does not make a good game. (0:21:31) Al: I cannot see how either of these three tiny things in this major update would (0:21:39) Al: change this game from being bad to being good. I have no interest in opening that game again. (0:21:48) Kelly: Definitely good to know. I was very intrigued when you mentioned the turn-based, and very (0:21:52) Kelly: disappointed when you immediately followed up with that it’s a bad game. (0:21:54) Al: here lies the problem. They do have a demo. Feel free to try the demo. I mean, some people (0:22:01) Al: like it, apparently, there are some positive reviews. Apparently, it’s mostly positive. (0:22:07) Al: I don’t know how. I really don’t know. So, like, every recommended person is like, oh, (0:22:08) Kelly: Are they paying these people? (0:22:17) Al: it’s so nice. And they’re like, but it’s not. And all the not recommended is like, it is (0:22:23) Al: the most boring farming game. (0:22:24) Al: With so few features, it feels like a proof of concept and then they didn’t add the rest of the game. (0:22:36) Kelly: I don’t know how Steam reviews work. (0:22:38) Al: You just have to own it, I think. (0:22:42) Kelly: Yeah, but like, I think it tells you, right, if like, they got it for free. (0:22:44) Al: Oh, good question. Purchase type. Steam purchases and other. So other would be free ones. (0:22:53) Kelly: That’s what I would think, but like I meant more so too on like the, oh, no, nevermind. (0:22:58) Kelly: 230 people found this review helpful. (0:23:02) Al: Oh, is that the not recommended one at the top? (0:23:04) Kelly: Yeah. (0:23:06) Al: I can’t believe I put 12 hours into this game, absolutely mad. (0:23:09) Kelly: That’s a lot of hours. (0:23:10) Al: It’s a lot of hours for a bad game. (0:23:13) Al: All right, yeah, I’m going to start bashing this game. (0:23:14) Kelly: Next. (0:23:16) Al: Moving on, Outlanders have announced a new DLC, The Culinary Diaries. (0:23:23) Al: It looks like it’s a food based story addition to the game. (0:23:29) Al: This is a town building strategy game. (0:23:31) Kelly: OK, it looks like a short hike or the goose game. (0:23:36) Al: Yeah, I mean, graphics wise, yeah, it’s very much management style game, though, rather (0:23:38) Kelly: Yes, yeah, that’s what I’m basing that off of entirely. (0:23:44) Kelly: OK. (0:23:45) Al: than I have not. There’s too many games to play them all. But yeah, it looks like it’s (0:23:47) Kelly: Have you played this one? (0:23:55) Al: added a whole bunch of cooking stuff. So if you enjoy this game, there you go. You got (0:24:01) Al: a new update? A new DLC? Or is it paid? That’s a good question, I should check that. (0:24:06) Al: It is… No, it’s not free. It is $5. It is not bad. They’ve got quite a few DLCs, (0:24:06) Kelly: It’s free, maybe. (0:24:13) Kelly: Oh, that’s not bad. (0:24:17) Al: which is interesting. They’re all $5. Yeah, they also have very positive rating on Steam. (0:24:18) Kelly: I noticed that it seems like they’re, they have quite the DLC (0:24:29) Al: None of that tells as much, because it’s Sugaju Island, Suga Valley, whatever, I don’t care. (0:24:30) Kelly: - I think no. (0:24:37) Al: Had a positive, quite positive, was it? Or something like that? I don’t know. It was positive for some reason. (0:24:46) Kelly: But I mean, like, I feel like generally, obviously, (0:24:49) Kelly: that’s not true for everything. (0:24:51) Kelly: Games that tend to put out consistent DLC content, (0:24:55) Kelly: like, there’s something good going on. (0:24:57) Al: Yeah, it has twenty nine thumbs up on the Steam post and zero comments. (0:25:03) Al: So you’ve not got a whole bunch of people (0:25:05) Al: complaining about it being paid, which implies to me that some people are (0:25:10) Al: excited to buy it. (0:25:10) Kelly: Yeah. And again, for $5, it’s not a bad addition. (0:25:14) Al: Five dollars. (0:25:17) Al: All right, next, we have some new games to talk about. (0:25:21) Al: First up, we have turnip bill. (0:25:25) Al: Words, words. (0:25:25) Kelly: You’re not having a good day with the, I’m immediately adding this one to my wish list (0:25:27) Al: Fail me, Callie. (0:25:33) Al: Turnip Boy steals them all. (0:25:36) Al: Uh, have you played any Turnip Boy game? (0:25:39) Kelly: I have not, um, not out of like not wanting to, but like just life. (0:25:45) Al: So turn it by commits tax evasion is great fun. It’s it’s a really good (0:25:51) Al: small (0:25:53) Al: RPG and I really liked that game turn it by Rob’s a bank is (0:26:00) Al: similar in terms of its action (0:26:02) Al: But it is a roguelite (0:26:06) Kelly: Oh, interesting. So not for Al. (0:26:08) Al: I (0:26:09) Al: Mean I I played it. I want to see how many hours I put into it. I put in (0:26:11) Kelly: Yeah. (0:26:15) Al: I played it on the switch not steam apparently (0:26:18) Al: So I would need to I would need to look on my switch, which I’m not doing right now (0:26:23) Al: I (0:26:26) Al: Finished the game. I completed it which I haven’t done for many many roguelites (0:26:35) Kelly: says a lot. I didn’t realize how new these games were though. That’s crazy that they’ve put out (0:26:40) Kelly: three games in like four years. (0:26:43) Al: Yeah, 10 hours is apparently what I put into it to complete the game. (0:26:48) Kelly: Oh, that’s, that’s a, that’s like a solid cute little short game. (0:26:52) Al: Yeah, well, that’s the thing about them. They’re not super long, (0:26:55) Al: you know, you’re not looking at 50 hours, you’re looking at up to 10. (0:27:00) Al: With Turnip Boy commits to excavation, I 100% did it. I didn’t 100% (0:27:05) Al: rob the bank, but I did complete the story. I completed that run, completed that run. (0:27:12) Al: Which is enough. (0:27:13) Al: For a roguelite, for me, considering I only got a third of the way through a run in Hades. (0:27:27) Al: Defeated the first boss, then died in the next level and went “I’m not playing that boss again”. (0:27:36) Kelly: Where’s your dedication to pain? (0:27:40) Al: Nowhere. So yes, right. Okay, so this is a new Turnip Boy game. Don’t get excited. It is not an (0:27:46) Al: RPG. It is not like the previous Turnip Boy games. It is an endless runner for some reason. (0:27:55) Kelly: Very, you know, they found like their niche little like theme with the turnip boy, but like it’s very interesting that each game is different. (0:28:04) Al: Yeah, so what I’ve said in my notes here is, I’ll buy and play a new Turn It By game, right? (0:28:13) Al: Because I like Turn It By, but I’m a little bit disappointed that it’s a third game and (0:28:19) Al: it’s not like the first, because yeah, the second one was different, but it was the same (0:28:24) Al: as well. (0:28:25) Al: Like it was a roguelite, but it was still like a combat game in the same way that the (0:28:31) Al: other one was, right? (0:28:32) Al: The controls were the same, you controlled the player. (0:28:34) Al: The same, you still had a weapon in the same way, and there weren’t as many puzzles, right? (0:28:40) Al: The first one had more puzzles, but it was still there was the same combat and stuff like that. (0:28:46) Al: And this is very much not that. So I’m a little bit sad about that. (0:28:53) Al: I guess that’s fine, you know, they can do what they want. But yeah, I’m gonna buy it, I’m gonna (0:29:00) Al: to play it and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it but I want another turnip by turnip (0:29:04) Al: I was so good, it was funny (0:29:06) Kelly: I’ve literally only heard good things about it. Like, you know, it’s I feel like they (0:29:11) Kelly: really like turn a boy made himself into a thing. (0:29:14) Al: Turnaby commits tax evasion was a lovely RPG that you could 100% in 10 hours, and it was funny. (0:29:20) Al: It had a fun little story. It had some good combat that was actually challenging, (0:29:24) Al: especially near the end. And it was good fun. Turnaby robs a bank, had the challenging combat, (0:29:30) Al: and it had some of the funny story. And other than that, it missed the rest of it. (0:29:34) Al: And this presumably will have the same humor. But that’s it. And (0:29:38) Kelly: But that’s it. (0:29:39) Kelly: So they’re just slowly degrading. (0:29:44) Al: I feel bad saying that, because I suspect it’s not like they’re making this instead of another (0:29:50) Al: RPG, right? Like, I think they had a good idea for doing this. And they’ve done it as Turnaby. (0:29:57) Al: I’m just like, when I saw there’s a new Turnaby game, I went, “Oh, yes, great!” (0:30:01) Al: And I looked at it and went, “This is nothing like them at all.” (0:30:04) Kelly: Yeah. No, I was just being a little cynical, but I agree. (0:30:09) Kelly: I think that’s they’re just trying different avenues. (0:30:14) Kelly: It’s not like, oh, this is like a quick grab or something. (0:30:16) Al: Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. But yeah, I’m not saying it’s going to be a bad game. It’s (0:30:20) Al: just one of these things where it’s like, if you would hear, oh, you know, say you didn’t (0:30:25) Al: know about Silksong, right? And you heard Silksong’s coming out. It’s a new, a new Hollow Knight (0:30:33) Al: game. You’re like, oh, fantastic, exciting. And then it turns out it’s Solitaire. Right? (0:30:40) Kelly: Yeah, that would Yeah, yeah, that’s very true (0:30:41) Al: That’s essentially what we’ve had here. (0:30:44) Al: OK. (0:30:46) Al: Like I’m not saying it’s a bad game, I just saw new turnip game, excited. (0:30:50) Kelly: You want her to play, yeah (0:30:51) Al: It’s not that, that’s the problem. (0:30:54) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s that’s the hard part (0:30:55) Al: And I guess this is the problem with spin-offs and stuff like that, right? (0:30:59) Al: Because this is what this is, it’s a spin-off, it’s not a sequel, it’s a spin-off. (0:31:02) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:31:03) Al: And I’m not saying they can’t do that, I’m just like, my expectations going in was different (0:31:09) Al: and I don’t know how they solve that problem, but that’s where we are. (0:31:14) Kelly: Well, maybe they’re working on that perfect Turnip Boy sequel in the back end. (0:31:20) Al: Well, they’re working on a different game just now as well, Hobknobbers, (0:31:26) Al: which I don’t think is out yet. (0:31:27) Al: Let me check. (0:31:27) Al: Yeah, it’s not. (0:31:28) Al: It’s still coming soon. (0:31:29) Al: So I suspect that the Hobknobbers is their upcoming big game and (0:31:37) Al: Turnip Boy steals them all as a let’s do a quick and easy, fun, endless (0:31:37) Kelly: - This is the, mm-hmm. (0:31:42) Al: runner that some people can buy and it will help our cash reserves. (0:31:49) Al: Well, speaking of their cash. (0:31:50) Al: It deserves, they’re also releasing a cubified turnip boy plushie. (0:31:53) Kelly: It’s so cute though and they have to reach their funded goal. (0:31:56) Al: I don’t need it. (0:32:00) Al: It’s $40! (0:32:01) Al: Oh my word, $40? (0:32:05) Al: This thing better be huge, how big is this? (0:32:07) Al: It’s 35 centimetres tall, so it is reasonably big, but that’s a lot of money. (0:32:14) Kelly: But it looks so soft. (0:32:16) Al: What is the shipping going to be to me? (0:32:20) Al: Probably too much. (0:32:20) Kelly: I don’t need this. What is the shipping? (0:32:26) Kelly: How much tariff would I have to pay to receive this? (0:32:30) Al: Oh 15 dollars shipping to me! (0:32:33) Kelly: Ugh. (0:32:34) Al: 55 dollars. (0:32:36) Kelly: Okay, that’s… that’s… (0:32:36) Al: And it is only 40 pounds, but I’m enjoying the dollar has sunk. (0:32:38) Kelly: But he’s so cute. (0:32:50) Kelly: Well, I’m so glad that someone’s benefited. (0:32:58) Kelly: Oh, I see, there is a tariff statement at the top. (0:33:06) Al: I don’t need it anyway so cube turnip cube or cube boy whatever you’d like to call him he exists (0:33:14) Kelly: He’s very cute. (0:33:15) Al: yeah uh (0:33:16) Kelly: He looks like he’s like that good soft material, too. (0:33:18) Al: yeah yeah (0:33:20) Kelly: Like squishmallows. (0:33:22) Al: but not (0:33:22) Kelly: I’m just going to keep talking until you feel bad, (0:33:24) Kelly: and then you add yourself to life. (0:33:29) Al: everdream valley have announced and released I think I think this is out now (0:33:34) Al: Ever Dream Valley. (0:33:36) Al: VR. A virtual reality version of Ever Dream Valley. (0:33:38) Kelly: Oh, oh, I don’t like that at all. I can’t look at that. (0:33:42) Kelly: I think I would puke if I ever did VR. (0:33:46) Al: I played, there was a game that I played which was like in VR, but you, but it was (0:33:54) Al: augmented reality rather than virtual reality. So you’re seeing the world around you as well (0:33:58) Al: and you like create these little islands where you put animals on them. I love that game. It’s such a (0:33:59) Kelly: OK. (0:34:05) Kelly: That seems cuter, and probably wouldn’t (0:34:07) Kelly: give me motion sickness, maybe. (0:34:10) Al: it was yeah it was a it definitely is much better um this I oh (0:34:16) Kelly: I literally can’t look at that cow clip. (0:34:18) Al: yeah I don’t I don’t know what to say about this game uh (0:34:25) Al: this kind of looks like a proof of concept this looks thrown together um (0:34:30) Kelly: It doesn’t look good. (0:34:32) Al: oh it’s not out yet it’s coming soon but you can pre-order it (0:34:34) Kelly: No yeah yeah but like that cow clip does not look good. (0:34:38) Al: No, no. (0:34:40) Al: No. (0:34:42) Kelly: Feels like I don’t, maybe I’m biased because I don’t like VR but like (0:34:47) Kelly: I thought we were kind of coming down from like the VR (0:34:51) Kelly: um spike I guess. (0:34:54) Al: do it. Yeah, I don’t know why they’ve done this. Like I have a VR headset and I love (0:34:59) Al: it for some things. I love Beat Saber. I love whatever the name of the game is. I kind (0:35:01) Kelly: Mm-hmm (0:35:07) Kelly: Beat Saber looks so sick. I think that would that’s like the the soul game that would sell me a (0:35:12) Al: It is the single thing that convinces anybody to buy VR. (0:35:17) Al: It is so good, I love it so much. (0:35:21) Al: But that, watching films in IMAX and whatever the name of the other game I play, the one (0:35:29) Al: with the Islands of Animals, those are the three things I’ve done more than once on my (0:35:33) Kelly: okay yeah no and it’s a separate game right like yeah you have to pay (0:35:35) Al: VR headset, right? (0:35:36) Al: Like there’s other things that you’ve tried once or whatever and gone “not for me”. (0:35:42) Al: It’s game, but the content. (0:35:47) Al: Yeah. (0:35:48) Al: It’s twenty dollars I think? (0:35:50) Kelly: you could pre-order it for 15 (0:35:58) Kelly: Yeah, no, I feel like a lot of the VR game just feel like novelty. (0:36:02) Al: Tune in next time to see if I’ve bought this game or not. (0:36:07) Al: All right. (0:36:08) Al: That’s the news. (0:36:09) Al: Let’s talk about Ratopia. (0:36:11) Kelly: Yay, I’m just so glad it came out. (0:36:12) Al: All right, I’m going to. (0:36:15) Kelly: Can I say that as someone who is waiting on so many different stupid games? (0:36:16) Al: Yeah. (0:36:20) Kelly: It is so nice to get a full release. (0:36:25) Al: OK, I want to try and describe this game and you can tell me what you think (0:36:30) Kelly: Okay. (0:36:30) Al: about my description. (0:36:32) Al: You are the the queen of a new rat city (0:36:39) Al: and you are building your city out. (0:36:43) Al: You it’s it’s almost it almost is like a it is a city builder, (0:36:49) Al: but it is a an RPG city builder. (0:36:52) Al: So you’re controlling a character. (0:36:55) Al: And you are building up the city. (0:36:58) Al: You’re you know, you’re saying this is where buildings go and you’re saying this (0:37:02) Al: different things go and this is these are the laws of the city and stuff like that. (0:37:08) Al: And you also accept in new members or new citizens. (0:37:14) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:37:15) Al: They are. They call them (0:37:18) Al: they call them migrants or refugees. (0:37:19) Kelly: I think it’s migrants. (0:37:19) Al: I can’t remember. It’s one of the two. (0:37:21) Kelly: It’s something with an M. I know that. (0:37:22) Al: I think it’s my yeah, it’ll be migrants then. (0:37:25) Al: And when you accept migrants in, you can then put them to work. (0:37:29) Al: Or you, so I guess the two, two. (0:37:32) Al: Your main ways of playing the game are you are controlling your individual character who goes around and can do things, and then you’re also directing your citizens to do things as well, so you don’t have to do them instead. (0:37:47) Al: And that can be basically anything, right? You can get them to man a specific building, to like lumber, or you can get them to dig. (0:37:55) Al: I think automatically they will like gather up everything that’s on the ground and put it in the chest. (0:38:02) Al: That’s it. It’s a city builder, but you are controlling an individual character as well as telling other characters what to do. (0:38:10) Al: Is that a fair description of the game? (0:38:12) Kelly: I think it is also it’s vertical builder uh like yeah yeah yeah (0:38:14) Al: What does that mean? What do you mean? Oh, like a 2D, yeah, okay, I see what you mean. It’s side scrolling up and downy. (0:38:22) Kelly: yes but like you’re building vertically which I think is like more terraria than like other (0:38:25) Al: Yes. I was going to, I was just going to say that Terraria is the, is the. (0:38:32) Al: Would be the example. (0:38:34) Kelly: I would say this is like a micromanagers final boss game (0:38:38) Al: Oh, my word, so micromanaging. (0:38:40) Kelly: It’s, it makes. (0:38:42) Kelly: It makes my heart sing. It’s incredible and so stressful. (0:38:45) Al: So let me tell you how I, let me tell you my thought process when starting this game. I’ve not put in, like, I’ve maybe put in less than an hour into this game, but the demo is really good at showing you the core concept of the game really quickly, and I don’t know if the main game does it in the same way, but. (0:39:02) Al: And you’re like, oh, you’re great. That’s fine. I’m going to go do some digging and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, man, I can only carry three things at once and there’s only three of the same thing. (0:39:10) Al: Oh, that’s really frustrating. Oh, goodness. Right. This is going to take forever to do anything. It’s like you dig, dig, dig, and then you throw in the chest and then you dig, dig, dig, and you throw in the chest. Right. Fine. Whatever. This is really annoying. (0:39:22) Al: Oh, OK. Right. I’m adding in new people to my city. OK, fine. Oh, they’re all picking up the things I can do so I can just go now and dig and dig and dig and dig and they will take the thing. Great. That’s a much improvement. (0:39:32) Al: And then it’s like, oh, and then it goes, oh, you need to build this thing. And you’re like, how do I do this? And it’s like you go into this menu and this menu then expands and expands and expands. (0:39:43) Al: And it’s like this web, absolute mass, massive web of different parts of different menus. And you’re just like, I have no idea what’s happening here. (0:39:54) Al: And it’s just it is, if you enjoy not creating spreadsheets, but if you enjoy looking at. (0:40:02) Al: Somebody else’s spreadsheets and figuring out what they do, you will like this game. (0:40:08) Kelly: I think that is a fair– (0:40:12) Kelly: not metaphor, what is the word I’m looking for– (0:40:15) Kelly: summation of essentially all of the aspects of this game. (0:40:18) Al: Where I enjoy making spreadsheets, I do not enjoy figuring out what other people have done, and that’s what the menu felt like. I’m like, I want this thing, but I need to figure out what category they put it in, what category of what category, and what menu of what setting, and then where in this category is it, because it’s just like this mess of things. (0:40:42) Al: And I don’t like figuring out what people think in the best of times. (0:40:48) Al: And it just feels like somebody made this game, and this is how they decided was the most logical thing for their brain, and I cannot be bothered spending my time figuring out why they decided. (0:41:02) Kelly: I think that is a very fair way to see it because I think that’s exactly how it is. (0:41:10) Kelly: But also, I feel like once it starts clicking, it starts making more sense because for me, (0:41:16) Kelly: I really enjoy trying to figure out how people are thinking because I think that’s the only (0:41:20) Kelly: way I can understand vaguely people. (0:41:26) Kelly: So it’s like a puzzle. (0:41:27) Kelly: So I think the puzzle of trying to understand the thought process is kind of fun. (0:41:32) Kelly: Also frustrating, though. (0:41:35) Kelly: Like, there’s definitely been moments where I’m like, (0:41:38) Kelly: “This stupid rat has to pee! How do I fix this?” (0:41:42) Al: Yes, I (0:41:42) Kelly: You know, like, “What do you mean they can’t do this task?” (0:41:46) Al: Think that part of it is is is I I didn’t hate right because it’s like you’re just your standard city builder thing (0:41:50) Kelly: No, no, it’s not bad (0:41:52) Al: It’s like you need to balance you need to balance all these things and you need to figure out how they balance fine (0:41:57) Al: Sure, whatever my problem. I just felt like I was navigating menus for 90% of the time (0:41:57) Kelly: Yes, it’s just I think (0:42:03) Kelly: It’s a lot of menus (0:42:04) Kelly: I did see someone say that they didn’t like that the game paused when you opened the menu to like build something and in (0:42:11) Kelly: My head I was like, what the hell are you talking about? (0:42:13) Al: All right souls player, goodness me, just masochistic person. (0:42:15) Kelly: Yeah, I was like what kind of game do you think this is that’s crazy (0:42:21) Kelly: Then like I literally I watched that and I was like what the hell kind of person (0:42:27) Al: Oh, my word. Horrifying. (0:42:28) Kelly: That’s sick that’s sicko behavior (0:42:32) Kelly: It’s like please keep those thoughts to yourself and I think better never implement that in this game (0:42:38) Al: Yeah, that that that how to make this game more stressful. (0:42:42) Kelly: Yeah, literally, like you said, the souls-like version. (0:42:47) Kelly: That’s disgusting. (0:42:48) Kelly: Don’t ever tell people that. (0:42:50) Al: It was like the kid just said, “Is it time for a test in school?” (0:42:51) Kelly: Like, I need those, I need that pause (0:42:54) Kelly: to figure out what I’m doing. (0:42:58) Al: And you’re like, “No! (0:42:59) Al: What are you doing? (0:43:00) Al: What?” (0:43:00) Kelly: You didn’t collect our homework. (0:43:01) Al: Yeah. (0:43:02) Al: Oh. (0:43:06) Kelly: But yeah, no, that blew my mind. (0:43:07) Kelly: ‘Cause I was like, people think like this? (0:43:10) Kelly: Why would you want that? (0:43:12) Al: So yeah, I think I, I mean, we’re just, we’re apparently getting straight into (0:43:15) Al: my opinions, um, I, I can, I, this is not the game for me, but I 100% can see why (0:43:16) Kelly: I think that’s very fair, and I do overall, I think this game, there is so much going (0:43:21) Al: someone would like this 100%. (0:43:29) Kelly: on and like, I like Rimworld a lot, I don’t know half of the shit I’m supposed to be doing (0:43:36) Kelly: in Rimworld because there’s just so much in that game. (0:43:41) Kelly: I don’t even buy the DLCs for that game, I just like playing the game, I figure things (0:43:45) Kelly: Peace out as the game goes on. (0:43:46) Kelly: You know, I’ve been playing it for a few years, things will happen, bad things happen, sometimes you die. (0:43:48) Al: Yeah (0:43:51) Al: Do you know I think (0:43:53) Al: What I think interesting was I think that when I while I was playing this game (0:43:57) Al: I think I was thinking you know what I would have more fun doing probably what is terraria (0:44:03) Al: Right, like I feel like that’s what I’m looking for if I’m one if I would be wanting to play this game (0:44:08) Al: It’s it’s I I I want it simpler (0:44:13) Al: I’m not it’s not necessarily even the action adventure bit right like it’s it’s more I (0:44:14) Kelly: That’s, yeah. (0:44:18) Al: Was thinking like this but (0:44:22) Al: Minecraft and then I was like wait, but that’s terraria, right? (0:44:24) Kelly: Mmm (0:44:26) Kelly: That’s so funny because I’ve I’ve actually never played I missed the boat on Terraria (0:44:30) Kelly: And I’ve also never played Minecraft because I 100% missed the boat on that one. I feel like at a certain point (0:44:37) Kelly: Like I think I would still enjoy Minecraft, but at this point in my life. I’m just like I cannot pick up Minecraft (0:44:43) Al: That’s totally fair. Minecraft was my, like I got in literally the last day of alpha (0:44:50) Kelly: Oh, wow. (0:44:51) Al: in Minecraft. So that was back on in 2010, I want to say. And that was like, I was, (0:44:56) Kelly: Mm-hmm. And I know people are still playing it. I know, you know, it’s still a relevant game. (0:45:00) Al: oh yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. But I was like part of the way through uni at that point, (0:45:07) Al: university. So like I, I was very much in a world where I. (0:45:12) Al: Could sit up till three in the morning, obsessing over stuff. And I loved the building aspect of (0:45:18) Al: that. So I, I, if I, obviously I do not have any numbers for how much time I spent on Minecraft, (0:45:25) Al: because it wasn’t through Steam and nothing exists for that. But if I did have numbers, (0:45:30) Al: I would probably be incredibly scared to share that number with anyone, right? Like. (0:45:34) Kelly: That’s how I feel about my Sims numbers, you know? I’m so glad I don’t have those. (0:45:39) Al: Yeah. Yeah, same, same sort of thing. (0:45:42) Al: Absolutely. (0:45:45) Kelly: But no, I think what I like about this game is that there’s so much going on. Like in (0:45:50) Kelly: a sense it’s like, I enjoy bein

Al and Kelly talk about Grimoire Groves Disclosure: We received a free review code for Grimoire Groves. #gifted Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:23: What Have We Been Up To 00:12:16: Game News 00:36:28: New Games 00:39:42: Grimoire Groves 01:12:37: Outro Links Harvest Moon Pre-Orders Bugaboo Pocket Release Date Fields of Mistria 2nd Update Go-go Town “Spring Cleaning” Update Sun Haven “Festivals” 2.0 Update Autonomica (Farm Folks) Name Change Coral Island 2025 Roadmap Everdream Village Contact Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello, farmers, and welcome to another episode of the Harvest Season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al, and we are here today to talk about cottagecore games. (0:00:36) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:40) Kelly: Yay. (0:00:41) Al: Welcome back, Kelly. How are you doing? (0:00:44) Kelly: Good. (0:00:44) Kelly: It’s always nice to be back. (0:00:46) Kelly: It’s so funny, because all of my voice recordings are just– (0:00:46) Al: Always nice to have you. (0:00:52) Kelly: oh, it’s like memory lane looking at all the past podcasts. (0:00:56) Al: You were last on talking about fields of mystery, which we might have stuff to talk about with (0:01:00) Kelly: Yes, yes. (0:01:04) Kelly: Yeah, I saw there was a note, but I (0:01:06) Kelly: I haven’t checked it out since we last spoke. (0:01:10) Kelly: Yeah, how have you been? (0:01:10) Al: But yeah, your first one of the year you did three last year. (0:01:12) Kelly: Oh, yeah, 2025. (0:01:14) Al: Let’s see if we can get you above three this year. (0:01:19) Al: Cool. Well, I have Kelly on this episode because we are going to (0:01:23) Al: talk about grimoire groves, grimoire groves. (0:01:28) Kelly: Yes, it’s like a little tongue twister. (0:01:31) Al: Yes, grimoire groves. (0:01:34) Al: Got to say up front, obviously, we received a free review code (0:01:38) Al: for the game, which actually can. (0:01:40) Al: I don’t know. No, that was a joke. That was a joke. That was a joke. (0:02:00) Kelly: No, no, no, no, I would absolutely pay money for this game. (0:02:11) Al: Spoiler alert. Yeah, so we’re going to talk about that game later in the episode. Before (0:02:15) Kelly: And thank you, Al, for that. (0:02:22) Al: that, we’ve obviously got a bunch of news, but first of all, Kelly, what have you been (0:02:26) Kelly: I have been up to taking care of a stray cat and then just trying to start (0:02:33) Kelly: planning out stuff for the spring for the yard. (0:02:36) Al: Oh, yes. Is it garden talking time? What’s your plans for this year? (0:02:39) Kelly: Yeah, but also we’re trying to… I don’t know yet. I’m still waiting but I have to (0:02:47) Kelly: clean up the yard because I prioritized weeding other areas of the house last (0:02:51) Kelly: fall instead of the garden, so it’s still kind of overgrown. (0:02:56) Kelly: I’m trying to get dirt so I can level out the borders of the (0:02:59) Kelly: yard and then tarp them. So exciting. And besides that, I’ve (0:03:08) Kelly: been playing Infinity Nikki for three solid months. This broke (0:03:11) Kelly: my streak, actually. I still play the game every day, so it (0:03:12) Al: No, I haven’t played it (0:03:17) Kelly: didn’t actually break my streak. I just was the only game I was (0:03:19) Kelly: playing for three months. (0:03:22) Al: Fair enough. I haven’t played Infinity Nakey. I’m pretty sure that Dalin plays it as well. (0:03:29) Al: I think we’ve talked about it before, but if you’ve been playing it for three months (0:03:34) Al: straight, I guess you’ve been enjoying it then. (0:03:36) Kelly: - Yes, yes, I think there were definitely moments, (0:03:39) Al: This is the dress-up game, right? Yeah. (0:03:41) Kelly: yes, there were definitely moments where I was playing it (0:03:43) Kelly: ‘cause I just was like, I don’t really have anything else (0:03:45) Kelly: I’m trying to play at the moment, (0:03:48) Kelly: but there is a lot of content and it looks really nice (0:03:51) Kelly: and it’s just like fun to run around the open world (0:03:53) Kelly: and like collect your stuff. (0:03:55) Kelly: It’s just a collecting game. (0:03:56) Al: Yeah. Look, you’re talking to a Pokemon player, right? Like, I know what collecting is like, (0:04:01) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:04:03) Al: I know the feeling. I think it’s a unique part of it, is the fact that it’s a gacha (0:04:10) Al: collecting game, but with outfits, I think is fun. (0:04:12) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:04:14) Kelly: Yes. (0:04:15) Kelly: And unfortunately, there are some things (0:04:19) Kelly: that you cannot beat with essentially not doing the gotcha, (0:04:22) Kelly: but you don’t have to do everything. (0:04:24) Kelly: It’s not going to stop your story progression. (0:04:27) Kelly: You’re just not going to get bonuses. (0:04:30) Al: Right. They’ve got to have a reason for you to pay money, right? (0:04:30) Kelly: You’re just not going to get the coolest outfit. (0:04:33) Kelly: Did I– absolutely. (0:04:36) Kelly: And did I spend some money to get a frog outfit? (0:04:40) Kelly: Yes, but it was a surprise. (0:04:42) Kelly: There was a dog outfit and I needed it. (0:04:44) Kelly: But also like the game is free also, so. (0:04:47) Al: Yes. And, well, yes, exactly. Tell me that three years ago. The thing about these three games is, (0:04:48) Kelly: You just have to you have to restrain yourself. (0:04:57) Al: yeah, you’ve got to make sure that you’re not going over the top, but you’ve also got to think (0:05:00) Al: about how much time and fun you’ve gotten out of games. Like, you know, if I think about Pokemon Go, (0:05:04) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:05:07) Al: I have obviously, I’ve definitely put too much money into that. But also when I think about the (0:05:07) Kelly: Ah, yes. (0:05:11) Al: amount of time that I spend in that game. Like, I spend hours every single day. (0:05:16) Kelly: Oh, I was Pokemon go is probably my highest. Yeah (0:05:17) Al: For eight, for nine years now. (0:05:22) Kelly: Like I don’t and I I I go back and forth on playing it but that game has (0:05:27) Kelly: That’s my most played game because of that (0:05:28) Al: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, ever. Yeah, that don’t think is… (0:05:31) Kelly: Like it beat my Sims like legacy of like, you know playing that from like 10 years old or whatever (0:05:38) Al: I think the thing is that because it’s so accessible, but also because you’re playing (0:05:41) Kelly: It’s so accessible it’s in your hand (0:05:45) Al: it for so many years, even if you only played half an hour every day after 10 years, which (0:05:47) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yes, exactly (0:05:54) Al: in a year and a bit, it’ll be 10 years since the game came out, if you’ve only played half (0:05:58) Kelly: That’s disgusting, don’t say that. (0:06:05) Al: an error, but you do it every single day for the for the for. (0:06:08) Al: 10 years, that is nearly 2000 hours. That’s the thing, the (0:06:12) Kelly: that’s insane but yeah no it’s it’s true yeah exactly but yeah it’s so it’s like (0:06:15) Al: numbers just add up so fast. And let me tell you, it’s way more (0:06:20) Al: than half an hour I’ve played every single day. (0:06:20) Kelly: okay yeah yeah and it’s like okay so like if I put some money in it every (0:06:26) Kelly: year like I’m getting so much out of it you know and I played love Nikki which (0:06:31) Kelly: is what is the phone game before like there’s been other phone games before (0:06:36) Kelly: this too but that was the one I got really into which is different like (0:06:40) Kelly: setup wise, but essentially it’s just an outfit game again. (0:06:42) Kelly: Gotcha outfit game and again, it’s like okay. I played that game for like four years. I put some money into it (0:06:49) Kelly: But I played it a lot like I spent so much time playing that game (0:06:52) Al: Yeah, as long as you can afford what you’re doing, that’s the important thing. (0:06:56) Kelly: Exactly, but yeah, what have you been up to? (0:07:00) Al: I have been procrastinating playing Grimoire Crows. (0:07:06) Al: Every so often, I end up in this situation where I’m like, this is a game that I need to play, (0:07:11) Al: and then I end up not playing it very much. And instead of procrastinating by playing other games, (0:07:17) Al: I procrastinate by doing other things instead. So I’ve not really done much this week at all. (0:07:20) Kelly: Yep. (0:07:23) Al: I have started a shiny hunt for Regigigas in Pokémon Sword. I’m at the point where I need to (0:07:38) Al: actually get through the rest of the legendaries. I don’t have a shiny if I want to finish my (0:07:43) Al: living decks, because I’m 110 left. And so I’m going to run out of non-legendaries very soon. (0:07:48) Kelly: Oh, my god. (0:07:52) Al: And so I thought, let’s start this one, because I can’t just… Yeah, exactly. (0:07:55) Kelly: Start breaking it up. (0:07:58) Kelly: Yeah, no, I understand that. (0:08:00) Kelly: I used to do that with Angry Birds. (0:08:04) Al: You’re going to have to explain that. (0:08:10) Kelly: Since Angry Birds came out, any phone that I get, (0:08:13) Kelly: I download Angry Birds and beat the whole game again. (0:08:15) Al: You replay it all again, oh my word! (0:08:16) Kelly: 3 stars? (0:08:18) Kelly: I’m less about it now, I just kinda go back to it when I’m bored. So like, you know, I have my phone for a while, eventually I get all the stars. But there’s certain levels that even after all these years of replaying it, they’re just difficult. And they piss me off. So I’ll break it down. (0:08:25) Al: look it’s fun it’s a fun game but I can’t say i’ve played it in the last 15 years (0:08:48) Kelly: I always break those up when I go back to get the 3 stars for them. So it’s the same thing where it’s like, I don’t want to do the really tough thing repeatedly and then just get frustrated at the game. Like it’s boring, you know? It gets boring. (0:08:56) Al: Fair enough. My 15 years might have been a bit of an exaggeration, however it is only (0:09:04) Al: 15 years since it’s 15 years since the first game came out. I can’t believe it’s been 15 years, (0:09:06) Kelly: Yes, yes, because I played it on the first iPhone I had, or an only iPhone. (0:09:09) Al: that’s wild. It was it was definitely it was one of the it was one of the early games that made you (0:09:20) Al: go ’this is why I want a touchscreen’ and it was that and (0:09:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. (0:09:26) Al: Fruit Ninja and Digital Jump. Those were like the three that made me realize I get it, (0:09:27) Kelly: Yes, I never got into Fruit Ninja. (0:09:36) Al: I would like a touchscreen please. (0:09:38) Kelly: Yep. Well, that was the thrill of like, you know, with the iPhone too. It was like, oh, this is so sick. I can, I can play these fun games. I can do this for a peggle. (0:09:48) Kelly: I played peggle so much on that phone. It’s pinball. (0:09:52) Al: Okay, no, I didn’t. I didn’t play that one. I don’t think I need more games. (0:09:54) Kelly: Oh, you should look it up. I think you like peggle. (0:10:03) Al: Yeah, fun. All right. I think that’s all. Is that all I’ve got to talk about? I’m shiny (0:10:09) Al: hunting. I think so. I played… You were the one that you were you were spying me on steam. (0:10:16) Al: Was it like half an hour I played of Grimoire Groves or something? (0:10:16) Kelly: Oh, yeah, I was watching you all week because every time I’d sign on to the Steam, it’s (0:10:22) Kelly: like you’re the only person I know that has the game also. (0:10:22) Al: Oh, I’ve got an hour and 20 minutes apparently on steam there. Okay. That was yesterday. (0:10:26) Kelly: So for like the whole week, it was like 12 minutes playing. (0:10:30) Kelly: Yes, now, I see it now, but I was like watching it. (0:10:37) Kelly: I know because like two days ago, I was like, he’s still, he is cutting it close. (0:10:43) Al: Look, well, the problem was you messaged me and you said, “I’m loving this game. I’m (0:10:48) Al: played it so much.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool. I don’t need to then.” (0:10:52) Al: Yeah. No, I legitimately think that’s all I’ve (0:10:53) Kelly: Also, I’m the problem. (0:11:02) Al: done this week is like shiny hunting and Pokémon Go. (0:11:05) Kelly: sometimes it’s like you just get that mental block where you just can’t (0:11:08) Al: Yeah. Oh, I did do… I know. I did do the the Scarlet and Violet Quack Quack Quack Quaville (0:11:09) Kelly: even you’re just like oh I gotta I gotta do this but I can’t (0:11:20) Al: raids. I don’t think I’ve ever figured out how to say the name of that. (0:11:21) Kelly: What? What is that? I actually did not play Scarlet and Violet. (0:11:22) Al: Pokémon. Did you not? Um, it’s the, uh, it’s based on like carnival dancers. Uh, let me send you. (0:11:36) Kelly: Okay (0:11:38) Kelly: But like what is it you do the dancing like you (0:11:40) Al: It’s a Pokémon. Oh, no, no, just like a raid, like a normal Pokémon raid. (0:11:45) Kelly: Oh, but it’s like dressed up like a carnival dancer (0:11:49) Al: No, no, clearly you completely misunderstood this. This is just a Pokémon. (0:11:51) Kelly: Okay (0:11:52) Al: A Pokémon that is based on a carnival dancer. That’s the Pokémon, (0:11:57) Kelly: Oh, but that’s what you’re waiting for (0:11:57) Al: but they’ve done, there’s a raid to defeat it and capture it, yes. (0:12:01) Kelly: Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I thought this was like a costume Pokemon. You know what I mean? (0:12:05) Al: Oh, no, it’s not. They’ve not done that in the main games yet. Um, yeah, that’s it. (0:12:06) Kelly: Okay (0:12:12) Al: That’s the entirety of that. It was a raid. I did it. There we go. Done. Uh, (0:12:17) Al: should we talk about some news? Because the section is being a little bit of a disaster. (0:12:21) Al: Um… (0:12:23) Al: So, first up, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, we have some news on Harvest Moon, (0:12:30) Al: The Lost Valley, and Skytree Village, the ports or remasters, however they want to call them, (0:12:38) Al: for Switch, which for some reason they’ve decided to do, is up for pre-order now. (0:12:44) Al: It is $40 for the two of them, which still feels like too much, but (0:12:51) Al: I feel like it says a lot. (0:12:52) Al: When they’re selling two full games that they originally sold individually on separate consoles, (0:12:59) Al: and they’ve ported them both to the Switch, and they’re selling them both together for $40. (0:13:03) Al: That shows you how much people definitely want to buy these games. (0:13:07) Kelly: Yeah, cuz a lot of these remakes are like still a full 60 dollars alone. Yeah (0:13:11) Al: Exactly. The good ones are. (0:13:15) Al: So it’s coming out in June. Previously, we just knew it was coming out in the summer. (0:13:19) Al: We don’t have an exact date as far as I can see, just says June. (0:13:23) Al: And if you pre-order it now, you get a free acrylic standee (0:13:27) Al: with some of the worst art I’ve seen for a Harvestmen game ever. (0:13:31) Kelly: I can tell you really like this one. (0:13:33) Al: I haven’t even played these games, but I know for a fact they’re bad (0:13:36) Al: because I talked to Rachelle about them and they did not like them and yeah. (0:13:39) Kelly: I can never remember which ones are bad but the art for this one does not look good. (0:13:47) Al: These were I think the first two they did after the split between Harvestmen and (0:13:53) Al: so these were the first ones that weren’t by the original team. (0:13:56) Al: They were by Natsume and let’s just say they hadn’t made any games before and you can tell. (0:14:08) Al: I do, I will, I’m so strongly of the opinion that I think that people sometimes are judging (0:14:17) Al: Harvestmen too harshly purely because they’re angry that they kept the name and didn’t give (0:14:23) Al: back but that’s how these things work and I’m sorry you dislike that but I think if you actually (0:14:29) Al: played some of the newer games they’re not as bad as you think but these ones I’m pretty sure are. (0:14:37) Kelly: - Fair enough, I think that’s a fair point. (0:14:40) Al: The way I described it in the last episode I did with Micah is (0:14:43) Al: they are so close to having a good game. (0:14:47) Kelly: Oh, with the new ones. (0:14:48) Al: Yeah, they’re so close. So close. (0:14:51) Kelly: Maybe next– maybe next game, they’ll hit it. (0:14:52) Al: what we said for three games now. Each game they do is better than the last. Yes, but (0:15:00) Kelly: OK, so they’re growing slowly. (0:15:02) Al: they do still make some bizarre decisions in those games. They’ve also released a whole (0:15:07) Al: bunch of screenshots. And yeah, I mean, they basically look like the original games did, (0:15:13) Al: but with, I guess, more pixels, but not more pixels on the actual models, just more pixels. (0:15:20) Al: So it’s like– (0:15:20) Kelly: No, they look like knees, but like with a little bit better quality. (0:15:22) Al: Yeah, yeah, that’s exact. It looks better quality, but not in a good way. (0:15:30) Kelly: No. (0:15:31) Al: It looks like HD kind of, but it’s like you’ve got HD upscaled basically, right? (0:15:39) Al: Like you were recording on a really old camera and you’ve upscaled it to HD, (0:15:43) Al: so it’s like everything is shiny and lots of pixels, but it still doesn’t look good. (0:15:52) Kelly: - Yeah, no, it’s not right. (0:15:53) Al: These were a DS and a 3DS game, I think, originally, so they have had to merge the two screens. (0:16:02) Al: However, I think the bottom screen was mostly just like for the map, (0:16:06) Al: and so they now have a mini map on the screen, so… (0:16:09) Kelly: Okay, I feel like a lot of games like this have like the map or like controls or something at the bottom (0:16:14) Al: Yeah, yeah, so I guess we’ll see. (0:16:19) Al: I don’t, I’m gonna buy this. (0:16:22) Kelly: I like, did you notice that it’s so you said it’s releasing in June, but then at the top (0:16:23) Al: I’m gonna do my duty for the podcast, you’re welcome. (0:16:33) Kelly: it says ships in April to June. (0:16:36) Al: Yeah, if you scroll down to the product description, it says release date June 2025. (0:16:41) Kelly: interesting so this game is worth that $25 basically (0:16:43) Al: Apparently, the acrylic standee is worth $13. (0:16:48) Al: So yeah, well, I don’t know what to say. You probably shouldn’t buy this. (0:17:02) Al: But I will. Next, we have Bugaboo Pocket. (0:17:07) Al: Have announced that the release date is on the 2nd of April. I don’t know if you’ve (0:17:11) Al: seen this game, Kelly. It’s a bug game. It’s like a bug Pokémon, but like on… (0:17:12) Kelly: I have not. What is this? (0:17:20) Al: How do I describe this? It’s like virtual pets. So like Tamagotchis. (0:17:24) Kelly: Oh, okay, I see it now. Now I got the screen page, but it’s got like way more details. (0:17:30) Al: Yes, yeah, it’s very much like modernized in terms of how you would interact. (0:17:37) Al: Quality of graphics and is much more intense from that sort of aspect of things. (0:17:43) Al: But I think you also can, for lack of a better phrase, because I’m very tired. (0:17:51) Al: It’s the end of the weekend. Do science on them. I don’t know how to describe it. (0:17:57) Kelly: Like, experiments? (0:17:58) Al: No experiment. No, that would be immoral. No, inspect them and look at them. (0:18:06) Kelly: Oh, OK. (0:18:07) Al: There is like if you have… (0:18:09) Kelly: Oh, and pin them. (0:18:10) Kelly: It looks like you can pin them. (0:18:11) Al: Yeah, but those are dead. Like you’re not pinning a live one, right? (0:18:13) Kelly: Yeah, that would be immoral also. (0:18:18) Kelly: I hope so. (0:18:19) Kelly: I’m just looking at pictures. (0:18:22) Al: So yeah, it’s much more involved than a Tamagotchi. (0:18:28) Kelly: The graphics look really cool. (0:18:30) Al: Yeah, Cody is excited to play this. (0:18:33) Kelly: I’m sure that makes sense. (0:18:36) Kelly: This looks really cool, honestly. (0:18:37) Al: Anyway, coming on the 2nd of April. Next, we have the Fields of Mistria 2nd update. (0:18:45) Al: It’s out now, Kelly. Have you played it yet? (0:18:48) Kelly: Not since, uh, November, end of November, since we talked. (0:18:54) Al: Yeah, that was just the first update that was then, so. (0:18:56) Kelly: Yeah, ‘cause I had finished everything that you could possibly do at that point, (0:19:00) Kelly: and I was like, “Okay, I gotta, I don’t wanna kill the game for myself.” (0:19:00) Al: Yep. (0:19:04) Al: We were on the same page at that point, right? Basically, I think we’d both done everything you could do in the game and didn’t want to destroy our enthusiasm for the game. But does that mean you’re definitely not going to get jump into the game with this new update? (0:19:13) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:19:20) Kelly: I’m probably going to wait. (0:19:23) Kelly: I mean, I started breeding for different color animals (0:19:27) Kelly: and stuff, like the tears. (0:19:28) Kelly: So I had been failing my time with that, (0:19:30) Kelly: but mostly because I didn’t have a new game. (0:19:34) Kelly: But yeah, I’m going to wait and see. (0:19:35) Kelly: I got games coming out soon. (0:19:37) Kelly: We got “Rethopia.” (0:19:38) Al: Yes, oh, yes, that’s that (0:19:41) Kelly: I got a solid amount of games currently. (0:19:43) Kelly: So I gotta actually, like, focus on them. (0:19:46) Al: That’s fair. We’ve already covered what’s out in this update, so let’s not spend too long on it. (0:19:50) Kelly: Mm-hmm, okay. (0:19:50) Al: Next we have Gogotown. Their next update Spring Cleaning is out now. I presume you haven’t played (0:19:59) Al: this game. It is fun. It definitely feels very polished for the way that I talked about it in (0:20:07) Al: the episode I did on it. It’s very polished what is there, but it feels like it’s a long way to go (0:20:13) Al: to feel complete. (0:20:15) Kelly: Okay, that’s fair. I mean it seems very ambitious looking so hopefully they just get there (0:20:16) Al: Yeah, a number of things in this update, you can now store a tool and a vehicle on (0:20:29) Al: yourself, it says in a patented Townco dimensional pocket. Basically, you had vehicles, but you (0:20:36) Al: had to like park them somewhere. So now you can keep one of them on yourself. So you have (0:20:40) Al: to keep running back to the parking spaces, which is a nice update. There’s also (0:20:46) Al: a Town info app that gives you a bunch of information on the Town. 360 degree camera (0:20:52) Al: rotation, which is good. I like this. Oh yes, what was that? You’ve asked for it. We’ve (0:20:56) Kelly: I like their note on this. (0:21:00) Al: put in an experimental setting for you to rotate the camera 360 degrees. Fair enough. (0:21:05) Kelly: The screenshot is definitely making me dizzy though, looking at it too long. (0:21:07) Al: Yes, you can definitely tell us experimental. There’s some things that move out of view when (0:21:13) Al: when they shouldn’t do and stuff like that. (0:21:17) Al: A work in progress. (0:21:17) Kelly: But I mean like they they they put it out there that it’s experimental so. (0:21:20) Al: Yep, yep, and they’ve also added (0:21:23) Al: infinite seeds for your farming, which I am intrigued by because I thought (0:21:28) Al: when you planted a seed, the plant never never seemed to die. (0:21:33) Al: It just seemed to always grow new stuff. (0:21:35) Al: So you essentially had infinite stuff, right? (0:21:38) Al: Because as soon as you had a seed, you just (0:21:39) Al: planted it and you had that plant forever. (0:21:40) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:21:41) Al: But maybe I’m misremembering. (0:21:44) Kelly: Maybe they changed it. (0:21:46) Al: updates as well. But yeah, those are the main ones that I noticed. (0:21:49) Al: Next, we have Sunhaven have released their 2.0 update. (0:21:53) Al: And you’re like, oh, 2.0, that sounds like it might be a big update. (0:21:57) Al: It’s festivals. (0:22:00) Al: It doesn’t particularly feel huge. (0:22:02) Al: I’m intrigued as to why they decided to go for 2.0 at this point. (0:22:06) Al: OK. (0:22:10) Al: It adds a furniture festival, a garden (0:22:12) Al: festival, a pet festival, a mushroom festival, a snow festival. (0:22:16) Al: And a bunch of other (0:22:19) Al: furniture and stuff like that related to that. (0:22:22) Kelly: Okay, interesting how much of the game is actually out? (0:22:26) Al: Well, it’s no longer in early access. (0:22:28) Al: So I feel like I think they might have I feel like they’ve done everything that (0:22:32) Al: they said in the Kickstarter, like it’s the story is done and stuff like that. (0:22:38) Al: When I see people talking in the comments, they’re no longer complaining about things (0:22:43) Al: they’re talking about translations being bad. (0:22:49) Kelly: Yeah, this one’s been on my wish list, (0:22:50) Kelly: so I’ve been just waiting to see. (0:22:54) Al: I think I own it, yes, I do. (0:22:56) Al: I kick-started this one, I just haven’t played it yet. (0:22:59) Al: So this came out initially in 2023. (0:23:03) Al: Or was that, no, that was the 1.0, I think. (0:23:06) Al: Yeah, 2021 is when it first came out. (0:23:08) Al: And this was when I was still well and truly (0:23:11) Al: primarily Switch, but it wasn’t on Switch yet. (0:23:15) Al: And then I got a Steam Deck, (0:23:16) Al: and then suddenly I was very much on the Steam Deck, (0:23:18) Al: except for games that weren’t on the Steam Deck. (0:23:21) Al: but I had kind of really moved the path. (0:23:24) Al: I’m just thinking about this game, because it was, you know, it had been like two years or something since it started. (0:23:32) Al: Sometimes I do think that there is like a time period where if you’re not going to play a game (0:23:36) Al: within that time period, you’re probably never going to get to it. (0:23:38) Kelly: Yeah, no, definitely it definitely gets harder and harder to go back to it (0:23:44) Al: So maybe I’ll get to it one day, who knows, there’s so many games. (0:23:48) Al: Next we have farm folks or, as it is now called, (0:23:54) Al: Autonomica? Good job, going from a game name that was just slightly awkward to say to one that I don’t know how to pronounce. (0:24:02) Al: Autonomica? Auto… Autonomica. (0:24:04) Kelly: Oh, Tom, oh, oh, Tom, I don’t know, I don’t know. (0:24:08) Al: Autonomica. That’s what you were trying to say, wasn’t it? Autonomica. (0:24:13) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, something like that. (0:24:14) Al: No, I don’t think it’s Autonomica. (0:24:18) Kelly: I don’t think it is either, (0:24:19) Kelly: but I was just trying to see if I could say it. (0:24:20) Kelly: And apparently I can’t. (0:24:24) Al: For those who don’t know the story behind this game, it was started as farm folks, and then the company that was making it went bust. (0:24:32) Al: And then another company basically, I don’t know whether they bought the company that went bust or whether they bought the rights to the game and the code and stuff, (0:24:40) Al: but they continued development. So the company that’s making this is not the company that did the Kickstarter for this game. (0:24:46) Al: Although I’m pretty sure I saw somewhere that they are going to honor the Kickstarter, which is always good. (0:24:52) Al: Um, don’t take– (0:24:52) Kelly: nice isn’t there another game with like a similar ish name to this new name but (0:24:54) Al: I’d need to confirm that, but I feel like I saw that somewhere. (0:25:05) Kelly: also like how do you go from farm folks which is like the most generic farm game (0:25:08) Al: Yeah. (0:25:10) Kelly: name I’ve ever heard now which is not saying a lot because a lot of these farm (0:25:14) Kelly: games have a lot of similar names it is but how do you go from that to what do (0:25:16) Al: Naming is hard, all right. (0:25:20) Kelly: What are you calling it? Autonomica? (0:25:22) Kelly: Autonomica. Oh, it’s a musical artist. Yes, I knew I’d seen this name somewhere before. (0:25:24) Al: Autonomica. Autonomica? (0:25:30) Al: Oh. (0:25:36) Al: So they’ve made they have went the new (0:25:38) Al: company that took over the game have basically been moving it in a different direction. (0:25:43) Al: So it’s it is still farming. (0:25:46) Kelly: It looks like Fortnite with Farfian. (0:25:46) Al: It’s not. (0:25:49) Al: Yeah, they’ve never really explained their reasoning, but they’re like, it’s not just farming. (0:25:53) Al: It’s so much more than that. (0:25:55) Al: So therefore we think farm folks is a misleading name and I’m like, OK, but I don’t. (0:25:58) Kelly: Okay. That makes more sense. But I don’t get anything about farming from this name. (0:26:04) Al: No, but you do get the automation part of it, which I think they’re really big enough. (0:26:09) Al: The college so that their new blurb on steam is Autonomica is an open world life simulator (0:26:16) Al: game that seamlessly. Oh, my word, I hate this so much seamlessly merges resource (0:26:22) Al: management and automation with farm building, extensive customization, (0:26:26) Al: PvP slash PvE battles and elusive phantoms. What is this jumble of words? (0:26:34) Al: Play solo or with friends to build your mega farm factory with almost no limits. (0:26:38) Al: It is a farming game. It’s just like a industrial scale farming game. (0:26:44) Al: Right. And I get why they wanted to change. (0:26:48) Al: Why they wanted it to be clear that this was not the same game that they took over. (0:26:52) Al: But also it is farming game. (0:26:57) Al: Like you can’t say it’s not a farming game. It is a farming game. (0:27:01) Al: Build your mega farm factory, they say in the new blurb. (0:27:04) Al: Like I don’t understand the issue with it. (0:27:06) Kelly: All of these screenshots, too, are just like, what is that game? (0:27:09) Al: Yes, Factorio. Yeah. (0:27:11) Kelly: Factorio? (0:27:14) Kelly: It’s like that, but with farming more. (0:27:16) Al: Open world 3D Factorio. (0:27:20) Al: Which I honestly am excited by. I think this game could be really good. (0:27:25) Al: I just don’t understand why they really didn’t like the name and they decided to change. (0:27:29) Al: But I don’t think this is a better name. (0:27:32) Al: That’s all I’m going to say. I get why they didn’t like the old game. (0:27:35) Al: Old name. I’m not sure this is better. (0:27:37) Kelly: Honestly, they can take this if they want to, but I think it should have been (0:27:44) Kelly: auto-pharmica, if anything. (0:27:46) Al: I would, yeah, I would certainly be more better. Yeah, I don’t disagree with you. (0:27:49) Kelly: It would be better than this. (0:27:54) Kelly: I would assume that this is some sort of space or underwater survival game (0:28:02) Al: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Anyway, they changed the name. RIP farm folks. Long live farm folks. (0:28:03) Kelly: just going off the name alone. (0:28:08) Kelly: It’s so weird too, because I don’t even like farm books. (0:28:14) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:28:18) Kelly: I digress. (0:28:19) Al: Coral Island have announced their 2025 roadmap. They have 1.2 planned to come out in the first (0:28:27) Al: half of the year, bringing multiplayer and revamped romance. (0:28:32) Al: Which I was looking at what they say about the romance. So let’s talk about the multiplayer (0:28:37) Al: first. There’s probably not a huge amount to say. Basically, it looks like it’s stardew (0:28:41) Al: style multiplayer. You’re all multiple people on the farm. Great, fine. I’m sure it will be (0:28:46) Al: great for people who love. I am not particularly interested just because I don’t want to actually (0:28:51) Al: play my games with other people. I like these games because I’m playing them on my own. (0:28:52) Kelly: I have no desire, I have no desire to play these. These types of games are for me to play by myself, so I can be a maniac, like, let me be a psychopath by my- (0:28:59) Al: Exactly. Exactly. (0:29:03) Al: I have tried so many times to play multiplayer Stardew, and I just can’t because I have to be (0:29:08) Kelly: Oh, no. No, no, no. (0:29:10) Al: the one who has this. The problem is, right? You have to organize to play at the same time, (0:29:16) Al: and that is just not fun. Organizing times for these. (0:29:16) Kelly: No, because either you’re micromanaging all of it, too. (0:29:25) Kelly: It’s like, how do you organize the time to play together and also organize how you’re (0:29:30) Kelly: playing together? (0:29:32) Al: Yeah, the best way to do that is just be like, right, you do the farming you do the mine, there you go, go, go do your jobs. (0:29:32) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:29:38) Al: And yeah, I don’t, I don’t particularly find it fun, I get why people might. And so if you are excited about Coral Island multiplayer. (0:29:46) Al: There you go, it’s coming. I hope you enjoy it. I’m not going to do this. (0:29:48) Kelly: I think the only multiplayer game I like is Monster Hunter, to be quite honest. (0:29:58) Al: So I was also looking at the romance revamp that they’ve got. (0:30:02) Al: And I think the only difference is, so there’s a bunch of heart events that existed already. (0:30:10) Al: And it looks like you have to see the previous heart events to unlock certain, to unlock (0:30:17) Al: more hearts. (0:30:18) Al: So once you get to five hearts, you have to watch the heart events for them before you (0:30:24) Al: can do heart six to eight. (0:30:26) Al: And then you have to watch another heart event and give a locket. (0:30:32) Al: Before you can start dating and do the next two hearts, which then you have to watch the (0:30:37) Al: other events and propose before you can get married and do the other five. (0:30:43) Al: I do think this is better because what I found when I was doing this, because I got married (0:30:49) Al: in Coral Island, is I had no clue that there were heart events still to do, which is probably (0:30:55) Al: still going to be a problem here, but let’s put that aside for a minute. (0:30:59) Kelly: There’s no like there’s no like heart marker next in like the (0:31:02) Al: So there are hearts, but it’s not like, it’s just like how many hearts you have. (0:31:09) Al: Like there was no like indication that there’s an event you should be doing. (0:31:12) Al: So like I got to 10 hearts and then I went and tried to propose and they were like, oh, (0:31:17) Al: I’m not ready yet. (0:31:18) Al: And I’m like, but this is the point where I meant to be able to propose. (0:31:20) Al: Why can’t I do it? (0:31:22) Al: And I googled and it was like, oh, because you’re missing heart events. (0:31:24) Al: And I hadn’t done any of the heart events. (0:31:27) Al: And I don’t know how it happens in Carta Island, but in Stardew, (0:31:29) Kelly: How– so I was going to say, it’s similarly set up, (0:31:32) Al: I was always finding the heart events. (0:31:37) Kelly: like you just trigger the event when you encounter them (0:31:40) Al: Yes, and there are a few heart events in Stardew that were very niche and you (0:31:41) Kelly: in a certain location. (0:31:46) Al: wouldn’t immediately find, but like by that point, you’re like, oh, (0:31:51) Al: I know that these things are coming, so I should be expecting them. (0:31:53) Al: I hadn’t done a single one in Carta Island. (0:31:56) Al: How had I not triggered any of the heart events? (0:31:59) Kelly: Yeah, that’s crazy. That doesn’t seem like a good sub. (0:32:00) Al: It was very confusing. (0:32:02) Al: And also, I don’t think the heart events are required in Stardew for marriage. (0:32:10) Kelly: I don’t think they are either. I think they’re just, like, for you. (0:32:12) Al: Yes, and you can get extra points by doing them. (0:32:16) Al: And they’re nice, and you want to know about the story because all the characters are good characters. (0:32:16) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:32:22) Al: I was going to say great, but no, not all the characters are great. (0:32:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:32:24) Al: All of them are good characters. (0:32:28) Al: Um, but yeah, I just, it was really, so if they have a. (0:32:32) Al: Way to make it clear. (0:32:34) Al: That you’re now expecting to see events, then that would be good. (0:32:38) Al: Um, I don’t know. (0:32:40) Al: Um, we’ll see, I guess they don’t talk about that. (0:32:44) Al: I don’t think, but it’s interesting restricting it that much. (0:32:48) Al: So you, you have to see the events before you can continue your heart progress. (0:32:53) Al: Uh, I don’t know how I feel about that. (0:32:55) Kelly: Yeah, that seems kind of iffy the way you just described your past experience, so I guess we’ll see. (0:33:00) Al: Aha, the revamped romance system unlocks at heart level two and you’ll see a prompt (0:33:05) Al: in the relationship UI whenever a hangout event is available. (0:33:10) Al: That is good. (0:33:11) Al: It’s now making it clear when you can do something and when there’s something to do. (0:33:15) Al: That is good. (0:33:16) Al: And if you click on them inside the menu and it shows like all the stuff that you’ve done (0:33:22) Al: with them, you know, the stuff you’ve learned that they love and stuff like that, and like (0:33:25) Al: there, the birthday and stuff, it says unlock requirement, see hangout event. (0:33:30) Al: I don’t know what happened to three but anyway, whatever. (0:33:37) Al: I think that means for heart two and for heart four. (0:33:41) Al: That’s what I think it’s talking about. (0:33:43) Al: So they are definitely making it much more visible, that aspect of things. (0:33:47) Al: So that is good. (0:33:48) Al: They’re also adding more heart events for after marriage, which is also good because (0:33:52) Al: one of the things I’ve really complained about Carl Island is that your spouse ends up turning (0:33:55) Al: into a hollow husk after you get married. (0:33:58) Kelly: That’s pretty sad. (0:34:01) Al: - It was so sad. (0:34:02) Al: The minute you got married, (0:34:05) Al: they just stand in your house all day doing nothing. (0:34:07) Kelly: Oh no. (0:34:09) Al: It was the worst. (0:34:09) Al: I’ve taken your life (0:34:11) Al: and you are now just an ornament in my house. (0:34:15) Al: It was so sad. (0:34:16) Al: So hopefully that’s improved a lot with this. (0:34:20) Al: And then the 1.3 update will include your kids growing up. (0:34:27) Kelly: that’s cool that’s what I literally just started like wondering if it’s like generational like do (0:34:27) Al: And it is, I wonder how far it will go. (0:34:30) Al: I don’t know. (0:34:36) Al: I would expect not. (0:34:38) Al: I expect it would just be, oh, they grow up to be a teenager and then they stop sort of thing. (0:34:42) Al: That is my expectation. (0:34:44) Kelly: that makes sense because that’s a big that’s that’s a lot doing (0:34:44) Al: I don’t think they’ll go full hog. (0:34:49) Al: Especially as they could actually make it like real-time in-game, right? (0:34:52) Al: For every year, they are a year older. (0:34:54) Al: And so you would actually have to do 18 in-game years. (0:35:00) Al: Before your child is an adult. (0:35:04) Kelly: - Hmm. (0:35:05) Al: So they could just go, I’m sorry, if you’ve played 18 years in this game, you’ve played too much. (0:35:12) Al: But I mean, I don’t know, maybe it will work. (0:35:14) Al: I mean, I do know that some games where you have kids that grow up, (0:35:18) Al: you then die and you become your kid. (0:35:20) Al: They could do something like that. (0:35:22) Kelly: That’s true, that would be cool. (0:35:23) Al: And then you inherit the farm and, you know, 20% of it is taken in tax. (0:35:31) Al: Yeah, so they’ve not got a huge amount of information in the 1.3. (0:35:35) Al: They also said there’s going to be a Merfolk festival. (0:35:39) Al: But they’ve not got any details on how the kids grow up. (0:35:42) Al: But that is coming in the second half of this year. (0:35:44) Al: Have you played, you’ve not played Coral Island? (0:35:46) Kelly: No. I really try to avoid early access. (0:35:47) Al: No. (0:35:50) Al: Well, it’s not early access anymore. (0:35:51) Kelly: Uh, oh, it’s out, out? (0:35:53) Al: Yeah. (0:35:54) Al: The 1.0 came out just over a year ago. (0:35:58) Kelly: Okay, I must have missed that. (0:35:58) Al: and then they go and they go on. (0:36:00) Kelly: I thought it was still in early access, still. Okay. (0:36:00) Al: 1.1 sometime last year? No. The 1.0 was technically not early access, but realistically (0:36:06) Al: was early access. The 1.1 feels like what the 1.0 should have been, but the multiplayer (0:36:12) Al: was always coming after early access. So I don’t feel like you would be missing out if (0:36:17) Al: you played now compared to if you played two years ago, you definitely were missing out (0:36:22) Al: in a lot. (0:36:22) Kelly: Okay, okay, maybe one day (0:36:24) Al: All right. And we also, we all maybe, maybe, probably not. We also have (0:36:30) Al: a new game by the developers of EverDream Valley. In fact, this is a sequel to EverDream (0:36:36) Al: Valley called EverDream Village. I get what they’re doing with that name, but also I am (0:36:42) Al: going to constantly mess up. Which one is which? They also feel the wrong way around, (0:36:47) Kelly: The valley and village is like too close to each other. (0:36:53) Al: you start in a village and then you go out to a valley. (0:36:53) Kelly: Yes, it should have been, this should be a prequel. (0:36:57) Kelly: Yeah, this is the prequel in my, (0:36:59) Kelly: I literally thought like this should be the prequel (0:37:00) Al: Set 10 years after the events of EverDream Valley, EverDream Village brings a whole (0:37:07) Al: new chapter with living, breathing village and a world beyond your farm. Now you’re built, (0:37:13) Al: this is the thing. It’s like the problem was EverDream Valley wasn’t really a valley. It (0:37:17) Al: was EverDream Farm. Right. And if it was that way, it was EverDream Farm and then EverDream (0:37:21) Al: Village. That makes more logical sense to be our expansion on that. Right. You’ll build (0:37:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:37:28) Al: relationships explore mysterious islands. (0:37:30) Al: The Valley may have been home but it’s time to explore a world full of new adventures, (0:37:44) Kelly: - Yeah, it doesn’t seem right, there’s something off. (0:37:57) Al: NPCs and endless possibilities. I don’t really get whirled and (0:38:00) Al: abilities from village. I know what they mean. I know what they (0:38:02) Kelly: - No, but I think they just mean the world of Everdream. (0:38:08) Al: mean. I know what they mean. Build your ideal cozy farm in a (0:38:12) Al: living village. Form bonds with fellow villagers to lend a hand (0:38:16) Al: as you grow crops, care for animals and craft a corner of (0:38:18) Al: paradise. Sail across enchanted islands to discover new resources (0:38:22) Al: and adventures along the way. Maybe it’s definitely not a (0:38:25) Kelly: Maybe there is a world. (0:38:28) Al: village. (0:38:31) Al: Anyway, I mean, you can ride a pig in Evergreen Valley, so they hopefully have something like that in this game. (0:38:36) Kelly: I’m looking at that right now. (0:38:38) Kelly: That actually looks really cute. (0:38:39) Kelly: That’s a good feature. (0:38:40) Al: I haven’t played this game. It’s been on my list for forever. (0:38:44) Kelly: The first one. (0:38:45) Al: Yes, well, the second one is now yet, so of course I’ve not played that. (0:38:48) Kelly: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:38:50) Al: It’s just coming soon. They’ve not said when, it’s coming just soon. (0:38:54) Kelly: One day. (0:38:54) Al: One day. All right. (0:38:56) Kelly: Do you see this tag at the bottom on their news updates? (0:39:00) Al: The second one is that in the Evergreen Valley page? (0:39:04) Kelly: On the Steam page, yeah. (0:39:07) Al: Where am I looking? Where am I looking? (0:39:07) Kelly: I guess this is who they base the pig off of. (0:39:11) Kelly: Let me send it to you. (0:39:12) Kelly: I’ll just send it to you. (0:39:12) Al: There’s too many pages here. That’s the problem. (0:39:13) Kelly: I would do that. (0:39:15) Kelly: It really is. (0:39:15) Al: On their news. Oh, happy birthday, Peter Curleytail. (0:39:18) Kelly: Recent events, yes. (0:39:20) Al: I don’t know what to say. That is quite a pig. (0:39:24) Kelly: He’s a little frightening, but kind of cute. (0:39:26) Al: Yes, that is quite the pig. (0:39:29) Kelly: But I like the interpretation of him. (0:39:31) Al: Yeah, I like the name Peter Curleytail. (0:39:35) Kelly: Yeah, I. (0:39:36) Kelly: I’ve never seen a pig like that before, so it’s a little haunting. (0:39:42) Al: All right, that’s us done with the news. (0:39:44) Al: We are now going to talk about grimoire, grimoire. Is it grimoire? (0:39:51) Al: Grimoire. Grimoire grows. And grimoire is something that’s a witch term, isn’t it? (0:39:59) Al: like what it what I keep hearing great (0:40:00) Kelly: Yeah it’s always like I feel like it’s like swamps and grimoires and uh no it’s um what (0:40:00) Al: memoirs and lots of these witchy games. (0:40:08) Al: That explains that because, right, okay. (0:40:10) Kelly: is it a grimoire is a the book it’s the book it’s like your book of spells that’s what it is. (0:40:17) Al: And the grove is the land that you’re doing (0:40:22) Al: because a grove is like a kind of forest type thing. (0:40:26) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. But no, it’s a little book that you… (0:40:28) Al: Okay, makes sense. (0:40:30) Kelly: have all your information in. (0:40:33) Al: So, a quick introduction to this game. (0:40:38) Al: It is described on Steam as join the witches in their quest to restore the grimoire groves, (0:40:45) Al: master magic, grow cute plant creatures, and discover the mystery of the rainbow socks (0:40:52) Al: in this cozy roguelite dungeon crawler. (0:40:55) Al: The way I would describe this in my whole one hour and 20 minutes playing it (0:40:59) Al: is it is kind of cult of the lamb, but without actual, without. (0:41:09) Al: Combat the way you interact in your runs is different. (0:41:13) Al: It’s not combat so much. (0:41:16) Al: And it’s less about building a village and more about restoring nature. (0:41:24) Al: Would that be a fair way of putting it? (0:41:26) Kelly: Yeah, I think so. It’s, it’s, it’s… (0:41:29) Kelly: But you still, I feel like I’m fighting. (0:41:31) Kelly: Maybe I feel less like I’m fighting and I’m more surviving. (0:41:31) Al: Yes, okay, so I mean, okay, you could make an argument that it is basically just fighting, (0:41:39) Al: but it’s it feels so you’re feeding the plants instead of fighting them, I think is how they (0:41:44) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, but no, I’m just I’m just being a jerk. I think it’s I think that’s a good. (0:41:44) Al: describe it. So that’s why I’ve been like is not. No, no, it’s, it’s, it’s fair in terms (0:41:50) Al: of game play is very similar to most other Roguelike action games. (0:41:51) Kelly: Yes, I also think it it has that. Yeah, yeah, it has that cuteness that I think (0:41:59) Kelly: cultural land kind of has, which is why I think like they remind me like like you said like it (0:42:04) Kelly: makes you think of them. You have the juxtaposition. Yeah, yeah. (0:42:06) Al: I think the cuteness works much better in Cult of the Lam (0:42:09) Al: because it’s… exactly, exactly. (0:42:12) Al: Whereas here, the whole world is cute. (0:42:14) Kelly: But I love the saturation in this game. So like that for me is like, and I loved Call to the Land. (0:42:21) Al: Okay, I will say the game looks lovely. (0:42:24) Al: It looks really nice. (0:42:25) Al: I do love how the game actually looks. (0:42:28) Al: The graphics, the design of the characters, (0:42:36) Al: and character, but also the plants and everything. (0:42:38) Al: I do like all of that. (0:42:39) Al: That is all nice. (0:42:41) Al: I will absolutely agree with that. (0:42:44) Al: Yes. (0:42:46) Kelly: I just think it’s like you don’t always, you don’t really get a lot of games that are like, (0:42:52) Kelly: it’s like saturated, but it’s also pastel, like there’s two different kind of colored (0:42:56) Kelly: tones going on in the game, which I think is interesting. (0:43:00) Kelly: Like the backgrounds are more saturated, but the creatures, the plants are a little more (0:43:04) Kelly: pastel leaning, but it’s so vibrant. (0:43:07) Kelly: Like a lot of games, they’re so dark a lot of the time or like aiming to be more realistic (0:43:11) Al: - Yeah. (0:43:13) Kelly: in their tones, I guess. (0:43:15) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:43:16) Kelly: Yes, but yeah, no, I love all of the designs. (0:43:17) Al: No, you’re definitely right about that. (0:43:20) Al: You wouldn’t look at this and think it was something else. (0:43:20) Kelly: I love all the little plants. (0:43:23) Al: That’s very true. (0:43:23) Kelly: No, exactly. (0:43:26) Al: So I guess there’s two main parts to this game, (0:43:29) Al: and there’s obviously a lot of other things, (0:43:31) Al: lot of things that I won’t have done in the main area. (0:43:33) Al: But like most of these roguelites, (0:43:37) Al: you have your hub, (0:43:38) Al: which is an area that is run– (0:43:41) Al: was previously run by some other witch– (0:43:44) Al: I can’t remember her name, maybe– (0:43:45) Kelly: Is it lavender? (0:43:47) Kelly: I think so. (0:43:49) Al: and it’s been taken over by thorns, (0:43:53) Al: and it’s all dreary, and you are to restore it. (0:43:57) Al: That’s the main idea. (0:43:58) Kelly: You’re the young spry witch coming in to fix it. (0:43:59) Al: And you do that by classic cliche, (0:44:05) Al: but it’s there for a reason. (0:44:08) Al: and your runs that you do. (0:44:11) Al: I think of roguelites specifically talking about roguelites not roguelikes (0:44:22) Al: well let’s not have that debate again. I find there are two types there are ones where (0:44:31) Al: your hub the point of the hub is to improve your powers skills etc to then do the runs and the (0:44:38) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yes, I was going to say, very– (0:44:41) Al: runs is the purpose of the game and that would be your like Hades stuff like that. (0:44:49) Al: And then there’s this type of thing this and Cult of the Lamb where your hub is the point of (0:44:55) Al: the game and the runs are to gather resources for doing things in your hub. (0:45:00) Kelly: I would say it’s kind of like a mix, I think, between Cult of the Lamb and Hades in that aspect. (0:45:07) Kelly: Because I do think Cult of the Lamb, there’s so much that you do in your hub area. (0:45:12) Kelly: And I don’t think this quite has near that amount of stuff. (0:45:16) Kelly: Like, you have a lot of updates and things you can interact with. (0:45:20) Kelly: I don’t want to spoil anything. (0:45:22) Kelly: But Cult of the Lamb, you could like run the village until you ran out of resources. (0:45:28) Al: I guess my point is like you’re not the run isn’t the like with Hades you are escaping hell (0:45:28) Kelly: like I spent like five minutes like you know up (0:45:31) Kelly: and then I got another run (0:45:37) Kelly: the sole purpose yes (0:45:40) Al: and your run is escaping hell and if you fail you go back to the hub world and you try again. (0:45:45) Al: Whereas in this and with Cult of the Lamb the point is the runs you’re doing to do (0:45:50) Al: things to bring back you’re never like disappearing and I think that’s that is very much (0:45:53) Kelly: No, that’s a fair point, yeah. (0:45:58) Al: why I liked Cult of the Lamb because I was building up this thing and I really hate the (0:46:05) Al: overall feeling of Hades where if you fail you fail and you’re back to the start and you have (0:46:09) Al: to start again and so I was really excited for this because I was like oh maybe this will be (0:46:15) Al: another one that I like because it’s that sort of style but I mean I guess I need to say at some (0:46:21) Al: point I didn’t like the combat in this game. I didn’t but I feel like (0:46:24) Kelly: Did you try it on easy mode? (0:46:27) Kelly: I d

Many property management business owners out there struggle with having a bad brand, bad pricing, cheapo clients, a lack of confidence, and more. In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down in-person with property manager and DoorGrow client, Kelly Rafuse, to talk about her journey with property management. You'll Learn [04:53] How to Be Picky with the Clients You Bring on [10:59] Overcoming the “Hustler” Mindset [15:04] Choosing an Effective Brand [21:07] Cheapos, Normals, and Premium Buyers Tweetables  ”As you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't.” “ The more confident you are, the more some of these… difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them.” “ It's better to be at the top than to be competing with the garbage at the bottom.” “ Need is scarcity, need is starving, and need is survival.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Kelly: You know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way.  [00:00:07] Jason: But you learned it.  [00:00:08] Kelly: Yes.  [00:00:10] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you're interested in growing in business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. [00:00:37] You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull, founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, the co owner and COO of DoorGrow. And now let's get into the show.  [00:01:13] So our guest today, we're hanging out with Kelly. Kelly, introduce yourself.  [00:01:17] Kelly: Hi there, my name is Kelly Rafuse with Crimson Cape Property Management in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.  [00:01:22] Jason: And you have a really nice logo. Where'd you get that really nice logo?  [00:01:25] Kelly: It's this little mastermind I joined called DoorGrow helped me with that.  [00:01:29] Jason: And it's, I was saying, I think it's cool because it's like you are flying right there. [00:01:33] It's like, it like reminds me of you.  [00:01:37] Kelly: Well, yeah. I had this Marvel Comics stud fetish, so.  [00:01:41] Jason: Yes. Okay. You're the Marvel comic gal. All right. So really excited to be hanging out. We're actually in Pennsylvania because this is kind of the neck of the woods Sarah grew up in and managed properties nearby and you manage properties in a neighboring market and so. [00:01:59] The same market. The same market. She, yeah. Exact same market.  [00:02:02] Sarah: I left and she has the market.  [00:02:05] Kelly: While you were here, I was just managing my own portfolio.  [00:02:08] Jason: Oh, okay.  [00:02:09] Kelly: And people were coming to me to manage theirs, and that's how I got into this mess.  [00:02:15] Jason: Yeah. Well, give us a little more background on you, Kelly. [00:02:18] How'd you get into property management?  [00:02:20] Kelly: Oh, well, I started off as a real estate investor. You know, buying homes out here in Northeast PA. It's a very good place to invest in property. Cash flow is, I mean, I think cap rates were like 12 percent when I got in. So, I mean, it was huge, and honestly, I was trying to replace my income because I'd gotten as far as I could go in my former career, you know, hit a huge glass ceiling, and realized that, you know, real estate was probably my ticket to freedom. [00:02:45] Jason: What was your former career?  [00:02:47] Kelly: I was on the radio.  [00:02:48] Jason: Yeah, okay, you've got a great voice for it, so.  [00:02:51] Thank you very much.  [00:02:53] Yeah, so you were doing the radio.  [00:02:54] Kelly: Yeah, so I actually got into this market, and I liked it here. I actually, I did my two years and then moved to a bigger market. I was in Hartford, Connecticut for a while. [00:03:03] And then an opportunity to come back presented itself. And I came back because I genuinely like the area. And you know, the inexpensive real estate was an attraction. And then My husband and I got into investing in properties. We built up quite a portfolio. We had 25 units of our own at one point. [00:03:20] We're down to 14 now. We sold a few off that, you know, really weren't moneymakers for us. But, you know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way.  [00:03:33] Jason: But you learned it.  [00:03:34] Kelly: Yes. I made all the mistakes.  [00:03:37] Jason: Yeah. And that's sometimes learning through mistakes and pain. [00:03:41] I sometimes joke that DoorGrow was built on thousands of mistakes.  [00:03:45] Kelly: You're telling me. And I will introduce My biggest pain point in just a second here. So what caused me to join DoorGrow is my husband's a real estate broker. And so people were banging on his door. "Can you manage my property? Can you manage my property?" It's like, "well, I don't do that, but my wife does."  [00:04:03] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:04] Kelly: And I'm like, well, I can't manage their property. I don't have a real estate license. And so it was a whole year of, "come on! Just get the license. Just do it! Just do it. Come on!" So I got the license. And I took on one of his investor clients, and I joined DoorGrow, like all in the same day. [00:04:23] And what I found out when I joined DoorGrow was I never should have taken on that client.  [00:04:27] Jason: That was the price of tuition. It's one of the key lessons that defines you in business, which is you learn those lessons and not take on bad clients. Well, I mean, for us, it's been really inspiring and exciting to see your journey as an entrepreneur and see you kind of get all this ready and get things developed and start to grow. [00:04:46] And so, we were talking about it, like, what should we talk about on the podcast today with Kelly? And you had mentioned.  [00:04:53] Sarah: Yeah, I had said, I think for me, one of the biggest shifts that I've seen in Kelly again and again and again is shifts in mindset because it was just even a few weeks ago where maybe a month ago or something, was relatively recent, where you were saying like, "oh, I read this book and it changed my life I'm waking up at like 4:30 in the morning and structuring my day different" and it was just again and again. But you've had these little shifts that end up leading to these huge changes for you and how you run things and how you structure your day and like just even your, your energy levels seem to be more protected now. [00:05:32] Kelly: Yeah, I'm not getting up at 4:30 in the morning anymore. Although I just learned yesterday I might have to start again because my daughter wants to join the swim team. Oh. And they practice it. 5 a. m. sometimes, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a struggle because I'm not only a real estate entrepreneur. [00:05:48] I am also, you know, a wife of a whirlwind. I mean, my husband is a broker. He's into wholesaling. He's into flipping. And I go to manage him.  [00:05:58] Jason: The whirlwind broker.  [00:06:00] Kelly: Yeah, and,  [00:06:02] Jason: yeah.  [00:06:02] Kelly: No, we'll say no more about that.  [00:06:04] Sarah: There's a lot going on. [00:06:05] Lots of moving pieces.  [00:06:06] Kelly: He's a genius. He's like a Bill Gates level genius. [00:06:09] I'm just waiting for the ship to come in. Yeah, nice. It's been 30 years, but it's coming.  [00:06:13] Jason: So what do you feel like maybe was the first mindset thing that you noticed in Kelly, kind of overcoming? Or what do you feel like was your first?  [00:06:22] Sarah: I don't know if I can think of a first, but I know that there's been several that I'd like to highlight. [00:06:27] Jason: Okay.  [00:06:27] Sarah: So I think one of the things is being much more picky with what clients you take on and what properties you take on and how you kind of screen and vet people.  [00:06:41] Jason: Maybe that first client helped you learn that lesson.  [00:06:44] Sarah: Yes.  [00:06:45] Jason: Yeah. So what, what was the lesson there? Like, what did you figure out?  [00:06:48] Kelly: Oh, wow. You know, the, the first thing is I have to see if our philosophies match. [00:06:53] Jason: You and the client.  [00:06:54] Kelly: Yes. And when I got into real estate investing, I admit I'm a bit of an idealist. I know you're into personality types.  [00:07:01] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:01] Kelly: And I test as an INFP.  [00:07:03] Jason: Okay.  [00:07:03] Kelly: So I probably have no business being in any business at all, but yet here I am. But I'm a dreamer. I'm a visionary. And so my first company was, and still is called Good People, Good Homes, LLC. [00:07:15] And I own property in that LLC. I'm not really doing business in it. It just holds property for me. But when I started it, it was supposed to be the company and it was: you buy these distressed properties in these neighborhoods and you fix them up and you put great people in them and it brings up the whole neighborhood and then everybody loves you and we hold hands and sing Kumbaya and that didn't really happen. [00:07:36] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:36] Kelly: But I did improve a lot of properties.  [00:07:39] Jason: Okay.  [00:07:39] Kelly: Right. Yeah.  [00:07:41] Sarah: I think arguably in this market, you are outdoing anything that I've ever seen because the befores and afters are just wild. And the rent rates before and after are wild. And this area, yes, you can absolutely get a great deal, a great bargain on real estate, and that doesn't come without its challenges and its problems. [00:08:06] But one of the things that I think is just so great in this area that you do is you take these distressed properties and you make them beautiful and livable and safe. And you provide a wonderful home now on something before that was dilapidated.  [00:08:25] Kelly: And the market's full of C class properties. You know, I hear a lot of property managers say, "Why are you even bothering with those?" [00:08:31] Well, honestly, there isn't anything else. Yeah, that's what we hear. You work with what you got. And I probably wouldn't be a real estate investor if the market wasn't like this. Because that's how I got in. I didn't make a ton of money in radio. I didn't. But I made enough to get in, you know, with a C class property. [00:08:48] And now those C class properties are paying for my life, and my daughter's life, and it's beautiful. The property management company? That's just icing on the cake, but I think it might even eclipse what I've been able to do with my rentals.  [00:09:00] Jason: Oh, I'm sure.  [00:09:01] Kelly: And there's a need for it.  [00:09:02] Jason: Yeah. Big need.  [00:09:04] Kelly: Yeah. So the biggest thing I learned, back to your question about how to vet clients, does their philosophy match mine? Do they believe their C class property could be turned into a desirable place to live? And yes, you will be charging market rent for that, which is a lot more than maybe you thought you could charge. And you'll get a better class tenant that way. Or are they just happy not doing anything to the property, just letting it be what it is and getting whoever they can get into it and, you know, getting whatever money they can for it. I don't really want to work with those people.  [00:09:38] Jason: Do you find part of this though is just selling? [00:09:41] It's like convincing them to align with your vision? Because it sounds like you have a better vision than a lot of the people that might come to you.  [00:09:48] Kelly: Sometimes when I show them the spreadsheet, of, you know, what I've done for some of my other clients, including the first one that I told you about. I mean, I really turned some of his properties around. [00:09:59] And I've tried to fire him twice. Yeah.  [00:10:01] He won't go and, you know, he's also a third of my income, so I'm going to keep him on. And, but the thing is, he's kind of listening to me now. Kind of.  [00:10:11] Sarah: He's open. Well, I think. It's like a walnut shell. We've just cracked it open. Maybe some of the good ideas are seeping through. [00:10:18] Jason: I've talked about this before, but I think also part of it is, as we've seen, you come into your own in more confidence in what you're doing and the more confident you are, the more some of these A personality types or these difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them. [00:10:36] And I talk about metaphorically punching people in the face sometimes. So you probably maybe punched them in the face metaphorically a couple of times since then. And so setting those healthier boundaries. Is something we naturally do when we start to believe in ourselves more. And so what other shifts do you feel like you've noticed in Kelly? [00:10:55] Or what are some of the things that DoorGrow's helped you with? Are you making changes too?  [00:10:59] Kelly: Well, like Sarah said, a lot of the mindset stuff, I mean, a big revelation came to me when I was at DoorGrow live.  [00:11:05] Jason: Yeah, what was that?  [00:11:07] Kelly: Well, first of all, getting to DoorGrow Live was a challenge because I was in the midst of my survival mode. [00:11:13] I'm a solopreneur still. I do everything myself. My husband's my broker of record, but, like, he's off doing his thing. Sure. So.  [00:11:21] Jason: You were doing everything, you're really busy, and you're like, how do I take a break to even just go to DoorGrow Live?  [00:11:26] Kelly: Yeah, and, you know, then I've got this mindset that, you know, how can I afford it? [00:11:30] But the thing is, I did have the money to go. That's another thing. I've got a poverty mindset I need to get past. And when I went to DoorGrow Live, that was really thrown in my face. Because I was talking about the challenges of being a solopreneur. And one of the pieces of advice that I was given by one of the speakers is, "What's your time worth?" [00:11:49] You know, you can't be doing all of these things when you pay somebody. Yeah, and I thought, well, what's my time worth? And then this little voice in the back of my head said, well, not a whole heck of a lot.  [00:12:00] Jason: You told everybody that. You said, "not a whole heck of a lot."  [00:12:04] Kelly: Yeah.  [00:12:04] Jason: And we're like, "oh, okay."  [00:12:06] Kelly: Yeah.  [00:12:07] Jason: Yeah. [00:12:07] Kelly: Well, I mean, that comes from, you know, my background. I grew up without a lot.  [00:12:11] Jason: Yeah. You know,  [00:12:12] Kelly: I saw my parents struggle. They're working class people. You know, I got into an industry that was on its, you know, downslide when I, I started on the radio in you know, the early nineties, you know, probably right after it started to slide down and, you know, there've been multiple layoffs and, you know, voice tracking and automation and, you know, I survived, but I think one of the reasons I survived was I was willing to work really hard for not a whole lot of compensation. [00:12:40] Jason: Sure.  [00:12:40] Kelly: You know, as people were let go and reductions in force, I was given more duties, but not more money.  [00:12:47] Jason: Sure.  [00:12:48] Kelly: And, you know, you do that long enough, you start getting the message that, oh, well, your time really isn't worth a whole heck of a lot.  [00:12:54] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:55] Kelly: Yeah.  [00:12:56] Jason: Who decides what your time's worth?  [00:12:57] Kelly: I do.  [00:12:58] Jason: Yeah. I do. [00:12:59] Yes.  [00:12:59] Kelly: I do.  [00:13:00] Yeah!  [00:13:01] And, you know, that's... [00:13:02] you do now. Yes.  [00:13:03] Jason: How has that shifted for you then? What's your perception of your time and the value of it? of your time now?  [00:13:09] Kelly: My perception of my time is, you know, first of all, I don't need to be tied to the Henry Ford 40 hour work week or even the 50-60-70-80 hour work week that I hear people say you "should" do when you're running a business because, you know, it's impractical. [00:13:24] I have a daughter. She's a teenager. She's just started high school this year. She's a field hockey athlete and now she wants to be on the swim team and she's got needs. Mhm. Right? I've got a husband who does not have a cushy job I can fall back on while I do my entrepreneurial thing.  [00:13:40] Jason: Right. Right. [00:13:41] Kelly: He's also an entrepreneur. [00:13:43] We are living off self employment income. So it is a constant, you know, point of stress. So, you know, I need to find out my key productivity time, and that's when I work. And sometimes I get four or five hours a day, and that's it, of key productivity time. But then I find myself, you know, when I'm walking the dog, having all these great ideas. [00:14:06] You know, I do things like I listen to your podcast you know, some great audio books that have been recommended to me. I devoured The One Thing by Gary Keller, the Profit First book. And I'm starting to implement these ideas. And it's just sort of like they're ladder steps.  [00:14:23] Jason: So basically, little by little, you've been investing in yourself by leveraging reading, getting coaching, doing this stuff. [00:14:31] And that's translated into you valuing yourself a little bit more.  [00:14:35] Yeah.  [00:14:35] Awesome.  [00:14:36] Kelly: Absolutely. And I've learned to turn things over, like maintenance, you know, I hired one of the vendors that you recommended, Vendoroo and they're, you know, the tenants still text me with maintenance issues. [00:14:47] Sure. And I text back, "put it in the portal." Right. "If you can't put it in the portal, call this number and they'll teach you how to put it in the portal."  [00:14:55] Jason: But yeah, probably less willing to take phone calls than you were before.  [00:14:58] Kelly: Yeah, I've never really taken phone calls.  [00:15:00] Jason: That's good, that's good. [00:15:02] Kelly: Thanks me. Get it all in writing.  [00:15:04] Jason: So you went through our whole rapid revamp process as well, like with the branding and like getting everything kind of dialed in, pricing. You've implemented a lot of things. And so, has that impacted your confidence level as well?  [00:15:20] Kelly: Oh, absolutely. I really feel like, you know, I'm marketing a real brand now with Crimson Cape. [00:15:25] Jason: Yeah. What, what was it before that?  [00:15:26] Kelly: GPGH Management Company.  [00:15:29] Jason: Oh, the acronym.  [00:15:30] Kelly: Yep. Good People, Good Homes.  [00:15:32] Jason: Yeah.  [00:15:32] Kelly: You know, just to take off of that and, you know, everything was GPGH. My husband was GPGH Realty.  [00:15:38] Jason: It sounds like some sort of drug or something. What do you take in GPGH? [00:15:42] Kelly: Well, it's the right market. [00:15:44] Jason: Okay. Well, then there's that GLP 1 joke too that you could put in there. GLP 1. Yeah. But my husband actually reprinted his real estate company because of, you know, he was inspired by what I did.  [00:15:54] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's his brand?  [00:15:56] Kelly: He's Gorilla Real Estate. That's the little stuffed gorilla you saw on the way in. [00:16:00] Jason: Okay, yeah. Yeah, and they're different, which is nice. They're not like, you know, kind of mixed together.  [00:16:06] Kelly: Right, right. And I don't want, you know, people to really associate us together, even though we do share an office.  [00:16:11] Jason: Yeah.  [00:16:12] For now.  [00:16:13] So you've gone through the branding, your pricing is different than anyone else in the market. [00:16:19] Kelly: Yeah. It's higher than anyone else in the market too. And that keeps a lot of the riffraff away.  [00:16:24] Jason: Yeah. It's better to be at the top than to be competing with the garbage at the bottom. For sure. Yeah. Especially in a difficult or lower end market. Yeah. Yeah. So awesome. What other changes?  [00:16:36] Sarah: I think, well, how many, we've gone through the rapid revamp a couple of times, so she's done the mindset piece a few times, and I think every time you go through it, you kind of get, like, an extra layer out of it, like almost like the next, like we're stacking like, levels and levels and levels of different like mindset tips and tricks, and then the perception piece, which once we're done with the little pieces on the website, we can get that launched for you. [00:17:04] I think that will make a huge difference. And recently. I mean, for the whole entirety of the time that you were in our program, you had always said "there is no way I can add more units. There is no way I can do more work. There is no way I can even focus on growth." And you are now adding new doors. [00:17:24] Kelly: Yep, I added three last week. I added another two Sunday night from a current client. I didn't know she had another double block. You know how I got those doors? She called me from you know, her poor husband is at the Cleveland Clinic. So she called me from Cleveland and she's like "I got a no heat call from this one building that you're not managing And I can't deal with it. Can you please take these units?"  [00:17:47] Jason: Nice.  [00:17:48] Kelly: So I just got two more doors.  [00:17:49] Jason: Okay.  [00:17:50] Kelly: And I'm hopefully closing on another five by the end of the week.  [00:17:53] Yes! [00:17:55] Jason: So doors are just starting to flow and you're able to dedicate time now towards growth which before you're kind of  [00:18:01] Kelly: yeah  [00:18:01] Jason: Chicken with head cut off running around and dealing with stuff. [00:18:04] Kelly: It's going to get a little iffy again now that I've added these doors, you know, okay. Now I have to onboard all these tenants. And there's a couple that come with the vacant units that they want me to rent in January?  [00:18:16] Jason: Yeah.  [00:18:17] Sarah: The best time of year here.  [00:18:21] Jason: Right. Lots of activity.  [00:18:23] Sarah: Speaking of vacant units, You have none now in the portfolio that you're Managing? [00:18:28] My current portfolio, I filled them all.  [00:18:31] Yeah, and how many did you have? Because I feel like all throughout the year I was getting updates and it was like 20 something and down a little bit, down a little bit, and now you're at zero.  [00:18:41] Kelly: Yeah, I filled I think 17 units over the course of the last year. [00:18:45] Amazing.  [00:18:46] 10 of them were filled between September and now.  [00:18:50] Jason: Nice. Wow.  [00:18:50] Kelly: And I've got a few that are coming up. I've got, you know, two of my tenants are moving into senior housing. So, you know, that means I'm probably going to have to redo their apartments because they've been living there since like 1965 or whatever. [00:19:04] I'm sure they're going to need to be some updates.  [00:19:07] Jason: So in getting this business started, if you hadn't heard about DoorGrow, or say, DoorGrow didn't exist. Where would you be you think right now?  [00:19:15] Kelly: Oh my gosh.  [00:19:16] Jason: What'd be going on?  [00:19:17] Kelly: I'm not sure I'd still be doing it.  [00:19:19] Jason: You think you would have quit?  [00:19:20] Kelly: With this client that I took on from the beginning, if I didn't know any better, I would think this is what property management is. [00:19:27] Jason: And you'd be like, yeah, right, so talking with us saying you should probably fire this client was probably enough to go, "okay, this may not be everybody."  [00:19:35] Kelly: Right. [00:19:36] Jason: Okay. [00:19:36] Kelly: Right, right. And you know, and you also helped me work with this client. So he's still my client, and he could be a very good client now that his buildings are cash flowing. But that remains to be seen because I got a little pushback on a repair last night that I wasn't real happy with, but we'll see. [00:19:53] Jason: You're going to set some strong boundaries with this guy.  [00:19:56] Kelly: I might have to punch him in the face a third time.  [00:19:58] Jason: Metaphorically. Right, right. Metaphorically, we're not advocating violence. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Well anything else that we should chat about or cover? I mean, it's really been, like I said at the beginning, it's been inspiring and exciting to see you grow. [00:20:13] We're really excited to see where you take this and we've seen just it and that's why we do what we do. It's great to see clients just grow like you've come so far. Your whole energy is just different. Just how you are from when we saw you at DoorGrow live and you're like, well, what's your time worth? [00:20:29] And you're, you've spouted off, "well, not very much," you know, or whatever you've come a long way. And I'm really excited to see where you go with this because this could be a really great residual income business. I think absolutely it will overshadow what you're making off your rental properties, but then it also feed you some more real estate deals in the future. [00:20:47] For sure as you, as you work this. And so, yeah, I think it'll be interesting. And how does the, the king of Gorilla Real Estate feel about everything that you're doing?  [00:20:56] Kelly: Oh, he's incredibly supportive. Yeah. I think he misses when I used to just, you know, clean up his bookkeeping for him. We now have to hire someone to do that. [00:21:05] Jason: Mm-hmm. Yes. Those wealthy problems. Yeah.  [00:21:07] Kelly: And yeah, and that's another mindset thing I need to get over. And you cover this in the rapid revamp when you're talking about, you know, the three types of clients you got, your, your normals, which you're, you're aiming for.  [00:21:18] Jason: Yeah.  [00:21:18] Kelly: But then you've got, you know, your cheapos and your premiums. [00:21:21] Sure.  [00:21:21] Jason: Yeah.  [00:21:21] Kelly: And and, and one of the things you talked about, the cheapos is. Are you a cheapo?  [00:21:27] Jason: Oh. Yeah.  [00:21:27] Kelly: And I realize that, yeah, I kind of am a cheapo.  [00:21:30] Jason: You get what you attract. Huh. And so, yeah, we're blind, we have a blind spot towards which category we are showing up as, and so stretching yourself to not be a cheapo. [00:21:41] Kelly: I grew up with nothing. You know, I grew up with nothing, so, yeah, that's why I'm a cheapo.  [00:21:47] Sarah: Yeah. And I get it, because I too was in that mindset, especially when I lived here.  [00:21:52] This area is in that mindset. [00:21:54] Yes, the whole area is very, and when you find someone who kind of breaks through that bubble, It's odd here, right? [00:22:03] And it's different. And it's weird. And it's like, what are they doing? What is this all about? This is just weird. Like, why are you not, you know, normal like us? And when that was something that I had struggled with for a very, very long time, too, because back when I had lived here, I thought, "okay, well, I want to make more money. And like, I need to make more money. And the only way I can do that is I can either work more hours and maybe get some overtime or maybe I can find a job that's going to pay me more and or ask for a raise, or and this is my go to strategy, was let's just work two jobs, three jobs, four jobs." I was working four jobs at a time. [00:22:44] I was working seven days a week and I did that for years and years and years just because, well, this job I maxed out on and I can't get any more money out of here, but I need more money, so, oh, let me just add on another job. Yeah, so I understand that completely and it was just, it was with time that that started to just crack and shift a little bit. [00:23:02] Jason: Kind of the trap of time for dollars. As if that's the only way.  [00:23:07] Sarah: Absolutely. Absolutely.  [00:23:09] Jason: So yeah, so being exposed just to other people that are not of that mindset probably is cracks that glass ceiling you spoke of a little bit before maybe.  [00:23:19] Kelly: Right. Yeah. And what I'm noticing is that I'm attracting people, local people, that have a similar mindset and they exist. [00:23:28] You know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in this area. Chris Jones started Pepper Jam, and he decided to keep his company here.  [00:23:34] Sarah: Oh, wow.  [00:23:34] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a few. Tech company, you might have heard of them. But yeah, there's, there's a few.  [00:23:39] Jason: So, you are no longer a cheapo.  [00:23:42] Kelly: No. I, well, I'm working on it. [00:23:45] I'm working on it. I catch myself.  [00:23:46] Jason: You say... [00:23:47] Kelly: I am no longer a cheapo.  [00:23:49] Jason: I am more normal.  [00:23:51] Kelly: I am more normal.  [00:23:52] Jason: Graduating towards premium.  [00:23:53] Kelly: And I'm graduating towards premium.  [00:23:55] Jason: It's good to be premium. We get to decide this, right? We get to decide this. [00:24:00] And so as you stretch yourself into more premium experience and recognizing, like, money is not the painful thing to be focused on, there's, and there's better things to be focused on that are more valuable and more important, like your time. And as you put a greater and greater premium on your time, you shift out of that currency of cash being the, you know, the God of your life controlling you and then you can start to be grateful. [00:24:26] And I think one of the key things for everybody listening is when we start to celebrate all of the things that we used to complain about related to money, I think this is how we shift out of that poverty mindset is, oh, we got to pay this bill. Thank you God that I have lights and power that I'm able to afford to do this. [00:24:44] Or thank you that I'm able to do this. And when we start to be grateful instead of projecting pain every time we see or hear money, And we start to project gratitude, then we start to attract more money. Like we start to be open to that. And as we shift into normal, yeah, we attract more normals. As we shift into premium, we attract more premium clients. [00:25:05] And they recognize you. It's like, there's a knowing between you and them, like, yeah, this is how it works. You come to us and we take care of everything and we take care of you and you get a premium service and product and they're like, "yeah, that's what I want." because premium buyers, when they see people that are cheapos. [00:25:20] They can like kind of smell it on you, right? So then they're like, "I don't want to work with this person. They're not going to take care of my property the way that I would want or do things or take care of me the way that I want." And so investing in ourselves. Sometimes for me, one of my coaches said, "go get a massage, you know, go do things to invest or take care of yourself to where you feel like..." you know, anything where we say, I think the poverty mindset is we hear this voice that says, " I don't need that nicer car. You don't need to go get a massage. Why do you need that?" Normal and premium is about shifting beyond need, right? Need is scarcity, need is starving, and need is survival, and so, and then what happens is we have to create drama or problems in our life in order to justify taking time off, so we have to get sick, or we have to justify it. [00:26:09] Doing something and so when we shift out of that then we shift into a healthier state where we can decide I am going to take a vacation or I am going to take time off. I'm going to go to DoorGrow live. You should all go to DoorGrow live, so.  [00:26:20] Sarah: I highly recommend coming up in May!  [00:26:23] Jason: It's coming up in May. Go to doorgrowlive.Com. So, all right anything else we should touch on?  [00:26:28] Sarah: One thing and I don't know if I've ever said this on the coach a call where you've been on but for me, it was actually Roya Mattis. She, at the time, was in Mary Kay like, and I was in cosmetic sales for Mary Kay, and It was very early in my Mary Kay career and I was kind of learning how to be entrepreneur ish, right? [00:26:53] Like, "Oh, I can write these things off and I can do things differently" and, "Oh, this is an expense, but it's a good expense." And it was a lot of new things for me. And one of the things that she had said is and I'll never forget because it just stuck with me and I went, "Oh, okay." Yeah, I need to stop thinking like that right now. [00:27:11] Is " come tax time, there are people who can't wait for tax time because they're waiting. They're depending on that refund and they're like, 'Oh, thank God I get this refund.' Right?" [00:27:21] A lot of rent gets caught up in it. [00:27:23] It sure does. Yeah. Funny. All of a sudden they have money. So. Once you start really making money, though, you don't get refunds anymore. [00:27:33] What ends up happening is you pay money. And not only do you pay money into it, but you now are, like, quarterly paying money. But you don't have to do that if you're, like, barely scraping by, if you're not making money. So, what she said to me is, " when you're, like, rich and you're making money You're excited to pay this money because you're making so much money that now, not only are not going to get a refund, but you don't, you don't worry about the refund, you're making money and now you're paying the taxes and you are going to hit a point where you want to be paying taxes more often than just once a year because that means you've reached a certain level and now you're making a certain amount of money and your goal at that point is then going to be, 'well, how can I increase this?'" [00:28:24] And that for me, it just stuck in my head forever. And I went, "Oh. Oh, geez. I didn't even realize that." And at that time I was, I was. Like, "well, I'm going to get a couple thousand dollars back, like on my tax refund." I haven't gotten a refund in years. And it's true though. It's just a different way of thinking about things. [00:28:40] It's like, well, you know, if you make this tiny little bit of money and then I can get, you know, a couple thousand dollars back at the end of the year, or I can make a whole lot more money. And then, yes, I have to make some quarterly tax payments. Man, I'd rather make a lot more money and I'll just give the government some of it. [00:28:54] And then what you have to do is just figure out how can we reduce that as much as possible.  [00:28:59] Jason: I would love to see taxes just be reduced dramatically. So, we'll see.  [00:29:04] Kelly: But, who knows what they're going to do.  [00:29:05] Jason: I don't get super excited about paying taxes, but I do get excited. I would rather, like, see more income on my tax return. [00:29:13] You know taxes every time so.  [00:29:14] Sarah: Would you rather make the big amount of money so that you have to pay the taxes in or would you make a really small amount of money so that you get a refund?  [00:29:22] Kelly: Yeah, just a really good accountant that can help you zig when the government zags  [00:29:26] Sarah: So that that was something that she said to me and I went oh, okay, that is a very different way of thinking about it. [00:29:33] And it just, just stuck with me.  [00:29:35] Jason: Yeah. Always looking through the lens of 'why is this positive?' it's a healthy mindset for sure. Yeah. Why are taxes positive? All right. Everybody listening is like, "they're not."  [00:29:45] Sarah: I know. Right. Cool. My brother wants a shout out. So shout out to Jason.  [00:29:50] Jason: What's up, Jason? [00:29:51] Sarah: He's like, "you never shout me out!" Here, here you are. The three of us are waving to you now. So, what's up, Jason?  [00:29:58] Jason: No, he's got the same name as me. Everybody's like, what's that all about?  [00:30:01] He's dating a Sarah.  [00:30:03] Kelly: Oh!  [00:30:04] Jason: Which is funny. And you have a stepsister, that's Sarah, so he's got two, three Sarahs in his life right now. [00:30:13] Three Sarahs, two Jasons, and a partridge in a pear tree. All right. Cool. Well, Kelly, it's been great coming to hang out in your office and to meet you in person like here in Pennsylvania. Thanks for hosting the DoorGrow show and having us hang out with you and we're excited to see where you go and how you progress in the program and all the things you're going to do as you add doors. [00:30:36] And I think the future is really bright for Crimson Property Management, Crimson Cape. Hey, I missed the Cape. It's like superhero stuff here. Yes. I am. I love it. All right. And that's it. So if you are tuning in, make sure to check us out at DoorGrow. com. And if you are wanting to grow your property management business, or you are getting burnt out on it, or you are one of the many sucky property management companies that exist, you don't have to be. [00:31:04] It could be good. It could be better. Then reach out to us. We would love to help you scale and grow your business. We help people from startup all the way to breaking the thousand door barrier. Whatever your goal is reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow. com. Bye everyone.  [00:31:18] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:31:45] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. 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Subscribe to Pillow Talk and join Christi, Kelly, Mellissa and Jill as they watch the new Dance Moms together! This exclusive package gives you access to all 10 episodes in both audio and video format, plus bonus content you won't want to miss. Join us for the full experience—click here to unlock it all!https://www.patreon.com/DanceMomsPillowTalk"This is the duet that broke Dance Moms," and Christi is not being hyperbolic. For all intense and purposes Dance Moms changed with this episode for the worse. The ratings were never as high and the episodes weren't nearly as funny, because this is Kelly's last episodes as part of the ALDC. It's the episode you've all been waiting for and it's one of our longest recaps yet for a reason because there is A LOT to unpack and plenty of tea to be spilt about what really went down in that room.Abby is unhappy how the team performed in the previous competition even though they came in 1st in the group competition, and states she will form a new team, keeping only Maddie, to compete against her own team. The ALDC is heading to New York for Sheer Talent and Abby will host the final round of ALDC auditions with the intent of coming back with both a win and a new team. Unbeknownst to everyone, except for Melissa and Maddie, Abby also intends to undermine Chloe and Paige's performance with a surprise guest.Quotes“I've never seen this episode. I never did either. I don't think I watched it when it came out, I really don't. Cause I have real f***ing trauma from this day." (00:57-01:06 | Christi & Kelly)“It's sad that she wants the girls that she taught to lose and the girls she didn't teach to win. Yeah it's so dumb cause she doesn't get that that makes her look stupid." (14:21-14:30 | Christi & Kelly)“Paige and Maddie were very close. And the fact that she could look at her and lie? I just don't know how you can allow your kid to do that? To raise them to think that that is ok." (1:07:49-1:08:06 | Kelly)“She has a bracelet on that says 'tough' and she's crying because somebody pulled her hair. Meanwhile it wasn't even her hair it was freaking extensions." (1:44:26-1:44:36 | Christi & Kelly)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Al and Kelly talk about Fields of Mistria Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:05:39: What Have We Been Up To 00:13:12: November Game Releases 00:15:25: Stardew Concert 00:27:34: Game News 00:40:41: New Games 00:51:38: Fields Of Mistria Links Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons Sun Haven UK/Switzerland/NZ Switch Release Everdream Valley “Family Time” DLC Snacko “Builders Dream” Update Spiritea “Phantom Friends” Update Farlands 0.3 Update Ratopia Dreamland Farm Ooze Keeper Contact Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello farmers, and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. My name is Al, (0:00:36) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:37) Al: and we’re here today to talk about cartridge core games. (0:00:43) Al: Welcome back Kelly, how are you doing? (0:00:46) Kelly: Pretty good. Enjoying the long weekend. It’s been nice. (0:00:49) Kelly: It’s nice to be back, too. How have you been? (0:00:51) Al: Yes, yes, good, good, good. (0:00:54) Al: I’m, yeah, doing all right. Just, you know, I’m cramming in as many farming games as possible (0:00:58) Al: before the end of the year. (0:01:00) Al: My game of the year episode is as accurate as possible. (0:01:04) Al: So busy. (0:01:06) Kelly: - Good dedication, really dedicated. (0:01:08) Al: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I probably could have played half of these in the first half of the year, but, you know, procrastination. (0:01:13) Kelly: But yeah, where’s the fun without that? (0:01:18) Al: Yeah, this is when the ADHD kicks in and goes, “Oh, deadline, great!” (0:01:22) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, no, literally. (0:01:25) Kelly: Do you have any things I did in like the 10 minutes (0:01:27) Kelly: before I sat down to record this? (0:01:29) Kelly: I think I ran through like five chores, just, why? (0:01:30) Al: Yeah, classic. Well, this is also Kelly’s 10th episode on the podcast. (0:01:40) Kelly: Whoo, I can’t believe it’s been 10. When you said that, I was so shocked. (0:01:40) Al: It’s wild. Yeah, yeah. I was surprised as well. I didn’t expect it to be that many because (0:01:52) Al: I guess it’s just been over a long time. Your first episode was in 2021. So we did Spirit (0:01:56) Al: and then the Spiritfare DLC, and then you and Kev did. (0:02:00) Al: Cult of the Lamb, and then you and Bev and Maddie did Potion Permit, (0:02:05) Al: and then we did Fishing Break, you and Kev did Graveyard Keeper, and then we did Pumpkin Panic, (0:02:11) Al: an episode called “What is Stardew still missing?” which I don’t even remember doing, (0:02:15) Al: but apparently we did. Yeah, sure. (0:02:16) Kelly: I remember that. (0:02:17) Kelly: That’s when it came out for the PC. (0:02:23) Al: I need to see how many episodes we’ve done on Stardew, and then the Dave the Diver story episode. (0:02:29) Kelly: Oh, yes. (0:02:30) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:02:31) Al: And then this will be your 10th one, wild, there you go. (0:02:34) Kelly: So many fishing– (0:02:35) Kelly: farming games, not fishing games. (0:02:37) Kelly: Also fishing games. (0:02:38) Al: Well, yeah, one of them was specifically a fishing game. (0:02:41) Kelly: Yeah. (0:02:42) Al: And the others almost all have fishing in them. (0:02:44) Al: Does Dave the Diver count as fishing? (0:02:46) Kelly: I wanna say yes, but I feel like no, because realistically to me it’s the mechanic of fishing. (0:02:55) Al: Well, that’s why that’s why I’m questioning it. (0:02:58) Kelly: Like I think the fishing is so different. (0:02:58) Al: But like, there’s a lot. (0:03:02) Kelly: Would you count scuba diving and animal crossing as fishing? No, that’s like it. (0:03:07) Al: You’re not catching fish when you’re scuba diving, though. (0:03:08) Kelly: Oh, you’re not? Oh, the dive thing? No. (0:03:10) Al: No. (0:03:12) Al: No, you only catch fish with a fishing rod in Animal Crossing. (0:03:16) Al: You, there are, it’s quite, yeah, yeah. (0:03:16) Kelly: Is it just like clams? (0:03:18) Al: I think maybe as far as like a crab, but I don’t think there’s any fish. (0:03:23) Kelly: Okay. No, I would not count David Diver as a fishing game, honestly. (0:03:28) Al: Interesting. OK, that’s this is our controversy of the episode. (0:03:33) Al: Listeners, tell us, do you think Dave the Diver is a fishing episode or not? (0:03:40) Al: If you make me decide, I would say yes, it is a fishing game (0:03:44) Al: because I think that fishing would be catching fish. (0:03:48) Al: I don’t think you specifically have to use a fishing rod or a fishing net (0:03:52) Al: to count as fishing. (0:03:54) Kelly: I see your point. I think I’m going more off of the vibes of every other mini fishing game. (0:03:58) Al: Yeah. (0:04:01) Kelly: Because definition-wise, you’re correct. It is a fishing game. What else am I doing, (0:04:05) Kelly: if not fishing? But I wouldn’t count it with the fishing games. It almost is kind of like (0:04:06) Al: Yeah. I mean, I would say it’s a– Sure. Okay. I would say it is a fishing game, (0:04:11) Kelly: that little controversy they had with the indie game thing. Okay, okay. (0:04:18) Al: but not a cottagecore game, which is ironic because it’s a cottagecore podcast. And I feel (0:04:24) Al: like we had the discussion about whether it was cottagecore or not, multiple times throughout the (0:04:27) Al: summer. Anyway, five minutes discussion on the Diver who expected that. This episode, we are (0:04:34) Al: finally going to talk about Fields of (0:04:36) Al: Mistria. I realised that, apparently, Spotify has the (0:04:40) Al: ability to leave comments and I went on and noticed there’s a (0:04:43) Al: person on Spotify that has just been commenting regularly. Are (0:04:46) Al: you going to cover Fields of Mistria? So, yes, here we are (0:04:51) Al: covering Fields of Mistria. Shout out to you, our single (0:04:53) Kelly: For that one Spotify– (0:04:54) Al: commenter. I can’t even remember the name. Yeah, episodes as (0:05:01) Kelly: I didn’t know you could comment on Spotify stuff, either. (0:05:07) Al: Yeah, so there’s Jack. There we go. Jack, you’re the one who’s (0:05:12) Al: commented multiple times asking for Fields of Mistria. As (0:05:15) Kelly: Hey, Jack. I hope you enjoy this episode. (0:05:16) Al: recently as nine days ago. Yeah, I mean, we had decided to do (0:05:19) Kelly: This is personally for you, Jack. (0:05:25) Al: this before I even looked at Spotify. But yeah, sure. So (0:05:30) Al: we’re going to talk about Fields of Mistria. Before that, we (0:05:32) Al: We have some news. (0:05:36) Al: A bunch of new games and a bunch of updates. (0:05:39) Al: First of all, Kelly, what have you been up to? (0:05:42) Kelly: I have been playing a lot of Rimworld again, because I think it’s a (0:05:49) Kelly: like, I don’t know what it is, Stardew is like a march game for me. And I think Rimworld is a (0:05:57) Kelly: late fall game for me. So I am back to Rimworld, which is not cottagecore, but it is a lot of (0:06:01) Al: Okay. (0:06:04) Kelly: farming. I mean, I guess technically, you could play cottagecore style, because they do have like, (0:06:10) Kelly: No violence mode, which I have (0:06:12) Kelly: played because I just want to like build. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. And then I’ve also (0:06:14) Al: yeah it’s a management game though isn’t it management style game yeah yeah I’m (0:06:18) Al: not playing it then (0:06:21) Kelly: been playing web fishing, which is really cute and fun and like, very simple, but like the core (0:06:27) Kelly: mechanic of fishing that I just enjoy in every farming game without like the deadline of having (0:06:33) Al: So. (0:06:35) Kelly: having to go to bed at night. (0:06:36) Al: So I have a question about that. (0:06:39) Al: I have been interested in this, but not enough to play it. (0:06:43) Al: But what do you do you interact with the chat room aspect of? (0:06:50) Kelly: You can play alone, or you can join a random lobby, or you can play with your friends. (0:06:55) Al: And what have you been doing? (0:06:56) Kelly: I have been either playing alone or playing with friends. I’m not really a big like, go into random people’s lobbies. (0:07:01) Al: OK, but you have you have done it with friends. (0:07:04) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:07:05) Al: What does that actually like? (0:07:08) Al: What is actually like? Is it audio? (0:07:10) Al: Is it text? It’s text. (0:07:10) Kelly: No, it’s text. It’s text. And then you kind of get the, like, Animal Crossing sounds as you hit send. It, like, does that. (0:07:20) Kelly: On top of your little chat and it pops up above your head and like, you also have like a little chat message bar so you could like see what you’ve been talking about. (0:07:29) Al: Okay. Okay. Okay. Because I hadn’t I know I looked through the screenshots and I hadn’t seen anything that actually showed the chat room aspect of it. It was all just like, you know, pictures of the fishing. (0:07:37) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s, it’s like a cute little aspect. I like that. I think it’s good (0:07:48) Kelly: that it’s like text. But very, very cute little game. Very cute. I just love fishing games. (0:07:49) Al: Yeah, yeah for sure (0:07:57) Kelly: I’m not going to lie. What have you been up to? (0:07:58) Al: Fair enough. (0:08:04) Al: I have obviously been playing Fields of Mistria quite a bit. (0:08:09) Al: We’ll talk about that when we come to it. (0:08:10) Al: I’ve also been keeping going with Marvel (0:08:13) Al: Snap and Pokemon Pocket. (0:08:16) Kelly: Oh, that’s the TCG one, right? (0:08:18) Kelly: I’ve been playing that. (0:08:19) Al: Yes, yes. (0:08:21) Kelly: I keep forgetting to open my pack, so– (0:08:24) Al: Do you not just open it when you get the notification, no? (0:08:26) Kelly: I don’t have notifications for things. (0:08:29) Al: OK, right, OK, so I turn off a lot of notifications, right? (0:08:34) Al: But, right, if you forget things, which. (0:08:39) Kelly: Yeah, but I’m just going to swipe the notification away. (0:08:40) Al: Yeah. (0:08:42) Al: No, you tap on it and then you open the app, open the gate, open the thing, right? (0:08:46) Al: You just do it then, you do it there and then it’s so fast. (0:08:46) Kelly: No, I’m not gonna do that. (0:08:49) Al: This is so this one, but this is the beauty of this game is it’s so fast. (0:08:53) Al: It’s like you open it and you press it and you get your five cards, you get your (0:08:53) Kelly: It is, that is nice. (0:08:56) Al: Dopamine hit, you swipe the app away the next- (0:08:58) Al: and the notification comes up, you do exactly the same thing. (0:09:00) Kelly: Al, listen. You’re right. I’m not going to try to fight you on this because you are 100% right. (0:09:02) Al: Ten seconds. (0:09:08) Kelly: However, many times I open the app and a message pops up that says, “You didn’t finish opening your card pack!” (0:09:16) Al: did stop doing that then. Yeah, I do. I do that. Yeah, I have to say, yeah, that is a bit of a (0:09:18) Kelly: So that is– [Laughter] (0:09:21) Al: problem. I don’t know why this game is so obsessed with that. It’s like you open up, you open a pack (0:09:26) Al: and you see it and then you write, close the app. And it’s like, I’ve seen my cards. I saw my cards, (0:09:28) Kelly: Mm-hmm because I forgot to like swipe it up. Yeah (0:09:32) Al: right? Don’t tell me I didn’t finish just because I haven’t gone and seen the 15 million animations (0:09:37) Kelly: Yeah, exactly. (0:09:37) Al: after that. It’s the same because it’s the same thing with, uh, with the battles, especially the (0:09:41) Al: solo battles is bizarre, right? Because it’s like, if you, you know, (0:09:46) Al: you do a battle and then you get annoyed because you lose. So you close, (0:09:49) Al: you just swipe the app away in anger. It’s like a really satisfying thing to do. (0:09:53) Al: And then you open it next time and it’s like, oh, did, you know, you didn’t finish this battle. (0:09:57) Al: I’m like, I did. I lost because I didn’t go through this stuff. Don’t make me relive this. (0:09:58) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, I actually I haven’t battled yet, but I completely understand. (0:10:01) Al: Why are you making me relive this? Go away. (0:10:10) Kelly: Yeah, but I do like the aspect of the whole idea that it is a two second app where you just open it open your card pack and then close it again. (0:10:18) Al: Perfect. That’s fair. That’s fair. But the problem is you can (0:10:18) Kelly: Like, I just want it for the cards I don’t want to really battle. (0:10:25) Al: get more cards by battling. Oh, yes. Absolutely. I don’t I (0:10:26) Kelly: Is it better than Pokemon Go? (0:10:28) Kelly: I’m not sure. (0:10:30) Kelly: Okay. (0:10:32) Kelly: Maybe I’ll try it, maybe I’ll try it. (0:10:34) Kelly: We’ll see. I gotta get more cards first. (0:10:36) Kelly: Yeah. (0:10:37) Al: don’t do PvP battles very much because like, you know, people (0:10:41) Al: suck. But I do there’s a lot of solo battles in the game. And (0:10:45) Al: know, there’s a new solo battle event going on right now. (0:10:48) Al: now that has unique cards for winning things. So yeah, against the computer. (0:10:51) Kelly: Oh, you can just play it yourself. (0:10:53) Kelly: Okay, okay, I didn’t I didn’t even look at that. (0:10:56) Al: The best bit is you can also tell the game to play for you. So you can have the computer (0:11:02) Al: playing against the computer. Yes, but what I do is when I’m sitting at my desk and I want just (0:11:04) Kelly: What? Kinda lazy? (laughs) (0:11:10) Al: a couple of battles and I don’t care about it because I’ve already beaten these battles, (0:11:14) Al: I just want to beat them more for more rewards (0:11:16) Al: Then I just have it sit (0:11:18) Al: In here I like just down on my phone (0:11:22) Al: Stand it’s just sitting there and it’s just doing the battles and every so often (0:11:27) Al: I look over it and see if I’ve won or lost and then I start again (0:11:30) Kelly: that is nice. I agree. That is a nice feature. Oh, yeah, I should go check mine. I do really (0:11:34) Al: Speaking of which I just got a notification that I’ve got packs. Let’s see. I’ve already got that already got that already got that (0:11:39) Al: Already got that no new cards great (0:11:43) Kelly: like looking at the card art, though. I think that’s the most fun of it. (0:11:46) Al: I’m just in an (0:11:48) Al: unfortunate position right now where I have most of the cards so most days I’m getting nothing (0:11:52) Kelly: Hmm. I only started like a week ago, I think. Also, I’ve noticed I’m very biased. I like almost (0:11:59) Kelly: never opened a Charizard pack. I know, I know. But I don’t want to. I know. I’m just, I have my own problem. (0:12:00) Al: Yeah, some of the cards are specific to that pack. (0:12:09) Al: I don’t know what to tell you. (0:12:15) Al: Anyway, so yeah, Pocket and Snap, I am at 98 on Snap now, so hopefully I’ll get to 100 by (0:12:22) Al: the end of Tuesday. We’ll see. And I’ve also started playing, speaking of playing games (0:12:31) Al: until the Game of the Year episode. I’ve been playing Luma Island as well, so yeah. (0:12:38) Al: I think it’s doing some interesting new things that I may or may not talk about in a week, and (0:12:45) Kelly: - Okay. (0:12:48) Al: I think I appreciate what it is doing, but I don’t know if it’s for me. (0:12:56) Al: But I’ve only put in like 15 hours into it so far, so. (0:13:00) Al: I’m gonna need more time to make that, isn’t it? (0:13:02) Kelly: I think that that sounds like it’ll be fun to see where it goes at least, (0:13:06) Al: Yeah. (0:13:07) Kelly: you know, and sometimes even if the mechanics aren’t for you, (0:13:09) Kelly: it’s like nice just to see people trying. (0:13:11) Al: Oh, for sure, for sure. (0:13:14) Al: All right, that’s what we’ve been up to. (0:13:18) Al: Next is our monthly segment of the recent releases, (0:13:22) Al: because this is only a second time doing it, but I decided that because there’s so many releases (0:13:28) Al: of games. (0:13:29) Al: And I’m always talking about the future. (0:13:30) Al: Talking about the past, I felt like people might want a monthly recap on what’s out (0:13:35) Al: in case they’ve heard of something that they’re like, “Oh, that’s something I want to play.” (0:13:40) Al: And now you can. (0:13:41) Al: So there have been four releases in November. (0:13:43) Al: I know it’s now December when you’re hearing this, but this is for November. (0:13:47) Al: So we have Farming Simulator 25. (0:13:50) Al: So if you love that Farming Simulator, there’s your new one, it’s out now. (0:13:55) Al: We also have Everhome, which I think… (0:14:01) Al: I don’t think that was previously Early Access, was it? (0:14:04) Al: No, I’m not seeing anything about Early Access, so that’s just a release now. (0:14:10) Kelly: Oh, that one looks cute. (0:14:11) Al: It does. (0:14:12) Al: It’s definitely on my list of “I want to play this,” but that list is very long. (0:14:15) Kelly: I’m going to add it to my list right now. (0:14:18) Al: And then we have Petite Island, which I’m pretty sure was in Early Access. (0:14:23) Al: So that is now 1.0. (0:14:25) Al: Is that correct? (0:14:26) Al: Oh, no. (0:14:27) Al: No, it’s not saying anything about Early Access. (0:14:28) Al: I was wrong. (0:14:30) Kelly: Honestly, with the amount of games that are in early access for forever, it’s like, (0:14:37) Kelly: who’s to remember anymore? Everything feels like it’s in early access. (0:14:42) Al: And and then Luma Island as well, which is also not in early access. (0:14:48) Al: So that’s four releases. (0:14:49) Al: None of them in early access. (0:14:51) Al: None of them have been in early access one unusual month. (0:14:54) Kelly: That is pretty crazy is it is it like I wonder if it’s like a pre-christmas thing (0:14:58) Al: Possibly, possibly. (0:14:59) Kelly: You know (0:15:00) Al: I do think a lot of I mean, a lot of games get delayed at this point. (0:15:04) Al: Like you don’t get a huge number of games coming out just now (0:15:06) Al: because they’ve either come out in October in time for, you know, (0:15:12) Al: the Christmas sale or they come out next year because they didn’t quite manage it. (0:15:18) Kelly: Mm hmm. Yeah, that. (0:15:18) Al: They don’t tend to like to come out in December or November (0:15:21) Al: because there’s too much happening. (0:15:25) Al: All right, next, we’ve got the news. (0:15:28) Al: The first news is a piece of news that I (0:15:30) Al: meant to talk about in the last episode, but I forgot (0:15:34) Al: because I didn’t write it down for some reason. (0:15:36) Al: And that is that they’ve announced a new series of stardew concerts. (0:15:40) Al: they had the previous series. (0:15:42) Al: Stargie Concerts that were called Festival of Seasons. (0:15:44) Al: The new ones are called Symphony of Seasons, and these are bigger. (0:15:49) Al: It’s a 35 piece orchestra. (0:15:52) Al: I believe the last one was under 20. (0:15:55) Al: I can’t remember exactly. (0:15:56) Al: I don’t know if it has it listed, but it was it was certainly much more intimate. (0:16:01) Al: It called it a chamber orchestra. (0:16:02) Al: Is that a specific number? (0:16:04) Al: I suspect not. (0:16:05) Al: Rona would be shouting at me if she was in the room. (0:16:06) Kelly: I have no idea. (0:16:07) Al: No, it just means just means small. (0:16:12) Al: So we may if you’ve not listened to it, me and Rona did a greenhouse episode on (0:16:18) Al: going to the previous Stargie Valley concert because Rona, my wife, is a big (0:16:23) Al: musician. She enjoys music. (0:16:26) Al: She does not play Stargie Valley. (0:16:27) Al: So it was a fun discussion to have about the music versus the the game sort of thing. (0:16:34) Al: I have successfully purchased tickets for the new concert. (0:16:37) Al: one the one that they’re doing in Scotland which (0:16:42) Al: obviously one is not very many, but we actually get one in many cases we don’t even get one. (0:16:47) Al: So I’m very happy to actually have one. (0:16:48) Kelly: Whoo! Whoo! Yeah, that is exciting. I forgot you went to the last round. (0:16:55) Al: And the Yeah, yeah. (0:16:58) Al: So that was earlier this year sometime, April or something. (0:17:04) Al: And that was in a converted church in Edinburgh. (0:17:08) Al: This new one is in 2026. (0:17:12) Al: It’s over a year away, which is just because of the time of the year that makes it sound (0:17:17) Al: even further away. (0:17:18) Al: It’s actually only like a year and two months away or something. (0:17:21) Al: I think it’s February. (0:17:22) Kelly: - Oh yeah, it’s heavy, all right. (0:17:22) Al: So it’s not that bad, but it does sound ridiculously far away. (0:17:30) Al: But they’re doing that, and this shows you how they’ve gone up a little bit. (0:17:32) Al: They’ve gone from a converted church in Edinburgh to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, which (0:17:38) Al: which is, I think, three times the size. (0:17:42) Kelly: It’s, it’s, you know, you know, Stardew is big, but I think when you see it like in this kind of aspect, it’s like, wow. (0:17:48) Al: Yeah, this is their second world tour, and this one’s bigger. (0:17:52) Kelly: Yeah. (0:17:54) Kelly: The next one’s going to be stadium level concert. (0:17:58) Al: Yeah, I don’t think I would want to see stardew music in a stadium. (0:18:02) Kelly: No, I think this is much cuter. Yeah. Yeah. But no, that’s so that’s so cool. (0:18:03) Al: I feel like concert hall works best. (0:18:09) Al: So, yeah, it was funny because (0:18:11) Al: so there was a presale that if you signed up to the newsletter, you got the code. (0:18:14) Al: I signed up for that and then we got the code (0:18:17) Al: and then I forgot all about (0:18:18) Al: it. And it was like, because I had my laptop next to my work, because it was 9am on Monday. (0:18:24) Al: I had my personal laptop like next to my desk, ready to log on at nine, and then completely (0:18:29) Al: forgot. It was really unfortunate. And then I looked at the time, there was, I can’t remember (0:18:36) Al: what it was, I just randomly looked at the clock, and it was 11 o’clock and went, “Oh, (0:18:40) Al: the concert. Oh, no.” And so I went on and thankfully they still had. (0:18:49) Kelly: That’s good, especially because, like you said, you only have one night for Scotland, (0:18:53) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And well, yeah. And it’s like I could go to England, but there’s only (0:18:54) Kelly: so it’s not like, “Oh, I could drive a few states over if I have to.” (0:19:01) Al: two in England and one of them is London, which is like four hour train ride or yeah. (0:19:06) Kelly: You wanna go to London? (0:19:07) Al: And who wants to go to London? And it’s like, it’s always annoying when you, cause like (0:19:11) Al: London gets the, cause I think you get like, obviously New York gets the, you know, Broadway (0:19:16) Al: musicals first cause obviously Broadway, uh, it’s kind of in the name. Um, but then they, (0:19:17) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:19:20) Al: They tend to go to London next and they take forever. (0:19:24) Al: You can always go to London for these things. (0:19:26) Al: It’s like, I don’t want to go to London, oh my word. (0:19:29) Kelly: Yeah, I don’t even want to go into the city for some of this stuff, so I feel you (0:19:34) Al: London is one of them, and Manchester is the other one. (0:19:36) Al: Manchester, despite being further north, is harder to get to than London. (0:19:41) Kelly: Oh, really? I thought I thought that would be closer to you, honestly. (0:19:44) Al: If you’re driving, it’s faster. (0:19:46) Al: But if you’re getting the train, it’s more difficult. (0:19:48) Al: It takes longer to get there. (0:19:48) Kelly: Mm. That makes sense. (0:19:50) Al: because they’ve got like a super fast train from Edinburgh to… (0:19:53) Al: London. It’s like four hours on the train which is fine but then it becomes a whole weekend thing (0:20:01) Al: rather than a night thing. Whereas this is, it starts at 7pm it’s like I can get my kids (0:20:08) Al: mostly ready for bed and then head off and then be back in for midnight. (0:20:13) Kelly: Yeah, you know, that’s nice. Yeah, that’ll be exciting. I didn’t realize it was, I mean, (0:20:18) Kelly: like you said, it’s only like a year basically away. (0:20:20) Al: Yeah, I think the American dates start in like August or something. (0:20:25) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, end of August. (0:20:26) Al: Yeah, the first dates in Seattle. (0:20:30) Kelly: I will say it’s funny. There’s no New York City date. (0:20:33) Kelly: It’s only upstate New York and New Jersey. (0:20:35) Al: Oh, that’s funny. Is that because New York City is just stupidly expensive to? (0:20:40) Kelly: That’s what I was about to say is it’s definitely because of that. (0:20:42) Al: Of all the places, of all the places in the world, it’s like you do not want to do that. (0:20:47) Kelly: Yeah. So that one makes a lot– because at first I was like, wow, there’s no New York City one. (0:20:54) Kelly: but there is a new (0:20:55) Kelly: New Jersey, which is close enough. (0:20:57) Kelly: I would go there instead of Albany. (0:21:00) Al: Yes, yeah, because, well, I don’t know where New York is, but New Jersey’s closer, I mean, (0:21:06) Al: much of New Jersey is closer to you than most of New York, right? I know, because I read (0:21:09) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, exactly. (0:21:14) Al: a lot of Ms. Marvel Comics, and she’s based in New Jersey City. (0:21:19) Kelly: Yeah, those are my sister works, actually, (0:21:21) Kelly: right across the water. (0:21:23) Kelly: It’s nice there now. (0:21:24) Kelly: They’ve been making it nicer. (0:21:24) Al: New York is right there. You’ve got New York, and then you’ve got Manhattan, and then you’ve (0:21:32) Al: got Jersey City, and then you’ve got New York. That looks… Yeah, that would… Yeah. (0:21:33) Kelly: No, yeah, literally. (0:21:38) Kelly: Oh, they put all their businesses on that side, (0:21:40) Kelly: I’m pretty sure, because they’re like tax reasons. (0:21:42) Al: Because there’s also casinos in New Jersey as well, isn’t there? (0:21:43) Kelly: You know? (0:21:46) Kelly: Mm-hm. We have them in New York now, just they’re more limited. Yeah, there was one that (0:21:49) Al: Howdy! (0:21:52) Al: I thought New York was quite strict with gambling. (0:21:55) Kelly: they were, I think when I was like in my early 20s, stuff started to change (0:22:02) Kelly: and they opened up a casino near where I lived. But I think they were, it wasn’t, you know, (0:22:08) Kelly: as open as like other states are with the gambling even inside of there. You know, (0:22:13) Kelly: like not every game I guess is allowed or stuff like that. Difference. (0:22:17) Kelly: I don’t know what gambling rules are. I just go in and I pull the lever. (0:22:23) Al: - Okay. (0:22:27) Kelly: But yeah, usually people from New York would go to Jersey to gamble because it’s better over there. (0:22:32) Al: It’s really funny, I’m just looking at the Google Maps and I knew there was weird stuff around (0:22:36) Al: exactly who owned Ellis Island and Liberty Island and I noticed that on Google Maps it has most of (0:22:44) Al: Ellis Island listed as New Jersey with like a big chunk of it including the Immigrations Museum (0:22:52) Al: listed as New York. So it’s like because you’re over the line, technically the island is within (0:22:53) Kelly: Oh, that’s funny. (0:22:58) Al: New Jersey. So most of it is New Jersey, but then there’s like an (0:23:02) Al: exclave of New York. We love border disputes. Did you know that Greenland and Canada now (0:23:04) Kelly: I forgot about that whole debacle. (0:23:13) Kelly: Who doesn’t? (0:23:20) Al: have a land border due to a solved border dispute? Yeah, so there’s an island between (0:23:23) Kelly: No, I did not (0:23:27) Al: mainland Greenland mainland Greenland between (0:23:32) Al: Greenland Greenland and like the very north of Canada. (0:23:36) Al: What is that? (0:23:37) Al: It doesn’t have a name. Nobody cares about it. (0:23:41) Al: Which is like right in the middle of the water, (0:23:44) Al: which is where they put the border between them. (0:23:47) Al: So it like crosses the island. (0:23:48) Al: So they spent decades arguing over who owned it. (0:23:52) Al: And then eventually they decided they just split it. (0:23:53) Al: So now technically it’s half and half. (0:23:55) Al: So they have a land border there. (0:23:57) Kelly: that’s cool. It’s kind of like the two little islands in the bearings straight between what (0:23:59) Al: Thank you. (0:24:02) Al: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:24:03) Kelly: are they called? Something with a D. I don’t remember. Yeah. Yeah. That one’s messed up though (0:24:06) Al: Diomede, a big Diomede and little Diomede. (0:24:10) Kelly: because like people live there and then they can’t, they got split up and now they can’t see their (0:24:11) Al: Yeah. (0:24:14) Kelly: relatives. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But you can’t cross that ice. It’s not allowed. (0:24:15) Al: Well, and it’s, and it’s essentially a land border half of the year anyway, because of the ice. (0:24:23) Al: Well, not, well, yeah, not allowed is very different from Kant. (0:24:27) Kelly: That’s true. That’s very true. (0:24:29) Al: Anyway, enough about geography. (0:24:32) Al: That’s the Stardew Valley Concert. (0:24:33) Al: Are you going to go to any of them? (0:24:34) Al: You’re going to go to the New Jersey one? (0:24:36) Kelly: Probably not, no. Yeah, probably not. (0:24:44) Kelly: It would be cool, but no. Yeah, no. I’m very excited for you. That is very cool. (0:24:46) Al: I’m excited for it. (0:24:52) Al: We don’t go to stuff very often because kids. (0:24:54) Al: So this year we went to the Stardew Concert (0:24:56) Al: and we went to Hamilton. (0:24:58) Al: Hamilton were in Edinburgh. (0:25:00) Al: And then next year, next year. (0:25:00) Kelly: Oh, nice. What is that? (0:25:02) Al: Next year, we’re going to see six. (0:25:04) Al: I think that’s what it’s called. (0:25:06) Al: So I believe it’s about Henry VIII’s wives. (0:25:08) Kelly: Oh, you know what? I think I might have heard something about this, actually. (0:25:11) Al: You’ll probably have seen music from it on TikTok. (0:25:15) Al: It’s all over the place. (0:25:15) Kelly: Yeah, that makes sense. TikTok is a great marketing ploy for that. (0:25:17) Al: So yeah, so many, so many musicals I’ve learned about that, yeah. (0:25:25) Kelly: Yeah, they’re really catchy. They get stuck in your head really well. (0:25:31) Al: Yeah, it’s a modern retelling of the lives of the six waves of Henry VIII. (0:25:36) Kelly: Okay. That’s cool. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Yeah, why not? And that’s fun. And now that you (0:25:38) Al: All I know is the music’s catchy, and Rona wants to see it, and I was like, yeah, let’s (0:25:45) Al: go see it, because I like the music. (0:25:49) Kelly: can, like, now that the kids are a little older and can actually get out a little bit (0:25:53) Kelly: more. It’s like, why not? (0:25:54) Al: So that’s our one for next year. (0:25:56) Al: And then we’ve got the Stardew concert the year after. (0:26:01) Al: Maybe I’ll see Wicked in 2026. (0:26:04) Kelly: Oh, yes, I want that to come out. I want them to release that on the streaming so that I don’t have to go into the theater for it. (0:26:10) Al: So here’s an interesting thing for you, apparently you can go into the New York Public Library (0:26:20) Al: and watch it. (0:26:20) Kelly: Oh, but I didn’t have to go to Manhattan. (0:26:21) Al: No, I know, I know, right? (0:26:26) Al: But you can, at least. (0:26:27) Al: I can’t. (0:26:28) Kelly: Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. That’s fair. That’s fair. That’s fair. (0:26:29) Al: Yes, it would be work, but less work than going to the theatre. (0:26:30) Kelly: It would be a trek to get there and then have to sit there and watch it. (0:26:38) Kelly: Yes. I’ve heard it’s a lot of sing-alongs in the theaters, (0:26:42) Al: Goodness, thankfully, I live in a very, a place where it is unacceptable to sing. (0:26:44) Kelly: which I’m happy for those theater kids, but you know, I don’t, I’m not a theater. (0:26:54) Al: So when we went to see the film, there were not people singing. (0:26:59) Kelly: I wish. (0:27:00) Al: This is what is unusual. (0:27:01) Kelly: My mom, actually. (chuckles) (0:27:02) Al: This is what is unusual is actually the people clapped at the end of it. (0:27:06) Al: I have never had people clap at the end of the film. (0:27:07) Kelly: Oh, it’s like clapping when a flight lands. (0:27:11) Kelly: I hate both of those. (0:27:12) Kelly: I hate those kind of people. (chuckles) (0:27:12) Al: There is one situation where clapping when a flight lands is acceptable, (0:27:16) Kelly: Yes, yes. (0:27:16) Al: and that is when you thought you were going to die. (0:27:18) Kelly: Yeah. (chuckles) (0:27:20) Kelly: Every other time, it’s just like, (0:27:22) Kelly: that guy was just doing his job or her job, (0:27:24) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:27:26) Kelly: like, this is how it should go, don’t clap. (0:27:29) Al: If you thought you were going to die or you’re flying Ryanair. (0:27:35) Al: All right, so let’s get into some game news now. (0:27:37) Al: So the first in the news is Sunheavour. (0:27:40) Al: I’ve announced their UK, Switzerland, and New Zealand release date. (0:27:46) Al: If you’re not up to date with the weird situation here, I will just summarize it. (0:27:51) Al: Sunheaven announced their America’s release date, and then they announced their Asian (0:27:57) Al: release dates. (0:27:59) Al: And then they announced most of Europe and also Australia, but not Switzerland, the United (0:28:05) Al: Kingdom, and New Zealand. (0:28:07) Al: And I, at the time, and still do think they just forgot. (0:28:10) Al: Well, so the Switzerland and United Kingdom I noticed were alphabetically at the end of the list, after all the other countries, so I just think they just copied and pasted incorrectly. (0:28:12) Kelly: ‘Cause I was like, what a weird bunch of countries to kind of like… (0:28:26) Al: I’m not sure why New Zealand, maybe they just forgot it existed, but I’m not 100% sure what the system. (0:28:34) Kelly: Because I would think New Zealand and Australia would be paired together like (0:28:36) Al: Well, so, so, right, OK, so… (0:28:40) Al: The weird thing about… So, the way the eShop works is there are, I think, six different regions. (0:28:47) Al: There is one for North America and one for South America, one for Europe, Australia, (0:28:55) Al: and New Zealand, and South Africa, I believe, and then there’s one for Japan, one for Hong Kong, (0:29:02) Al: and one for South Korea. Was that six? That was six. I believe that’s all of them. (0:29:04) Kelly: Okay. Yeah. (0:29:09) Al: what I understand based. (0:29:10) Al: So I think this is just them like cleaning up after their mistake and not admitting it, (0:29:30) Al: which is weird. And I also think the reason that they got they released it region by region is (0:29:36) Al: because they didn’t realize there were multiple regions until they’d already added it. (0:29:41) Al: To the Americas one. (0:29:42) Kelly: That’s so funny! (0:29:45) Al: And the problem is we don’t know any of this because the Sunhaven developers are very bad (0:29:49) Al: at communicating their discard after they announced the European release date before (0:29:54) Al: they announced that also included United Kingdom Switzerland and New Zealand was just people (0:29:59) Al: saying, so is it not coming to the UK? Is it coming a different date? What’s happening? (0:30:03) Al: And it turns out it’s exactly the same date, which would back up my they just forgot to tell you (0:30:08) Al: about it because there are two. (0:30:10) Al: There is a possibility of that, but I mean, generally the regions are very similar politically. (0:30:29) Kelly: which I could see because it’s like, aren’t some countries kind of (0:30:40) Kelly: Yeah, that’s true. (0:30:41) Al: But if that is the case, what happened was they ticked all of the boxes except the UK, (0:30:48) Al: Switzerland, and New Zealand. They did not check those boxes and then they put in a different (0:30:53) Al: release and checked just those three countries. Because it’s not even like an EU versus not EU (0:31:01) Al: thing, because Norway was in the first release and is not in the EU, and obviously Australia is (0:31:01) Kelly: No, it’s a, it’s a weird. (0:31:06) Al: is not in the EU and Switzerland is not in the EU but for (0:31:10) Al: and purposes regulatorily it is the same and the UK is mostly the same because obviously it was in (0:31:17) Al: the EU until four years ago so it’s a bit of a mess I miss clicks or copy and paste mistake which (0:31:22) Kelly: Yeah, that’s, that’s, that sounds like a misclick, a few misclicks, for sure. (0:31:31) Al: is what I think I think they went and tried to copy the entire list and just missed the last two (0:31:35) Al: of them. (0:31:38) Kelly: and then did not even like acknowledge it or any like. (0:31:41) Al: Yeah well that’s the weird thing right? Like people have been talking about this from the (0:31:45) Al: moment they published their post about it coming to Europe and they said nothing (0:31:51) Al: and so like if they had just it almost feels like they just don’t want to admit their mistakes (0:31:56) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they could just make a joke about it like this. People would (0:31:56) Al: and but why in such a weird way? Yeah! (0:32:01) Kelly: find it funny like it’s not a it’s an inconsequential mistake like nobody’s. (0:32:06) Al: Yeah. And the people already think they don’t communicate. And so making this weird like, (0:32:13) Al: oh, we weren’t wrong. We were right all along. Thing just makes it seem even weirder. Oh, (0:32:22) Al: anyway, living on. We have one DLC release. So Everdream Valley have announced a family (0:32:31) Al: time DLC. This is coming to Steam on the 6th of December and then in consoles. (0:32:36) Al: Next year Q1. This has new story quests, new NPCs, new animals and new furniture. That’s (0:32:45) Al: an interesting thing to put in a DLC. Well, quests, were quests, animals and furniture. (0:32:52) Al: I guess NPCs like, I guess that’s not an unusual thing to put like new characters in, but the (0:32:54) Kelly: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like I could see, like a lot of games will do like a new DLC with (0:33:03) Kelly: more quests. You know, so maybe. Yeah, yeah, that’s how I would take it. Yeah, like it’s (0:33:04) Al: Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I guess. Yeah. They’re not saying like this is by the DLC to get (0:33:10) Al: quests. It’s the DLC comes with quests. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. The furniture (0:33:13) Kelly: like additional furniture, additional quests, additional NPCs kind of thing that that’s I (0:33:17) Kelly: could be wrong. But that’s how I would read it. Yeah, that’s just add on. (0:33:19) Al: is, I guess, not weird because it’s just like that’s pretty common thing. And then we have (0:33:24) Al: three updates to games. Snacko have released their builder’s dream update, which I’m sure (0:33:30) Al: you can guess where that is. It’s a whole bunch of crafting building stuff. (0:33:34) Al: Lots of good improvements. And I guess we’re not getting Snacko 1.0 this year. (0:33:41) Al: We’re probably getting next year. Because that’s 0.9.5. So close. (0:33:44) Kelly: They intentionally just decided we’re going to add a few more digits into this. (0:33:55) Kelly: It looks so cute though, I wanted to come out. (0:33:57) Al: Yeah, at this point I’m like, because I’ve not played it since the early access came out, (0:34:01) Al: I did play a very early alpha of it. Because I’ve not played it since the early access (0:34:07) Al: come out, at this point I’m like, I just need to wait for the 1.0, right? (0:34:10) Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, because I feel like at this point, it’s like if you don’t wait for the 1.0, (0:34:15) Kelly: like what are you getting out of the 1.0 when it comes out? (0:34:17) Al: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I will, I will say, I will say, Snacko Devs, listen to me. (0:34:25) Al: We’re good friends, we’ve talked before. (0:34:27) Al: Listen to me now, do not release this in December. (0:34:30) Al: You released the early access last December. (0:34:32) Al: Do not, do not do this. (0:34:35) Al: I beg of you, January, January’s fine. (0:34:39) Al: Do not release your 1.0 in December. (0:34:41) Al: I will cry. (0:34:43) Al: I will cry. (0:34:44) Al: Thank you. (0:34:45) Kelly: - You’re gonna release it December 31st at… (0:34:48) Al: That’s OK, that’s December 31st is fine. (0:34:50) Al: That’s basically January, because I will have recorded all the episodes by then (0:34:54) Al: for the year. It’s not like I need to then rush it, right? (0:34:57) Al: As a 2024 game, it was December the 31st. (0:35:00) Kelly: Also, I just love in their little notes the difference in communication where they literally (0:35:08) Kelly: have screenshots from the Discord talking about part of the updates here. (0:35:10) Al: Mm. Yeah. (0:35:13) Al: That is such a good point. (0:35:14) Al: Snacko Dev is fantastic with communication. (0:35:16) Al: Like they are literally just in the Discord talking to people. (0:35:20) Al: Sunhaven, I have never seen a single one of them talk in the Discord. (0:35:26) Al: Yeah, definitely. (0:35:28) Al: Spiritity have released their Phantom Friends update, which adds a… (0:35:33) Al: You can have your spirits as pets now. (0:35:40) Al: Interesting change. (0:35:40) Kelly: to like follow you around. (0:35:41) Al: If, yeah, yeah, they follow you around and replace your existing… (0:35:48) Al: No, they don’t replace your existing spirit companion. (0:35:50) Al: They add to… (0:35:53) Kelly: I wonder if I should give this game another chance. (0:35:55) Kelly: It seems like they’ve added so much since I last played. (0:35:57) Al: possibly, yeah. (0:36:00) Kelly: But I have enough other farming games. (0:36:08) Kelly: That’s that. That was my issue. (0:36:13) Kelly: Yeah. (0:36:18) Kelly: Now that is a good point, because I feel like I just at its core, (0:36:21) Kelly: I felt kind of listless playing the game. (0:36:25) Kelly: So, yeah, I think you do have a good point. (0:36:27) Kelly: I just like I want to like it so much. (0:36:30) Al: I agree. I also want to like it. Um, but I guess about it, that counts, right? (0:36:36) Kelly: - Yeah, it does have very positive reviews, (0:36:38) Kelly: so obviously other people are enjoying it. (0:36:39) Al: Which is good, which is good. And it’s, you know, yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Um, (0:36:39) Kelly: So I’m glad, yeah, I’m glad. (0:36:41) Kelly: ‘Cause I do like, I like the whole concept. (0:36:47) Al: and it’s over 500 reviews as well. So it’s not, it’s not like they’re, they must be getting (0:36:52) Al: enough. That’s, you know, 500 reviews means quite a lot more people buying it, right? Because (0:36:57) Al: most people do not review your game. (0:37:00) Kelly: Yeah, no, I don’t think I think I’ve reviewed like two games (0:37:00) Al: I don’t know if I’ve reviewed any of them on Steam. (0:37:09) Al: They’ve also added new spirits, so that’s what you care about in the game, right? (0:37:15) Al: The spirits. (0:37:16) Al: So there you go. (0:37:19) Al: And the final update is Far Lands. (0:37:22) Al: I’ve released their 0.3 update. (0:37:25) Al: This is the biggest update Far Lands has seen to date. (0:37:30) Al: It adds achievements, which is always a good thing. (0:37:34) Al: Another game we’re about to talk about later on in this episode could have. (0:37:37) Al: That would be great. (0:37:38) Al: Please and thank you. (0:37:42) Kelly: I also love achievements. (0:37:44) Kelly: It’s honestly one of the big things (0:37:45) Kelly: that I really like from not playing (0:37:47) Kelly: as many games on the Switch and switching over to PC. (0:37:48) Al: Mm, yeah, I wonder if, well, almost every game feels a mystery. I wonder if, because (0:37:51) Kelly: I’m like, oh, achievements in every game. (0:37:54) Kelly: How nice. (0:37:59) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:38:05) Al: obviously they have been slowly getting more and more features as they get a lot, you know, (0:38:10) Al: like the 3DS added a bunch of stuff that other games, other systems had, and then the Switch (0:38:16) Al: called Mostly Modern. (0:38:18) Al: Maybe the next switch you’ll have. (0:38:23) Kelly: Maybe. I always wonder, I didn’t know what the issue was, to be honest, because I know (0:38:28) Kelly: when some people, what is it called, port the games to the Switch, like I know for HoloNet (0:38:34) Kelly: I can’t do video screenshots. I could do plain image screenshots. Yeah, because I think it’s (0:38:37) Al: Yeah, interesting. That, so I believe the video screenshots is something they can disable. (0:38:46) Kelly: about how hard it is for the person porting it to, I guess… Okay. (0:38:51) Al: I don’t think that requires any work on their point. I think it’s more a case of they didn’t (0:38:53) Kelly: Which is, yeah, because it’s weird, because you can record it on every other device. But (0:38:55) Al: want to add that feature. I’m not sure why, but… Yeah. (0:39:03) Kelly: that was also one of the ones where I don’t have achievements, and I know there’s achievements (0:39:06) Kelly: for that game. Yeah. (0:39:07) Al: And some games add them into the game itself, like they’ll add, but that’s a lot of work. (0:39:11) Al: The whole point of the achievements in Steam and stuff is that they’re very easy to do, (0:39:16) Al: because it’s literally just, “Here’s my list of achievements,” and then you put in the code to say (0:39:20) Al: when the achievement is hit. Yeah, because it doesn’t have… Switch doesn’t have an achievement (0:39:22) Kelly: Oh, so that’s the issue is that it’s just hard to add them in on the switch, like the switch doesn’t make it okay. (0:39:29) Al: system. So if you want to have it on the Switch, you have to build it entirely yourself. And it (0:39:34) Kelly: Uh, I’m dumb. I understand now. (0:39:34) Al: And it would be only within game because there are a. (0:39:38) Al: Couple of games that have done that they’ve recreated the achievement system in their own game, but then it only works for that game and it takes a lot of work to do that. (0:39:40) Kelly: Mm hmm. (0:39:42) Kelly: Mm hmm. (0:39:46) Kelly: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That makes a lot more sense. (0:39:47) Al: Whereas with steam and with Xbox and with PlayStation there’s a piece of code that they can call which just does the achievement for them so. (0:39:54) Kelly: Okay, I knew it was something to do with how it set up, but I never looked into the actual basic why behind it (0:40:02) Al: They’ve added to upgrade system as well. (0:40:04) Al: They’ve added food, they’ve added house upgrade system, they’ve added new (0:40:07) Al: furniture, they’ve added guests and better NPCs, one of which looks like a xenomorph. (0:40:12) Al: Not sure why. (0:40:14) Kelly: I like his jacket. (0:40:14) Al: Legally distinct, legally distinct xenomorph. (0:40:20) Al: Yeah, it looks like a pretty big update. (0:40:21) Al: I haven’t played this game yet. I do want that. (0:40:24) Kelly: Yeah, it’s on my list of games to check out. I just I tried to avoid most early access, honestly. (0:40:33) Al: Good thing we’re not talking about an early access today then (0:40:39) Kelly: Is it generally? (0:40:42) Al: So that’s the game updates. (0:40:43) Al: We now have three new games to talk about, (0:40:47) Al: the first of which actually, no, let’s go the other way around. (0:40:49) Al: Let’s talk about Dreamland Farm first, (0:40:51) Al: because I think this will be the quickest to talk about. (0:40:55) Al: Dreamland Farm. (0:40:56) Al: Since childhood, you’ve dreamed of being close to nature, (0:40:59) Al: but being born and raised in the city stood in the way of that. (0:41:02) Al: The closer you were to adulthood, the more time you spent with your grandma, (0:41:05) Al: who showed you all around her own farm, from crops to berries and mushrooms, (0:41:09) Al: everything she knew, she taught you, she prepared you to be her (0:41:12) Al: successor. I mean that’s just every farming game. I don’t know. I don’t know. And what (0:41:16) Kelly: - Yeah, why do they all do that? (0:41:19) Al: I find really interesting is like, so if you have a farming game, the description should (0:41:25) Al: tell you what’s different about it. Don’t be like, oh, it’s a farming game. It’s like, (0:41:27) Kelly: Yeah. This time it’s your uncle and not your grandpa. (0:41:28) Al: yeah, we know that, right? It’s like, if you have, yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s like, come (0:41:36) Al: on. Let’s not, let’s not pretend. This one looks… (0:41:42) Al: Pretty… I don’t see anything unique in this, personally. (0:41:46) Kelly: I only gave it a cursory glance and it does look pretty. (0:41:52) Kelly: It doesn’t look like it’s breaking any boxes or molds or whatever though. (0:41:56) Al: But equally I also didn’t think about Fields of Mistria and didn’t want to play that until I decided, until it got a lot of buzz and I was like okay it’s time to play this one, you know, like, sometimes you can’t tell without playing it, which is a PR problem, obviously. (0:42:12) Kelly: Which goes back to your point of pointing out the differences (0:42:14) Kelly: and not the similarities. (0:42:19) Kelly: That’s what you need to get in touch with all the devs (0:42:22) Kelly: about is changing their PR management. (0:42:26) Al: I will be your PR. (0:42:29) Al: No, no, I will not. (0:42:32) Al: That is very much a conflict of interests. (0:42:36) Al: This one interestingly, so it’s now it’s on Switch and Xbox, it is not on Steam, which (0:42:41) Al: is interesting. (0:42:42) Kelly: Oh, that feels so backwards. (0:42:43) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:42:47) Al: I wonder why. (0:42:48) Kelly: I wonder right too, especially if it’s on x. (0:42:49) Al: Yeah, because it’s not like it’s they had an exclusivity deal with Switch, because then (0:42:54) Al: and they wouldn’t be on Xbox. (0:42:57) Al: And the Xbox version did come out like a week after the Switch version. (0:43:01) Al: That’s not long enough for it to be an exclusivity. (0:43:04) Kelly: - No. (laughs) (0:43:04) Al: So yeah, weird. (0:43:07) Al: I don’t know, I’ll keep an eye on it. (0:43:09) Kelly: Hopefully it’s good. (0:43:09) Kelly: Hopefully they got something unique in it. (0:43:11) Al: Yeah, yeah, hopefully. (0:43:13) Al: Hopefully. (0:43:14) Al: It’s 10 pounds. (0:43:16) Al: Is it 15 dollars? (0:43:18) Al: Probably. (0:43:20) Kelly: Probably something like that, yeah. (0:43:22) Al: So it feels cheap enough to like buy it and play it. (0:43:26) Al: And if you’re not bothered by it, then it’s not the end of the world sort of thing. (0:43:30) Al: Next we have RATOPIA. (0:43:33) Al: RATOPIA. (0:43:35) Al: I keep wanting to say RATOPIA, but it’s only one T, so it’s definitely RATOPIA. (0:43:38) Kelly: Uh, to be fair, I say rat topia (0:43:41) Al: Yeah, but there’s no second T. (0:43:42) Kelly: Well, he sounds better I know but it’s funner to say that way (0:43:47) Kelly: For the podcast, I will say rat topia (0:43:50) Al: RATOPIA. RATOPIA is a new game that is combined first of all, a new game, come on. What is (0:44:01) Al: that? I just feel like sometimes I feel like this this podcast is just me editing and critiquing (0:44:07) Al: the descriptions of games. Is a new game. Yeah, we know that. Don’t add that in. Also (0:44:13) Al: just a point, you don’t need to put your name in the description because your name is elsewhere (0:44:17) Al: on the page, right? Just right. (0:44:19) Kelly: Uh, you sound like somebody’s like third grade English teacher critiquing their (0:44:20)

"Abby says to Chloe that she has the dancer's body. She has the look. Your technique shines through, you can nail it no matter what. listen to that positive shit! Hu huh. I'm willing to bet you Kelly that that's what she said to Maddie and they edited it so she says it to Chloe. She would never say that to Chloe," admits Christi reluctantly. Even when the show is seemingly throwing our beloved bitches a bone it's never that easy. Not helping the matter is Abby is using Chloe as a pawn in her little game on the Pyramid for "Two Can Play This Game".Even though Kendall led the trio that took first in last week's competition, she is placed lower than Chloe on the Pyramid. The only reasoning seems to be that it'll make Jill upset with Christi and set-up a solo face off between Chloe and Kendall at this week's competition. But these mind games take second place to Abby's primary focus, the return of Cathy and her Candy Apples.Cathy is determined to take back the limelight after loosing to Abby at nationals, but Cathy's team has had more time to prep since they don't have to film a TV show. So Abby dedicates extra days for the girls to learn the group dance, and threatens that if they can't beat Candy Apples then she might as well replaces the whole team!Quotes“You said you're going to be Miss Piggy [for Halloween], I'm being a dumpster fire. I think that's going to be the most appropriate thing I can be. You can be a dumpster picker like me!” (1:43-1:50 | Christ & Kelly)“It was really cute because the girl who was helping me, you could tell she knew who I was and she was kind of fan-girling. And I was like, 'Ok listen, I don't know how to check this,' and she was like, 'I know I listen to the podcast.'" (9:03-9:16 | Christi)“I just want to point out that this competition was like invented for Dance Moms, now it's freaking huge! Huge! Oh really? They have like 40 to 70 competitions per year or some crap. Oh my I didn't know that. Yeah, so I just want to say you're welcome." (12:14-12:31 | Christi & Kelly)“This is where [Abby] turned to production and screamed: This is stupid because Kendall has dark hair and should be Katy Perry and Chloe is blond and should be Lady Gaga. This is dumb, dumb, dumb! Whose stupid idea was this?!" (20:10-20:26 | Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Al and Kelly talk about the story of Dave the Diver Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:03:12: What Has Kelly Been Up To 00:04:19: Tangent 1 - The Scots Language 00:11:53: What Has Al Been Up To 00:21:22: News 00:35:50: Tangent 2 - Rockstar North 00:44:55: Dave The Diver Upcoming DLCs 00:53:45: Kelly’s Mechanics Thoughts 01:02:31: Dave The Diver Story 01:16:01: Tangent 3 - Game Hyperfocus 01:18:44: Dave Story Conclusion 01:29:12: Outro Links Research Story “0.9” Update Sprittea “Moving & Grooving” Update Loddlenaut “Goddles” Update Outlanders “Wandering Star” DLC Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Trailer Dave the Diver Upcoming DLCs Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello Divers, and welcome to another episode of The Harvest Season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al, and we are here today to talk about Cottagecore games. (0:00:36) Kelly: and my name is kelly (0:00:41) Kelly: whoo (0:00:42) Al: We’ve not come to a conclusion on whether David the Diver is a Cottagecore game or not. (0:00:45) Kelly: maybe it’s like a bungalow, like you know bungalows are the the the cottages of beach towns (0:00:50) Al: Well, the problem there, right, so if Cottagecore games are for lesbians, what are bungalow games (0:00:57) Al: for? (0:00:58) Al: games for them. (0:00:59) Kelly: non-binary people (0:01:01) Al: I’ll take it. (0:01:04) Al: All right, excellent. (0:01:04) Kelly: I don’t know! (0:01:07) Al: Fantastic. Well, OK, so I think it is a college school game, right? (0:01:11) Al: Because, yes, there are some, like, stakes and stuff, but there’s fewer stakes, I think, than, say, Stardew Valley. (0:01:18) Kelly: Yeah, and I would say also it’s like you still have like the mines in Stardew Valley? (0:01:23) Al: Exactly. Yeah, that’s what I’m meaning. The mines in Stardew Valley are definitely scarier (0:01:28) Al: than most in here. But you can’t ignore nighttime entirely if you want to. The only stuff that (0:01:28) Kelly: Yeah, I would say that the nighttime is the scary part. (0:01:39) Al: only spawns in the night are some fish, which you want if you want to collect the collection, (0:01:44) Al: and a few optional side quests. I don’t think any part of the story is required for you (0:01:49) Al: to go out at night? Or was there one, maybe? (0:01:50) Kelly: I think there was, unless I’m mistaken, I think there was one with the more eels. (0:01:53) Al: There was one. Yeah. (0:01:57) Kelly: It’s been a while. I played that part I think a year ago now so that’s (0:02:03) Kelly: been a while, but I think one part was required and then after that it was like (0:02:07) Kelly: you don’t have to do this again. (0:02:10) Al: So yeah, I think it counts. If Stardew counts this counts. (0:02:13) Kelly: Yeah, I think so. You have farms, you have little (0:02:18) Al: You do, you do. (0:02:18) Kelly: Fish tanks and chickens. (0:02:21) Al: Yeah, the chickens is the most un-feature-rich thing in the game. (0:02:27) Kelly: Yeah. (0:02:28) Al: Chickens exist and if you turn up you get an egg. Great, congrats. (0:02:32) Kelly: You can name them, but you can’t pet them. (0:02:36) Al: All right, cool. So we are here to talk about (0:02:40) Al: well, we’re here for the final episode of Dave the Diver Month. (0:02:44) Al: Two weeks late. (0:02:49) Al: And I’ve got Kelly along to talk about the story for Dave the Diver. (0:02:52) Kelly: Hey, um, I loved this game. I got it, I think the day it came out, and I played it until my fingers hurt. (0:03:01) Kelly: So, weirdo, oh, yeah, yeah. (0:03:03) Al: So hopefully we’ll have lots to talk about in the main topic then. (0:03:08) Al: Exciting. So before that, we obviously have some news. First of all, Kelly, what have you been (0:03:14) Kelly: I have been actually getting ready for a trip to Scotland. (0:03:21) Al: Woo! (0:03:21) Kelly: Woo! (0:03:22) Kelly: But besides that, I’ve been playing Day of the Diver to catch up on the DLCs, playing (0:03:29) Kelly: Solitaire because that is my brain-dead dissociation game, and I’ve actually started doing Dooling (0:03:38) Kelly: Go again, which has been interesting. (0:03:40) Al: In fact, what are you learning? (0:03:42) Kelly: I decided to try Japanese, ‘cause I– (0:03:44) Al: Okay. (0:03:44) Kelly: I’ve tried Spanish, I’ve done German, I’ve done Italian. (0:03:48) Al: So you’re not trying to learn any Scottish Gaelic, or I think Scots is on there as well. (0:03:52) Kelly: No. (0:03:56) Kelly: I didn’t even think about that, to be honest. (0:03:58) Kelly: Which would have been interesting, ‘cause I was just like, (0:04:00) Kelly: “Oh, let me try something that’s completely different than, you know, any of the, like, uh, Latin languages, or German language.” (0:04:09) Al: Germanic. No, it’s just Gallic. They don’t have Scots. I thought they had, I thought (0:04:10) Kelly: Yeah. (0:04:15) Al: I’d seen some where they have Scots, but they don’t. Is it? So, well, okay, so this is gonna (0:04:18) Kelly: Interesting. Can you speak, Scotts? (0:04:22) Al: be a whole tangent, but we’re going for it anyway. I’m just checking. Yeah, Google doesn’t (0:04:27) Al: have it either, it just has Gallic. They all call them Scots Gallic, which is technically (0:04:32) Al: not true, because Scots is a language and Gallic is a language. Gallic is a language (0:04:36) Kelly: Mm. (0:04:39) Al: longer than Scotland has existed. But anyway, that’s not neither here nor there. So I definitely (0:04:44) Al: can’t speak Gallic. I can speak some Scots, but a lot of the Scots that I know is not (0:04:51) Al: stuff that I knew was a different language. So when I was, a lot of people in Scotland (0:04:54) Kelly: Okay. (0:04:57) Al: grow up learning what some people refer to as Scottish English, which is like a weird (0:05:03) Al: amalgamation amalgamation of English and Scots. And so (0:05:08) Kelly: So kind of like Spanglish, like when people grow up in like, you know, like mixing Spanish and English words in the theme. (0:05:09) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s when you start to like encounter people outside, you (0:05:20) Al: realise, oh wait, this word that I’ve been using is a word that is not English, right? (0:05:26) Al: And to a lot of people, they would just think it’s, oh, it’s just a dialect word, right? (0:05:30) Al: But it’s from a different language. We just use it not in… So I would never use an entire (0:05:36) Al: sentence in Scots because that’s just not how I grew up. (0:05:39) Al: But a lot of the words that I would use, obviously not on the podcast, not when I’m (0:05:46) Al: working because I don’t work with many Scottish people, but like in my day-to-day life, there (0:05:51) Al: are a lot of words that I would use that would be Scots. Like for example, in the classic (0:05:56) Al: Scottish way, I’m going to use a weather word, a word about the weather. So the weather here (0:06:02) Al: today is drich, and that is a Scots word that means, it basically means overcast, right? (0:06:09) Al: Like it’s cloudy, it’s just not nice, it’s like it’s not sunny, but it’s not like pouring down (0:06:14) Al: with rain, it’s just, it’s drich. So that is an example of a Scots word that I would use (0:06:16) Kelly: okay (0:06:20) Al: most days because of the weather. It does, yeah, it’s a d, drich. (0:06:21) Kelly: is that does it start with a D or a B so so is it kind of like it almost reminds (0:06:28) Kelly: me of like dreary you know what I mean in this sense and I would kind of use (0:06:29) Al: Yeah, it’s, yeah, yeah, it’s kind of, it definitely, yeah, I would say, yeah, they’re almost synonyms. (0:06:33) Kelly: that word to (0:06:39) Al: I would say that drich, I think, can be used in other contexts, whereas drich entirely would be (0:06:42) Kelly: Outside of weather. Yeah. (0:06:45) Al: about the weather. So like you would talk about, oh, that’s a drichy meeting, or people were drich, (0:06:46) Kelly: No, that totally makes sense. Is- so he’s like… (0:06:51) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:06:52) Al: or whatever, but you couldn’t say something else with drich other than the weather. So yeah, that, (0:06:56) Kelly: Okay, that makes sense. That’s so interesting. Is… (0:06:59) Kelly: like, I’m gonna totally butcher this, but like, (0:07:03) Kelly: can I? Like, how do you say that? C-A-N-N-A-E? Is that considered Scots? (0:07:10) Al: Oh canny. Yeah, that would be another. So this is where we get into some technicalities of (0:07:10) Kelly: Yes. Yes. Yes. (0:07:17) Al: where English comes from. So modern English is itself, it comes from not just old English, (0:07:28) Al: but it also comes from old Scots, and old is, you know, auld lang syne, that’s A-U-L-D, (0:07:32) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. (0:07:35) Al: that’s Scots for old. And so a lot of English words… (0:07:40) Al: Scots are, you know, very similar to Scots words because, you know, both languages come (0:07:45) Al: from both old languages, Old English and Old Scots. (0:07:47) Kelly: Okay (0:07:48) Kelly: So it’s kind of like it’s like Portuguese and Spanish and like German and like Dutch kind of where it’s like you can (0:07:49) Al: Yeah, yeah. A very… exactly. Yeah, and you wouldn’t know every word and these sorts of (0:07:55) Kelly: Understand them, but they’re not exactly the same (0:08:00) Al: things, but some words you could maybe guess at, like “old”. Most people would be able (0:08:05) Al: to guess what that means, stuff like that. Different words. (0:08:06) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, in the context. (0:08:10) Al: Clearly different language, but, you know, you can kind of guess what it means because (0:08:14) Al: they’re similar languages, absolutely. But, like, one example of the Old English/Old Scots (0:08:19) Al: thing is, so you’ve got fox, the animal, and you know what the female fox is called? So (0:08:26) Kelly: I feel like I do, but not right now. (0:08:28) Al: it’s a vixen. So fox with an F and vixen with a V. I can never remember which one it is, (0:08:36) Al: in one of Old Scots and Old English. It’s Fox and Fixing. (0:08:40) Al: They can, they can, they can. The other interesting thing is that there’s also a lost letter from (0:08:50) Kelly: and v and f kind of can sound the same too, you know, yeah. (0:08:59) Al: Scots that is not used anymore thanks to the anglification of keyboards. So when (0:09:10) Al: typewriters started becoming a thing, they were obviously, they used the standard QWERTY (0:09:14) Al: layout that we’re using now. And the letter is called a yod, and it kind of looks like (0:09:20) Al: a cross between a z and a y. And it has a sound like a y sound. It’s kind of like a (0:09:22) Kelly: Okay. (0:09:24) Kelly: Okay. (0:09:26) Kelly: Okay. (0:09:29) Al: y, but it’s not quite the same. And I can give you an example of a word that this would (0:09:33) Al: be used in. Do you know the company that does all the logistics at airports? (0:09:40) Al: And they’re called Menzies, do you know them? M-E-N-C-I-E-S. So they do a lot of, like they (0:09:47) Al: are a huge worldwide company that do logistics at airports. So if you’re at an airport and (0:09:52) Al: you look out on airside and you see, you know, people with their high vis on, in most airports (0:09:59) Al: in the West, they will be Menzies employees. Which is actually fun fact, that company started (0:10:07) Al: out as a paper shop in Scotland. (0:10:10) Al: But that zed is not actually originally a zed, it was actually a yod. (0:10:10) Kelly: Oh, that’s cool. (0:10:18) Kelly: Okay. (0:10:19) Al: And so the word ‘menzies’ shouldn’t actually be said menzies, it said ‘mingies’. (0:10:25) Al: Yeah, and so there’s a lot of words, a lot of places in Scotland that you might notice this (0:10:30) Al: when you’re over here, a lot of places in Scotland that have zeds in their name in the middle, (0:10:34) Al: and it’s not actually a zed, it’s a yod. So there’s a place in near Glasgow, (0:10:40) Al: that’s called Calane, and that’s C-U-L-Z-E-A-N, but of course that zed was a yod, (0:10:47) Al: which is why it’s Calane, not Cal-Zane. (0:10:50) Kelly: Okay, so you guys all just acknowledge that it should be pronounced (0:10:56) Al: We just ignore the fact that it’s a zed, because that’s what you learn. (0:10:59) Kelly: Yeah (0:10:59) Al: I didn’t know for a long time that it wasn’t originally a zed. (0:11:03) Kelly: Okay (0:11:04) Al: But yeah, we don’t pronounce it like that. (0:11:06) Kelly: Okay, sorry to derail (0:11:07) Al: But yeah, so you will. (0:11:10) Al: So it’s fine, I’ll put this in specifically as a section on the Scots (0:11:15) Al: language for some reason. But yeah, so you might hear some people, (0:11:18) Al: if you ever see the paper shop that still does exist, Menzies, (0:11:21) Al: some people will call it Menzies, and some people call it Menzies, (0:11:25) Kelly: Oh, very interesting, that’s pretty cool. (0:11:25) Al: because it depends on who you are. (0:11:28) Al: There used to be a politician in Scotland calls Menzies Campbell, (0:11:30) Al: and nobody would ever call him Menzies Campbell, (0:11:32) Al: despite the fact that it’s spelled the exact same way. (0:11:34) Kelly: That was a fun fact. (0:11:35) Al: But they still call the paper shop Menzies for some reason. (0:11:38) Al: So Ming is fun fact. (0:11:40) Al: There you go. That’s your Scott’s language history on the Cottagecore podcast, (0:11:46) Al: The Harvest Season. (0:11:48) Kelly: I’m just really good at derailing the podcast, what can I say. (0:11:52) Al: Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. (0:11:55) Kelly: What have you been up to, Al, besides history lessons? (0:11:56) Al: What have I been up to? (0:12:00) Al: I have been playing, well kind of playing, Harvest Moon, Home Sweet Home, and Coraline 1.1. (0:12:10) Al: I quite often, if I’m like trying to play a game for a podcast and I’ve not quite got (0:12:14) Al: into it yet, I will feel guilty about that and not play any other games. (0:12:22) Al: So I have played about two in-game days of Harvest Moon Home Sweet Home. (0:12:28) Kelly: That’s it! (0:12:28) Al: That’s it. (0:12:29) Al: So we’ll see. (0:12:30) Al: Hopefully I’ll manage to play enough before the podcast that I’m recording in a week. (0:12:36) Kelly: It’s crunch time! (0:12:38) Al: - It’s crunch time. (0:12:40) Al: So we’ll see. (0:12:40) Al: The annoying thing I also found out is that, (0:12:42) Al: so it’s, I don’t know if you’re aware of this game, Kelly, (0:12:45) Al: but it is a mobile game. (0:12:48) Al: So it’s on Android and iOS. (0:12:50) Kelly: the harvest moon one (0:12:51) Al: The new Harvest Moon game, yeah. (0:12:53) Al: And they haven’t enabled cloud safe for it. (0:13:00) Al: So I installed and started playing it on my 13 inch iPad. (0:13:00) Kelly: Oh. (0:13:05) Al: And that is now the only device I can play this game on. (0:13:05) Kelly: Oh. (0:13:09) Kelly: That’s… that’s so… wrong. (0:13:10) Al: I just ate is bizarre, because a special. (0:13:16) Kelly: Especially on like a harv– like, I’m assuming the Harvest Moon game, you know, it has a lot going on. (0:13:21) Al: Yep, you should be here. (0:13:21) Kelly: You’re dedicating a good amount of time to playing it. (0:13:25) Kelly: Yeah, like, you have items, you have things that you’re building up, like, why would– (0:13:30) Kelly: Like, don’t most of these games have that built in by now? (0:13:34) Al: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not even you don’t even need to do much. You just need to say yes, you can do it. (0:13:44) Kelly: Yeah, and especially with I feel like I’m sure they’re different games, but like just having like knowing that animal (0:13:52) Kelly: crossing (0:13:53) Kelly: Is whatever Pacicapia is like shutting down their app? (0:13:54) Al: Bocky camp (0:13:57) Al: Yeah (0:13:58) Kelly: Wouldn’t you kind of want to make sure that your app is there to like fill the void? (0:14:02) Kelly: - I enjoyed. (0:14:03) Al: Anyway, so that’s that that’s another reason why I’ve not played a lot of it yet is because I can only play it on one (0:14:08) Al: Device and it’s the 13 inch iPad which I like as a device, but it’s not the best for a mobile games, obviously (0:14:15) Kelly: Is it annoying to like, hold for… Is that what the issue is or is it? (0:14:19) Al: That’s part that’s part of the issue although I do have it on a (0:14:22) Al: I stand at my desk, so I (0:14:24) Kelly: Mm. (0:14:24) Al: don’t have to hold it when I’m at my desk, but that means that realistically the only (0:14:27) Al: time I’m playing this game is when I’m working. Which is not a great way to play a game, right? (0:14:29) Kelly: Yeah. (0:14:35) Al: But anyway, whatever. It’s especially annoying because they haven’t disabled playing it on (0:14:39) Al: Macs as well, so now you can play iPad and iPhone stuff on Macs, which is great. It’s (0:14:46) Al: a great feature, but it means that I’ve installed the game on my Mac, but I’d have to start (0:14:52) Al: and you saved to play it there. (0:14:54) Al: Like I was like, this is great because there are like so many ways for me to play this. (0:14:59) Al: I can play it on my iPad during work. (0:15:00) Al: I can play it on my Mac when I’m sitting in front of the TV. (0:15:04) Al: I can play it on my iPad mini when I’m in bed and I’m like, nope, you get one of those. (0:15:09) Kelly: Yeah jokes on you. That’s annoying. (0:15:10) Al: One of those. (0:15:11) Al: Yeah, I should have just gone with the Android version, but the problem is the Android version (0:15:16) Al: crashed when it first came out. (0:15:18) Al: So I couldn’t play it for, in fact, I don’t think it’s, I think it’s still not working (0:15:18) Kelly: So they kind of, they, they dug you into a little corner. (0:15:29) Al: So, I’ve done a little bit of Carlisle in 1.1 as well, because I hadn’t been playing (0:15:34) Al: that yet, so that’s that, and I have gotten very much back into Marvel Snap. (0:15:40) Kelly: Whoa, I haven’t heard that name in a while. (0:15:42) Al: Yeah, so it was, oh they make, they make loads of real decisions, but they’re quite good (0:15:46) Kelly: Did they, like, fix the game? (0:15:47) Kelly: Because I know they were having… they made some kind of weird decisions last winter. (0:15:54) Kelly: Okay. (0:15:54) Al: at fixing these things quickly, like you get multiple changes a week. (0:15:56) Kelly: Okay. (0:15:58) Kelly: Okay. (0:15:59) Al: So, if there’s something that’s completely killing the game, they kill that really quickly. (0:16:04) Al: They’re pretty good at that. (0:16:06) Al: No, we’re at the end of a season, and the next season has like a new type of ability, (0:16:12) Al: which is the first time they’ve done that since launch, so that’s exciting. (0:16:15) Al: And a lot of new Spider People cards, which is also cool. (0:16:21) Al: I do like some Spider People. (0:16:23) Kelly: when did they release marvel snap? was it like around this time last year? (0:16:24) Al: But it’s only a year, I don’t know. (0:16:29) Kelly: right? is it older than that? (0:16:29) Al: It can’t only be a year, really. (0:16:32) Al: No, two years, October 22. (0:16:33) Kelly: okay okay. I didn’t think it was only a year old but I was like I don’t I don’t keep up with that (0:16:39) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:16:40) Kelly: game so there’s also that. there just happened to be a streamer I was watching who was like obsessed (0:16:46) Kelly: with it for a while. (0:16:47) Al: I really love it, because it’s, I like card games, but one, they’re so hard to keep up (0:16:55) Al: with all the cards, right? (0:16:57) Al: And the good thing about Marvel Snap is so many. (0:17:00) Al: There’s many different types of playing are viable. (0:17:02) Kelly: So it’s not like you get one or two meta that are like (0:17:06) Al: Exactly, exactly. (0:17:06) Al: There’s like, you know, Destroy decks are really good just now. (0:17:10) Al: Move decks are pretty good just now. (0:17:12) Al: There’s also like a couple of other types of decks that you can use based on multiple cards. (0:17:18) Al: Like I have played four different decks and won with them over the last two days. (0:17:23) Al: So it’s, yeah, it’s pretty good. (0:17:25) Al: Discard decks are still quite good as well. (0:17:27) Al: Like there’s lots that’s working just now. (0:17:30) Al: And yet there are a few cards that if you don’t get them, you’re unlikely to get up to like (0:17:35) Al: level 100, rank 100. But I’m unlikely to get there anyway. And it’s still fun. Like it takes a long (0:17:41) Al: time to build up the ranks anyway. So, you know, it takes it only now are my rank 60 now. (0:17:49) Al: And, you know, granted it’s only been, I’ve only been playing for two weeks of this season, (0:17:57) Al: which is about half of it, but… (0:18:00) Al: It’s like, I… Yeah, I think it would have been unlikely for me to get to 100 anyway, but… (0:18:06) Al: So yeah, and also the actual matches are simpler than most card games. (0:18:11) Kelly: Okay. (0:18:12) Al: So you’ve only got a few things to think about while still having a lot of different strategies. (0:18:17) Al: And obviously they’re fast. (0:18:20) Al: You know, you can get a match and done in a cut in, you know, the longest matches take five. (0:18:20) Kelly: Yeah, no, it seems like, you know, I I’m not a big Marvel person, but it seems like a fun game with a lot of creativity and like options. (0:18:34) Kelly: And the fact that they’re still actively updating it, I think says a lot. (0:18:34) Al: Yeah. Yeah. It’s obviously making money. Um, so yeah, I mean, basically the reason why (0:18:42) Kelly: Yeah, that too. (0:18:46) Al: I’m back into it is because, um, Hannah, uh, from the ISE slack, um, she walk got, she (0:18:54) Al: came over and was like, Oh, I’m interested in this because I hear that it’s quite similar (0:18:58) Al: to what the new Pokemon trading card app will be like. So I want to see how this works before (0:19:02) Kelly: Oh interesting, smart of Pokemon. (0:19:04) Al: to see how similar it is and compare it to that. And so when she said that, well, yeah, (0:19:12) Al: exactly. It will be interesting to see how much it actually is because we don’t know much details (0:19:16) Al: about how the battles will work. Um, but it will be very clever if, if it is, if it works out well. (0:19:22) Al: Um, but because she came through and did that, I was like, Oh, now I really want to play (0:19:28) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:19:28) Al: and I haven’t stopped playing since. So that was two weeks ago. (0:19:33) Kelly: I… I trust me. I understand. I understand. (0:19:37) Kelly: I’m sure you’ll get out eventually. (0:19:39) Al: Yeah, this is my problem, is I don’t play games casually, I play games until I stop (0:19:40) Kelly: You’ll be free. (0:19:46) Al: playing them, and it is my life until I stop playing them, and then I never think about (0:19:52) Kelly: Yeah, literally, I completely understand. (0:19:55) Kelly: That’s why I’m not allowed to play stuff like Cafe Mix anymore. (0:20:01) Kelly: I like… it was a phone game, you know? (0:20:05) Kelly: But it was a phone game that, uh… (0:20:07) Kelly: Once I started playing events, I got really hooked, (0:20:10) Kelly: and I was good at the events, and I kept winning events, (0:20:12) Kelly: and then I would get money out of it. (0:20:12) Al: Yeah, yeah, my (0:20:14) Kelly: And it was just like, it was like, you know, daily. (0:20:16) Kelly: It was a daily thing where I’d go in, I’d play five games, I’d do this, (0:20:20) Kelly: and then the events. (0:20:22) Kelly: were like, “You have to play all weekend, otherwise you won’t win,” and I’d be like, “Well, I have to win.” (0:20:27) Kelly: Um… (0:20:28) Kelly: So now I’m just not allowed to play that game. (0:20:30) Kelly: But I do that with all games, that’s why I played Day of the Diver until my fingers hurt, you know? (0:20:33) Kelly: That’s, uh… (0:20:34) Al: Yeah, yeah, I just I never got into cafe mix because I just didn’t like the gameplay like it felt too imprecise (0:20:35) Kelly: That’s what I do. (0:20:39) Kelly: Yeah. (0:20:41) Kelly: It’s… it is. (0:20:43) Kelly: It’s very sloppy. (0:20:44) Kelly: Which I think can work in your favor if you know how to use it correctly. (0:20:50) Al: Yeah, probably, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to learn. You know, it’s like, I loved like (0:20:52) Kelly: Yeah, no, that’s fair, that’s fair. (0:20:56) Al: shuffle, Pokemon shuffle, which is not, I know it’s not the same game, but it’s, it’s like similar (0:21:01) Kelly: It’s very similar, yeah. (0:21:01) Al: ideas in some ways. But I much preferred that because it was very clear, like, it’s precise, (0:21:07) Al: right? This place goes to that piece and that’s it. Whereas with Cafe May, it’s like, oh, you’re (0:21:11) Al: kind of like circling. And it’s like, I didn’t. (0:21:14) Kelly: Yeah, no, it’s it’s definitely very different in actual gameplay (0:21:20) Al: Cool. So that’s what we’ve been up to and a (0:21:22) Kelly: Yeah (0:21:24) Al: tangent on the Scottish language. (0:21:27) Al: Now we’re going to talk about some news, some game news. (0:21:30) Al: First of all, we have the zero point nine update of Research Story is out now. (0:21:35) Al: So this includes a new NPC, (0:21:39) Al: lots of extra content for the NPCs, a cooking system and your classic on a daily (0:21:47) Al: Cottagecore game, the daily summary, when you (0:21:50) Al: go to sleep, gives you everything that you’ve done in that game. (0:21:50) Kelly: I laugh, but honestly I need things like those. (0:21:55) Al: Well, that’s the thing. And it’s like you have, like, especially in farming games where (0:21:56) Kelly: Like when games don’t have that, sometimes I’m like, “hmm, what was I doing? (0:22:05) Al: you are selling a bunch of stuff on a daily basis, it’s good to know one, how much you (0:22:06) Kelly: Mmhmm. (0:22:09) Al: actually sold, and two, how that break broke down. You know, that was a key point of Stardew (0:22:11) Kelly: Yeah. (0:22:17) Al: is trying to figure out what was the most efficient stuff. (0:22:20) Al: This is really nice in that it’s building up into other things as well, so it’s like, (0:22:26) Al: “Oh, here are the people you talk to, and here’s the XP you gained,” and that sort of stuff. (0:22:32) Kelly: Yeah, no, it definitely does help, and I think also with farming games it’s so easy to get sidetracked on things. (0:22:38) Kelly: So it’s, like, good to see at the end of the day, like, “Oh, I actually did not sell as much stuff that I wanted to,” (0:22:44) Kelly: or “Didn’t talk to the right amount of people,” or, you know, “It’s two days until I have to buy something that’s really expensive, I better start selling a bunch.” (0:22:53) Al: They have also released their roadmap to 1.0, so they’re getting close. They have two more updates (0:22:59) Al: before the 1.0. That is 0.10 should be coming out at the end of September. That is player (0:23:06) Al: customization. 0.11 should be coming out at the end of the year, and that is orange hearts and (0:23:14) Al: shimmers. The orange heart events that will be for NPCs. And I don’t know what shimmers means. (0:23:20) Al: Oh, shiny creatures right in front of me. (0:23:23) Al: I always got to translate into Pokemon. (0:23:27) Kelly: Translate, yeah. (0:23:31) Al: And then the 1.0 will be coming out in Q1 next year. (0:23:36) Al: So if you’ve been looking for 1.0 to finally get into this game, (0:23:40) Al: it’ll be next year, be warned. (0:23:41) Kelly: Have you played the, um, is there an Early Access? (0:23:45) Al: Yeah, that’s what this is. (0:23:46) Al: I haven’t played it. (0:23:47) Al: I know that Cody has played it, and I think Bev played it as well. (0:23:50) Al: and they had a chat about it on one of the episodes. (0:23:53) Al: And they both really liked it. So, I don’t know. (0:23:55) Kelly: It looks cute. I like the note about married life events because I feel like a lot of these games kind of end events once you marry your characters of choice. So that’s nice. (0:24:02) Al: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, not looking at anyone in particular, Coral Island. (0:24:11) Al: Uh, Spirity have also got an update out now. The moving and grooving update, um, was animations. (0:24:20) Al: Hahaha. Hmm. Yeah, did you play it? (0:24:22) Kelly: This game is so upsetting to me because I really wanted to like it so bad. (0:24:27) Kelly: So like, seeing this update, it’s like, these look so funny, and like, they look so silly but it’s like, I’m not gonna go back to play like this. (0:24:34) Al: This is the problem is like you can like everything about a game, but if you don’t actually enjoy the core loop of the game (0:24:40) Al: It doesn’t really matter (0:24:40) Kelly: Mm-hmm (0:24:42) Kelly: Yeah, and I gave it I think I put like 30 hours in or something so I like I gave it a good (0:24:45) Al: Oh, wow, that’s more than I put in I may be I may be put in ten hours (0:24:48) Kelly: Try (0:24:51) Kelly: I wanted to like it so bad, but what can you do? (0:24:53) Al: Yeah (0:24:54) Al: Yeah, I wonder how much of it is just like a personal preference thing, right? Like some people just don’t like certain times of games (0:25:00) Kelly: Yeah (0:25:02) Kelly: I (0:25:03) Kelly: Mean, I don’t know cuz I love games like this. Typically. I wish I could I play this like back in (0:25:10) Kelly: fall so I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I know some things were just like (0:25:15) Kelly: kind of really repetitive in like a (0:25:19) Al: I think that the repetitive bit is probably my problem, is that the bathhouse you did upgrade, (0:25:27) Al: but it didn’t really feel like you were progressing. Whereas with farming games, (0:25:33) Al: you go from like a two by two square that you’ve made of turnips to thousands of crops over your (0:25:41) Al: farm, and tens of animals giving you millions every season. And it didn’t feel like there was (0:25:49) Al: level of progression to aim for. And that was what I think really lost me about it. (0:25:56) Kelly: Yeah, I agree because I updated like I think as much as I possibly could in the bath house, too (0:26:03) Al: but it’s like oh now I have three baths it’s like oh is there right okay (0:26:06) Kelly: Yeah, there’s actually a second floor yeah, but it doesn’t add that much (0:26:15) Al: yeah anyway but if you’ve if you enjoyed the game there’s more updates to it and you know (0:26:17) Kelly: But yeah (0:26:21) Al: as you say these animations are pretty goofy and fun and add some more (0:26:24) Kelly: Yeah, they look so silly and cute, you know. (0:26:26) Al: they add some more character to the npc’s next we have a new update for (0:26:33) Al: Laudelnot coming out on the 19th of September and oh boy do I hate the names (0:26:38) Al: that they give these updates this one is the Goddles update what’s a Goddle you might say (0:26:45) Al: that’s a good question this includes a new secret cave biome that houses three mysterious Goddles (0:26:52) Al: was this cavern forgotten by guppy what ancient abilities do these Goddles have (0:26:59) Al: I’m still not quite sure what I got all this is it the little (0:27:03) Al: like tree looking thing in this image, maybe. (0:27:06) Kelly: I don’t know. I think it’s cute that it’s like, oh, plant these to prevent pollination, uh, pollution, but you know, still it’s like, yeah, to your point, like, what is this made-up word? (0:27:20) Al: Yeah, I think this might be one of those updates that if you have played the game, which I (0:27:26) Al: haven’t yet, that you might be more interested in it. Yeah, I want to play this game at some (0:27:34) Kelly: It looks cute. I like whatever this aesthetic is called. I can’t think right now. (0:27:42) Al: Yes, I can’t remember either. They’ve all got fancy names. (0:27:44) Kelly: Yeah, but I like this game design. I think that (0:27:48) Kelly: style of animation is very cute and very fun for a little underwater game. Yeah. (0:27:51) Al: It works, it works, yeah it works well especially when all your creatures are axolotls, which (0:27:58) Kelly: Yes. (0:28:00) Al: the goofier an axolotl is, the cuter it is. (0:28:04) Kelly: That is true. That is, it is unbeatably cute looking. (0:28:10) Al: Next we have a new DLC for Outlanders, this is the Wandering Stars DLC, and I mean if (0:28:18) Al: you’ve played Outlanders you can look at it, I don’t really think we need to go into the (0:28:21) Al: details of this. (0:28:24) Al: Outlanders is a city builder game, so I’ll probably not play it, because every time I (0:28:29) Al: try and enjoy a city builder I just get frustrated with them, it’s not my kind of game. (0:28:34) Kelly: I get too into city builder kind of games and then it’s also really not enjoyable for me and like actually just stressful, so yeah. (0:28:42) Al: I think part of my problem, so I used to love City Builders, I was obsessed with SimCity2 (0:28:49) Al: so much, but I think part of the problem is that they never work well with controllers. (0:28:58) Al: They’re just not fun to play unless you have a mouse and keyboard, and that’s not how I (0:29:03) Al: game anymore in my life. (0:29:04) Kelly: It’s so funny because I’ve (0:29:04) Al: I am past the point. (0:29:07) Kelly: I’ve flipped from like being a controller only person to (0:29:13) Kelly: playing a lot of games mouse and keyboard now with like an occasional controller and (0:29:18) Kelly: It’s true a lot of these games are so different when you have the option to mouse and keyboard them (0:29:24) Kelly: Like there’s some games where it just makes such a big difference (0:29:26) Al: Yeah. Yeah. I just like, the way that I game nowadays is sitting on my sofa, watching TV (0:29:33) Al: with Rona, because that’s the time we get together and that’s how we like to spend our (0:29:34) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:29:38) Al: time together. So I’m not going to go, Oh, sorry, Rona. I’m going to go into the office (0:29:41) Al: and play games on my computer. Like, I’m just not going to do that. So, um, but I used to (0:29:47) Al: like when I was a student or whatever, I would, you know, be up till two, three. (0:29:56) Kelly: It’s tough (0:29:57) Al: Yeah. Finally, we have an update on what was called Runefactory Project Dragon and is now (0:29:59) Kelly: The sacrifices (0:30:10) Al: called Runefactory Guardians of Azuma. (0:30:14) Kelly: that’s a kind of oh wait so i’m sorry to cut you off but was it called rune factory project dragon (0:30:21) Al: Yes. So I don’t know if that was ever meant to be the title, because when you see project you (0:30:21) Kelly: and they changed that’s interesting (0:30:28) Al: quite often think that’s not the final title. So I suspect it was like we haven’t thought up a name, (0:30:30) Kelly: Yeah. (0:30:32) Kelly: Yeah. (0:30:35) Al: it’s about dragons, call it project dragon. But anyway, now they’ve got given an actual name, (0:30:43) Al: and they’ve said it’s coming out spring next year, and we have a trailer. So the interesting, (0:30:50) Al: Have you ever have you played (0:30:51) Al: any Renfactory games? (0:30:52) Kelly: No. I never got onto that bandwagon. I don’t know how I missed it. I think I was (0:30:53) Al: Okay, so (0:30:58) Kelly: just too dedicated to The Sims at that point in my life. (0:31:02) Al: fair enough. I mean, we’ve all been through our Sims phase. Again, interestingly, spent (0:31:09) Al: a lot of time playing Sims and Sims 2 specifically, and then not really since then. Probably for (0:31:14) Kelly: That’s fair. (0:31:15) Al: the same reason that they don’t really work very well with controllers. (0:31:17) Kelly: Oh no, they’re awful. Those games are the games that made me realize that not all games can be played the same way. (0:31:24) Al: Yeah, yeah. Like, I think it’s good that they add support for it because some people (0:31:29) Al: will have no other option and they would rather go through the pain and do it anyway. But (0:31:36) Al: anyway, so the interesting thing about this game is it says that it is a boldly reimagined (0:31:44) Al: gameplay. And the interesting thing is I watch this trailer and I’m not sure what the (0:31:49) Al: boldly reimagined gameplay is because previous Rune Factories are at a (0:31:54) Al: level. It’s basically Harvest Moon, but also combat. And this is Harvest Moon, but also combat. (0:32:04) Al: So, you know, you still have all the exact same farming stuff and then you go off and you fight (0:32:13) Al: creatures. Now granted, it does seem to be that some of the combat is dance-based rather than (0:32:21) Al: with a sword, but I… (0:32:22) Kelly: Interesting. So it’s like a rhythm? (0:32:24) Al: I don’t think it is rhythm-based, so this is the thing. I think it is just you press a button (0:32:31) Al: and you do a dance move, which isn’t fundamentally different than you press a button and you hit (0:32:37) Al: something with a sword. So… I don’t know. I don’t know the specifics of that. Well, this is the thing, (0:32:38) Kelly: So it’s still tur- like, it’s still… (0:32:43) Kelly: Are you gonna, like, start breakdancing at enemies? (0:32:47) Al: because the dancing… this is the weird bit. The dancing just seems to give you weapons that you (0:32:51) Al: you hit the enemies with. (0:32:54) Kelly: Are you dancing to the gods to, like, ask for a weapon? (0:32:54) Al: I just, Kelly, I have no idea. (0:33:00) Al: They’ve not shown any real gameplay. (0:33:03) Al: I guess my point is, I don’t know what the new part of this is. (0:33:07) Al: It just looks to me like the next Rune Factory. (0:33:10) Al: And there are some changes to it, and it’s a different story. (0:33:13) Al: And that’s all great, and people will love that. (0:33:15) Al: But like, why are you pretending that it’s something fundamentally different when it’s clearly not? (0:33:21) Kelly: Have there there’s been like a quite a few ruin factories, right? (0:33:24) Al: We’ve had five so far. (0:33:25) Kelly: And maybe they’re just lying to forget it I don’t know (0:33:31) Al: I mean, one person’s boldly reimagined is another one’s iterative change, right? (0:33:36) Kelly: Yeah, this seems like a pretty far reach though based on what you’ve said (0:33:42) Al: It does. (0:33:43) Al: This just, it feels like Rune Factory 5, but with some advances, which is fine. (0:33:48) Kelly: Maybe they’re… maybe they’re hiding it. (0:33:49) Al: I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but why would you do that? (0:33:50) Kelly: Maybe they’re hiding the… (0:33:54) Al: It even says, “Restore your lost memories.” (0:33:56) Al: You still have Amnesia, like in every single Rune Factory game. (0:33:59) Kelly: Oh it’s one of those games, okay I see. (0:34:05) Al: This game. (0:34:06) Al: I don’t know if I can, I don’t know if I can go through playing another Rune Factory game. (0:34:06) Kelly: I don’t know. (0:34:10) Kelly: Have you played all of them? (0:34:11) Al: No, I have not. (0:34:12) Al: I have played just four and five, but I feel like that’s enough for me. (0:34:20) Al: I’m not a fan of the combat in these games. (0:34:23) Kelly: Okay, is it turn-based or is it like? (0:34:24) Al: No, it’s action based. (0:34:27) Al: Like real-time, whatever you want to call it, real-time combat. (0:34:31) Al: It’s just, I never feel like it’s responsive enough for me to feel like it’s enjoyable. (0:34:34) Kelly: Okay. (0:34:38) Al: It feels more like hack and slash rather than something like, I don’t know, Breath of the Wild, (0:34:45) Al: where you can have like precise combat with dodging and what’s the other one where you (0:34:52) Al: hit at the right parry, that’s the right one. (0:34:54) Al: So, I don’t know. I say that I don’t want to play it, but I’ll probably play it. We’ll (0:35:00) Al: see. We now have a trailer for it, so if you’re interested, go watch it. We’ve not heard anything (0:35:08) Al: else about Rune Factory 6, which fun fact Kelly, they announced at the exact same time (0:35:12) Al: they announced this game. No, this isn’t 6. This is… Yeah, but this is the thing. It’s (0:35:13) Kelly: Oh, this isn’t six. This is a side project. (0:35:20) Al: It’s not though. (0:35:21) Al: It’s not. (0:35:22) Al: It’s just the next. (0:35:24) Al: It will be interesting to see how long our Silkkox song is, and we can (0:35:26) Kelly: So, when does six come out? (0:35:30) Kelly: That’s… that’s… (0:35:35) Kelly: But this one seems to be coming out pretty quick. (0:35:40) Kelly: That’s… that’s not too bad when your other ones take five years. (0:35:46) Kelly: Yeah, that’s my… that’s my gauge for everything. (0:35:55) Al: to this is half a Silkkox song or whatever. (0:35:58) Kelly: » Well, I think the psychos have run out of other games, or (0:36:02) Kelly: they’re starting to run out of other games to compare it to. (0:36:06) Al: Yeah, I think GTA6 is the only other one that feels like that has been longer. (0:36:08) Kelly: Yeah, [LAUGH] yeah, and that’s just a meme in itself. (0:36:12) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, GTA6 is not coming out next year, no matter how much they say it is, it’s (0:36:13) Kelly: So the two meme games, we’re just [BLANK_AUDIO] (0:36:21) Al: not coming out next year. It is a, like, because I don’t know if they actually announced that (0:36:26) Al: it was coming out in 2025 or something, but be- (0:36:29) Kelly: No, ‘cause there was that whole meme just going around of like, “We got this before (0:36:34) Kelly: GTA VI.” (0:36:35) Kelly: Oh, so end of next year. (0:36:35) Al: Yeah, so the announcement it was going to come out in Q4 2025, which late 20… Yeah, (0:36:42) Kelly: That’s never gonna happen. (0:36:43) Al: that means it’s coming out 2026. It was hilarious because they announced it in December last (0:36:44) Kelly: Yeah. (0:36:50) Al: year. So it was like, “Oh, they’re going to announce the new game. Great.” And then it (0:36:53) Al: came out and it was like, “Oh, wow, that’s exciting.” And then at the end it was like, (0:36:56) Al: late 2025. You’re like, “Really? You’re announcing it two years before you’re currently planning (0:37:02) Al: on it coming out. (0:37:04) Kelly: It’s just I went into a little bit of a spiral recently because of GTA 6 and that whole timeline (0:37:11) Kelly: because I was like, wow, it has been, I lived at my parents house when GTA 5 came out. (0:37:12) Al: Yeah. It’s, it’s basically my entire career. So I, so (0:37:19) Kelly: I was in college. (0:37:24) Kelly: Literally I was so excited because the weekend it dropped, my parents were away and I set (0:37:29) Kelly: up the big screen TV in the living room, and moved like the comfy (0:37:32) Al: Yeah. (0:37:32) Al: Thank you so much for watching. (0:37:34) Kelly: you know armchair to the center of the living room and sat there, and played GTA 5 on the big screen TV and (0:37:34) Al: If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. (0:37:36) Al: If you want to see more videos like this, please like and subscribe. (0:37:42) Kelly: That’s how long it’s been (0:37:44) Al: It’s funny, so it came out on the 17th of September 2013, I got my first job outside (0:37:48) Kelly: No literally like so literally this is (0:37:53) Al: of uni on the 8th of August 2013. So just over a month before GTA 5 came out, I started (0:38:01) Al: my career. Since then, I’ve changed job like five times. I have had two children, I have (0:38:07) Al: bought two different houses, not at the same time, I’m not a crazy person. (0:38:14) Al: I was technically married before that, but only by two months. So like my entire career. (0:38:21) Al: I remember explicitly that it came out around that time because my first job, their office (0:38:28) Al: was right next to the Rockstar offices in Edinburgh. And so they had this massive, four-storey (0:38:30) Kelly: Uh, okay. (0:38:35) Al: poster on the office building that I walked past every single day for like a month before (0:38:42) Kelly: it’s it’s crazy it’s it’s it’s so funny like it’s yeah like you said like my whole life (0:38:50) Kelly: like I was still in college still living at my parents still working you know some like college (0:38:56) Kelly: level job (0:38:58) Al: I have a nine-year-old who was born a year and a half after it came out. (0:39:04) Kelly: you know I gotta say they really um milked gta live for all it’s worth (0:39:11) Kelly: because the fact that that kept (0:39:11) Al: - Yeah, they really did. (0:39:12) Kelly: that game so relevant is absolutely insane. (0:39:16) Al: Yeah, I mean, I’m never, I’m not really a GTA person, (0:39:21) Al: so I never played GTA Live. (0:39:22) Kelly: Well, I was. I was, you know, for literally most of my childhood (0:39:28) Kelly: and then they didn’t release a new game for half my life. (0:39:34) Kelly: Like, that’s crazy. One of my first- I used to rent (0:39:37) Kelly: GTA Miami Vice and GTA 3 from Blockbuster. (0:39:42) Al: I think it’s a very good example of how modern games have become too big. So from 1997, when (0:39:53) Al: the first GTA came out, there were 16 years between that and GTA 5. 16 years. It depends (0:40:00) Kelly: And what did they put out like 12 games? (0:40:03) Al: which one you’re counting, which ones you’re counting, because there’s like… so if you’re (0:40:05) Kelly: I’m counting the mini like the the side like the PSP games and stuff like that too. Yeah (0:40:12) Kelly: I could hear I could hear the little tapping (0:40:12) Al: going to be 15. 15 games. So an average of one a year. And since GTA 5… or let’s just (0:40:16) Kelly: Okay, so I wasn’t too far off (0:40:21) Al: shoot… so between GTA 5 and GTA 6 releasing, and this is just GTA games by the way, it’s (0:40:26) Al: not all Rockstar games. I’m just talking GTA stuff. So between GTA 5 and GTA 6 releasing, (0:40:31) Al: there will be at least 12 years. So 12 years between… and in that time, what have they (0:40:33) Kelly: That’s absurd. (0:40:38) Al: they had GTA Live and well, ignoring (0:40:38) Kelly: Red Dead Redemption? (0:40:42) Al: the other so GTA stuff specifically GTA Live or online or whatever you call it and their remastered (0:40:42) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. (0:40:48) Al: trilogy. No, exactly. And I was counting for the record like I wasn’t I wasn’t even counting like (0:40:49) Kelly: Oh, right, okay. Which, that doesn’t count. (0:40:56) Al: they had a double pack and a trilogy re-release. I wasn’t counting those before so literally and (0:41:04) Al: GTA online came out at the same time as 5 came in 2013 was like two weeks after 5. So (0:41:08) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. (0:41:12) Al: yeah Rockstar have done other games of course since then but it just… (0:41:16) Kelly: But they literally had such a, like they are who they are because of GTA. (0:41:22) Al: yeah, uh-huh. Also well also also also Lemmings but yeah. (0:41:24) Kelly: Like again, that was my childhood. I could tell you the craziest cheats for those games. (0:41:30) Al: We can’t forget Lemmings come on. (0:41:32) Kelly: What is, is that a Rockstar game? (0:41:35) Al: Did you never? So okay right this is where we get into the history of Rockstar North. (0:41:40) Al: Not Rockstar, Rockstar North. (0:41:41) Kelly: Is that the Scotland office? (0:41:42) Al: So, well, let me get to that. Let me get to that. So, GTA was originally developed (0:41:50) Al: by a company called DMA Design. This was a company based in Dundee, in Scotland, which (0:41:52) Kelly: Mm-hm. (0:42:00) Al: it’s actually the heart of games design in Scotland. The university there, people come (0:42:07) Al: from all over the world to study games design. It’s like well known for that. (0:42:13) Al: DMA Design, after GTA 3, were bought by Rockstar and renamed Rockstar North. But before that, (0:42:23) Al: they also released many games. GTA is the one that obviously most people know of, (0:42:29) Al: but they also released Lemmings, which was a big game. Did you never play Lemmings? (0:42:37) Al: So, this was a game, the game play for this was you have… (0:42:42) Al: Obviously, this is based on the false idea of Lemmings walking off cliffs, (0:42:46) Al: which is obviously nonsense, but it was a fun game. (0:42:50) Al: So, you know about the creatures Lemmings, right? (0:42:52) Kelly: Yes, yes. (0:42:53) Al: And you know about the Disney’s terrible thing where they pretended that Lemmings (0:42:58) Al: walked off cliffs, but actually they just basically pushed them off a cliff for a documentary. (0:43:02) Kelly: Yes, I do know about that. (0:43:03) Al: Yeah, OK, cool. (0:43:06) Al: So, DMA Design made a game called Lemmings that was based off this idea. (0:43:10) Al: Um, you have a lot of little (0:43:12) Al: lemmings and you have to guide them through a 2D world, get them from the start to the end using (0:43:20) Al: different things like you can, you know, you can tell a lemming to mine through this thing, (0:43:24) Al: you can tell one to build a stair, you can, you know, loads of things. It was a really fun game. (0:43:28) Kelly: They’re so cute looking, honestly. Like, I’m looking at it now, it looks adorable. (0:43:30) Al: Yeah. So I don’t think they made a single lemmings game after they became Rockstar North, (0:43:36) Al: which I’m very sad about, but it’d be amazing. They basically- (0:43:39) Kelly: Ugh, could you imagine? (0:43:42) Al: became the GTA place, even though they did so many other games before that. (0:43:47) Kelly: Yeah, that’s crazy. I never would have guessed that, to be honest. (0:43:50) Kelly: But yeah, GTA. What is life? (0:43:53) Al: Yes, there we go. So many tangents in this episode. (0:43:56) Kelly: Derailment 2. (0:43:57) Kelly: - What? (laughs) (0:43:59) Al: Um, but hey, I mean, GTA 6 probably come out before Elder Scrolls 6. (0:44:04) Kelly: I’ll probably get it before a silk song, you know, that’s (0:44:07) Al: Well, I don’t know… I don’t know… (0:44:10) Al: Bye. (0:44:10) Kelly: Al I have to say these things to jinx it so (0:44:12) Al: Yeah, okay, sorry, sorry. Right, I think we’re done with our tangents for now, (0:44:18) Kelly: Yes (0:44:19) Al: and that’s definitely the news finished. I think the news was finished 20 minutes ago. (0:44:25) Kelly: We had to have another history lesson, okay (0:44:25) Al: So now, yeah, yeah, we’ve got two Scottish history license, one about the language, (0:44:31) Al: and one about the only games company that has actually been successful. (0:44:38) Kelly: You have to say we’re consistently on theme, at least, somehow. (0:44:42) Al: I’m just getting you ready. I’m getting you ready for coming. You can have a look at the (0:44:47) Al: Rockstar North offices in Edinburgh when you’re there. I don’t know where their current offices (0:44:52) Al: are because I think they moved since I worked in Edinburgh. Anyway, we’re going to talk (0:44:57) Al: about Dave the Diver. Specifically, we’re going to talk about the story aspect of it, (0:45:02) Al: but there are two things we need to discuss beforehand. First of all, they have, for some (0:45:09) Al: reason I know it’s new DLCs since the last day of the day. (0:45:12) Al: So we need to talk about them. (0:45:14) Al: So the first one is Bilateral. (0:45:17) Al: This is the card game, the like ridiculous rogue-lite card game where you have to like (0:45:24) Al: build up a hand and make, like you’ve probably seen people with trying to break it by having (0:45:31) Al: numbers so large that the game crashes and stuff like that. (0:45:38) Al: I don’t think we know for certain what’s happening here, but it looks like they’re (0:45:41) Al: putting (0:45:42) Al: the game as a minigame inside, but I also noticed on the Nintendo Direct this week that (0:45:42) Kelly: It’s like a minigame, right? (0:45:50) Al: also Dave the Diver themed decks are going in bilateral as well. (0:45:56) Kelly: that’s cute I think that’s a nice like I feel like Dave does such a good job of (0:46:02) Kelly: these cute little like you know they’re they remind me like back in the day when (0:46:07) Kelly: you do like follow for follow or like photo like my photo and I’ll

"I'm a horrible human being. Well no you aren't you have cancer so you have a pass right? Isn't that the way it goes? Yeah, and this is the cancer episode!" Well now that Kelly has an excuse and Christi is still AWOL on the second half of the Dance Moms Cares Special, it should be smooth sailing from here with no more infighting. Right? Abby even has to step out to care for her mother, thereby giving the moms some Abby free time, things have to be smoothing sailing from here. Well it never is as easy as one would hope, this is Dance Moms after all!The day of the competition arrives and the moms find themselves waiting in a gymnasium for a change, leading to some reminiscing about their days as cheerleaders. But the happy times are short lived as Leslie continues her stand-off with Kelly, whom she sees as an obstacle in Payton's path onto the team. The moms are still confused by Leslie's insistence that Payton be included, as she's clearly out of place with the rest of the girls in both height and age, but Leslie doesn't back down. The moms also point out that it isn't a fair match between Chloe and Payton since Payton has had months to prep her dance compared to Chloe's few days, but once again nothing will sway Leslie from getting her daughter the spot she feels she deserves.Quotes“People ask all the time: Were these fans real or did production set them up? It's both. I think they came to see us but they gathered them all together so they were all in one spot when we arrived." (12:04-12:16 | Christi & Kelly)“Holly says this is a wonderful opportunity for the girls to express themselves using dance, give back to the community and hopefully find a cure for breast cancer. Which kid is looking for the cure? I don't know but one of you need to find it.” (14:38-14:51 | Christi & Kelly)“It was astounding when those kids won as much as they did because you are literally dancing against people who do nothing but the same dance over and over and over and over and over and over..." (23:29-23:43 | Christi)“Maddie gets first place for her solo...Maddie. Maddie gets Maddie, Maddie and Maddie gets Maddie in the first place for the Maddie category." (34:06-34:13 | Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this special episode of Back to the Barre, Christi and Kelly invite you to join them live from Mom's Weekend at Ohio University for a moderated Q&A in front of a nearly 1000 person crowd! With so many great questions from both the moderators and the audience, it only seemed fit to share them with our little Bitchettes as we're certain you've all been dying to ask some of these questions yourself! Like what do Christi and Kelly think of the Jojo Siwa rebranding? Do they care about the Jojo Siwa rebranding? Do they even really know Jojo Siwa? There are also many non-Jojo Siwa related questions that are certain to spill the tea you're searching for.Quotes“I just want everyone in this room to realize that we understand that Dance Moms would never be made today and the things I said on national television would not fly, ok? We apologize. We know that. We understand that it's problematic on many levels. Ok, you're the ones who keep replaying it." (7:09-7:27 | Christi & Kelly)“We knew that we could get mad at each other and that it was going to be ok. I think we all felt that way, all the moms on the show. Like we would fight with Melissa and everybody's like how does Melissa even talk to you guys, you were so mean? It's like if you have a sister. You fight with your sister and you hate her one second, but then like the next day you're going to be best buddies.” (22:21-22:45 | Christi & Kelly)“It was a top secret thing. Even the crew didn't know I was coming back!... If you ask the moms you know what they thought that they were waiting for? They thought they were waiting for a cake. There like we thought we were getting a cake because we won.” (36:34-37:01 | Christi)“Oh my god The Amazing Race. I actually applied for Kelly and I to be on The Amazing Race. I probably would have died. We would have both died!” (51:50-51:59 | Christi & Kelly)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Al and Kelly talk about what they think could still be added to Stardew Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:27: What Have We Been Up To 00:07:40: News 00:22:53: Stardew 1.6 00:56:47: What Is Still Missing In Stardew 01:21:22: Outro Links Echoes of the Plum Grove Release Date Bunny Haven Mika and the Witch’s Mountain Dev Update Potion Permit Update Len’s Island Roadmap Chill Roadmap Stardew 1.6.3 Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello farmers and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al and we are here today to talk about Cottagecore Games. (0:00:36) Kelly: and I’m Kelly. (0:00:41) Al: Ah welcome back Kelly, it’s been a while. (0:00:46) Al: What was your last episode? (0:00:47) Kelly: Um, was it the pumpkin heart? (0:00:47) Al: It was. (0:00:49) Al: Oh no pumpkin panic! (0:00:52) Kelly: Yeah. (0:00:53) Al: No! (0:00:54) Al: Oh I talked to, was it Bev I talked about that? (0:00:56) Kelly: Ahhh. (laughs) (0:01:00) Al: There was a couple of weeks ago and they had not listened to that episode and eventually went and watched like one of the speedruns and I was like just be warned and they were like yeah it’s terrifying. (0:01:08) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:01:13) Kelly: Yeah, that is absolutely the least cottagecore game that I think we’ve discussed. (0:01:15) Al: Yeah. (0:01:18) Al: Oh yeah don’t yeah. (0:01:21) Kelly: And listen, I have some anxiety attacks playing Stardew in the mines, but that’s nothing. (0:01:30) Al: We’ll talk about it later but I’m in the volcano just now on Ginger Island so I’m having fun there. (0:01:31) Kelly: Yes. (0:01:39) Al: Cottagecore and not Cottagecore there is an overlap there anyway. (0:01:43) Al: So yeah welcome back it’s been six months good to have you back. (0:01:48) Kelly: It’s good to be back, I’m always happy to come back. (0:01:50) Al: We are going to talk more about Stardew 1.6 because we are going to eke out all the content we can from this update I guess that’s the fun of me and Johnny covering. (0:02:01) Al: It’s going to be less than a week after it comes out is there’s always going to be stuff that we miss and so fun to come back and chat especially with with with you Kelly who obviously you weren’t on the last episode so you’ve got probably different thoughts probably some similar thoughts but anyway before we get into that transcripts are available in the show notes and on the website the there’s a bunch of news to talk about but first of All Kelly, what have you been? (0:02:30) Kelly: Besides playing Stardew, you know, I had five days off last week, and I spent three of them playing Stardew until four in the morning. (0:02:42) Kelly: So that was really rough to go back to work the next week. So now I’ve been trying to roll it in at about one o’clock in the morning. (0:02:48) Kelly: But, you know, that never works, because it’s always just one more day. (0:02:52) Kelly: So it’s like 1.30 I’ve been going to bed playing Stardew. So, you know, it’s been going. (0:03:00) Al: I mean is the original solitaire not a roguelike? (0:03:02) Kelly: But besides that, I’ve been playing Solitaire Battle. It’s like a roguelike RPG solitaire game where you battle other things. (0:03:18) Kelly: We had this discussion in Slack. I said it as a joke, but it 100% is. (0:03:23) Al: It is! (0:03:24) Al: There’s nothing like it’s just it’s a single run and then once it’s done nothing matters and you can start again. (0:03:28) Kelly: Yep, you got what you got in that run and then you don’t get that same thing ever again (0:03:34) Kelly: and you know what, it made me realize, maybe that’s just the games that I like (0:03:40) Al: Yeah. Each to their own. So what makes this different? Is it an RPG? Did you say an RPG? (0:03:40) Kelly: to my core (0:03:54) Kelly: Sort of so like you get you you you go against a different like character each round and you (0:04:03) Kelly: Obviously want to try to get more matches and more cards in them, but you also (0:04:07) Kelly: Have power-up cards, so you have like a tack move (0:04:10) Kelly: You have like some Stat boosters and stuff like that you can get like extra draws (0:04:16) Kelly: so you’re kind of just like looking to kill their health bar before your health bar goes down and (0:04:21) Al: Oh, interesting. (0:04:24) Kelly: Three three levels with three levels in each it’s it’s a unique little take on (0:04:29) Kelly: Solidary Dallin and introduce me to it (0:04:32) Al: is there a story? No. Okay. Well, let’s not get into the discussion of what an RPG is. (0:04:34) Kelly: No (0:04:36) Kelly: So maybe not RPG maybe I’m just saying letters and words (0:04:41) Kelly: No (0:04:44) Al: People complain about me talking about that all the time. Okay. Do you gain cards for winning and stuff like that? Is that how you get the power up? Okay. And then you buy the power-ups with the money. (0:04:46) Kelly: My hands are up I am done (0:04:55) Kelly: Uh, no, you actually gain money. (0:04:58) Kelly: So, like, yeah, yeah, you buy the cards. (0:05:00) Kelly: So it’s like, oh, you linked seven different cards at once, you get more money. (0:05:06) Al: sounds like a rogue light to me rather than a rogue like every time every time I talk about this I think I know the difference and then I say something and someone’s like oh maybe not (0:05:09) Kelly: I don’t know the difference. (0:05:18) Kelly: Yeah, I’ve given up. I’ve decided it’s funnier this way. (0:05:23) Al: see I’m I’m my current understanding is that a rogue like is where everything resets between runs and the only thing that improves is your skill and a rogue (0:05:36) Al: light is where you gain things between runs to improve the runs in other ways (0:05:42) Kelly: So I think it would be more of the first but you do gain characters (0:05:48) Kelly: to play as (0:05:49) Al: Yeah, but you’re also gaining money, right? Which gives you paradox and stuff like that so that (0:05:52) Kelly: Oh, yeah But so it’s like that’s one run and then I’d go back and like, you know do a different run So I guess it would be the second one because you’re keeping the cards through the nine levels that you’re playing I don’t know man. I don’t know (0:06:04) Al: Who cares? Whatever. I wouldn’t like it either way. There’s still only one that I’ve actually enjoyed as a whole game, so. Oh, what have I been up to? I mean, Stardew, like, is there is that enough? I mean, basically, I’m now at 60 hours played of Stardew 1.6. (0:06:07) Kelly: Who cares whatever (0:06:10) Kelly: Yeah, no you wouldn’t like it. I just think it’s fun (0:06:12) Kelly: I need to make fun of this conversation every time it gets brought up. (0:06:28) Kelly: Oh, nice. (0:06:35) Al: And we are currently recording on Thursday, so it’s quite an early episode for nearly a week before it’ll come out, but yeah, so it’s a week and two days since it came out, (0:06:49) Al: almost exactly. So, 60 hours. (0:06:54) Kelly: Too bad, I’ve put 30 hours in, (0:06:55) Kelly: but I did not start playing until Saturday night. (0:06:58) Al: Ah, yeah. Yeah, I was ready for it. The whole of Tuesday I was like, “Right, it’s going to be late. It’s going to be late today because I know that Concerned Ape is in Pacific time, (0:07:09) Al: but I’m going to keep paying attention anyway.” And then it came out at like 9pm my time and I was like, “Ugh, great.” Yeah, well, exactly. Exactly. So I am tired. I don’t think I’ve be doing anything else, sadly not games wise. (0:07:18) Kelly: Dangerous time to start. (0:07:29) Al: I keep trying to start Princess Peach show time, but I’ve got stuff to do in Stardew. (0:07:35) Kelly: It’s hard starting with such a commitment. (0:07:38) Al: Yeah, but we’ll talk more about that soon. (0:07:40) Al: Let’s talk about some news. (0:07:42) Al: First off, we have Echoes of the Plum Grove have announced that they are releasing on the 29th of April this year. (0:07:48) Al: Kelly, I suspect you haven’t heard of that yet. (0:07:52) Kelly: I have not, um, I like the title. (0:07:56) Al: So, I mean, the summary of this is it is a life sim where you can kill people. (0:08:04) Kelly: Oh. (0:08:08) Kelly: It’s such a cute artwork, I did not suspect that. (0:08:12) Al: Yes, yes. It’s very Paper Mario-esque. I’m trying to find the wording because it’s quite a… I can’t find the wording, but I’m pretty sure this is the one where you can kill people. (0:08:14) Kelly: Yeah. (0:08:23) Kelly: I like that. I think that’s a nice way to stand out. (0:08:25) Al: Yes, I’m all for different things. You also have to survive winter. I think you can die because of the season. I don’t know if I like that or not, but I’m certainly willing to try it. I mean, I’ve backed it on Kickstarter. (0:08:33) Kelly: Oh, I like that too (0:08:44) Kelly: Yeah, I mean, also I’m saying I like that, but I’m sure also if I played it and put like 40 hours into the game and then I died, I’d be pissed. (0:08:50) Al: So I believe that if I, okay, so you you have children and then you grow old and I believe… (0:09:00) Kelly: Oh, I think I have heard of this. (0:09:04) Al: I’m not sure I need to double check but I’m not sure if it says for certain but I think you can then continue as your child when you die. We’ll find out because it comes out soon, (0:09:13) Al: comes out in one month. Was this on Switch or was it just on Steam? Not that it matters anyway because even if it comes out on Steam, it will… (0:09:21) Al: Even if it comes out on Switch, it will come out on Steam first, (0:09:23) Al: so I’ll probably just play it on my Steam deck. (0:09:26) Al: I’m not seeing Switch. (0:09:27) Al: Anyway, so yeah. (0:09:28) Al: Next we have Bunny Haven. (0:09:30) Al: Bunny Haven is out now. (0:09:33) Al: I don’t think there’s much to say about this game. (0:09:35) Al: There’s bunnies. (0:09:36) Al: Adopt rescue bunnies, (0:09:38) Al: care for them, and transform your garden into the haven in this cozy cafe sim. (0:09:42) Kelly: Okay, cute (0:09:43) Al: Yeah, out now. (0:09:45) Al: Will you play this? (0:09:47) Kelly: Maybe I’m I’m like is that a phone game or is it like a yeah, I’m like weird about phone games I’ll like the idea of something but in the long run. I just go back to playing dungeon cards (0:09:58) Al: Oh, what is dungeon cards? (0:09:59) Kelly: so (0:10:02) Kelly: It’s a roguelite card game (0:10:06) Kelly: So yeah, it’s just like a silly little card game (0:10:14) Al: Mika and the witch’s mountain. (0:10:18) Al: This is your witch delivering packages. (0:10:24) Kelly: okay what is this like the poly art style is that what that is (0:10:29) Al: Oh, yeah, there’s a I know what you’re trying to I know what you’re trying to say, but it’s not that, and I can’t remember. (0:10:39) Al: Shaded, is it shaded? (0:10:42) Kelly: Oh, Cell… (0:10:43) Al: Cell shaded, yes, that’s it. (0:10:44) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of games can be really fun in the start style. (0:10:49) Al: I agree, I think this works really well. (0:10:52) Al: They have not announced their release date, but they have released that they’re planning to release they have announced. (0:10:59) Al: They’re planning to release before summer. (0:11:02) Kelly: Okay (0:11:03) Al: I don’t know if this is a translation thing because the team is Italian. (0:11:05) Al: So they’re, you know, there’s a, there’s an aspect of that, that they’re not kind of native English speakers, but that feels like before summer. (0:11:15) Al: I mean, I always have issues of using seasons, right? (0:11:17) Al: Because as we have discussed many, many times, there is no one universal definition of the seasons. (0:11:25) Al: Not everywhere has four seasons, some places have two, some places have three, some places have five, and even the places that do have four, they don’t all have them the same. (0:11:35) Al: So it always annoys me when the people do this, but like what is I don’t know whether they actually mean before summer or whether they mean before the end of summer, so it could either be like any time between now and what June, or it could be any time between now and September. There we go. (0:11:52) Kelly: Yeah, it could be anything. (0:11:56) Kelly: I think they intentionally did that just to be vague for their own benefit. (0:11:59) Al: Yeah, yeah, we are putting all the team’s efforts to have Mika and the Witches Mountain out before summer this year. Yes, we will see. I want to play that game, although not right now, (0:12:08) Kelly: I mean, it’s better than nothing. (0:12:14) Al: I’m playing Stardew, so you know maybe they can wait. (0:12:15) Kelly: The tarot cards look cool. (0:12:17) Kelly: I like the art for them. (0:12:19) Al: I haven’t actually seen that. Is that in this update? (0:12:20) Kelly: They’re collectibles. (0:12:24) Kelly: Uh, I’m on the page you sent me, but I don’t think it’s from this update. (0:12:28) Al: Oh yes, no, it is the update, yeah, yeah, well I know I do, that’s my thing. (0:12:30) Kelly: Oh, okay. (0:12:31) Kelly: Who doesn’t love collecting things? (0:12:38) Al: Potion Pyramid, did you play Potion Pyramid? (0:12:40) Kelly: Yeah, I did a podcast with Bev and Maddie. (0:12:43) Al: You did one on it, yeah. (0:12:45) Al: So there’s an update out now with new romanceable characters, I wasn’t even aware they had romance in that, I don’t remember you discussing that on the podcast, were you aware they had romance in this game? (0:12:49) Kelly: Mm. (0:12:57) Kelly: We were, um, I think it was kind of (0:12:58) Al: Hehe. Surprise, surprise. (0:13:00) Kelly: lackluster compared to some other (0:13:03) Kelly: romance-able games, so that’s probably why you don’t remember us talking about it. (0:13:08) Al: Yeah, probably, probably. They’ve also added some extra languages and a cinematic opening (0:13:17) Al: animation to the game. Is this in? Is it still in early access? Was it in early access? I can’t. (0:13:24) Al: It is not in early access. (0:13:26) Kelly: I was gonna say, I think he was out. (0:13:27) Kelly: They definitely seem to have been fixing a lot of bugs, (0:13:31) Kelly: ‘cause there definitely were a lot of bugs, (0:13:33) Kelly: I know, when we talked about it. (0:13:35) Al: Yeah, I feel like adding an opening animation, it doesn’t feel like an after 1.0 thing to do. (0:13:44) Kelly: No, also kind of feels weird when there’s like other things that I probably would have (0:13:50) Kelly: Spent the time on fixing (0:13:51) Al: Yeah, I will say that it won’t be the same people doing those two things, (0:13:55) Kelly: Mmm, yeah (0:13:55) Al: right? Like the developers would have gone, oh great, here’s the animation, right? That’s it in, (0:13:59) Al: right? There’s not much work for them to do after this is made. (0:14:02) Kelly: Yeah, but that’s still budget money, right, you know? (0:14:06) Al: » Sure, that doesn’t mean that if they hadn’t done it, (0:14:09) Al: they would have spent money on fixing. (0:14:10) Kelly: That’s true, that’s that’s very true. (0:14:12) Al: You can’t just throw more developers at a team and get quicker, faster bug fixes. (0:14:19) Al: It’s not how it works. (0:14:20) Kelly: Listen, I played Software Inc., it is how it works. (0:14:25) Al: Please never run a development team. (0:14:29) Kelly: My company was so successful. (0:14:32) Al: There’s a fun– I can’t remember the name of it, (0:14:34) Al: but there’s a fun. (0:14:35) Al: Principle in companies that says that people get promoted until they are no longer doing the job well and then instead of getting demoted back down to where they were doing a good job they continue to be in the job that they weren’t doing well and that’s why it always feels like management are terrible what they’re doing because they are. (0:14:55) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yes, I’ve heard the same exact thing about managers and (0:14:56) Al: So. (0:15:01) Kelly: It definitely applied to my past manager. Now I have a good manager. So (0:15:06) Al: Ah, well, I’m sure you won’t have them for long because they’ll get promoted into something that they’re not good at. (0:15:14) Kelly: That’s the fingers crossed (0:15:17) Kelly: On a side note, I don’t know if you you’re interested in playing a work game after work, but software ink was fun (0:15:24) Al: Ah, maybe, maybe when I’ve had like a long holiday or something, (0:15:25) Kelly: Mm-hm, yeah, there you go. (0:15:29) Al: we’ll see. Certainly not right now. Maybe when I’m in a new job, maybe when I’ve got a new job. (0:15:34) Kelly: When you’re filled with hope and, you know, a new will to survive. (0:15:39) Al: Lens Island have updated their roadmap again. They now have six updates coming, (0:15:48) Al: no four updates coming over the next three months, which I’m sure will go great. (0:15:54) Al: They have the end of March, which is now. They have the community update. At the end of April, (0:16:01) Al: they have two different updates coming. They both say end of April. That’s very weird. (0:16:08) Al: One of which is the camp. Yeah. Yeah. So realistically, that’s one update, isn’t it? (0:16:08) Kelly: But they’re tied together. (0:16:15) Kelly: Mm-hmm. They wanted to showcase both. (0:16:15) Al: I don’t know why they’re calling it two different updates. That’s fair, but like don’t say it’s four different updates. That’s not how it works. (0:16:24) Al: Oh, that is totally something that someone would do. That’s the camera orbiting update, (0:16:24) Kelly: They’re going to be on two separate dates. (0:16:39) Al: which is such an overly complicated name for. I mean, it’s a very good and impressive feature to implement, right? Like you have a freeform camera in a game that never had a freeform camera before. That’s good. But my word, I do hate. (0:16:54) Al: that name. Freeform camera, yeah. Camera. Like what is the camera orbiting? And camera orbiting implies that it’s like always moving, right? Because like an orbiting thing isn’t moving at will, it is moving at a general constant orbital speed. So I. And as always happens in these games when you’ve got moveable cameras. (0:16:54) Kelly: Is that what you would say though instead free-form camera? Yeah, I think that sounds better than camera orbiting update (0:17:08) Kelly: Yeah (0:17:13) Kelly: You’re just trying to play the game and like hope that you can see the right way while you’re doing (0:17:24) Al: The controls change when you’re moving the camera, so you’re just running around in circle. (0:17:24) Kelly: mhm, mhm (0:17:32) Al: Oh, that sounds terrible. (0:17:34) Kelly: That’d be a fun, like, challenge form. (0:17:38) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:17:41) Al: Anyway, and the other update at the end of April is the completionist update. (0:17:49) Al: New starter guide, collections page, and quest objectives will be added. (0:17:54) Al: Then at the end of May, they have the frozen lands update, (0:17:58) Al: which is a new Arctic world, new weapons, enemies, and animals, new major boss. (0:18:03) Al: Major boss. (0:18:04) Al: Is that not just a boss? (0:18:06) Kelly: They really want to spice things up, Al. Let them be. (0:18:11) Al: a new vehicle and more. And then it looks like the full release has been pushed a little bit because it was originally scheduled for July, but it’s now coming out in Q3. Technically July is in Q3, but in fact they’re now saying Q3 rather than July. I suspect that means September. But thank you for saying Q3 and not saying summer. I appreciate that. Although you do get into the question of like, well, what are we talking? (0:18:30) Kelly: Yeah, I would also think that. (0:18:41) Al: Or are we talking financial calendar? In which case, which financial year? (0:18:47) Al: There is here. Yeah, it’s April to March. Technically, it’s the, I think the fifth of April to the fourth of April the next year. Don’t ask me why, it just is. Yeah, so if you talk about the financial year here that’s what (0:18:49) Kelly: Is there even a standardized fiscal year? (0:19:11) Al: people need. And that will include multiplayer and the I don’t know what they mean by the act 5 major update that sounds like it’s the final bit of the story possibly but I’m not sure. And a new hardcore mode. (0:19:26) Kelly: Are the stories called acts because like also technically this would be the fifth update (0:19:31) Al: It would be the fifth update this year but there have already been lots of updates to this game. (0:19:41) Al: It came out in 2020-2021, so yeah, I don’t know why I started saying 2000, right? (0:19:44) Kelly: I thought you were going to say 2012 for a second. (0:19:49) Al: I’ve not, I’ve not said 2000 and something for years, 2021, I don’t, I think even back in 2012, I was still calling it 20, I think it was back in 2009. (0:20:04) Kelly: That’s fair. I think I switched back and forth until like- (0:20:06) Al: Yeah, I find it funny because, like, I would never say… (0:20:10) Al: You would always say, like, 1901, 1905, 1922, you wouldn’t say 1905, yeah. (0:20:16) Kelly: Because that sounds ridiculous. (0:20:20) Al: But we knew that saying 2000 dand would sound ridiculous at some point as well, so why did we ever start saying, uh, it doesn’t matter, don’t matter, doesn’t matter. (0:20:29) Al: We don’t have time to get distracted by this pointless stuff. (0:20:32) Al: It is quarter to 11. (0:20:34) Al: Milltown have released their roadmap as well. (0:20:36) Al: They just came into Early Access last week, I wanna say. (0:20:42) Al: The day before or the day after Stardew 1.6, so I haven’t played it yet. (0:20:50) Al: So their first update will come out apparently this month, which presumably means like tomorrow. (0:20:58) Al: Because I don’t think they’re gonna be doing it all at the weekend. (0:21:02) Al: So it should be out by the time you’re listening to this episode. (0:21:04) Al: And that will have some bug fixes. (0:21:06) Al: Performance fixes etc etc and full controller support. (0:21:11) Al: Look, if you’re gonna release controller support like less than two weeks after your early access, (0:21:16) Al: just wait the two weeks. (0:21:23) Al: Boy oh boy. (0:21:24) Al: And then they’ve listed the other updates that are coming out, (0:21:27) Al: or some of the other updates that are coming out with no dates on them, (0:21:30) Al: which is probably a sensible thing to do. (0:21:32) Al: do. (0:21:32) Kelly: Yeah, I feel like that doesn’t set the expectations badly seems like some pretty good updates along the lot like down (0:21:37) Al: Yeah, I do need to play this game, it is on my list. (0:21:44) Al: I do own it, cuz of course I backed on Kickstarter. (0:21:51) Kelly: Some people are hoarders, some people, you know, (0:21:53) Kelly: back everything on Kickstarter. (0:21:55) Al: I feel like we’re about to come into a really busy period for games coming out, I just have that feeling. It was three days, it was three days after Stardew 1.6 came out that it came out. (0:22:00) Kelly: Yeah, I trust- (0:22:05) Al: In fact, in that case, it was last Friday that this game first came out, less than a week. (0:22:13) Al: And the final piece of information, which will be a lovely segue into our main topic, (0:22:18) Al: is that Stardew 1.6.3 is now out, which includes the most important update, Kelly. (0:22:24) Al: you can access clinche (0:22:25) Al: shop while your tool is being upgraded. (0:22:28) Al: That was three updates ago, come on get with it! (0:22:28) Kelly: I thought you were gonna say, “You could drink mayonnaise.” (0:22:37) Kelly: No, uh, when I saw the Clint update, I was so ecstatic. (0:22:41) Al: the Clint update. (0:22:43) Kelly: I hate him. I never want to see him. (0:22:46) Kelly: But this is the best update that could have been applied to him besides he turns into nothingness and you can become your own, uh, blacksmith. (0:22:54) Al: Well, let me tell you so I have so listeners will have heard this is when I segwaying into this is the this is The main main point of the episode now. We’re just gonna talk some more about stardew (0:23:05) Al: Kelly’s gonna talk about some of their feelings on the 1.6 update and (0:23:11) Al: I will probably talk about some of the 1.5 stuff that I’ve now accessed in the last few days because I haven’t stopped playing and (0:23:19) Al: then we might talk about some things that we think are still missing from the game. (0:23:24) Al: With the massive caveat that we obviously don’t expect anything else, (0:23:28) Al: and if this game never gets another update that will be completely acceptable, (0:23:34) Al: we’ve had six massive updates for this game. (0:23:35) Kelly: We love you, Concerned Dave. We don’t expect anything from you. Please just be nice. (0:23:42) Kelly: You’re so nice. (0:23:42) Al: Um, but yeah, Clint, I have an update. So people will know that I was, uh, I’m romancing Emily in this game. Um, and yeah, well, exactly. So, um, Johnny said that I’m running the full evil run in this version. Cause obviously I’m doing Junimo Kelly. You were the first person to find that out. Literally two hours before we recorded the last podcast, I got A message from Kelly going. (0:23:50) Kelly: Oh no, so arch rival Clint. (0:24:04) Kelly: It was the first person to shame you on it too. (0:24:13) Al: What have you done? (0:24:15) Al: As I had just finished completing the Georgia Community Center equivalent. (0:24:23) Al: I don’t even know what it’s called. (0:24:26) Kelly: I don’t either, but I open Steam and what do I see? (0:24:30) Kelly: But Al has completed the Jojo, Jojo Mart, whatever thing. (0:24:36) Kelly: I don’t think I know anybody who’s done that. (0:24:38) Al: Well, now you do. (0:24:41) Al: Let me see what it was actually called. (0:24:42) Kelly: This is the genocide run of Stardew. (0:24:46) Al: genocide. Wow. (0:24:50) Kelly: It’s an Undertale reference. (0:24:52) Al: All right, I did not. (0:24:54) Al: I played Undertale. (0:24:58) Al: I didn’t enjoy it. (0:25:01) Al: We don’t need to talk about that. (0:25:04) Al: So the actual the actual achievement is Georgia Co-member of the year. (0:25:08) Al: Look, it’s my rarest achievement, 4.3% of players of this achievement. (0:25:14) Kelly: There you go. Well, I saw that on Steam, and how could I not publicly shame Al for this? I mean… (0:25:26) Kelly: Oh, I will say, so I– to the listeners, I’ve only played Stardew on the Switch before this, (0:25:33) Kelly: and it is so nice to have the achievements. (0:25:36) Al: Yeah. You do get them in the Switch version, but they’re only in-game. It’s really nice to be able to go and see them. I don’t know why Nintendo insists on not doing achievements. (0:25:40) Kelly: Yeah, it’s not the same. (0:25:48) Kelly: It makes me so mad! (0:25:49) Al: It feels like something they could do with… It’s not like it’s no work, but the majority of the work is on the developers’ sides. They need to build an API that allows people to put in some information, and then they need a UI that shows you it. That’s really all you need to do. (0:26:07) Al: I’m not saying it’s very, very easy, (0:26:09) Al: but I am saying it’s not the hardest thing they’ve ever done. (0:26:09) Kelly: It’s such a small thing that’s like completely unnecessary, but it just feels so nice. (0:26:12) Al: And I think it would make playing the switch much more fun. (0:26:22) Al: Yeah I’m wrong actually it’s not it’s not my rarest achievement anymore. I got the unforgettable soup today. Yeah only 0.7% what did you put in to get that? Oh wow yeah love me an easy soup I put in I put in a gold truffle yeah I oh nice wow impressive that’s pretty good (0:26:22) Kelly: I will say. (0:26:28) Kelly: I got that a few days ago. (0:26:40) Kelly: Oh, fancy. I’m early in the game still. This was my first spring, or summer, or whatever. (0:26:52) Al: no I put it I put in the gold truffle purely because I accidentally walked into the beach and went oh no it’s soup time do I have anything in my bag I had one food item and it was a gold truffle look because I had the gold truffle it was fine right I was I was like this is a perfect thing for a soup this will be great (0:27:04) Kelly: Oh, you are so lucky. (0:27:06) Kelly: You are, I would have savescombed. (0:27:08) Kelly: I would have absolutely just shut the game down and restarted the day. (0:27:14) Kelly: Yeah, no, yeah. (0:27:16) Kelly: Yeah, you got luck, you lucked out. (0:27:18) Kelly: That’s awesome. (0:27:19) Kelly: No, I would have absolutely just shut the game down and like close my eyes for a second and then restarted everything. (0:27:26) Al: Oh dear, it was funny because I was going over, I was actually planning to go to Ginger Island. (0:27:31) Kelly: Oh, man. (0:27:32) Al: So I was going to the beach to go to the boat, and then I was like, (0:27:36) Al: “Oh, guess I’m not going to Ginger Island today.” (0:27:36) Kelly: Good thing you didn’t just, like, use a totem or whatever. (0:27:43) Kelly: Can you use a totem for Ginger Island? (0:27:44) Al: You can, but I had never, this was my first time going to Ginger Island, so I didn’t, (0:27:44) Kelly: I can’t… (0:27:45) Kelly: You can, right? (0:27:46) Kelly: Oh! (0:27:47) Kelly: Also, “Plans Interrupted” by the Lueo. (0:27:50) Al: I didn’t, I didn’t have any to- (0:27:52) Al: Oh, sorry, I interrupted you. (0:27:57) Kelly: That’s pretty lucky. (0:27:59) Kelly: I don’t know what I was saying. (0:28:01) Al: “Achievements”. (0:28:02) Kelly: Oh, I was going to say that was my best achievement. (0:28:06) Al: Oh, so I interrupted, I interrupted you, telling me about an unforgettable soup, (0:28:07) Kelly: That’s what I was about to say. (0:28:10) Kelly: I was going to brag about the fact that, yeah, I was going to say I have you beat. (0:28:13) Al: by telling you about my unforgettable soup. (0:28:19) Al: Apparently, so I’ve also, the Ginger Island one, which… (0:28:22) Al: just get to Ginger Island, only has 1.2% of players. (0:28:24) Kelly: Well that’s even with the soup one, I’m not doing great in the summer, I’m doing well, (0:28:26) Al: Yeah, that is really, that’s so much smaller than I was expecting. (0:28:29) Al: The soup one as well. You just need a gold and anything. (0:28:38) Kelly: you know, like I’m having a good run through, but I’m not doing anything crazy and yeah I started with the new meadow thing so I have chickens and eggs, that’s like a step up. (0:28:48) Al: - Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:28:50) Kelly: Which is great, I love them. (0:28:51) Al: Yeah, so you did the new farm then. (0:28:52) Kelly: Yes. (0:28:54) Al: So tell me what you think about that then just in general. (0:28:55) Kelly: I think it’s really cute. I think it is kind of you kind of give yourself a little boost by getting the chickens for sure, because it doesn’t take long for you to get like a mayo maker and then that’s like, even without the mayo maker, you’re still like dedicated getting a few hundred dollars a day at the beginning, which is like such a big thing. Yes, it is. (0:28:57) Al: ‘Cause me and Johnny had to chat about that as well, (0:28:59) Al: ‘cause we both went for that, absolutely. (0:29:04) Kelly: It’s kind of you kind of give yourself a little boost by getting the chickens for sure, because it doesn’t take long for you to get like a mayo maker and then that’s like, even without the mayo maker, you’re still like dedicated getting a few hundred dollars a day at the beginning, which is like such a big thing. Yes. (0:29:20) Al: Yeah, which is huge to start with. (0:29:26) Kelly: I’m not selling my foraged goods and then trying to save some so I have something to eat. (0:29:30) Al: Yeah, selling wood and stone. (0:29:32) Kelly: Yeah, exactly. (0:29:36) Kelly: Like, yes, of course, I am a fisherman through and through when it comes to stardew, so that is always my go-to for money. (0:29:43) Al: interesting. Let me tell you, I am not a fishing person so much so that I am at level ten for everything in in this save except fishing of which I am far. (0:29:58) Kelly: Oh wow, no, I got like Iridium Fish by day 10 of spring. (0:30:05) Kelly: And I was like, oh, is this gonna be harder on like computer? (0:30:08) Kelly: Because like, you know, I’m using the mouse instead. (0:30:11) Kelly: But no, I think it might even be easier. (0:30:14) Kelly: I love fishing, I think it’s so much fun. (0:30:16) Kelly: But you make so much money. (0:30:16) Al: I dislike it less once I’ve gone up the levels, right, (0:30:23) Al: because it becomes easier as you go up. (0:30:24) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. (0:30:26) Al: And you do get a lot of money early game, (0:30:29) Al: but then by the time I actually have bothered to try it, (0:30:32) Al: I’m already making lots. (0:30:34) Al: Like I’m now trying to push up the levels because I’m like, I wanna get to level 10 on fishing by the end of year two. (0:30:34) Kelly: Yeah (0:30:40) Kelly: Yeah, yeah cuz otherwise you can’t get the legendaries right (0:30:40) Al: I’m currently midway through summer year two. (0:30:46) Al: You get them the next year. (0:30:48) Al: But no, I want to get it for the granddad’s evaluation. (0:30:53) Al: Although I think I just hit my last thing that I needed to do for my granddad’s evaluation. (0:30:54) Kelly: Well, yeah, that’s part of it too. (0:31:01) Al: But that last point that I needed to get was having your pet at full happiness. (0:31:09) Al: And the problem with that one is I don’t need to keep him at full happiness, (0:31:13) Al: which isn’t hard normally, (0:31:15) Al: but I’m trying to do a lot of stuff in general. (0:31:16) Al: look, Emily’s at home, I’ve already married Emily, she can be looking… yeah. I don’t (0:31:20) Kelly: Yeah, and then not come home. (0:31:36) Kelly: Because you committed animal neglect? (0:31:42) Kelly: You’re married already?! (0:31:46) Al: know how much I’ve played this game in the last week, Kelly. (0:31:49) Kelly: No, I just I truly don’t care about marrying people and so I think that’s always the last thing that I focus on (0:31:55) Al: I oh yes so that’s what I was going to talk about so my yes I was going to talk about Clint because I was talking about Clint. So last episode I had mentioned that I was romancing Emily and I had previously romanced Hailey. Hailey was my my first instard you and let me but we’re not in the same save file. So come on I’m not that and not that terrible although that would be interesting. (0:32:00) Kelly: Yeah, so we got so sidetracked, oh my god (0:32:14) Kelly: The sisters? (0:32:18) Kelly: Oh, okay. (0:32:25) Al: No, I I I romanced Hailey in my first Stardew game and the reason why I did that is I suspect the same reason everybody does Hailey is she’s mean to you when you first talk to her and you’re like “oh well I’m gonna have to I’m gonna have to change that”. Feels like a challenge. (0:32:38) Kelly: Umm, yeah, that’s what I did with Alex, cause he’s just mean to you. (0:32:49) Al: Yeah, yeah same thing. (0:32:50) Kelly: Yeah, I mean it makes sense cause there are each other’s, you know, counterparts or whatever. (0:32:55) Al: Yeah, yeah exactly, exactly. So that was my first one and then my second one I did (0:32:59) Kelly: Okay. Mm-hmm. (0:33:00) Al: Leah just as something a bit different. I thought she was quite a different character so I thought I’d go for her and then this one I don’t know why I decided with Emily. I just I just did and then the whole Clint stuff and I was like well this sounds fun and then so when I recorded the last episode, I was just kind of in the middle of romancing Emily. (0:33:23) Al: and… (0:33:25) Al: Johnny had mentioned how that was obviously because I was doing that and the Georgia stuff I was doing the full evil run (0:33:31) Al: Um, and I was like, ah, you know clint’s a wimp. Um, he doesn’t even try (0:33:34) Kelly: No, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean, what do you mean the evil run, you are, this is negating the horrors of your Jojo Mart because you are saving Emily from Clint. (0:33:44) Al: Well, because it’s… I don’t think she needs saved from Clint, I’ll be honest with you. (0:33:52) Kelly: No, but I mean, I hate him, so… (0:33:55) Al: Yeah, well, exactly. This was my point, is that I didn’t think it was that bad, because I think that Clint is just pathetic, and he doesn’t even bother trying, he just kind of mopes around. And then, so, I am now married to her, so I have officially broken his heart, (0:34:04) Kelly: Mmhmm. (0:34:08) Kelly: Yeah. (0:34:15) Al: but the best bit was it was amazing. There’s one of the heart, I think it’s… I’m assuming it’s a heart event for Emily. You turn up at Mayor Lewis’s house, and Emily is doing some clothes related, try out some new clothes thing with a bunch of people. And so, you do this and like a bunch of different people. (0:34:38) Kelly: Oh, I think I know what you’re talking about, yeah. (0:34:44) Al: It’s just you and Emily left and you have a moment with Emily and it’s all lovely. (0:34:57) Al: And then Clint walks back in and he sees you both and he’s like, “Oh, I guess I interrupted something.” (0:35:04) Al: And just before he leaves, he says, “Well, you win,” and walks away. (0:35:08) Kelly: Oh god, but see that’s why he’s such a sad sack little loser no he’s just like he’s the mopey kid in the corner (0:35:10) Al: And you’re just like, “Wow! (0:35:14) Al: Way to do it.” (0:35:16) Al: Like, “Oh, my word! (0:35:17) Al: So pathetic!” (0:35:18) Al: I’m just like, “You didn’t even try! (0:35:26) Al: What are you doing?” (0:35:28) Al: And he’s like, “Oh, can you give this thing to Emily?” (0:35:32) Al: It’s like, “Give it to yourself! (0:35:33) Al: You want me to give Emily a rock? (0:35:36) Al: You’re the rock guy! (0:35:37) Al: That’s your thing!” (0:35:38) Al: This is the thing, he is literally - all of Emily’s favourite things, except Cloth and and will are rocks. (0:35:44) Al: Basically, right? She likes all the things you get that he gives you. (0:35:45) Kelly: Mhmm. (0:35:49) Kelly: Mhmm. (0:35:50) Al: You just- he- he could eat- (0:35:53) Kelly: No, I fully support this because he is… (0:35:57) Kelly: He’s the little loser kid in the corner who thinks that for some reason, he is getting ignored. (0:36:05) Kelly: But he’s not doing anything. All he has to do is take a step forward. (0:36:06) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, give her a rock. (0:36:09) Kelly: Just be normal. Go talk to her like a person. (0:36:14) Kelly: Like, it’s so simple. (0:36:15) Al: Weird isn’t necessarily bad though, that’s the thing, you just need to actually try. (0:36:15) Kelly: Just… just talk to her like you talked to me, Clint, but maybe not ‘cause you’re still weird. (0:36:23) Kelly: No, I don’t mean weird in that way. I mean, he’s… I don’t like his mentality. (0:36:27) Al: I agree. (0:36:30) Al: He feels like he is the victim despite never even trying in it. (0:36:32) Kelly: He’s the victim. (0:36:36) Kelly: Yeah. (0:36:36) Al: Agreed. (0:36:37) Kelly: He’s the victim who put himself in a hole. (0:36:40) Kelly: Yeah, well… (0:36:42) Al: So, yeah, I have defeated him and broken his heart and now I’m married to Emily and all is good with the work. (0:36:49) Kelly: Yeah, that’s good. (0:36:51) Kelly: I’m happy for you. (0:36:52) Al: Anyway, sorry, I interrupted you. So, yeah, the new farm, you have enjoyed having chickens and getting mayo. (0:37:00) Al: I love also, I don’t know what you think about this, but I love how you can drink mayo now, not because I’ve ever done it, (0:37:06) Al: just because like in terms of the game, it’s a really good energy source really early on for this farm. (0:37:12) Kelly: Oh, I actually did not try it. (0:37:15) Kelly: Um, but I do know that it upsets the people around you if you do drink it around people. (0:37:20) Al: Yes. I mean, most of the time you’re not eating in front of people, right? Like, most of the time you’re downing something as you’re halfway down the mine. Let’s not pretend like, you know, (0:37:26) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. (0:37:29) Al: the people who are finding out that people don’t like seeing you drink mayo, they’re doing it just to see what happens. You’re not– Yeah, sure, but you– Sure, but you don’t go into Mayor Lewis’s house to drink some mayo, right? Like, that’s just not a thing you do. (0:37:35) Kelly: I mean, listen, sometimes I get caught opening trash cans when people are around. (0:37:39) Kelly: Sometimes I don’t think about stuff. (0:37:43) Kelly: No. (0:37:44) Kelly: No. (0:37:47) Kelly: Um, but no, I thought that was a funny little update. (0:37:50) Kelly: Just like a silly little thing. (0:37:52) Kelly: Who doesn’t love silly little things? (0:37:54) Al: how is your farm so far then you’ve you’re at your at the end of summer is that (0:37:58) Kelly: Um, I am, I think, day 18 of summer? (0:38:04) Al: the 18th of summer year one (0:38:06) Kelly: Yeah, so, good so far, I do need to get more into the mines because I need a sprinkler, (0:38:14) Kelly: so I need, I miss them. (0:38:16) Kelly: It’s just like, I want to grow everything, but then I don’t want to have to water everything, (0:38:19) Kelly: and yeah, it’s really nice to have your watering can updated, but it’s still not enough. (0:38:23) Kelly: And it takes so much time and so much energy, but it’s going good so far, I moved everything, (0:38:29) Kelly: I like the setup of the farm so far, I think I have a good idea of where I want to put my barn and stuff. (0:38:35) Kelly: Um, but I did move all of my crops down to the, is everybody’s farm different, and it’s just like similar concepts, or are they, the same, right? (0:38:41) Al: No, it’s the same layout, yeah. (0:38:44) Kelly: So I moved it down to, by that lake at the bottom left. (0:38:48) Al: OK, I’m still using the top, the stuff just underneath your farm because I have the greenhouse. (0:38:52) Kelly: That’s what I was using at first, I got fed up with the, the watering can. (0:38:57) Al: Yeah, fair. (0:38:59) Al: Yeah, that is one big disadvantage is that you are quite far away from water up there, but everything’s sprinkled for me now. (0:39:04) Kelly: Yeah. (0:39:07) Kelly: Yeah, see, once I get to that stage, (0:39:08) Kelly: it’s like, okay, I can pick and choose how I wanna do it. (0:39:11) Kelly: Although last time I used that area for fish, (0:39:17) Kelly: whatchamacallit, (0:39:20) Al: Oh, fish buns. (0:39:20) Kelly: yes, the roe, the roe pons. (0:39:21) Al: Right, I was like, you just have fish lying on the ground? (0:39:27) Kelly: So I used that area in my last different farm for that. (0:39:33) Kelly: But I like missing room with the layout. (0:39:34) Kelly: I like literally draw them out in notebooks and like figure everything out. (0:39:37) Al: Yeah, I don’t. (0:39:38) Kelly: Yeah, no, I mean I write out (0:39:41) Kelly: the information on like how much each fruit costs, how long it takes to grow, (0:39:46) Al: I see I’m definitely, I’m just at the point now where I’m just like well I’m just growing. (0:39:47) Kelly: how much it costs to pickle. (0:39:53) Kelly: Yeah, now you’re having fun. Yeah. (0:39:54) Al: Ancient fruit, ancient fruit in my greenhouse and whatever one specific crop is the best one to do outside, which is summer just now so it’s star fruit. (0:39:57) Kelly: Yeah, exactly. (0:40:01) Kelly: Yeah. (0:40:04) Kelly: Yeah, but no, I like the aspect of making my little lists. (0:40:10) Kelly: I like making lists. (0:40:14) Kelly: I got green rain the other day. (0:40:16) Al: The green rain is great. I got that for the second time today. (0:40:18) Kelly: I’ve never had it, my God, it was so cool. (0:40:22) Kelly: Cuz it’s only in summer, right? (0:40:24) Al: It is. I’m pretty sure it’s the seventh of summer it happens on, because I’m sure that was the same both years for me, but it might. (0:40:30) Kelly: Oh, see, I heard it could be different. I heard it’s rare and it doesn’t- (0:40:34) Al: Well, I’ve had it both summers, so I don’t think it’s that rare. (0:40:39) Kelly: okay but oh my god what a cool little event it made the insides of the houses so dark and eerie (0:40:43) Al: Yeah. (0:40:46) Al: I really like it. I especially the second time around, I noticed that it also makes all your trees suddenly grow to full height, which is cool. (0:40:49) Kelly: I got so much moss (0:40:55) Kelly: yes because I got a lot of my trees back in my yard um (0:40:59) Al: Yeah. Which was especially good for me because I was growing the hardwood trees at that point, (0:41:04) Al: and so I suddenly had 10 hardwood trees, and I was like, “Yes! All the hardwood! Fantastic!” (0:41:05) Kelly: oh that’s nice. That is so nice. (0:41:10) Kelly: I really liked that they had those fiddlehead fern trees in the forest area, down below your house, because I don’t have access to secret woods yet. (0:41:16) Al: - Yeah. (0:41:21) Al: - Yes. (0:41:27) Al: - Yeah, I think that’s also what I mentioned in the last episode. (0:41:30) Al: That’s another really good thing about this farm is it has both hardwood logs on it. (0:41:34) Kelly: Mm-hmm (0:41:36) Al: And the big hardwood log, you have to have a gold ax for, (0:41:40) Kelly: Mm-hmm, which I’m not up to yet (0:41:40) Al: but the, no, but the smaller one, (0:41:43) Al: you just have to have an iron axe for. (0:41:45) Kelly: Yes, which I am very close to (0:41:46) Al: And so you can get hard with much quicker. (0:41:49) Kelly: Yeah, which is so nice cuz there’s so many things that for crafting you need to you need the hardwood (0:41:55) Al: Yeah. Yeah. I think, do you not even need that for, I think, is it cheese maker you need that for? (0:42:00) Kelly: Yeah, because I was gonna go make one and I was like ah hardwood, and I have some hardwood, but I don’t have enough hardwood (0:42:03) Al: Yeah. Frustrating. (0:42:08) Kelly: What else I really like that now when your menu it like (0:42:13) Kelly: Blips the community bundle button (0:42:18) Al: I will say it has done that since 1.4, it’s just it seems to be something that people just keep (0:42:20) Kelly: Has it okay, well (0:42:23) Kelly: You know what? (0:42:27) Al: realizing every time they play it again. It’s like oh this is cool that it’s something a bunch of new people learn because I’ve seen because I’ve seen concerned a tweet about it three different times over the last five years and everyone’s like oh wow that’s a great new feature and is like no no I’m just reminding people because I yeah because I (0:42:32) Kelly: You know what? (0:42:32) Kelly: Maybe it’s just the best feature. (0:42:40) Kelly: Well, I just learned about it. (0:42:48) Al: because I’ll tell you how I know that it was definitely 1.4 is because I didn’t do community center this time. I didn’t play 1.5 but I used that feature quite a lot so there you go. (0:42:59) Kelly: Uh, okay. (0:43:02) Kelly: The sea jellies and the river jellies are very interesting. I don’t know what they’re for yet, but they’re cool-looking. (0:43:06) Al: You can eat them, but also there’s a specific one crafting that I know of that uses it. (0:43:10) Kelly: Yeah. (0:43:15) Kelly: Yeah, I figured there would, I figured there would be something. I’m very much in the… (0:43:19) Al: It’s something you’re going to like, personally. (0:43:21) Kelly: Okay, okay, but I’m, no, I’ll wait. I’m very much in the… (0:43:23) Al: Do you want to know what it is or not? (0:43:25) Al: No. (0:43:26) Al: OK. (0:43:27) Al: I need you to tell me what you think of it when you get it, because I think you’ll like this new item. (0:43:29) Kelly: » Okay, I’m excited. (0:43:34) Kelly: But I’m very much in the mentality of hoard things first and then later I don’t have to deal with it as much. (0:43:38) Al: Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, like it took me three months to figure out what the Moss was for. Yeah. (0:43:46) Kelly: Yeah, I’m still waiting on that one, I don’t know yet. (0:43:49) Kelly: I got so much moss though from that rain. (0:43:51) Kelly: I was like, my God, we’re going ham. (0:43:53) Kelly: And then I love how after a whole bunch of trees are still covered in moss. (0:43:58) Al: Yes Not just on your farm as well (0:44:00) Kelly: It’s like, this is the residue. (0:44:03) Kelly: Mm-hm, but also great for just fiber in general, (0:44:06) Kelly: because fiber can kind of be hard to come by sometimes. (0:44:10) Al: Yeah, especially if you want to grow tea saplings, (0:44:13) Kelly: Mm-hm, so that was really cool. (0:44:15) Al: which is a good source of early game money. (0:44:16) Kelly: I think overall, I just really liked that event. (0:44:18) Kelly: and I looked at the camera and I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna do it.” (0:44:20) Al: I agree. My first time on it, I didn’t do very much on it because I didn’t have a lot of energy and obviously it runs out early, but I literally got my second one today and I cut down every single tree that I found and I cut up all of the moss on the ground. I think I had like like 200 moss or something by the end of it. (0:44:40) Kelly: Yeah, I think that’s- I think that’s about what I got. I was like, I’m just gonna take food with me and empty my pockets and go. (0:44:46) Al: It’s definitely worth it. Did you talk to anyone during the event? (0:44:49) Kelly: Yeah, I went to the salon, which I was actually kind of pissed about because I wanted… (0:44:51) Al: Oh yeah, saloon, not salon, different things. (0:44:54) Kelly: Whatever. Yeah, I know. (0:44:56) Kelly: Listen, I know what the word is and what I’m gonna call it in my head are two entirely different things. (0:45:01) Al: It’s all right, I call it a pub anyway because saloon is a very American word. (0:45:06) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. (0:45:07) Kelly: Um… (0:45:10) Kelly: But I went there because I was like, “Oh, I’ll buy some more salads so that I have a ton of energy today, and then tomorrow if I want to go in the mines or something, I have a salad or something with me.” (0:45:22) Kelly: And then I went in there and you couldn’t even buy anything because everybody was just in panic mode. (0:45:27) Al: Yeah, yeah, did you find Demetrius? (0:45:30) Kelly: No, I did not because I was like, “You know what? I don’t care. I’m gonna go cut the trees down.” (0:45:34) Al: He’s so funny, he’s up by his house, (0:45:37) Al: dressed up in a hazmat suit. (0:45:40) Kelly: No, I did see a tweet about that, actually. Damn. (0:45:42) Al: He’s so funny. (0:45:42) Kelly: I wish I wanted to see that. I forgot that those were the connected events. (0:45:47) Al: Everybody else goes to the pub. (0:45:49) Al: He’s out in a hazmat suit. (0:45:52) Kelly: He’s an interesting little man, you know? (0:45:54) Al: Yes, yes he is. (0:45:56) Kelly: But no, I was like, “You know what? I gotta find these fiddlehead ferns, so I need to get out of here.” (0:46:02) Kelly: I was like, “Back to cutting down trees. This is too much interaction.” (0:46:08) Kelly: What else there was (0:46:10) Kelly: There was other things and now I can’t think of them (0:46:12) Al: So, this game is a lot about kind of the small quality of life updates, how have you found, (0:46:20) Al: obviously we talked about the new farm, are there other kind of day-to-day things you’ve been doing that you found different in the game? (0:46:31) Kelly: And that’s what I’m trying to think. I feel like there was, and now I cannot think, um… (0:46:36) Al: Feel free to get the patch notes up for on the stardew website. (0:46:40) Kelly: That’s what I’m literally… (0:46:42) Al: I presume you haven’t been to the desert festival? (0:46:44) Kelly: No, no, no, no, not yet, um… (0:46:46) Al: It’s very hard to get that in the in the first year but I’ve just been to it and I I very much enjoyed that. It’s good fun. It ties together a bunch of different things in the desert (0:46:48) Kelly: Yeah. (0:46:56) Kelly: Oh, I’m excited for the the fishing derbies tomorrow. Today. Today! (0:46:57) Al: which is good fun. (0:47:03) Al: Yes. (0:47:05) Al: T-t-today. (0:47:06) Kelly: Um, I like that that um, I haven’t really experienced it yet but I saw something about the mastery system which I think is very interesting and I am excited to see how that plays out. (0:47:15) Al: I’m so close I just need to get my fishing up to 10 and then I can do it. (0:47:17) Kelly: Ah. Um, what else? Oh, the prize machine! (0:47:23) Al: Yes have you done that? (0:47:24) Kelly: Yes, I got two tickets so far. (0:47:26) Kelly: And I got an apricot tree. (0:

“In a 30 second span, two of the most iconic Dance Moms moments happen back to back,” Christi exclaims as "She's a Maniac" has those and more iconic moments to spare. To mark the occasion (and to celebrate one of her few episodes where she doesn't suffer) the Bitches welcome Paige Hyland to the Barre! Abby brings in Broadway dancer Rachelle Rak to choreograph the Golddigga group number. It's a not too subtle jab at Melissa, who was just secretly married, but it sure is fun to have to explain what a Gold Digger is to the kids! Perhaps more pressing is whether Abby will be able to square away her desire for control with Rak's non-Maddie centric choreography.Quotes“For us telling our points of view like on this behind the scenes thing, the kids version is totally different. Cause you guys were in the dance room and we didn't know what was going on a lot of the time but you guys didn't really know what was going on upstairs.” (12:09-12:24 | Kelly)“We all have come to learn that the Pyramid means nothing. Not based on any kind of fact or any kind of real information. Just kind of based on your last name, maybe.” (23:50-24:01 | Christi and Kelly)“It's a cellophane wrap party…and we're wrapping each other…in literal cellophane. I figure I should go put one of them on. Kelly! Maybe I'll wear one of those this weekend on my face. I don't think they work. Well they got to do something! Well it's probably old and expired, it's 12 years old at this point. Don't you think the plant extracts might have dried up?! Maybe.” (56:43-57:10 | Christi and Kelly)“I am shocked that no producer picked that up and said, we're going to incorporate this [Giant Doll Man] into a dance. Girls, this is Bob Fosse, he's sitting on the edge of the stage, now dance for Fosse. Flirt with him, dig his gold.” (1:07:22-1:07:37 | Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhylandFollow Jill on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jillvertesFollow Paige on IG: https://www.instagram.com/paigehyland1Follow Paige on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@paigehyland_3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Al and Kelly talk about Pumpkin panic Join Al and Kelly in a quick journey through the world of cottagecore gaming. They share their experiences with “Pumpkin Panic,” discuss recent news, and leave you feeling cozy and inspired. Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:03:00: What Have We Been Up To 00:13:42: News 00:55:48: Pumpkin Panic 01:24:30: Outro Links Disney Dreamlight Valley Leaves Early Access Spirittea Release Len’s Island Roadmap Updated Moonstone Island Updated and DLC Released Stardew Valley Horseradish Juice Echoes of the Plum Grove Steam Page Echoes of the Plum Grove Kickstarter Pumpkin Panic Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello farmers and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. (0:00:36) Al: My name is Al, and we’re here today to talk about cottagecore games. (0:00:37) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:38) Kelly: Woo! (0:00:43) Al: Two weeks in a row Kelly, what’s happening here? (0:00:50) Kelly: I know. It’s even funny because Kevin brought it up. I did last year’s Halloween. (0:00:56) Kelly: Which I totally forgot. Because I totally forgot Cult of the Lamb came out last year. (0:00:56) Al: Yes. That was last year, my word, wild. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, why not? But hey, I’m on, I think this is, is this my first Halloween ep? No, no, I was on one with Rochelle, the original Graveyard Keeper one, I think, I was on. But I hadn’t played the game, so Rochelle I was basically just telling me. (0:01:01) Kelly: Yeah. It’s just my season. I don’t know what to say. (0:01:18) Kelly: I was gonna say Kevin brought that up last time actually, yeah. (0:01:22) Kelly: Okay. (0:01:24) Kelly: Well, welcome to your own podcast Halloween episode. (0:01:26) Al: about it and I was asking questions, but I think I’ve not been on any of the other Halloween episodes. So I’m here. Yay. Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us, Kelly. It’s good to talk to you again, even if Kevin did steal you from me for the last week. This one has been organized for much longer. Much longer. Yeah. Yeah. We have had a bunch of different ideas for last week and none of them were really like enough. (0:01:43) Kelly: Of course, thank you. (0:01:45) Kelly: I will say we planned this one. Yes. Last week was very impromptu. This is very much so planned. (0:02:01) Al: And there was a point where Kevin was like, I can’t do the recording time we have. And I’m like, well, I’m traveling the rest of the time. So so he kicked me off. He kicked me off my own podcast and and brought you on instead. So thank you very much for that. (0:02:16) Kelly: Always a pleasure. I did have to do a little, like, briefing on it though, because I hadn’t played Graveyard Keeper in, like, a year, and I was like, “Oh, what is this game again?” (0:02:19) Al: Oh, yes. Fair enough. (0:02:26) Al: Well, we don’t have that problem with this week’s game because it’s incredibly quick to play some of it and get a very good idea of what this game is. So this episode, we’re going to talk about pumpkin panic. And we’ll have lots to say about that later on in the episode. But yes, we’re going to talk about that just to mention that transcripts are available for the podcast in the show notes and on the website. So if you need that, that’s (0:02:57) Al: OK. Before we talk about pumpkin panic, we’re going to talk about the news. But first of all, Kelly, what have you been up to? (0:03:02) Kelly: I have been playing, I actually just finished this morning, I started playing the cosmic wheel of sisterhood. (0:03:16) Kelly: So this is an interactive story game where you play as a witch who has been banished from her coven, and you are kind of trying to make your way back. (0:03:32) Kelly: You play into your coven and you create tarot cards and you read the tarot cards to kind of create the gameplay in the world. (0:03:45) Kelly: And you have visitors. (0:03:48) Kelly: So I am not always great at story games because as much as I love reading, I also get very frustrated at a lot of stories in games. (0:03:53) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:03:58) Kelly: And I thought this, they did this so good. (0:04:01) Kelly: I thought it was so much fun. (0:04:02) Kelly: Because you’re so hands-on with it. (0:04:03) Al: This seems a little bit more involved than a standard visual novel. (0:04:12) Al: Is it just mainly the one minigame that I’m seeing on this Steam page? (0:04:16) Kelly: Um, what is… what is… (0:04:18) Kelly: Um, kind of. So that’s like… (0:04:18) Al: with making the cards. (0:04:22) Kelly: You have that, you can do like there’s interactive stories within the story. (0:04:27) Kelly: Um, so there’s like different… I wouldn’t call them mini-games, but like the interactions are the rest of it. (0:04:33) Al: Right, OK. (0:04:33) Kelly: Um, and… (0:04:34) Al: But it’s not it’s not just like click a button and see the next. (0:04:36) Kelly: You kind of… like obviously… (0:04:40) Kelly: No, no, no, no. Yeah, there’s definitely… (0:04:42) Al: Here’s one choice sort of thing, right? (0:04:46) Kelly: You make the choices as to what you’re gonna do, who you would mite over to your little house. (0:04:50) Kelly: Um, and then… (0:04:53) Kelly: Even when you pull a tarot card, you have the choice as to how to explain the card. (0:04:57) Kelly: So, there is a lot of, um, leeway into how the interactions go and how the story itself is gonna go. (0:05:05) Kelly: So like I did a run, and I can do a totally different run next time. (0:05:06) Al: Okay. All right. (0:05:11) Kelly: So you do have you really do like you kind of write the story yourself as much as you can for you know (0:05:19) Al: It has very positive reviews on Steam, it has over a thousand. (0:05:23) Kelly: demo. There’s a demo which I would highly suggest playing because that’s definitely what I did and once I finished the demo I immediately bought the game and all of your stuff transfers over which is so nice because I hate when you start a demo especially for a game like this and you got to start it over. But yeah I thought it was like a very nice little like casual gameplay but like still very interesting. And like kind of emotional. (0:05:53) Al: Shocking when they make you feel things. How dare they? (0:05:53) Kelly: Right? What have you been up to, Al? (0:05:56) Al: Well, speaking of making you feeling things, before I get into games, I have watched the new film “Killers of the Flower Moon”. Have you seen… I presume you haven’t seen… (0:06:08) Kelly: I have not seen it yet, however I have owned that book for like a decade or so. (0:06:14) Al: Yeah, mm-hmm (0:06:15) Kelly: My dad bought it years ago. My dad’s a very big like historical novel kind of person and then we actually read it in my book club about two years ago or a year ago. I really enjoyed it. I thought the book was very good. I have not watched the movie yet, but I’ve heard very positive reviews. (0:06:28) Al: » Okay. Yeah. (0:06:38) Kelly: Even from the Native American community about the movie, of course there’s some things that probably could have been done differently, (0:06:45) Kelly: but I think that’s anytime it happens when you’re telling somebody else’s story. (0:06:46) Al: Hmm. I think, yeah, yeah, definitely. I think there’s a lot about the film that is obviously, (0:06:54) Al: you know, there’s some, you know, some racist stuff in the film, right? Obviously. But that’s the sort of thing where it’s like, well, yeah, but you’re talking about a, you know, a racist crime, (0:06:57) Kelly: Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, you’re telling a story from 1930 or 20 or whatever (0:07:04) Al: right? Like, yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not, don’t go into expecting a good time. (0:07:15) Kelly: Yeah, and unfortunately I don’t think the story would be accurate if those things are kind of left out because they do play a big role in what’s going on with the story itself. (0:07:16) Al: No, of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I enjoyed that. It’s very long. It’s very long. So that’s why I was up really late on Thursday night because of that. (0:07:26) Kelly: But crazy. Yes. (0:07:37) Al: Because I saw the showing started at half seven and like I wasn’t home until quarter past midnight. (0:07:44) Kelly: Wow. Wow. (0:07:44) Al: So. (laughs) (0:07:46) Al: I don’t regret going to see it, it was very good. (0:07:49) Kelly: Which I feel like is such a… it’s such a hard thing to achieve with some of this… (0:07:49) Al: And I don’t think it was… (0:07:51) Al: Like, it doesn’t feel like it was unnecessarily long, right? (0:07:54) Al: Like, I feel like he was doing something with every minute that you had. (0:07:58) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. (0:08:03) Kelly: these stories. Like, I mean, I feel like I didn’t see Oppenheimer, but I feel like that a lot of people talked about that. (0:08:09) Kelly: Feeling kind of like dragged out in a lot of spots. (0:08:12) Al: Interesting. Yeah, I suspect a lot of these things depends on how you feel about quiet moments that make you contemplate. Right. Absolutely. You can’t be talking about a massacre or about, (0:08:21) Kelly: Which I think these stories need those moments. (0:08:24) Kelly: So I don’t see anything wrong with that. (0:08:27) Kelly: Yeah, just on to the next scene. (0:08:30) Al: you know, wiping out of a city without having some moments to make you think, “Wow, that’s bad!” (0:08:40) Al: Exactly, exactly. So it’s quite great. (0:08:42) Al: So I enjoyed it. It was good. I don’t think I’m going to watch it a second time. It’s not like I’m going to watch this film again. But yeah. (0:08:54) Kelly: I will say on that note, the book is also extremely good. I know, Allie, you said you’re probably not going to read it, but if anybody out there is interested, very interesting. (0:09:05) Al: Yeah, people don’t really. Yeah. (0:09:10) Kelly: I think some historical novels can be kind of boring and dragged out because I do read a lot of history. This was very good. This was written in a way that like really you You just, you had to keep going. (0:09:24) Kelly: No matter what. It wasn’t, it wasn’t… (0:09:26) Kelly: Umm, oh my god, what’s his name? (0:09:28) Kelly: The Devil in White City guy, Eric Larson. (0:09:30) Kelly: I like some of his works. They can also be a bit cumbersome. (0:09:31) Al: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. I mean, just to make a point of it, like people don’t like when I talk about the fact that I don’t really read books, but I don’t really read books. (0:09:34) Kelly: So I don’t think it was like that. (0:09:47) Al: And it’s not like I read books as a child. And the problem is that I just I struggle because I don’t have like the visual aspect in my brain. Like I’m not I’m not able to see the things that are described. So so much of a book I just kind of skim over. (0:09:53) Kelly: Yes, yeah. (0:10:01) Al: Because it’s like descriptive stuff that doesn’t really mean anything because I can’t see it. (0:10:04) Kelly: Whereas I’m the complete opposite and I see everything in my head and then I get really mad when the movie comes out and skews my perspective on how I envisioned everything. (0:10:05) Al: Um… (0:10:12) Al: Yeah. I always found that hilarious when people were like, “Oh, it’s nothing like what it is in the book. It’s not like what I imagined it.” And I’m like, “What do you mean it’s nothing like what you imagined it?” I don’t understand what you mean by this. And now that I understand that people now make up images in their head, suddenly I understand what they mean now. They’re like, (0:10:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:10:32) Kelly: Yep Yep, it’s it’s so funny cuz like my roommate is like you she can’t see anything in her head and I’m like, well What do you what do you mean? What do you how are you living? I don’t understand Well, I am That is the that is the issue Thank you. (0:10:33) Al: “Oh, this isn’t exactly what I had imagined in my head.” (0:10:46) Al: Oh, I’m just like, how do you ever get anything done? Are you not constantly distracted by the things in your head? (0:11:00) Al: So I’ve also played a bunch of games, because I apparently haven’t been on the podcast for multiple episodes. So I have played and finished Sonic Superstars and Mario Wonder, and I have been playing through the new Spider-Man game. That is taking me longer, because just like It’s on my PS5, you have to kind of sit down and deliver. (0:11:16) Al: All those games are great, Sonic Super Star is good, Mario Wonder is fantastic, Spider-Man is fantastic. (0:11:28) Al: Both of those two games did things that I couldn’t, I just wouldn’t have expected what they did. (0:11:36) Al: It’s not just like, oh there are another version of this game, right? (0:11:41) Al: They both do things that are like, this is brand new stuff, really interesting. (0:11:41) Kelly: I think that’s so exciting, especially for the Mario games because I feel like, you know, (0:11:46) Al: That I really, really like. (0:11:48) Al: Yeah. (0:11:50) Al: Yeah. (0:11:52) Kelly: how long has it been? (0:11:52) Al: Yeah. (0:11:53) Kelly: How many games have come out? (0:11:54) Al: Yeah. (0:11:55) Kelly: Like, how do you keep reinventing the wheel? (0:11:56) Al: Yeah, definitely. (0:11:58) Kelly: But it’s still exciting to find out that they can. (0:11:58) Al: Yeah, and I think, I mean I don’t think they need to do that for every single game. (0:12:02) Kelly: No! (0:12:02) Al: Like I enjoyed every game in the new series. (0:12:07) Al: Like they’re all fun, they don’t have to be completely different, they all have new challenges in their different levels. (0:12:13) Al: levels but it is also fun to occasionally get like this is just. (0:12:16) Al: Just a completely different way of thinking and the the Wonderflowers just do just crazy things in the levels that make it just so different. (0:12:26) Al: You know it’s not just like oh here’s a different power-up and the new power-ups are fun as well but it’s not just like oh this one’s a bubble instead of a fire right and that’s that’s fun but it’s not like a radical idea whereas like the Wonderflowers are like what if this was a top-down game instead of a side-scroller and you’re like. (0:12:46) Al: Like what if apparently now we’re doing that you know like I think it’s the weird stuff that they did with that game and it’s like what if the Piranha plant sang you know. (0:12:57) Kelly: Oh my god, I saw the clips of that, they’re so cute! (0:13:02) Al: It’s just like I love the idea of that it’s just brainstorm a hundred and the weird thing is every single level has one right it’s not like this is the sort of thing that you wouldn’t you if if they told you but you’re like oh that’d be fun so like you know it’d be like all the boss battles. (0:13:16) Al: Have them or what like this. (0:13:16) Kelly: That’s cool. That’s very cool. (0:13:18) Al: A couple of levels in every world. (0:13:20) Al: Every single world has one. (0:13:25) Al: So yeah, good fun. (0:13:26) Al: I’ve also been playing Harvest Moon Winds of Anthos because I need to play that. (0:13:32) Al: So I’ll talk about that next week. (0:13:35) Al: I don’t think we need to talk about that just now. (0:13:39) Al: It is what it is. (0:13:40) Al: Cool. (0:13:41) Al: News. Should we talk about some news? (0:13:47) Al: Let’s start with the controversial stuff. (0:13:50) Al: Disney Dreamlight Valley. (0:13:51) Al: Have you played this yet? (0:13:52) Kelly: No, I have not. I think when it first like when they first announced it I was like oh this looks really cute If I’m not playing anything, I’ll probably play it Yes So I don’t think I will be playing Because like free to play You know, I know there’s gonna be some payment stuff, but you can kind of avoid it sometimes (0:14:00) Al: Yeah, were you waiting for it to go free to play? That’s the question. (0:14:04) Al: Yeah, well wait no longer! It is no longer going to be free to play! (0:14:08) Al: I think this is fast, so this is okay, so full context. (0:14:16) Al: Yes, yeah definitely. (0:14:23) Kelly: Or at least you can get an idea of what the game is before you decide to put money into it Yes, sorry jumping ahead (0:14:27) Al: so yeah so let’s okay well let’s put that let’s put the (0:14:30) Al: the discussion of that bit aside let’s let’s get into the actual news of it so the game is leaving early access on the 5th of december so that will be the first full version of the game whatever that means they have announced that it’s not going to be free to play anymore so you will have to to buy it they have also announced that there is going to be a paid dlc coming which they’re going to detail you’ll know more about this when you listen to this episode because they’re going to be saying more about it on the day this episode comes out (0:15:00) Al: that next week as well but they have also said that they are still going to continue to have free content updates so it’s not all going to be paid dlc I think that there are so many different ways to buy this game now it’s weird have you looked at the so in the main link on there they’ve got a list of the new ways to buy the game which is like you can just buy the game for $40 or you you can buy the physical cozy edition. (0:15:26) Kelly: Oh, I saw this. (0:15:30) Al: Which also gives you some stuff and that’s $50 or you can buy the gold edition, which also has more exclusive items and gives you the DLC or you can buy the DLC separately and these purchase options are on top of what the current purchase options are for early access, which you can still do until the 4th of December. (0:15:52) Al: I know it’s so bizarre. (0:15:53) Kelly: I think I got a headache just looking at this earlier. (0:15:58) Kelly: I was like, what is this, a streaming service? (0:16:00) Kelly: What the hell is this? (0:16:00) Al: I think I just it feels like so I think you can you can frame not being free to play as positive and negative right negative obviously a bunch of people who were like yeah I get to play the game without paying for it now don’t get to do that they either have to pay or they don’t get to play the game and that’s really frustrating I get why people would be frustrated by that. (0:16:22) Al: On the other hand obviously we know that free to play games are very manipulative and are very good at sucking. (0:16:26) Kelly: Oh, absolutely, yes. (0:16:28) Kelly: Well, so that’s what I was gonna ask, right? Like they’re not removing microtransactions from the game. (0:16:30) Al: But it’s not like there aren’t going to be ways to pay for things inside the game after you’ve bought it. (0:16:37) Al: No so I it feels like they’re just doing a bit of both worlds which. (0:16:42) Kelly: Yes, they want their cake and they’re gonna have their cake and eat it too kind of thing. (0:16:46) Al: Yeah yeah it’s not not great. (0:16:49) Kelly: And then the the $40 base price is kind of wild. (0:16:52) Al: It does seem let me so let me double check. (0:16:56) Kelly: To go from free-to-play to $40? (0:16:59) Kelly: Oh wait, so if you paid for early access, does that come out of the base? (0:17:00) Al: The early access prices. (0:17:02) Al: Because. (0:17:04) Al: So if you paid for access you have the game now so you don’t have to buy the game again and they’ve also said as a thank you to our early access players all unique cosmetic items included in the upcoming gold edition will be given free of charge to any player who purchases and claims of founders pack in game or on on or before December the 4th no matter the tier. (0:17:30) Kelly: Okay, that’s nice because I think… (0:17:30) Al: And not only that but all founders will also receive 2500 min stones to celebrate this that’s. (0:17:32) Kelly: Okay, that’s nice. (0:17:39) Kelly: Nice. (0:17:41) Al: So let me just double check the prices for… (0:17:47) Al: Yes, so here we are. So there’s three different versions you can buy in Early Access. (0:17:50) Al: Well, this is the thing. This is where it’s wild. So there’s the standard Founders Edition, (0:17:51) Kelly: Oh my god. But how many tears? (0:18:01) Al: which is the Early Access to Dreamland Valley plus 8,000 Moonstones plus a bunch of exclusive stuff, (0:18:08) Al: and that is $30. So $10. (0:18:11) Al: cheaper than the final price. And then there’s the deluxe founders rewards which gives you 14,500 moonstones. I don’t know why they insist on always like it’s not 15, why not 15? Weird. And a bunch of more exclusive items and that one I don’t have a price for but I think it might have been, it was either 50 or 60. (0:18:34) Kelly: Well, that’s 50 on here, on the regular one. (0:18:36) Al: Yeah. I think, I think… (0:18:42) Al: Yeah, it’s 50, 50. And then there’s the ultimate founders edition which gives you 20,000 moonstones and a bunch of extra cosmetic things. And that one was $6, $70? (0:18:58) Kelly: Okay, I think that makes sense because the gold edition for the standard game is (0:19:03) Al: So there are like seven different ways to buy this game. All with different things. (0:19:08) Kelly: Oh my god. (0:19:10) Kelly: And then the DLC is $30. (0:19:11) Al: So it’s like if you… Yes, which is only included in the Gold Edition, not as far as I can tell, (0:19:19) Al: any of the Early Access editions. So if you have Early Access, you still have to pay for the (0:19:25) Kelly: I have some things I’d like to say, and I’m gonna maybe keep them to myself. (0:19:31) Al: So I will say you do get a capybara companion if you buy the gold edition. (0:19:31) Kelly: It is very cute. It’s very cute. It has a flower crown. (0:19:40) Al: A flowery capybara companion. (0:19:41) Kelly: I mean, you can’t go wrong with the capybara. (0:19:46) Al: True that. (0:19:48) Kelly: Listen, the game looks so cute. I think that’s why this is kind of so disappointing. (0:19:52) Al: Yes, yeah, yeah, it is. (0:19:59) Al: So I think it is a good game and if you said to me this game… (0:20:01) Al: Why did they say that? Why did they even say that? (0:20:04) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:20:20) Kelly: Exactly. They made the promise. Yeah. (0:20:23) Kelly: And that’s so frustrating because that’s what they’ve been writing on since they announced this. Like why, why, why? And then to announce the changes a month before. (0:20:37) Al: Just why? (0:20:39) Al: I know, I know, I know it’s so… (0:20:40) Kelly: And then also, so if you buy the cozy edition, besides the flowery capybara and the expansion (0:20:50) Kelly: is there anything else you’re missing? Like are you limited from gameplay? Okay. (0:20:52) Al: No, no you’re not, you’re not. So the only gameplay, so everything that’s exclusive outside of the expansion pass, everything that’s exclusive is just cosmetics. If you buy, if you… it is, isn’t it? It’s not quite that bad yet, but it definitely feels like that’s where they’re going yes the funny thing is (0:21:07) Kelly: Okay, that’s a little bit better, but you know what? It’s giving me sims. (0:21:14) Kelly: No, but it’s getting there. Yeah. (0:21:22) Al: right see if you buy the base game and you buy the expansion pass that’s one cent cheaper than buying the gold edition which gives you the base game and the expansion pass I mean it also gives you the it does give you the capacity is the capybara worth one cent that’s the it just seems like why is the gold edition the same price as it seems weird (0:21:33) Kelly: Yeah, but no capybara. (0:21:47) Kelly: It does, like also, like okay so if you if you do really want to play this game, (0:21:51) Kelly: why would you buy the base edition and the expansion pack instead of just buying the gold edition? (0:21:55) Kelly: Again, this is just such a headache to look at. (0:21:55) Al: Yeah, yeah, well, that’s that yeah, so yeah seven different seven different ways to buy this game You either buy it in one of the three early access ways of buying it or you buy it in one of the three Non-early access ways to buy it if you wait till the 5th of December and then you either buy the expansion mass or not We don’t know what’s in the expansion pass exactly they’ll be telling us that on Wednesday today if you’re listening on the day this comes out (0:22:24) Al: There are some hints. (0:22:25) Al: There we’ve seen Gaston and… oh is that Rapunzel? I think it’s Rapunzel. (0:22:33) Kelly: Oh, yes, that’s Rapunzel in the back. And then, uh, Eva. Eve, Eve. (0:22:34) Al: Who’s the little robot? Oh was that from Wally? (0:22:38) Kelly: Eeeve. (0:22:40) Kelly: Yeah, from Wally. (0:22:41) Al: Okay I still haven’t seen Wally. I know, I know. So I went through a period of time of just not watching Disney Pixar stuff. (0:22:42) Kelly: What? (0:22:44) Kelly: Ugh. (0:22:47) Kelly: I mean, I’ve never seen Tangled, so whatever, but Wally’s so good. (0:22:52) Al: I have seen (0:22:55) Al: a few of them since, but I haven’t caught up on all of them. I just watched, what’s it called, Elemental today. (0:23:10) Kelly: How was it? I get clips on TikTok and it seems pretty cute. (0:23:14) Kelly: I feel like the trailer kind of made it seem like it was going to be like a knock-off uh… (0:23:14) Al: I enjoyed it, yeah. It’s better than the trailer that made me think it was going to be. (0:23:22) Kelly: How am I… I’m blanking on it. (0:23:24) Kelly: No, um… I can’t think right now. I don’t know. (0:23:25) Al: Anything can roll me on Juliet. (0:23:30) Kelly: It just felt very familiar, I guess, if that… (0:23:34) Al: Yeah, it is. There’s nothing particular about it that’s interesting on you, but I think it does a good job of being a fun and enjoyable and emotional way of exploring immigration and an immigrant’s family’s journey and some of those struggles. I think it does a good job. (0:23:50) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:23:52) Kelly: That’s uh, that’s like kind of like again, I watched a lot of clips on tiktok. I get so sucked into the movie clips on tiktok But I think that that’s exactly the vibe I got to I was like very surprised I feel like With the difference between the trailer and how the actual movie seemed to be See ya later. (0:24:03) Al: fair. (0:24:16) Al: Yeah. I don’t know what that trailer was about, because like the trailer came out and everyone went “this looks terrible, what are you doing?” and then the phone came out and people were like “yes, yes, sorry, it’s good, it’s good, it’s enjoyable”. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not going to say it’s the best Pixar film, but it’s certainly not the worst. It’s good. I enjoyed it. Yeah, so that’s, we don’t, we’ve seen Gaston and Rapunzel and would you say Eve? (0:24:19) Kelly: Bye. (0:24:27) Kelly: Yeah, I feel like every review I’ve seen of it, people really liked it, like they enjoyed it, so… (0:24:46) Kelly: Eve, yeah. I think that Eve, Eevee, something like that? Not Eevee, but it’s like that, yeah. (0:24:46) Al: And there’s a snake and a pig. So we don’t know a huge amount, we’ll see, but it’s, I don’t think so. (0:24:57) Kelly: Is that the jungle book? (0:24:58) Kelly: No, that’s not the snake from the jungle book. (0:25:03) Kelly: Oh, there’s a creature in the tree too. (0:25:05) Kelly: That is the jungle book. (0:25:07) Kelly: Look at the monkey in the tree. (0:25:09) Kelly: I’m pretty sure that’s the jungle book. (0:25:11) Al: Anyway, well, no more. It’s interesting that this is their first paid DLC, so they are locking content behind another paywall, which is what it is. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing. I’m just saying it is what it is. So don’t expect to pay the base price of the game and get all of the updates for free forever. That’s not going to happen. (0:25:22) Kelly: Which I think is just… (0:25:24) Kelly: Yes. (0:25:34) Kelly: I just think it’s a little wild to go from free to play to the base game is free and then the DLC is also the same price as like a game. (0:25:36) Al: It’s not Stardew Valley. (0:25:41) Al: Well, that’s the thing. If you want to now play everything that will be available on the 5th of December, it’s gone from zero to $70. Yes, you say there’s going to be more free content updates, but you know there’s going to be more paid DLC as well. (0:26:01) Kelly: Oh, and like you said, there’s transactions in the game probably too, right? (0:26:04) Al: Yep, yep, yep. So I never outright bought it. (0:26:06) Kelly: Do you have early access or no? (0:26:11) Al: Although I will now be buying it because I was waiting for it to be free before I got it on Switch. But I did have it on Game Pass for a while, and I was playing it on that. (0:26:14) Kelly: Well… (0:26:16) Kelly: Oh, uh, okay. (0:26:25) Al: The thing that I’m frustrated with free to play is not that I have to pay for the game. (0:26:28) Al: I’m fine with paying for the game. What I’m frustrated is I now have to decide what I’m playing it on. When it’s free to play, it would mean I could have it on everything and choose depending on how I’m feeling on the day or how they play on different platforms. (0:26:29) Kelly: - Yeah. (0:26:41) Al: Whereas now I need to go, or no, I need to decide do I want to on Switch or do I want to on Steam Deck. (0:26:45) Kelly: Mm-hmm That’s fair I just I think it’s just I’m mostly annoyed about being told the whole time that it’s gonna be free to play and then Getting the rug pulled out from under you a month before (0:26:46) Al: I think I’m going to do it. (0:26:54) Al: It’s bizarre. Never make these decisions upfront. Yeah. Wild. Never say, “Oh, next year when release is good.” Just don’t do it. It’s pointless. It is. I mean, it doesn’t feel like it should be that big a promise for, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world. (0:27:05) Kelly: It’s a big promise to make. (0:27:07) Kelly: No, no, no, no, it shouldn’t. (0:27:12) Kelly: I think that’s another point that I was trying not to bring up is like, come on, like of all people Do you really need to be charging this much? (0:27:21) Al: Yeah, I suspect. What I suspect is they didn’t expect it to be as popular as it has been and people to like it as much. Like, this is a good game, right? This isn’t one of these, like, “Oh, they’ve just thrown some money at someone and got a really rubbish game based on a film,” right? This is a really good game, and if you like Disney characters, (0:27:42) Al: this is a great game to play because there’s so much lore and you get to, like, be friends with the characters that you like in the games. It’s really good fun. (0:27:51) Al: And the farming is good. It’s not their best, but it’s good. It’s a good game. That’s part of the problem is I think they were probably expecting it to be a standard free to play game. The people who made those decisions, right? We’re expecting it to be like, Oh, (0:28:05) Al: this isn’t a game we’re going to manage to convince people to pay for. Oh wait, no people like the game. Oh, well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna charge people in, you know. (0:28:12) Kelly: And I think back to your point, like, I’m not… I mean, obviously I grew up on Disney, whatever. (0:28:19) Kelly: I’m not the biggest Disney person. I still wanted to play the game. Like, it looked like a good game. (0:28:24) Al: It is. It is a good farming game. It is a good cottagecore game. (0:28:26) Kelly: But I think now, like, someone like me, I’m not gonna play this game, to be quite honest. (0:28:31) Al: Yeah. (0:28:34) Kelly: Because I’m not gonna pay, whatever, 40 bucks at the minimum. (0:28:38) Kelly: I mean, to be honest, I’m mostly playing indie games, so like… (0:28:42) Kelly: He paying $40 is like, I really wanted to play this game. (0:28:42) Al: Yes, it’s cheap compared to some games, but… (0:28:45) Kelly: Yes. But by my standards, that’s a triple-A game. (0:28:52) Kelly: Literally. (0:28:53) Al: You could buy Stardew four times for that price. (0:28:55) Kelly: Literally. (0:28:59) Al: You could buy Stardew on all your consoles if you wanted, and you probably already have. (0:29:06) Al: Last couple of things, the Cozy Edition, as we mentioned, that’s the… (0:29:12) Al: physical edition. (0:29:13) Al: I do not know why they’re calling it this, it is a stupid name, but whatever. (0:29:17) Al: It has been delayed until the 10th of November, except the Switch version in North America. (0:29:25) Al: All the other versions have been delayed. (0:29:26) Kelly: How lucky. (0:29:29) Al: It’s such a weird… (0:29:30) Al: I mean, first of all, who’s buying this game physically? (0:29:33) Al: That is a weird decision to make. (0:29:35) Al: I don’t… (0:29:35) Kelly: I could see if it was released closer to Christmas or something. (0:29:36) Al: Why are you… yeah, okay, I guess that’s a good point. (0:29:39) Kelly: Like, does anything come with it? (0:29:41) Kelly: No, no, I mean like physical. (0:29:42) Al: Yeah, you do get a few cosmetics extra with it, but that’s all. (0:29:47) Al: Oh, no. (0:29:47) Kelly: No, then no. (0:29:49) Al: No, no, it’s just a case with the game and a code that gives you some extra cosmetics, (0:29:49) Kelly: Oh, not even… yeah, no, no, no. (0:29:58) Al: that’s it. (0:30:00) Al: I think, yeah, you’re probably right though, that’s exactly it. (0:30:03) Al: It’s because people will buy a game for people physically, right? (0:30:06) Kelly: Yeah. (0:30:06) Kelly: I was about to say, “Your grandma can buy a friend.” (0:30:07) Al: That’s why they always do that, because then your grandmother can walk into a shop and buy a game for you. (0:30:12) Al: Oh, they like Disney. (0:30:14) Al: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? (0:30:14) Kelly: Exactly. (0:30:16) Kelly: Oh, Disney characters? (0:30:17) Kelly: This is perfect. (0:30:20) Al: Don’t buy this game physically. (0:30:23) Al: It’s weird decision to make. (0:30:24) Al: I mean, do what you want. (0:30:26) Al: I’m not. Anyway, and I guess the final point to say is that Micah has finally been vindicated because he bought the game not knowing it was going to be free to play. (0:30:35) Al: And turns out it’s not going to be free to play. (0:30:36) Kelly: Oh, really? (0:30:40) Al: So he gets the last laugh. (0:30:43) Al: I think. Yeah, he didn’t. (0:30:45) Al: It was really funny because we were I can’t remember when it was. (0:30:47) Al: But the first episode that I had him on after the game came out, (0:30:52) Al: we were talking about how he was playing it and then how he bought it. (0:30:54) Al: And then I’d mentioned that it was going to be free to play. (0:30:57) Al: And he was like, wait, what? (0:30:58) Al: It was very funny. (0:31:01) Al: I think he bought the Ultimate Founders Edition as well. (0:31:02) Kelly: Well, it seems like he was gonna pay the money no matter what, so… (0:31:03) Al: So that’s like he paid the seventy dollars. (0:31:06) Al: Well, yeah, that’s true. (0:31:08) Kelly: You know, I feel like in that instance, it doesn’t matter if it was free to play or not. (0:31:13) Al: That’s true, that’s true. (0:31:14) Al: I think that’s everything about that. Wow, we just spent 15 minutes talking about that. (0:31:21) Al: Cool, so there you go. 5th of December, that’s the important thing. If you want any of the special stuff that comes with only early access, go get that as soon as you can. If you don’t, (0:31:34) Al: then don’t. If you’re not going to buy this game, I’m sorry. There we go. (0:31:39) Al: Speaking of games coming out with less controversy. (0:31:42) Al: Spirit tea. So this is the farming game slash Spirited away type game where you are running a tea Once ago tea. Yeah. Yes And Yeah, I kick started it when I came out because I’m I thought I I actually have access to the game already I know right (0:31:55) Kelly: It’s like a tea house, bath shop. (0:31:58) Kelly: It looks so cute. (0:31:59) Kelly: I wanna get this. (0:32:01) Kelly: This is, I’m definitely getting. (0:32:08) Kelly: Oh my god. (0:32:12) Al: So, yeah, I kick started the game looking forward to playing it it is the is finally releasing on the 13th of November So if you have been looking forward to running your own little tea house tea shop wherever you want to call it with a bath house and Play with some spirits. I don’t I don’t know the right words to use with this game yet. Go go get it It’s mostly one guy who’s been developing it for a bunch of years. He’s working with a publisher But yeah, if you like game– (0:32:42) Al: games that are as indie as they come, go get it. (0:32:47) Al: Yeah, yeah, it’s not just your standard. (0:32:47) Kelly: It looks like a nice little spin on the farming game. (0:32:55) Al: Go plant some turnips and then you get better crops. (0:32:58) Kelly: Yeah. (0:32:59) Al: Lens Island have updated their roadmap, (0:33:04) Al: so they have said that their 1.0 is coming out in July 2024. (0:33:09) Al: I think this is the first official date we got from them. (0:33:12) Al: We had got some– they’d originally wanted to release it this year, (0:33:16) Al: and then at some point they’d said it would be next year. (0:33:20) Kelly: That’s nice to get a solid time actually. It always is. You’re talking to the person waiting for Silksong here, I know. (0:33:23) Al: It’s dangerous, but yeah, nice. So I look forward to Lens Island coming out in November of next year. (0:33:36) Al: They’ve also said there are going to be two more updates this year. One in November, (0:33:47) Al: which, oh look, it’s November now, and one in December, and then there’ll be a final. (0:33:53) Al: Major update before the final release in March of next year, and then the final release in July of next year. So if you are waiting for that one point of release of Lens Island, (0:34:06) Al: that’s when you’re going for it. I actually own this game as well, and I haven’t played it. (0:34:11) Al: It’s quite combat focused this game, and when I first got it when it first entered Early Access, (0:34:22) Al: because I kickstarted that. (0:34:23) Al: I need to stop kickstarting things. (0:34:26) Al: I kickstart all the farming games. (0:34:28) Kelly: You just want to be hip and say, “I was here first.” [laughs] (0:34:29) Al: It’s a sickness, Kelly. (0:34:32) Al: Yeah, I know, right? (0:34:38) Al: They didn’t have controller support at that point. (0:34:41) Al: And of course, I was playing it on my Steam Deck, so it was not fun to play with. (0:34:46) Al: So I spent like five minutes and went, nope, not doing this. (0:34:48) Al: I’m waiting for controller support. (0:34:48) Kelly: Wait, if it didn’t have– (0:34:51) Kelly: how does that work, then? (0:34:53) Al: I think you can map any button or any touchpad or anything to any standard PC controls. (0:35:03) Al: So you can say, if I press this button, (0:35:06) Al: I press this keyboard button or I press this mouse button or I do this gesture or there’s loads of clever things you can do, and it works really well for a lot of things, but it wasn’t working for this. (0:35:17) Kelly: That’s very fair. (0:35:18) Al: I was like, I need to wait for official controller support for this one. (0:35:19) Kelly: I do think it’s funny that the release date on Steam is November 26, 2021. (0:35:22) Al: So that’s what I did. (0:35:28) Kelly: ‘Cause it’s 2023? (0:35:28) Al: Why is that date funny? (0:35:31) Al: OK, well, that was the early access release date. (0:35:32) Kelly: I know, I know, but I’m just saying it’s funny to like sit here and look at the news about, you know, it getting released next year. (0:35:35) Al: OK. (0:35:37) Al: Yes, yes. (0:35:42) Al: Moonstone Island are I think I think you and Kevin talked about the DLC for that last week, they’ve announced that there is a free update coming with the DLC as well, which should be out now. (0:35:57) Al: So it includes an expansion to the green. (0:35:58) Al: House closing old mine holes. (0:36:01) Al: I don’t know what that means. (0:36:03) Al: Who knows? (0:36:03) Kelly: Umm, okay. (0:36:06) Kelly: I’m assuming monsters come out of the mine holes, maybe? (0:36:10) Al: I think it’s a creature collection game. (0:36:10) Kelly: I don’t know. (0:36:12) Kelly: Stop the children from falling down the mines. (0:36:13) Al: It’s a creature. (0:36:15) Al: Yeah, we do. We don’t want that. (0:36:18) Al: Inventory manage improvements and adjustable day length are the big things that they were highlighting. There’s I mean, the patch notes are much more detailed. I’m not going through them. (0:36:28) Al: There’s a lot of stuff. I’ll link it in the show notes. (0:36:31) Al: Go look at that if you care about it. (0:36:32) Al: Yeah. Yeah. (0:36:32) Kelly: Yeah, this is the one it had a ton of updates last week too or two weeks ago Okay, that makes sense, but it seems like they’re really working to you know update any of these little issues (0:36:37) Al: I think most of it was like bug fixing and stuff. (0:36:39) Al: This is the first kind of like content update, I think. (0:36:42) Al: Content and feature update. (0:36:43) Al: So this is. Yeah, it’s. (0:36:45) Al: Yes. Yes, they are. (0:36:51) Al: This is one of those ones that I probably do want to play at some point, but. (0:36:55) Kelly: It looks really cute, too. It really does. I would like to play this. (0:36:55) Al: It does. It does. (0:36:58) Kelly: I mean, me too. I’m a sucker for collection in general. (0:36:58) Al: It’s also creature collection, and I’m a sucker for creature collection. (0:37:01) Al: Well, yes, that too. That too. (0:37:07) Al: That too. (0:37:08) Al: Yeah. Stardew Valley. (0:37:12) Al: Concerned Ape is continuing to just trickle things out. (0:37:15) Kelly: He’s been just dropping things. Yeah, like he it’s like it’s making me so annoyed because I’m like I don’t want to play stardew. I like I always do I do I’m actively spending my life fighting the urge to play stardew valley [laugh] (0:37:17) Al: I know. (0:37:18) Al: No, you do. You do, though. You do. (0:37:25) Al: You don’t lie. You want to play. (0:37:28) Al: What I love is like some of them are like, “here’s the most tiny little thing like this one, which is just a screenshot of wild horseradish juice.” (0:37:42) Kelly: Yeah. (0:37:42) Al: And my reaction was, “Oh, is that not already in the game? Okay!” (0:37:43) Kelly: I literally when I looked at it I was like oh yeah you can’t do anything with horseradish can you? (0:37:51) Al: So some of them are like this tiny thing where it’s just like, “Oh yeah, the update’s gonna have horseradish juice!” (0:37:58) Al: And then there was the one a few weeks ago which was like, “Here’s just like detailed ten bullet points of what’s coming in the update.” (0:38:04) Al: And you’re like, “Oh, okay!” (0:38:05) Kelly: Yep, listen, I would take every single one of these, I’m like, cool, awesome, great. (0:38:12) Kelly: But yeah, no, I saw this one and I was like, oh, another thing for me to micromanage. (0:38:18) Al: ALICE (KEEPER) Kelly, did you ever play any of the 1.5 update stuff? So that’s Ginger Island and stuff like that. (0:38:24) Kelly: Yes, so I started with actually my first Switch game. (0:38:26) Al: ALICE (KEEPER) I mean, I think it was for a lot of people. (0:38:28) Kelly: Yes, um… (0:38:32) Kelly: But I got my Switch a year later, so I was a year behind everybody. (0:38:33) Al: ALICE It came out nice and early in 2017 and yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. That’s all right, (0:38:39) Kelly: But I played it then, yes, and then I played it two years ago. (0:38:41) Al: so were the updates. (0:38:45) Al: Yeah. (0:38:45) Kelly: Yes, so Ginger Island had come out, which was fun because that wasn’t in my initial playthrough. (0:38:47) Al: Yeah. (0:38:49) Al: Yeah. (0:38:50) Al: I’m not sure. (0:38:51) Kelly: So that was really fun to go out. (0:38:54) Kelly: I feel like that really opened up a whole new part of the game and like extended it nicely. (0:38:57) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:39:06) Al: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, that’s what he’s doing, right? Like, just keep playing this game, please. (0:39:09) Kelly: Yeah. But I mean, he does it in such a good way. Like people would play this game even if he didn’t go out there and release, you know, updates to it. People would be replaying it it constantly anyway yep (0:39:12) Al: Here’s more stuff. I know. (0:39:21) Al: and people would pay for the updates and he just gives them out for free. (0:39:24) Kelly: yep what a good guy yes yes but I mean we might have talked about a game a few minutes ago that might have been doing a different thing no but I fully agree with your point you know it’s like (0:39:26) Al: I mean, he is a millionaire, so you know, like it’s easier to be a good guy when you’re a millionaire. But yes, it is. (0:39:38) Al: Absolutely. No, I don’t. Yep, I don’t. I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m not not trying to take it away from him. You’re absolutely right. (0:39:51) Al: I haven’t played the 1.5 stuff with Ginger Island and stuff like that. So I need to, (0:39:54) Kelly: Oh really? Okay. (0:39:56) Kelly: That might be the best, because especially it seems like he is adding quite a few things, so why not wait? (0:39:57) Al: it’s on my list of like, I really need to do this. So I’m trying to decide maybe I just wait for 1.6 to come out and do it all at the same time. (0:40:06) Al: Yeah, yeah, and I’m going to have to cover that. (0:40:11) Kelly: I will say there is one thing in Ginger Island, there’s like one thing that you really have to like hope for the luck of finding. (0:40:20) Kelly: So that can be a little frustrating, but I think if you kind of… (0:40:24) Kelly: I think the issue is more so when you don’t leave enough stuff to do at home to. (0:40:29) Kelly: And you kind of save Ginger Island for the very end and then you’re like, “Ugh, where is this thing? Come on, show me your…” (0:40:36) Kelly: Like, because it’s like one of those things where you can only collect a few things a day of it. (0:40:39) Kelly: Oh, I always do a new save. (0:40:39) Al: And then I need to make the decision of do I do a new save or do I continue my existing save. (0:40:45) Kelly: I know I should probably go back, but I love a restart. (0:40:49) Kelly: Like, I’ve got like five different room worlds because I just like… (0:40:52) Al: So mostly I have like one that I have done most of the things in, and then I have like a bunch of others that are like random challenges and a random multiplayer one. (0:40:52) Kelly: Could I go back and keep– (0:40:54) Kelly: I’m playing them sure. (0:41:12) Al: See I’m the opposite, I’m like I really should do a new one and see how it changes things because obviously it’s not. You don’t expedite. I need to do both realistically, right? Because it changes things. Exactly. Yeah. (0:41:16) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:41:18) Kelly: It’s like you get to see how you strategize and how you handle things differently and like, you know Going back in with like new knowledge and like all that stuff Like like this this the one I did two years ago, I have notes I take notes when I play this game So I have like field guides I’m like, you know the best things to do with this and each season and what you should pickle and what you should Kagan like blah blah blah like what Fisher what’s Oh Yeah Oh, no, I I love a (0:41:32) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:41:46) Al: Yeah, yeah. Oh, see, I don’t pickle and keg because I just can’t be bothered. I just go, (0:41:54) Al: what is the most expensive crop? Like the most for selling. And I just go with that. (0:41:59) Al: Like, I’m just like, I do like mayo and cheese and stuff like that. But I’m like, I don’t, (0:42:04) Al: I can’t be bothered with like putting my crops and these other things and waiting. No, I just sell. Like, I know you can make more money, but I don’t, I don’t want to do that. (0:42:12) Kelly: I love a good micromanage. It’s not even about the money because I’m a third point I don’t need more money. It’s literally just about me having tasks to do. But yeah, no, I’m like, I… At certain points I was like, okay, so if I place this many kegs in the basement, can I still access them if I walk around this way? (0:42:31) Al: Yes, what’s the optimum strategy? I think the problem is that they figured it out. There is a right answer to that in everything. (0:42:43) Kelly: Yes, which I don’t, I don’t want to sound like I’m one of those people who are doing things to the T perfect, like gotta have every second count. (0:42:54) Kelly: Like I definitely do things in my own little stupid way. (0:42:58) Al: Yeah. Yeah. I also quite like trying different things. So there was one quite early on with the podcast where me and Rachelle were trying to see how much money we could make just from mining. It was good fun. It was good fun. Yeah. Yeah. (0:42:59) Kelly: But there are certain things that I try to make sure I’m doing them correctly, I quote unquote correctly. (0:43:07) Kelly: So that I can get money and stuff from them, especially early game. (0:43:10) Kelly: Once you get to a certain point, it’s like, oh my God, do I need money? (0:43:20) Kelly: that’s a that’s a fun challenge I think those are like fun ways to like how can I do this how can I do this differently oh yeah like I’m a I’m I do this in every like game essentially but I love fishing for So I’m always like a sucker for that, but I feel like (0:43:28) Al: Yeah, exactly. And it’s like, you can actually make a lot of money that way. (0:43:32) Al: And it’s just fun to try the different ways of doing that because (0:43:50) Kelly: My last one I tried to like avoid that more so but It’s always fun to just try different ways do different things (0:43:54) Al: Fair enough. (0:43:56) Al: I also saw someone do a challenge which was like you can’t leave the farm and that was quite interesting. (0:44:06) Al: So they didn’t get a lot of seeds is part of the point, right? (0:44:11) Al: So obviously you get them from foraging, you can get seeds just from foraging. (0:44:15) Al: But yeah, a lot of it was just having to like sell the things you find around the farm. (0:44:21) Al: They used the four carner’s farm. (0:44:22) Kelly: No chickens? (0:44:25) Al: They used the four carner’s farm, so you get a little bit of everything. (0:44:29) Kelly: uh okay okay but like no interactions with people unless they like literally come to visit you that’s crazy but I feel like you know that’s like the it’s like nose locking yourself into stardew it’s fun yeah but stardew yay (0:44:35) Al: Yep. Yeah. (0:44:38) Al: Exactly, exactly, exactly. Lots of different ways to do it. (0:44:47) Al: So yeah, wild horseradish juice. (0:44:49) Al: I will probably never make it. (0:44:52) Kelly: I i will say who is drinking this I love horseradish I love spiciness I love (0:44:53) Al: Yeah. But just pure horseradish juice. (0:44:59) Kelly: bloody marys I love burning my sinuses I would never listen there’s been times in my life where my sinuses have been really bad and somebody was like hey if you put apple cider vinegar up your nose it’ll help and i’ve done that this sounds wild I would never do this I have never heard of horseradish as being described as sweet (0:45:05) Al: No! (0:45:10) Al: It’s description is a sweet nutritious beverage. (0:45:23) Al: I think there’s lots of sugar in that. (0:45:25) Kelly: Yeah, it has to be like really pickled or whatever. (0:45:29) Kelly: That’s crazy. (0:45:33) Al: The final news is we have a new game announced. We don’t have a lot about it. It’s called Echoes of the Plum Grove and it is coming to Kickstarter soon and its little tagline is “Build a thriving community across generations in this cosy historical farm simulation”. (0:45:51) Kelly: I think that’s pretty cute, like that’s a different idea because I feel like you know in a lot of these you can have a kid or something or a family but it doesn’t really go anywhere. (0:45:58) Kelly: Like I feel like this is very much so not how I play The Sims but how a lot of people play The Sims where they’ll make generational things and like the generations start to interact with each other and it’s like really interesting, it’s a very long-term way of doing it. (0:46:08) Al: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A few games have kind of done a little bit of this, like, I think the new Harvest Moon does it where you can grow. You still stay as your same character, though. (0:46:29) Al: But there was… Oh, what was the… A Wonderful Life did this as well, didn’t it? You can play as your child at a certain point, I think. (0:46:39) Al: So yeah, there is apparently a lot more information on Steam that I didn’t notice until now. (0:46:43) Kelly: I did have to go open the Steam page because the Kickstarter basically had nothing on it. (0:46:44) Al: I will link that in the show notes. (0:46:47) Al: Yes, well, that’s the thing, that’s why I didn’t think we had a huge amount, but it is apparently on Steam. (0:46:53) Al: Well, the page is up on Steam, and it says it’s coming out in 2024, but I suspect (0:46:59) Kelly: I would also. I like his little cute like

Kev and Kelly do a second harvest of Graveyard Keeper Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:17: What Have We Been Up To 00:06:11: News 00:34:56: Graveyard Keeper 01:14:29: Outro Links Coral Island 1.0 Moonlight in Garland Early Access Sun Haven 1.3 Update Fabledom Fairytales & Community Update Moonstone Island Eerie Items DLC Lonesome Village Physical Edition Garden Story Translation Update Fantastic Haven Graveyard Keeper Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:32) Kevin: this is kelly ween this is kelly ween kelly ween kelly ween and in this show uh we talk about games that are filled with cottage gore yeah hi everyone welcome to the harvest season um with me today is kelly i’m kevin she’s actually gonna be here for well spoilers but then she’s gonna be on next week too she were on last week I bring it up because last year you were on for Halloween we did Cult of the Land. (0:00:47) Kelly: Hey. (0:00:57) Kelly: Oh, I forgot about that. (0:01:02) Kevin: And so, yeah, so, well, that’s exactly right. (0:01:03) Kelly: Is this just like my thing? (0:01:07) Kevin: Um, yeah, you’re Kelly our pumpkin queen. (0:01:10) Kevin: So here we are. (0:01:11) Kevin: Um, she’s all about this stuff. (0:01:14) Kevin: And so we are here today to talk about graveyard keeper, another, um, cottage gore game, um, technically this is a second harvest episode. (0:01:25) Kevin: Uh, Raschelle covered it way back. (0:01:28) Kevin: Like the first Halloween episode. (0:01:32) Kevin: And so I knew about it for years, but I didn’t get a chance to play it until recently. (0:01:37) Kevin: Um, and Kelly has played it significantly. (0:01:40) Kevin: Um, yeah. (0:01:40) Kelly: I only got out of it though last year. I was very new to it, so… (0:01:44) Kevin: Well, still more than I have. (0:01:49) Kevin: I’ve only played, uh, just a handful, relatively speaking. (0:01:51) Kevin: Um, but yeah, that’s, uh, we will get to that soon enough. (0:01:58) Kevin: Um, but before that, as always. (0:02:02) Kevin: Show notes and links and the transcripts are all available on the website for people to see and look at and on. (0:02:09) Kevin: Ooh, and whatnot. (0:02:11) Kevin: Um, and, uh, before the graveyard keeper will do news as always. (0:02:17) Kevin: And more importantly, what have you been up to Kelly? (0:02:19) Kevin: What have you been playing, watching, doing, yada, yada. (0:02:21) Kelly: Um, playing? I’ve really been slacking. I’ve been playing solitaire in Pokemon Go, which is not… It is, but I just… I get stuck playing it, and like, it’s fun, but I’m also like, I could be playing something better. (0:02:37) Kevin: Yeah, I mean it’s like comfort food sometimes it just it’s simple and I get it Exactly sometimes you just need a mindless game Okay, okay madman okay, I have not watched it. I’m familiar with it. That’s the one with That’s the one like 50s (0:02:37) Kelly: Um… [laughs] (0:02:39) Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, thoughtless. Um… (0:02:50) Kelly: But I just… (0:02:51) Kelly: I rewatched Mad Men, so that I think is more exciting. (0:03:05) Kelly: yeah like 60s advertising, yeah. (0:03:05) Kevin: add agency right (0:03:07) Kevin: 60s okay all right how how mm-hmm how long is it like the whole thing oh wow that’s longer than expected well that’s cool yeah sure (0:03:07) Kelly: uh I was a big fan when it came out. (0:03:12) Kelly: uh it’s like seven seasons I think? yeah seven seasons. (0:03:18) Kelly: yeah when I first ran I jumped ship like I think after season five. (0:03:25) Kelly: uh I mean it’s not the worst last two seasons but they’re not as good. (0:03:32) Kelly: Good. (0:03:34) Kevin: Um, let’s see, uh, well, I’ve last week we covered paleo pines actually kept up with it a good bit after There was a patch that dropped It’s been a big dinosaur for a week for me. I watched Jurassic Park this week again - (0:03:35) Kelly: What about you? What have you been up to? (0:03:52) Kevin: Boy, that movie’s real good good other than that Yesterday I cried that Super Mario wonder it just came out yesterday (0:04:04) Kevin: the newest one for this switch and It’s a good one Um, I’ll plug the rainbow road radio the other show I do with our mutual friend Alex We did our first look at it on that show. We just recorded and that’ll be dropping soon It’s fantastic it’s There’s I’m only a little bit in like on the second world but like every (0:04:23) Kelly: What do you think of it? (0:04:34) Kevin: level feels like it is introducing something new and different and I mean classic Mario is good you know 2d it’s your standard 2d Mario and whatnot so the gameplay is good and it’s just filled with all sorts of fun surprises and delights I’m going to spoil people on probably the best part that I’ve experienced so far there’s this level it’s like the second or third level you can do. (0:05:04) Kevin: There’s a bunch of piranha plants popping out of the pipes and you run and jump past them and whatnot. (0:05:09) Kevin: And then there’s the Wonder Flower which changes the level in different ways or whatnot. (0:05:15) Kevin: So when you touch the Wonder Flower, it starts this musical production and all the piranha plants just start singing. (0:05:23) Kevin: And it’s incredible, you entice everyone to at least look it up. (0:05:29) Kelly: I actually, I saw it on TikTok this morning and I was like, hmm, okay. (0:05:30) Kevin: It’s just so much fun. (0:05:34) Kevin: It’s so, because it just, right? (0:05:37) Kelly: Very much unexpected. (0:05:38) Kelly: I thought it was like somebody made it at first, like, you know, somebody edited it. (0:05:41) Kevin: Yep, it’s so out of the blue. (0:05:42) Kelly: But no, it was real. (0:05:45) Kevin: Yeah, no, it’s good. (0:05:48) Kevin: It’s really funny and yeah, the game just brings smiles to me every level with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns like that. (0:05:56) Kevin: So yeah, Mario Wonder, two thumbs up for me for sure. (0:05:59) Kevin: Like I said, people can go to Rainbow World Radio to hear more in-depth thoughts. (0:06:04) Kevin: But, yeah, that’s mostly what I’ve been up to. (0:06:08) Kevin: And now, with that, let’s hop on over to the news. (0:06:15) Kevin: We have, as always, a handful of, mostly game updates. (0:06:19) Kevin: Yeah, there’s a lot of game updates for some reason right now. (0:06:24) Kevin: So we’re going to start off talking about Coral Island. (0:06:30) Kevin: Okay, the one, okay, this is a big one. (0:06:34) Kevin: For people who may not remember, Coral Island is your standard Stardew-esque, well, I say standard. (0:06:40) Kevin: It’s got all your fixings, your farming, and it’s on an island, hence the name, right? (0:06:46) Kevin: So it has the tropical aesthetic and whatnot. (0:06:51) Kevin: But the big news is the 1.0 version is launching on November 14th, which is exciting. (0:06:58) Kevin: They have a trailer, and it looks expansive. (0:07:05) Kevin: There’s a lot going on. You have your farm, you can go underwater, you can meet mermaids, you can do your romancing, (0:07:12) Kevin: you can do, I think there’s even a race in there somewhere. All that good stuff. (0:07:18) Kevin: It looks very polished and like a 1.0 game. You can also… (0:07:22) Kelly: Yeah, I was going to say, it definitely looks like there’s, it looks a lot different than like the first, you know, clips I saw of it. (0:07:30) Kevin: Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it’s definitely a game now, for a better way of putting it. (0:07:36) Kelly: Yeah. (0:07:37) Kevin: And you can also dress up as a panda or dinosaur, so you know, there’s a lot going on there. You also get your little animal crossing, you can redecorate your house wherever you want. (0:07:49) Kevin: Oh, you can even have a baby in this, that’s wild. Yeah, that is dropping on November 14th, (0:07:58) Kevin: just a couple of weeks and it will be dropping on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5 they’re hoping for a 2024 release for a Switch version. Do you think you’ll try Coral Island or look in its general (0:08:12) Kelly: I think I might. I think it definitely looks really cute. I think it depends on if I’m playing anything, you know, when it comes out. I’m trying so hard not to, like, backlog myself. (0:08:22) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, that’s the hard part right too many games Yeah, no, that’s that’s a good idea I definitely have bought back So I respect that I think you can romance a mermaid so, you know, I’m not that going free I wonder how that’s gonna work. How are they gonna move up the land or vice versa? (0:08:43) Kevin: It’s a two-story floor but the bottom floor is underwater [laugh] (0:08:44) Kelly: just uh living in a two separate homes kind of situation there you go (0:08:52) Kevin: I’m down for that, um, yeah, right now it’s only 25 bucks, oh that’s not bad for this, that’s, that looks like a lot of content for 25 bucks, so, um, get excited. (0:09:06) Kevin: Um, oh, oh yeah, okay, sure, yep, that makes sense, that’s fair. (0:09:07) Kelly: Oh, it does say it’s going to release, I think, at $30, though. (0:09:11) Kelly: There’s a note about the price adjustment. (0:09:14) Kelly: But the diving looks really cool. (0:09:16) Kelly: I played a lot of Dave the Diver over the summer, (0:09:19) Kelly: so I feel like I’m still looking for games where I can go exploring like that. (0:09:19) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good. (0:09:23) Kevin: Yeah, it does look good for like the animation stuff. (0:09:29) Kevin: I’m also a big fan of underwater type games and it looks very expansive down there. (0:09:35) Kevin: So yeah, there’s a post on Steam page with all the updates and everything. You guys can check it out. (0:09:44) Kevin: If you do have early access, it looks like there will be a save reset. (0:09:53) Kevin: So there is that. But, either way, November 14th, I look forward to it. I might actually check it out now. It looks pretty… (0:10:00) Kevin: So, next up we have Moonlight and Garland. (0:10:06) Kevin: I don’t know if this is a game announced, but it’s… (0:10:09) Kevin: Yeah, I guess it is, because they’re announcing their early access October 24th, which will probably already be out by the time people are listening to this. (0:10:18) Kevin: This is… here, let me read their, uh… (0:10:22) Kevin: The elevator pitch, where is it? (0:10:24) Kevin: A cozy open-ended life sim about finding your feet in the big city, decorate your apartment, make new friends, grow too many houseplants, and love your city life. (0:10:33) Kevin: Um, so it… yeah, it’s… it’s city-based, right? So you’re in an apartment, you’re not running a whole farm, but you can grow plants, you can have pets, um, make relationships and whatnot. (0:10:46) Kevin: The art style is… (0:10:48) Kelly: That’s the most realistic farming sim. (0:10:52) Kevin: » [LAUGH] (0:10:54) Kevin: » No, you’re right. (0:10:59) Kevin: » Yeah, yeah, Kelly can. (0:11:00) Kevin: Well, no, you’re in the house now, you’re not in an apartment anymore. (0:11:03) Kelly: No, but definitely, you know, went through that also, like, how do I keep my plans alive in my apartment when there’s no sun? (0:11:04) Kevin: But yeah, you know the feeling. (0:11:12) Kevin: Man, gosh, you’re super right. (0:11:16) Kevin: Boy, there’s a person showing an apartment with a lot of bunnies in their apartment, that seems difficult. (0:11:23) Kevin: You’re gonna have that many bunnies in an apartment. (0:11:26) Kevin: The art style is, it’s 2D pixelated, but it’s not Stardew-esque. (0:11:31) Kevin: It’s a little more cutesy than that, and I don’t know how to best describe it. (0:11:35) Kevin: And all the NPCs are kind of bobbing their head at the same time to some unknown beat, it is cute looking. (0:11:43) Kevin: And it’s only the early access, so I’m sure it’ll grow considerably more. (0:11:51) Kevin: That is, you know. (0:11:52) Kevin: October 23rd? 24th? I’m seeing two different days. (0:11:58) Kelly: I definitely want to follow up on it because just looking at the coming soon photo, it’s like why is there an iguana on the sidewalk? (0:12:06) Kevin: Hahaha! (0:12:06) Kelly: Can I have an iguana? (0:12:07) Kevin: Wait, you havin’ a guana? (0:12:08) Kelly: And then there’s also the bear man. (0:12:10) Kevin: Wait, wait, wait, wait, let me see, which one are you talkin’ about? (0:12:10) Kelly: I’m on the steam page, the early access release. (0:12:14) Kevin: What? (0:12:15) Kevin: Okay, okay, let me see… (0:12:17) Kelly: So in the coming soon photo that says steam early access, October 24th, whatever, wishlist now. (0:12:27) Kevin: Okay, okay. Oh, I’m looking at the wrong page. I would explain it wouldn’t it? Yup. There it is. Okay Yeah, I was looking the wrong page. There is a bear man. Why is there a bear man? (0:12:28) Kelly: There’s a bear man in the iguana, like do I get a pet iguana, do I get pet pigeons? (0:12:37) Kevin: Okay, I Okay, I want to mine a department full of pet iguanas that that I can do they’re pretty low-key There are pigeons. So, you know, definitely, you know, they’re hitting Oh, are they gonna have the the trash bags out on the sidewalk? (0:12:55) Kevin: Are they gonna go all in on the city? (0:12:57) Kevin: I don’t know if garland is a city name. It’s a city in texas. I know that much. (0:13:11) Kelly: Yeah. (laughs) (0:13:28) Kevin: But yeah, coming soon, early access. (0:13:31) Kevin: Next up, the clip side of early access, we got DLC patches, whatever you want to call it, for Sunhaven. (0:13:39) Kevin: This is the magical-esque farm where you do magic, there’s monsters, dragons, etc. (0:13:51) Kevin: It is patch 1.3, which includes new buildings. (0:13:58) Kevin: There are several that don’t look human, one is an angel, just straight up an angel. (0:14:04) Kevin: One guy is blue, he’s a moon attendant, whatever that means. (0:14:11) Kevin: You have to, they will be unlockable at some point, but that’s fascinating, dating non-humans like that. (0:14:20) Kevin: Oh, they will have a couple of other romancibles coming later this year. (0:14:28) Kevin: They will also have new farm structures and buildings. (0:14:32) Kevin: Greenhouses, silos, chicken coops, butterfly gardens, I like that. You don’t see that in farming games. (0:14:38) Kelly: That’s very unique, yeah. (0:14:40) Kevin: That’s cute, I love a butterfly garden. (0:14:44) Kevin: Monocyphoners, glorite siphoners, I don’t know what they are, workshops, and ticket counterfeiters. (0:14:54) Kevin: I don’t know what that means, but you’re counterfeiting. (0:14:57) Kevin: They’re up to crimes. I like that. (0:14:59) Kevin: I want to know why you can do crimes. (0:15:01) Kevin: Tickets for what? (0:15:03) Kevin: I don’t think they’re concert tickets. (0:15:05) Kevin: That’s fascinating. (0:15:07) Kevin: But yeah, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff. (0:15:10) Kelly: A lot of stuff. There’s like a ghost shed kit? I want a ghost shed. (0:15:11) Kevin: What does that mean? (0:15:18) Kevin: Do you keep ghosts in there? (0:15:19) Kelly: You grow them in there, maybe? (0:15:21) Kevin: I don’t… (0:15:23) Kevin: Oh wait, there are variations. (0:15:25) Kevin: variations because there’s pumpkin and mushroom. (0:15:27) Kevin: It looks like a ghost, oh I see it. (0:15:29) Kevin: Yeah, it has the eyes, the windows look like eyes and the glow, okay. (0:15:29) Kelly: Oh! (0:15:31) Kelly: That makes so much more sense because I was like oh mushroom shed. That’s just a shed where you grow mushrooms, you know That’s and then I just took the rest of them like that [laughs] (0:15:33) Kevin: Um, sh*t skins, yeah it does. (0:15:36) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, okay. (0:15:44) Kevin: Um, oh that’s the butterfly, wow those are big butterflies. (0:15:47) Kevin: Um, oh those are fascinating buildings. (0:15:49) Kevin: Um, let’s see, player birthdays. (0:15:53) Kevin: There is the birthday, birthday celebration. (0:15:57) Kevin: There is a huge pinata that you can hit, so I’m already down for this. (0:16:01) Kevin: Um, geez that’s like a full sized lion looking pinata, that’s great. (0:16:06) Kevin: Um, that’s uh, so all that’s included in the patch. (0:16:10) Kevin: Aside from that there will be DLC available. (0:16:13) Kevin: Um, all six different packs, trick or treat, spirit battle, rock and roll, cyber pop, monkey monkey, and dreamy ram. (0:16:22) Kevin: They’re all, they contain different items, packs, outfits, items, whatever. (0:16:27) Kevin: You guys can check the Steam page for details. (0:16:30) Kevin: Uh, for, yeah, there’s more details out there than we talked about, but, uh, yeah, that seems like a hefty patch. That seems like fun. (0:16:38) Kelly: Yeah, there’s a lot in this. This page goes on. (0:16:38) Kevin: Um, uh, yeah, it does. Um… (0:16:41) Kelly: And there’s even a coming soon, so… (0:16:43) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, they’re talking about future. (0:16:47) Kevin: Um, wow, new season of weather. Wow. (0:16:50) Kevin: Gloomy, what’s the difference between rainy and gloomy rain? I don’t know. (0:16:55) Kelly: Um, I think there’s I could I could understand that one (0:16:55) Kevin: But there you go All right, yeah, I guess. Okay, uh See like out here in Georgia. It’s a little more like rain. Not gloomy rain. Gloomy rains like hurricane force rain That’s what I think Wait no, yeah, okay. I get it (0:17:10) Kelly: No, I think gloomy rain is like when it’s kind of cold and like the sky is just dark and grey all day and it’s like just kind of constant. Like you could have nice rain, like you could have sunny rain, you could have like… (0:17:24) Kevin: Yeah, I do enjoy sun showers. (0:17:25) Kelly: It doesn’t have to be gloomy. (0:17:26) Kelly: Just like a normal rain shower isn’t always gloomy. (0:17:27) Kevin: You’re right. (0:17:28) Kevin: Yeah, no, you’re right, okay, um Yeah, so there’s all the whole bunch of stuff you guys can check that out Is that sorry? Yeah, when’s the release? I didn’t it’s it’s Oct they posted it October 20th It is oh, yeah, it’s already out on Steam. Yeah, so Now time this recording which means by the times you guys are listening. It is definitely available. That is again Sun haven (0:17:58) Kevin: Huh? Oh man, I’m just looking at the picture like a big tree man monster. I might have to check this out I like tree monsters. I I haven’t played a magic game in a minute. Well, I mean, well, maybe our keeper gentle notwithstanding Um, but it’s high, you know fantasy magic II I’m down for that. I could use that Yeah, uh, okay speaking of well, I don’t know more updates (0:18:04) Kelly: right? like i’m kind of like- i’m intrigued. i’m definitely very (0:18:17) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:18:18) Kelly: I feel like this is pretty different, yeah. (0:18:28) Kevin: We have so this is The what I refer to as not a city builder but a village builder because it’s medieval villagey themed But you’re helping build the whole village and run everything it is currently in early access and they are dropping a update for it I’m excited for this game myself. I’m gonna wait for the 1.0, but I love the art style. It’s cutesy and goofy (0:18:59) Kevin: and they are dropping all sorts of things in this update including a An encounter with a misunderstood Cyclops who’s very cute. His eye is just a dot His name is Eric one eye you can there will be a witch’s hut a red hooded girl Who’s looking for her grandma’s house? That that’s a speech. I don’t trust that at all. Oh, no, I don’t like that Hemisary gnomes (0:19:26) Kevin: It was seriously rare! (0:19:28) Kevin: And then a fawn with a really big nose and mustache. Oh, I like this guy. (0:19:33) Kevin: There’s a… and a few more. (0:19:36) Kevin: Well, those are fun characters that they’re adding. I love the art style and it looks really fun on these mythical, magical, whatever you want to call them. (0:19:46) Kevin: Cyclops and fawns. Gnomes. They’re fun looking characters. (0:19:48) Kelly: No, yeah, they look they look so cute. It looks very adorable (0:19:49) Kevin: Yeah. (0:19:51) Kevin: Yep. (0:19:53) Kevin: There are, oh gosh, 50 new world events and 30 new objectives. (0:19:58) Kevin: I don’t know what that means, but those are big numbers. (0:20:00) Kevin: Oh, there’s a magic bean. (0:20:03) Kevin: There’s monthly and yearly objectives. (0:20:06) Kevin: Hot weight. Positive and negative events. Oh, oh, they’re, they’re, they’re wild. Okay, I’m down for that. (0:20:15) Kevin: They have, let’s see, new buildings, a laborer guild. Oh, so you can hire better laborers. That’s fun. A bank. (0:20:24) Kevin: Oh, you can tax your villagers at different rates? (0:20:28) Kevin: Oh, that’s awesome. Grand theater? Oh, that’s a nice looking theater. (0:20:34) Kevin: Fisherman’s hut? Fish up stuff? All sorts of quality of life stuff? (0:20:40) Kevin: Well, there’s a lot of graphs in this game and things like that. I’m down for that. (0:20:45) Kevin: Yeah, that’s a lot of stuff coming. Like I said, I’m probably going to wait for 1.0 myself, but I’m glad that it’s coming along nicely. Yeah, that is again fabled. (0:20:57) Kelly: Is there any, is there any real estate or? (0:20:59) Kevin: Go. Oh, it is live. That update is already live as of this recording. (0:21:05) Kevin: So, yay. If anyone is playing the one point or the early access, first of all, (0:21:10) Kevin: somebody tell me if they are because I want to know about it. And it is out already. (0:21:15) Kevin: Um, yeah. All right. Good. Oh man. I’m just trying to fable them. It’s so goofy looking and the. (0:21:23) Kelly: Is there like an overall release date or no? (0:21:33) Kevin: uh not that i’m saying now um I have left here a quick glance um yeah so probably still a hot minute probably sometime in 2024 i’d hope but uh it’s not dead yet so i’ll take that let’s see next up we have uh moonstone island we have dlc for that this is which one’s this one okay all right we so we have dlc come (0:22:11) Kevin: Well, let me get to the details. Yeah, it’s the Halloween update right? That’s the key thing here. Um, (0:22:16) Kelly: I think so, ‘cause it’s for Halloween. (0:22:17) Kevin: We’ve got just a whole bunch of Spooky decors per their website gravestones skeletons a big old pumpkin house um Web’s five types of cobwebs. Oh Oh a rug. That’s just the tongue. That’s clever. I like that. Um, (0:22:38) Kevin: uh So yeah, there. (0:22:41) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:43) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:45) Kelly: I’m sorry, it’s actually not out yet. (0:22:45) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:47) Kelly: It’s not out, which I’m kinda… (0:22:47) Kevin: Um, there are n- some- the- so some of this stuff is DLC, which I’m assuming means purchasable separately, but there will be stuff included for free in the updates on the skeletons and things like that. (0:22:58) Kevin: Um, spirits are free- I don’t know what spirits are in the context of this game, but um, but they’re coming some out. (0:23:05) Kevin: Um, oh wow, I didn’t check- it’s got some good reviews. (0:23:09) Kevin: Um, I’ll have to check that out. (0:23:11) Kevin: Oh wow, what? Oh gosh, I forgot about- I’m remembering the game. (0:23:15) Kevin: There’s- you can fight like robots with a card battling system. (0:23:19) Kevin: They are… (0:23:21) Kevin: Yeah, oh man, oh gosh. (0:23:23) Kelly: These are really cute looking things, these creatures. (0:23:26) Kelly: I, yeah, like, I really like the style of it, yeah. (0:23:26) Kevin: This whole episode’s just me getting excited about games I forgot to get excited about. (0:23:31) Kevin: Um, as if I didn’t have enough already. (0:23:33) Kevin: There are really cute characters- there’s a fishbowl with legs. (0:23:36) Kevin: Um, I like that. (0:23:39) Kevin: that. And then at the end they just. (0:23:41) Kevin: Have a picture of a cat with like a sun hood. I don’t know but um, it’s very cute cat. (0:23:47) Kevin: That is Moonstone Island. That is already out, I believe. Why do we have a date for that? (0:23:52) Kelly: It is a very cute cat. (0:23:54) Kelly: The game is out, it says “NA” for them. (0:23:56) Kevin: Okay, thank you. But it says, while says it’s October 27th. I (0:24:06) Kevin: Couldn’t find that myself. Oh wait. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, October 27th. It’s only $4. (0:24:11) Kevin: Okay, that’s actually not bad at all and 10% off the first week. So there’s 46. (0:24:18) Kevin: Yeah, okay. Oh, it’s a new spirits must be a little monster buddies. That’s what it means. I’m excited. One looks like an apple with a worm through it. They’re just showing silhouettes. I’m just guessing. (0:24:23) Kelly: There you go. (0:24:29) Kevin: And yeah, I don’t know all that. Oh, I might check this out now. It’s a very cute game. (0:24:34) Kevin: Moonstone Island. Um Let’s see Next up we have oh, this isn’t an interesting (0:24:41) Kevin: one because boy, I never thought we’d see this this is Lonesome Village game that I notoriously advocate because the developers are from Mexico. It’s got the cute coyote as you saw puzzles in a tower. They’re coming out the fiscal edition. Pre-orders are live. You can check the show notes for the link. It is not from limited run games actually. A game a site called premium edition games. (0:25:11) Kevin: physical edition which includes all sorts of goodies including oh wow a full-color manual oh that’s exciting Wow a dog tag yeah they do um oh man a manual that’s exciting um yeah it’s great um yeah I I cover this game with Johnny, it was last year or year before, I don’t remember. (0:25:22) Kelly: Dude, the indie games always put so much into like what you get from… (0:25:32) Kelly: I love a manual. (0:25:33) Kelly: A full color manual too, that’s so nice. (0:25:41) Kevin: It’s a fun little game with lots of puzzles, and just very very cute little animal-closing-esque villagers. (0:25:47) Kelly: It looks really cute. The art style kind of reminds me of like Cult of the Lamb, but without the like paper feel. (0:25:47) Kevin: It’s actually funny because in the “story” of the game, so it’s called Lonesome Village because there’s a village and everyone’s kind of been turned to stone or disappeared. (0:26:03) Kevin: And the villains, they’re the people who did it very much look like Cult of the Lamb. (0:26:06) Kelly: Okay. (0:26:07) Kelly: Oh! Oh! It’s a cult! It’s a cult! What is happening here? (0:26:09) Kevin: Yeah. (0:26:12) Kevin: It came out around the time Cult of the Loom. (0:26:14) Kelly: I’m watching the trailer! Oh my god! (0:26:15) Kevin: It looks a lot like Cult of the Loom. (0:26:18) Kevin: The cult from Cult of the Loom. (0:26:20) Kevin: I think we made the joke in the episode. (0:26:22) Kevin: It came out around the same time too. (0:26:25) Kevin: Yep, yep, exactly. Yep. (0:26:26) Kelly: That’s so funny, ‘cause I was thinking it kinda like reminds me of the way they do the animals, like the style of the animals. (0:26:32) Kelly: But now that I’m watching this trailer, it’s like literally… (0:26:32) Kevin: It’s cult, it’s a lot like Cult of the Loom, Cult. (0:26:36) Kelly: That’s so funny. Oh, I gotta play this. (0:26:41) Kevin: Yeah, I have to check it out again. I still have it. (0:26:45) Kevin: It’s been a while. I’m sure they patched it up and done some stuff. (0:26:48) Kevin: ‘Cause I had a few rough edges back then, but I’m curious. (0:26:51) Kevin: I might do another look at it at some point. (0:26:54) Kevin: Because, yeah, props to–but, again, Mexican dev team, so I gotta shout them out. (0:26:59) Kevin: Ogre Pixel, that’s the name. (0:27:02) Kevin: But, yeah, that is a cute little logo of an Ogre–Pixillator Ogre. (0:27:07) Kevin: And again, this is the physical edition release. (0:27:11) Kevin: $40 for the premium edition, which seems to be their only version but includes all sorts of goodies. Um, I When do pre-orders end? I don’t know if I see that but the pre-orders are available now So you can check out the site and get it. Um Alright next up we have Not Garden Galaxy is perfect. We’re heading on the notes. That’s a different game that I was going to cover almost (0:27:42) Kevin: Garden story. That’s the one with the playable grape. That looks a lot like Stardew Valley a lot like It has It’s very cute though the grape that’s playable It is an update that has 11 new languages. Wow, that is a lot of languages I don’t know which ones they are. I just see the It’s out on Steam and switch already this update (0:28:09) Kevin: Very cool. Yeah, I actually don’t know what language is. I don’t know. (0:28:11) Kevin: Let’s see the details. But wow, that’s a big number. Good for them. (0:28:16) Kevin: Always props for making it more available for more people and whatnot. (0:28:19) Kevin: Yep. It is. The grape is very cute. (0:28:20) Kelly: Yeah, that’s always awesome. It really does look like stardew though. It’s cute though (0:28:25) Kevin: Next up, a new game announcement for as far as I can tell. (0:28:31) Kevin: This is called Fantastic Haven, which actually I find really intriguing. (0:28:36) Kevin: It’s the prime… (0:28:40) Kevin: Let me read the– (0:28:41) Kevin: The elevator pitch. (0:28:43) Kevin: So, this is a… (0:28:57) Kevin: Yeah, a Zook cheaper-esque type game, but they’re all magical creatures. (0:29:03) Kevin: Um, so you’re building big pens that look like circular homes more? (0:29:09) Kevin: Um, you alter the land and… (0:29:11) Kevin: It’s full 3D graphics, um, the… I think the actual designs of the creatures are actually quite nice, um… (0:29:18) Kevin: I like animals and critters and… (0:29:21) Kevin: …cheaping them and whatnot, so I’m already pretty interested, um, especially with the spin of… (0:29:26) Kevin: …like, they’re all magical creatures, I don’t see any other animals in here, I see like a griffin, uh… (0:29:31) Kelly: No, I’ve only seen, like, yeah, griffins and some weird frog with, like, horns and stuff. (0:29:31) Kevin: Yup, it’s a bullfrog, you get it? (0:29:36) Kelly: Ah, yes, yes, yes. (0:29:41) Kevin: The color shows a lot more, uh, it looks like you’re even busting some out of, like, cages and, like, carny… (0:29:46) Kevin: …you know, those carnival cages with the wheels, the cars, um… (0:29:51) Kevin: So that’s… that looks very fun, yeah, like I said, a lot of menus, probably, um… (0:29:57) Kevin: …very zookeeper tycoon-esque, um, but with the heavy, uh, magical fantasy paint over it, um… (0:30:06) Kevin: So that is right now the only release date planned is for Q2 of 2024 so it’ll probably be a minute but look forward to it I certainly am those are some fun designs yeah it’s it’s it’s charming enough for me I’m definitely interested um and then lastly okay this one I want to talk about in depth a little more because this one’s affecting me personally uh well actually there’s two me and my neck was night market once again got another patch that one. (0:30:41) Kevin: one point two point one oh whatever the it’s out on switch so you know it’s out on the steam version or whatever um so uh there’s a lot of quality of life stuff you can do with it. (0:30:48) Kevin: I’m not gonna go into the details because I don’t remember them but the other one I want to talk about because we just talked about last week is paleo pines. (0:30:53) Kevin: We just got yup okay so uh one point two point one oh whatever the it’s out on switch so you know it’s out on the steam version or whatever um so uh there’s a lot of quality of life stuff you can do with it. (0:30:54) Kelly: Which I still have to play, but I have not yet. (0:31:11) Kevin: We can change how quickly time passes in the game um oh gosh so one of the after I recorded last week with Spencer and we talked and played I was getting a lot of crashes. (0:31:23) Kevin: They had released a patch previously to fix some of that they said it was like a memory issue um but they were still experiencing it. (0:31:26) Kelly: Mmm. Okay. (0:31:31) Kevin: I felt like the more farther I got in the game the more I was crashed getting crashes uh they addressed some of that. (0:31:37) Kevin: that the game is still not free of crashes because (0:31:41) Kevin: we’ve been probably within an hour after downloading the update the game crashed on me again But it is better in general So they’re definitely aware and working on it at probably top of their list There is Also, there’s a whole list and you can check the show notes for them. I’m trying to look at which ones that are Stand out to me. Oh, there’s a cooking pot (0:31:46) Kelly: Oh, God. (0:32:07) Kevin: But it was weird because it was at some other guy’s house you have to go all the way to this other (0:32:12) Kevin: cook stuff but now you can buy one for your own ranch so that’s great oh here’s a fun one um so you can ride your dinosaurs because of course you can but the thing was whenever you got off of them they would just run away from you at max speed it was whole it was wild you could like try to stop them but um clearly not intended they have addressed that and and this definitely was an update needed and and it works um they will no longer run away from you when you get off of them (0:32:42) Kevin: um yes well luckily I think it was only in the ranch like your home base when it happened they wouldn’t leave you when you’re out in the wild oh my god that would be the worst yes but it’s still a pain because your character is a lot slower than the dinosaur so yeah yeah it’s just a pain having to go across the ranch to find them I mean it’s a pretty big ranch too um (0:32:44) Kelly: feeling it’s like okay nice I can I can get to the place I’m going to but once you’re there you’re stuck there now (0:32:56) Kelly: Oh, okay, okay, I was picturing like you, yeah, like you in the middle of like some field or something. (0:33:12) Kevin: uh there’s all sorts oh horse lock so there was a uh resource called forestwood that was needed for a lot of things it was pretty rare they increased the respawn on that that’s great um they did some ui improvements which were nice uh um lots of other things some oh there was a storage glitch spencer talked about think they fixed that um yeah just sort lots of little things (0:33:42) Kevin: because there were lots of little things that needed fixing um like I said still not 100 percent yeah yeah there is um where is it do they not have it um so there there is I read there is one glitch that they haven’t addressed yet um they know it’s an issue but for some reason at some point and it’s happened to me your game will reset to the first day of the game because there’s you know calendar like most farm. (0:34:12) Kevin: games and whatnot like you’ll keep all your stuff but somehow the calendar will just have reset to the very first game or very first day of the year which is wild um luckily I was able to get around that if you encounter it you can just reload an old save and it’s fine but um that was the wild glitch to see um but yeah that was I’m glad that came out because that addressed a lot of the little nitpicks Spencer and I had with the game and I’m sure (0:34:42) Kevin: they’re still working hard on that so good for you paleopines that update again is out already for switch and probably the other versions whatever versions it’s on all right so that was uh yeah the hearty helping of news and things but that’s now we’re doing that let’s talk about grave graveyard keeper yeah what’s what’s the tagline the most inaccurate medieval simulator isn’t that (0:35:09) Kelly: Something like that. I know inaccurate is involved of [laugh] (0:35:14) Kevin: Hold on let me look at it. Um the most inaccurate cemetery simulation game. Okay. Yeah, I think that’s what it is Okay Well Yeah, so again, um It and this game’s been up for years at this point. Um, I’ll covered it years ago Yeah. Yeah, there you go. That’s cute (0:35:24) Kelly: Oh, the most inaccurate medieval, yeah, cemetery sim of the year. (0:35:36) Kelly: Uh, they had their five year anniversary actually in August. (0:35:42) Kevin: There’s a bunch of DLC I bought the (0:35:44) Kevin: version with all the DLC I don’t know what the base game hazard does not have. (0:35:48) Kevin: I’ve only played it for an afternoon or two. I don’t think I’ve reached any of the DLC portions yet probably. (0:35:49) Kelly: Oh, did you? Okay. (0:35:57) Kevin: They’re all parody names there’s a stranger sins there’s breaking something (0:35:57) Kelly: Um, I’m trying to remember. I know the DLC… (0:35:59) Kelly: Yes, because there’s better save soul. (0:36:04) Kelly: Um, I did look into getting them, but I didn’t- I didn’t, because I think it was like- (0:36:11) Kelly: I feel like there’s- there’s so much going on in this game already. (0:36:14) Kevin: Even if it is, there’s a lot going on. (0:36:14) Kelly: Uh, that I was very happy to not have the added, um, things that like go along with the better save soul one. I heard that gets a lot of pretty tedious. (0:36:24) Kevin: Yeah, heh heh heh. (0:36:25) Kevin: Better save solo, that’s good. (0:36:29) Kevin: I don’t think that one’s out on Switch. (0:36:31) Kevin: That’s it? I don’t know if that one’s out on Switch. (0:36:32) Kelly: Oh, are you playing on Switch? I am not gonna lie. I have not. (0:36:36) Kelly: I’ve been so bad at playing my Switch this year. (0:36:44) Kevin: But, I mean, that’s fine, like, I know that the Switch port gets black for a good reason. (0:36:55) Kevin: There’s a Switch tax for sure, so I don’t blame you. (0:36:57) Kevin: But hey, at least we can compare notes on that. (0:37:00) Kevin: If you played on Steam, I would guess? (0:37:10) Kevin: Um, but okay, so let’s okay, let’s the elevator pitch Okay, first of all, I didn’t expect that this game’s an isekai That I didn’t expect at all so for people unfamiliar with isekai that is a genre of anime primarily where a character wakes up in a simulated often fantasy type world (0:37:38) Kevin: Sword Art Online and just… (0:37:40) Kevin: …other ones. It’s a whole trope now. (0:37:42) Kevin: Umm… (0:37:43) Kelly: I was gonna say it breaks the, you know, inherited your grandpa’s farm trope though. (0:37:44) Kevin: … (0:37:46) Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. (0:37:48) Kevin: You’re just a guy who gets hit by a car cause he’s looking at his phone. (0:37:52) Kevin: Don’t look at your phone when crossing the streets. (0:37:54) Kevin: It’s dark in the rain, people. (0:37:56) Kevin: It’s not recommended. (0:37:58) Kevin: And he wakes… (0:37:59) Kelly: Poor dude’s just trying to give back to his girlfriend or whatever. (0:38:00) Kevin: …yeah, his love, as he says, and… (0:38:03) Kevin: …he wakes up in a graveyard area and… (0:38:08) Kevin: There’s a talking skull that talks to you. (0:38:10) Kevin: And he says, “Hey, welcome. You’re the graveyard keeper, I guess.” (0:38:13) Kevin: Um, more or less, and sure enough, you’re put in charge of this graveyard in this little medieval village area. (0:38:23) Kevin: And you’re trying to figure out how to get back home while managing the graveyard and all the stuff people are asking you. (0:38:32) Kevin: Because, of course, people are going to ask you to do everything around here. (0:38:35) Kevin: Uh… (0:38:36) Kelly: I mean, what would a game be without everybody asking you to do all these things? (0:38:40) Kevin: Right, right. (0:38:42) Kevin: Um, so, okay, hell, you beat the game, correct? What are your overall impressions? (0:38:50) Kelly: I really liked the game. I thought it was a lot of fun. I think there’s a lot of stuff to do, (0:38:57) Kelly: like it can get a bit overwhelming, but I think, you know, it definitely involves, you know, (0:38:59) Kevin: Boy does it. (0:39:01) Kevin: Oh. Yep. (0:39:04) Kelly: looking things up online. But I will say there is an issue with how intuitive it is. (0:39:08) Kevin: Yep. (0:39:10) Kevin: Yep. (0:39:12) Kelly: I think I could have been further along in my gameplay if I understood some of the (0:39:20) Kelly: panics. A lot better. And I will say on that note, it was not always easy to find the answers on the internet. So that made it even worse. And sometimes if you did find an answer, (0:39:21) Kevin: Yep. Okay, so yeah, so. Mm-hmm. (0:39:31) Kevin: Oh yeah, the double whammy, oh yeah. (0:39:35) Kevin: Yup, it’s wild. (0:39:38) Kelly: it was from like 2018, so something got patched or didn’t work like that anymore. (0:39:46) Kelly: So, that was my biggest issue. (0:39:48) Kelly: Did it stop me from putting in, you know, (0:39:50) Kelly: 90 hours, I think, or whatever into the game? (0:39:55) Kelly: No, but there were definitely moments where I was frustrated. (0:39:59) Kelly: Or, like, again, just like, I was playing the game, I was enjoying myself, (0:40:03) Kelly: but I could have been further along than what I was. (0:40:07) Kevin: Yeah, um, okay. Mm-hmm Okay, yeah for sure they’re just Yeah, absolutely. Um, so for comparison I got the game Thursday I think today’s like Saturday. So two days ago So I’ve only played for and Mario wonder so I didn’t play as much yesterday So I played the game for an afternoon and then some um, I like the game a lot. Um, (0:40:07) Kelly: And not even in, like, a micromanagy, like, you know, whatever kind of way. (0:40:13) Kelly: Like, in, like, a… (0:40:15) Kelly: It would have made more sense. (0:40:26) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:40:37) Kevin: I think it is Almost minecrafty and how open it is and crafting and everything But I fully agree like that’s my biggest criticism there’s a lot that is not intuitive Or explained well Yep, yep, yep, I’m sure (0:40:50) Kelly: you haven’t even gotten or opened a lot of the, you know, different aspects of the game yet at this point, I’m sure, because it really expands. It expands a lot. There is a lot to do. There is so (0:41:03) Kevin: But I can imagine… I mean I see the skill tree. (0:41:07) Kevin: So… I can… I can… she’s… I can… (0:41:12) Kevin: So there’s a skill tree in this game, right? You have to get points to unlock your skills. (0:41:18) Kevin: And you can see how far it goes. And yes, I can see there’s a lot to unlock and do and whatnot. (0:41:24) Kevin: But… I think the skill tree is probably where I can direct my first criticism. (0:41:32) Kevin: Because there’s three types of points, whatever you want to call them. (0:41:37) Kevin: Red, green, and blue, and you need different amounts of each for unlocking each new skill, which lets you craft new things or do new things, whatnot. (0:41:46) Kevin: Um, the red and green work hard to get, but the blue, the blue is killing me because I hit a point where I had like one blue point overall and couldn’t figure out how to get more. (0:41:56) Kelly: You run out of them. (0:41:58) Kevin: Yeah. (0:41:59) Kelly: There’s a certain point where the game just stops you from getting more for a bit. (0:42:02) Kevin: Really? Wow. (0:42:04) Kelly: Not like stops you. (0:42:06) Kelly: There’s definitely a roadblock, I would say. (0:42:11) Kevin: - Yeah, okay. (0:42:14) Kelly: I struggled with that for so long. (0:42:17) Kelly: And then, of course, at a certain point, it’s like, oh. (0:42:20) Kelly: Now, actually, you’re out of red. (0:42:23) Kelly: Or now you’re out of green or whatever. (0:42:25) Kelly: And it’s like, oh, something that I– (0:42:26) Kelly: so I think one of them is done from manual labor, red, I think. (0:42:27) Kevin: yep yep your manufacturing and things yeah red okay oh you don’t get read from them (0:42:34) Kelly: Yeah, so at a certain point, you get helper zombies that you can assign to do things. (0:42:42) Kelly: So you’re no longer getting the red from those things that you would be getting red from. (0:42:47) Kelly: So it definitely makes you have to stop and think and watch everything. (0:42:56) Kevin: Yup, absolutely, um, it’s a very resource-manage-y heavy game and that includes your skill points or whatever you want to call them. (0:43:07) Kevin: That’s fascinating. (0:43:09) Kevin: Like I can see the blue are going to be very scarce. (0:43:11) Kelly: But I think it’s interesting because it does… (0:43:13) Kelly: Sorry, I was gonna say it just it does impact, I feel like, (0:43:18) Kelly: what you’re trying to do in that day. Because if you’re trying to get blue points… (0:43:19) Kevin: Right. Yeah, exactly. (0:43:22) Kevin: The nice thing, one of the nicest things about the game, (0:43:26) Kevin: there’s no real pressure. (0:43:28) Kevin: There’s no seasons or years or whatever. (0:43:31) Kevin: There’s a week. (0:43:32) Kevin: So like in six, seven, I don’t remember how long, how many days, (0:43:36) Kevin: but that’s the worst that you have to wait. (0:43:37) Kelly: It’s seven days Which and I liked I like I really like the fact that there was no pressure on the seasons or When you finished the game even or anything like that. I also liked the Each day is a different person You have to make sure that you’re getting the things you need to have done before that day so you can go and deal with that person (0:43:38) Kevin: Yep. Which go by quickly. (0:43:42) Kevin: Yep. (0:43:57) Kevin: Yep. (0:43:57) Kevin: Yep. (0:44:03) Kevin: Yep, he just gotta wait until… (0:44:03) Kelly: Because there’s definitely some weeks where if you miss that person you’re screwed (0:44:07) Kelly: Yup. And there is something later on in the game, you know, when things have slowed down in certain areas and you’re just like waiting for that one day where you can fast forward. (0:44:10) Kevin: Until that point. (0:44:21) Kelly: Yes, but I do actually want to say on that point, I think this is very interesting because there is no pause button. There’s no space yet. (0:44:21) Kevin: Yeah, sure that makes sense. Yeah, you can fast-forward at any point you should go to sleep and (0:44:32) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, even if you’re in your menus, time goes on. (0:44:37) Kelly: Yeah, you have to literally like go to the exit screen or whatever. Like the main menu page. (0:44:41) Kevin: Yeah Yep Yep, so if you’re looking through your notes here You know hemming and hawing at a menu thinking about where you want to spend your points that happened to me just just today When I was playing I cuz I finally got some blue points today. And so I was just like agonizing over I wanted where I wanted to spend them and before when I got out of the menu Oh, it’s evening already. Cool. The whole day’s [laughter] (0:44:43) Kelly: There’s a certain page that stops time, but the rest of them don’t. (0:44:48) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:45:09) Kelly: Yep. (0:45:11) Kelly: Yep. (0:45:12) Kevin: But they’re the kind of I mean, I don’t know if it was their intent or not But the way to combat that it’s very easy to reroll your did your save like you own there’s no autosave It just saves when you go when you wake up So most of the time you can say you’re pretty much have a safe at the start of the date or start of the day, excuse me, and You can just reload to that and have a plan or save yourself (0:45:23) Kelly: Oh, yes. (0:45:25) Kelly: Yes. (0:45:29) Kelly: I would just quit the game. (0:45:32) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:45:40) Kelly: Oh yeah, no, there was many times where I would either just, you would see like the NPC walking away from their post, and I would have to go and reset the game and then do the day over and make sure I got there early enough. (0:45:47) Kevin: Oh my gosh. (0:45:50) Kevin: Yep. (0:45:52) Kevin: Oh my gosh. (0:45:54) Kevin: That happened to me twice already when I go down and Snake is running away and like, “No, I need to talk to you, Snake.” (0:46:02) Kelly: oh god he’s so annoying he’s so annoying for the skill points though I think it’s like kind of fun like there’s some weird ones you can choose from uh-huh (0:46:05) Kevin: He is. (0:46:08) Kevin: He is. (0:46:11) Kevin: Yeah. (0:46:13) Kevin: Overall, I’m a big fan of the Skilled Trees, umm… (0:46:17) Kevin: Because you can very much pick and choose if you want to focus on certain areas and whatnot. (0:46:23) Kevin: Umm, obviously like… (0:46:25) Kevin: To get green points, that’s the farming stuff, so you do want to invest in some of that stuff. (0:46:30) Kevin: Umm, but like, early on you can really get through a lot of the wood and metalworking stuff. (0:46:37) Kevin: Umm, and again, with almost no pressure on when to do it, umm, it’s… (0:46:42) Kevin: It’s very open and you’re very free to pick and choose as you want. (0:46:46) Kevin: You know, (0:46:47) Kevin: the limitations of how many skill points you actually have notwithstanding. (0:46:52) Kevin: I think it is a clever system. (0:46:54) Kevin: And because you get to see what’s coming ahead, that helps you plan that too. (0:47:00) Kevin: I really like that. (0:47:01) Kelly: Yes, definitely. (0:47:01) Kevin: Um… (0:47:02) Kelly: There was definitely some areas in the skill tree though where I did not understand what, (0:47:09) Kelly: like if you unlocked something, (0:47:12) Kelly: I didn’t understand how to access it afterwards, (0:47:15) Kelly: which then led to me diving down a rabbit hole, (0:47:18) Kelly: trying to figure it out. (0:47:18) Kevin: Yeah, sometimes that’s a little unclear most of the time When you look at the skill tree thing it says okay, you can craft at this bench or that bench or whatever But some are not very clear. Yeah Some aren’t super clear. Yeah But I do agree (0:47:27) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, it definitely is pretty good. (0:47:30) Kelly: It’s pretty good. (0:47:34) Kelly: Can we talk about the main premise of the game, which I think is the most weird and fun part is, you know, collecting your corpses? (0:47:41) Kevin: Yeah, the it’s definitely yeah the differentiator the the the graveyard itself. Yeah, let’s talk about that (0:47:43) Kelly: Because you are, you are quite literally the graveyard keeper. So you get a (0:47:54) Kelly: Annoyed little donkey that delivers corpses to you. (0:47:56) Kevin: I’m red donkey from a leftist stable [laughter] (0:47:57) Kelly: And oh my god, there was so many times where I would hear that bell and just be so far away from home. (0:48:06) Kelly: And just go running because it’s like the second you hear that bell that corpse starts, you know, deteriorating. (0:48:12) Kevin: Yep Yeah, that’s that’s an interesting aspect that the forps is deteriorate and it affects a lot of things And yeah, they’re kind of deliver just at random times. It feels like I didn’t detect any pattern Umm… (0:48:22) Kelly: Yeah. (0:48:23) Kelly: Yes. (0:48:27) Kelly: No, they can definitely be whenever. (0:48:31) Kelly: And they can pile up too. (0:48:34) Kevin: Oh my gosh, I don’t think I’ve had that happen yet, but I could see that happening. (0:48:35) Kelly: Yeah, no, they can definitely pile up. (0:48:43) Kelly: I mean, this game goes in depth. (0:48:48) Kelly: I have freezers for bodies. (0:48:53) Kelly: So, you know, it’s like you are literally treating it like a morgue, like… (0:48:57) Kelly: But I think one of the most fun parts is removing the organs, (0:49:03) Kelly: but also the most hard to understand initially. (0:49:06) Kevin: Right, so yeah, let’s talk about that because as very early on you’re introduced that you have options to do the corpse One you can bury them in your graveyard. It has a prettiness rating you how you decorate it Well, you bury them and whatnot You can even just throw it in the river or cremate them or You can take them into your morgan Do a little bisection, you know see what you can poke around and find in there pull out a skull some blood What? (0:49:36) Kevin: A bit of flesh. (0:49:38) Kevin: It’s fascinating that they gave you this option. (0:49:43) Kevin: There’s… (0:49:44) Kevin: I haven’t gotten too in-depth with the body parts. (0:49:47) Kelly: So, I’ll explain it. It’s a lot. (0:49:51) Kelly: Basically, your corpse, so when you bury a corpse, you want it to be as high rated as possible because it impacts your cemeteries overall like beauty rating, (0:50:05) Kelly: which is a whole different aspect. (0:50:07) Kelly: And that’s a big part of the game because it kind of roadblocks you if you don’t keep up with it. (0:50:11) Kelly: But so you want to make sure you’re removing. (0:50:14) Kelly: If you remove certain organs, it makes your corpses… (0:50:17) Kelly: …that’s how you can remove them. (0:50:19) Kelly: If you remove other organs, it decreases it, and they don’t really tell you at first. (0:50:23) Kelly: You have to unlock skills on the skill tree… (0:50:25) Kelly: …that tell you. (0:50:25) Kevin: Yeah, I mean they tell you like there’s bad organs, but you don’t you can’t tell which ones until you go get that later (0:50:29) Kelly: Yes. Yes. (0:50:34) Kelly: And so you can remove organs, and you can also try to put the organ back. (0:50:38) K

Réecoutez le FG Chic Mix avec Yann Vico du jeudi 14 septembre 2023  1) Pleasure State, Pleasure State, Lee Foss & MK feat. Anabel Englund, МК, Lee Foss, Anabel Englund 2) Deep Zone, Ceybil Jefferies, DJ Spen - Praise Him (Lift Your Hands Up) (DJ Spen Retroactive Extended Remix) 3) Tyrone Lee - Soul N Samba (feat. Michele Chiavarini) [Michele Chiavarini Vocal Mix] 4) Revival, Phebe Edwards, GeO Gospel Choir) - Think (Club Version) 5) DBow - Get Involved (Director's Cut Classic House Mix) 6) Copyright pres One Track Mind ft Lisa Millet - Late At Night 7) Michael Gray, Tatiana Owens - Invincible (Original Mix) 8) Jennifer Hudson, R. Kelly - It's Your World (Terry Hunter Club Mix) 9) Harley & Muscle ft. Dawn Tallman - He Did It (Main Vocal Mix) 10) Mark Knight, Sgt Slick, Beverley Knight - I Wanna Be Your Lover (Extended Mix) 11) Peggy Gou - Starry Night 12) Ron Carroll - A New Day 13) Jody Watley, Roy Ayers - I Love To Love (MAW Mix) 14) James Mac, VALL - The Boy Is Mine feat Rosalie (Club Mix) 

This conversation is so timely + supportive. It's a big ole' exhale that many people need. "It's the fastest way to calm yourself down." - Kelly It isn't often that I meet other humans who have read most of the same books I have and deliver mindfulness and meditation teaching in the same way as I do. In fact, up until recently I hadn't met anyone like this. Until Kelly Ryan came into my life, that is. The conversation that followed was POWERFUL. Kelly Ryan went from a chronically ill, stressed out corporate executive to a calm and centered mindset coach, meditation teacher, energy healer, breathwork facilitator, and transformational speaker. Now she teaches people all over the word how they can step beyond past limitations, overcome anxiety, connect to calm, consciously create their best life, and truly heal thrive on every level! Kelly has inspired thousands of students to step into their own greatness and live their best life. In today's conversation, we discuss meditation, nervous system regulation, healing autoimmune disease, the power of words, screen apnea and what to do about it, and so much more. It was a pleasure and a joy to connect with Kelly. If you resonate with this conversation, leave a review on iTunes and share it with your circle! xo Marie   ps - I love introducing you to companies and products that have helped me to live more intentionally and feel better. Check out TWO of my favourite companies below and feel free to use their discount code for anything you want to try! North Coast Naturals is an independently family-owned business here in Canada. They offer premium supplements with a food-first mentality. All of their products are made and packaged in BC and undergo high stringent quality testing. I personally have been using their daily greens powder, L-glutamine, boosted collagen and hemp hearts. Head to northcoastnaturals.com and use code BARKERPODCAST20 at checkout for a sweet little discount. Be Mushrooms is a west coast Canadian microdose and adaptogen brand serious about helping people with their mental health. I've been using their line of products for the last year and am blown away at the healing I've undergone with the support of these little mushroom capsules. You can check them out at bemushrooms.com and use code MBWELLNESS for 15% at checkout. With so mush love, Marie   Connect with Kelly Ryan: FREE Month of Meditation Membership https://www.anchormeditation.com/freemonth https://www.anchormeditation.com/ https://www.instagram.com/anchormeditation/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/anchormeditation Connect with Marie: https://www.instagram.com/mariebarkerwellness/ https://www.mariebarkerwellness.com/ https://www.mariebarkerwellness.com/contact   30 Day Flow Journal: https://www.mariebarkerwellness.com/shop Free Morning Meditation Audio: https://marie-barker-wellness.mykajabi.com/morningmeditation 13 Downloadable Meditations: https://marie-barker-wellness.mykajabi.com/offers/tRoJJH2o Know Your Flow Program: https://marie-barker-wellness.mykajabi.com/know-your-flow Stress Less + Learn To Meditate Program: https://marie-barker-wellness.mykajabi.com/stress-less-course Join The Be Well Club (workouts, meditation, supplements, support) https://forms.gle/9ZqS9iotf5mEyZRJ8

Mike Isaacson: The earth isn't flat. Everything is going downhill. [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome to another episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast. Today I am joined by Kelly Weill, reporter at The Daily Beast on the fringe ideology beat and author of the book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything. Ms. Weill, thanks so much for coming on the show. Kelly Weill: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Mike: So now when I finished the book, I DM'd you to tell you that you're absolutely brilliant. And the reason why is your intentional approach when it comes to being a conduit of misinformation. You're very careful in how you reference your source material so as not to lead readers to it. Can you talk a little bit about your methodology a bit and how you dealt with your sources? Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. It's weird dealing with somebody like flat earth, which is objectively wrong, right? When you're talking about that subject, you already kind of risk platforming that conspiracy theory as if there's any validity to it. So one thing that I tried to do throughout the course of my reporting and then to replicate as I was writing this book, was not to really engage with flat Earth as though it were a legitimate theory. And I kind of had it easy there. If I were doing something like medical misinformation, I would have probably had to get in the weeds a little bit more. But as far as flat earth goes, I would go to these conferences and when I was interviewing people, I'd be really straightforward. I'd be like, "Hey yo, I'm not I'm not a flat earther. I'm a reporter; I believe in the globe. But let's talk about why you believe this thing." And for me, that was a bit more interesting than the details of what exactly they believed because flat earth is wrong, but I wanted to come to why they bought into a theory that's so wrong. And when we had those conversations about their pathways to belief, that turned out to be a lot more interesting to me than just the zaniness of this theory. Mike: Okay, and we'll get into that soon. I want to talk about some things I learned. So the first thing I learned from your book is that flat earth theory is actually not that old? Like, there were cultures that believed in a flat earth, but there wasn't the sort of pseudoscientific theory to justify it. So, when does the story of the flat earth movement start? Kelly: Yeah, totally. This is a bit of a misconception actually. I know when I was a kid I thought that there was, you know, Columbus thought he might have been sailing off the edge of the world. That's not true at all. We've known for thousands of years that earth was round because you can prove it with some pretty basic math. It's something that we've been able to do long before we could physically observe the shape of the Earth. But where flat earth theory actually comes back in is in England in around 1840. And that's when we have a guy named Samuel Rowbotham. He's a really interesting guy. He was a failed leader of a socialist commune; he had his hands on all kinds of short-lived fringe movements. I had a great time going through, you know, pre-Marxist socialist newspapers to find out what he was up to. But one of his career trajectories that didn't fail had to do with misinformation. He sold fake miracle cures, sort of a proto-Alex Jones. And he started shelling this idea that maybe earth was flat. And that idea was really alluring to certain people in that moment because, around mid-1800s, we're talking about a time when the natural sciences are taking on more and more of a role in the discourse and the importance of things like religion are taking more of a backseat. So when a theory like flat Earth comes out, it allows people to discard huge swathes of science and say, "Oh, I knew it was wrong all along. Oh, the scientists are all in league with each other to keep us in the dark." So as baffling and unscientific as flat earth was, even back then, it really did allow people to affirm their priors, to cast out information they didn't want to believe in, and sort of reshape their beliefs around this new and creative and just wholly counterfactual idea. Mike: It just blew me away that Rowbotham had no predecessors whatsoever, he just kind of built this out of whole cloth, just him in the Bible. So how did flat Earth stick around? Kelly: It stuck around because he had cronies just like any conspiracy influencer we have today. You know, I've just a couple of minutes ago compared Rowbotham to Alex Jones. He had his entourage, the people who might be like Owen Shroyers of the movement, who were even louder and a bit more virulent in their dissemination of these theories. These were the people who– He had a follower named John Hampden who just reminds me so much of one of these guys who goes on YouTube and is like, "Debate me. Debate me." And he would lure actual scientific professionals into these stupid, pointless debates over established science about the shape of the world. But because he was just so tenacious and he wouldn't admit that he had lost a bet about a scientific wager and he would go to jail because he was harassing people about the shape of the world, you know, that emotional appeal, it continued to resonate with people throughout the years. And even though flat earth has ebbed and flowed a little bit in popularity, just the wildness of it, I think ,has always had an appeal for certain people who are looking for it. Mike: So, one thing I was surprised about was that the flat earth movement was rather a latecomer, as far as conspiracy theories go, to the internet. So, what brought the flat earth online? How was it received? Kelly: Yeah, that was really interesting to me, too. Because while I was researching this, I was kind of trawling through OG conspiracy pages online. What's interesting to me actually if I might take a step back here is that conspiracy theories have always been early adopters of a lot of technology. You know, Rowbotham had a friend who was running a printing press, and he was getting his flat earth zines out. There was a flat earth commune in the early 20th century, and they had one of the earliest powerful radio programs that they could broadcast along the way. So when I was looking at early internet conspiracy theories, I did find that conspiracy theorists were some of the first voices online who were really putting out weird information. So I was deep in the trenches looking at Y2K influencers and all that. But there actually, to your point, was sort of a lack of flat earth theory early on in the internet. And I can think of a few reasons for that. For a while, flat earth theory was very tied to the Flat Earth Society, which was shepherded until 2001 by this very elderly couple. They were super literally off the grid. They lived in the desert, and they just were not the type of people to get online. And a lot of their archives actually burned in a house fire. So flat Earth really kind of took a nosedive with their deaths. It came back online when some archivalist started going through those older records of this Flat Earth Society couple. And these people relaunched the Flat Earth Society online as a forum, a discussion place where people could talk. It's interesting to me. I am not completely sold on the idea that the people who relaunched the Flat Earth Society online were genuine. I think there's a reasonable chance that they're kind of fucking around like they thought it was funny. But they did resurface this huge archive of decades and decades of flat earth writings and they put them online. And that became, I think, the basis for a lot of more genuine believers to start going through the back catalog and seeing what flat earthers had been saying for the past 150 years. And eventually, it went from this sort of more moderate discussion on forums to things that could go a lot more viral with the advent of sites like YouTube. Mike: Okay so let's talk about the algorithm. How did flat earth wind up profiting from the YouTube recommendation algorithm? Kelly: Yeah, this was huge. And throughout this book, I wanted to be careful about ascribing flat earth's resurgence to any one thing, you know, any one website or any one algorithm. That said, YouTube has a lot of blood on its hands as far as flat earth goes. Basically, for quite a long time YouTube's algorithm would promote videos that it thought people would want to watch. It actually still does this, but they've done tweaks that hamper flat earth, I'll get to that in a minute. But basically, what people really want to watch, what people really want to click on at two in the morning, is not necessarily factual information. It's not really the “Eat Your Vegetables” kind of video. It's the weird scintillating stuff. If you see a video in your sidebar, a recommended video on YouTube and it says, "Is earth really flat?" Yeah, you're gonna click on that because it's just so weird you have to find out what that video is about. Because those videos performed so well, because they tapped into this curiosity and this weird factor, they started overperforming in the algorithm, and they appear to have been promoted overwhelmingly. So conspiracy YouTubers would realize that, "Hey, I can get a lot of views by having a title that references flat earth.” So from a confluence of people making flat earth videos because they're being cynical, because they knew it would get a lot of views, and people who are actually starting to get earnestly converted from these videos going and putting their genuine beliefs in these new channels, we started seeing this huge swell of flat earth videos and a pretty powerful recommendation algorithm that gave those videos a disproportionate share of traffic. I do want to note that YouTube kind of acknowledged this and changed its algorithm in 2019 specifically so that flat earth would not be such an issue. Mike: One thing you didn't draw a comparison to, or maybe I missed it, and I'm about to regurgitate one of your points, was to multilevel marketing. Like, these YouTubers are not just looking for converts to watch their videos, so that they can get monetized ads or whatever; they want converts to make videos themselves and then reference their videos so that they can get traffic that way. Can you talk a little about the culture of the flat earth movement on YouTube? Kelly: Absolutely. I think the multi-level marketing comparison is such an apt one, and I'm actually kind of mad that I don't make it in the book, because it's relevant. And you bring that up. But literally the first Flat Earth conference I went to, this one flat earth celebrity YouTuber came up to me and she started talking to me. She goes, "Oh, I didn't realize you are a reporter. I was gonna say you should maybe make some videos about flat earth." Because she thought I was there and I was being genuine and... I'm gonna say something really mean. A lot of flat Earthers are kind of like boomer men that you don't want to watch a video of. And I was a 24-year-old woman so I think that was what was going on. [laughs] But to that end, yeah, flat earthers don't just want to preach; they want to convert. And they want to build this community around themselves and around their videos because that's what keeps the theory going. Flat earth in and of itself could just be a set of talking points that you accept, and then you move on with your life. But for a lot of flat earthers, it becomes a way of life. It becomes a community that they build, and frankly, a set of relationships that they cling to because they often have deteriorating relationships with the rest of the world when they convert to this theory. So there's a very strong community basis in flat earth and other conspiracy theories. And I definitely think that flat earth YouTubers are often trying to make more flat earth YouTubers, and they're trying to promote a community that will further promote their videos. Mike: Okay. So another thing I liked about the book was the way you brought human dignity to a lot of the people you talked about (not so much the cult leaders and grifters, but just kind of average people). Can you talk a bit about the people you met during your reporting and some of their backgrounds? Kelly: Absolutely. I mean, there's no one profile for a flat earther. I know I just said a lot of them are kind of boomer guys. And maybe the average flat earther is a little bit older. But there's a surprising diversity in how people come to flat earth. When I was talking to people, I was trying to get a sense of, you know, “what were their priors?” Initially at the first flat earth conference, I went and started asking people about their political beliefs. And I found that although this movement does skew conservative, a lot of people were very disenchanted with politics and they didn't really affix themselves to a tidy political profile. So what I started doing was looking into that disaffectation. Why were people dissatisfied? Why were people looking for such a radical alternative explanation for the world? And I found quite a lot of pathways to flat earth. A lot of them are fairly upsetting; a lot of them had to do with people who were looking for new forms of community because they felt alienated in some sense, people who were looking for religious alternatives, a lot of people who came from faith traditions where they didn't fully feel like they were getting the right answers. So when I was talking to people, I think I was in a certain sense maybe trying to diagnose what exactly had gone a little bit wrong to lead them to this movement. And I found the people who were actually quite forthcoming with me, were quite generous in explaining their path to flat earth. So that's something I tried to do regardless of, you know, if somebody told me they were a Trump supporter or an Obama fan who had completely fallen out of political circles. I just tried to try and keep an eye on that human element. Mike: Okay. You have this chapter, Alone in a Flat World, where you talk about people losing their social lives to flat earth. This seems to play into this 21st-century decentralized cult phenomenon. You talk a lot about QAnon too, which is similar. So there are flat earth organizations, but apart from getting high-rolling flat earthers to a conference once a year, they don't really hold on to the movement. That's coming from the YouTube culture. Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. I think a decentralized cult is a really interesting way of thinking about flat earth and frankly a lot of other conspiracy communities. It's hard to strictly call it a cult because there's no one leader, there's no one person they take marching orders from. And yet it has a lot of the hallmarks of a cult. There's a central idea that you have to adhere to and block out all the other noise. You have to distance yourself from people who criticize this idea. It's a very in-group out-group affirming structure. And it's interesting when I started looking at that model for flat earth, it was pretty easy to apply to a lot of other fringe movements and frankly some not-so-fringe movements. I thought it was really interesting to apply to Trumpism, and I know that sounds like a very Twitter-lib talking point saying, “Oh Trump is a cult leader.” But in the more maybe psychological aspect of it, where you do think about people's willingness to create this community around a central figure or central idea at the expense of the rest of their entire world. I think that was really interesting. And it also, for me, explains why it's so hard to pull people away from these figures or ideas. Because they're not really operating on “debate me” facts and logic; they're operating on very emotional grounds. They tie a lot of their identity to flat earth or a political ideal. And so when you're trying to help them disengage from that, I think you need to also try and have some element of emotional healing. You need to offer an alternative to what sustenance they're getting from that movement. So yeah, that was definitely a model that helped me while I was thinking about flat earth and why people believe. Mike: Yeah. It's like when I was doing my research on fascism for my Ph.D.-- that I didn't complete-- [laughs] one of the articles that I came across was talking about how the condition for someone deprogramming themselves from the Nazi movement, and from cult movements in general, is not only kind of a disillusionment with the movement that they're in but also kind of like an alternative that they can jump to, like a landing pad of a community that they can segue into without having to basically be alone in the world. Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny. There were a few interesting anecdotes earlier this year, and I can't fact-check them, but I think there's the plausibility to people who were saying that they had former QAnon relatives who dropped it when they found something that met that same need. One of them was an aunt who got really into K-pop, which has this huge really loud online fandom, right? And so if the aunt was into QAnon because she wanted that community around her, well there's actually something comparable and infinitely less harmful in stanning BTS or whatever. And then the other was someone whose relative was into QAnon because she liked the puzzle element, and she got into Wordle. And she did 500 Wordle knockoffs a day. And that was just kind of taking the place for her. So I think people don't turn to these ultra-irrational things for no reason at all, they're seeking some unmet need. And if we can hopefully redirect them into something as harmless as BLACKPINK or whatever, that's definitely preferable. Mike: Yeah. Okay. One interesting thing that you did in the book, which I'm not sure that you even noticed, was you adopted some of their manners of speaking. So like in particular, more towards the end of the book, you start using "flat" to refer to flat earthers in the way that someone might use "gay" to refer to someone who's gay. You describe someone as being flat. You do point out also that they often use the phrase "coming out of the closet." So can we talk about how badly these people want to be gay? [Kelly laughs] But was there an acculturation process in talking to and understanding these people, though? Kelly: Yes. And also in terms of the coming out, what's so funny to me is these people really do want some legitimate form of victimhood because they do feel victimized and so they're just borrowing the language of the queer community, which is funny because a lot of these people are quite religious and conservative and are actually anti-gay, which I just thought was wild to see. Yes, there definitely was a process of learning how to talk to these folks. I think one of them was– I was never, like I said earlier, I was never really trying to debate people. There was one thing that I had to dodge almost every time I went to a conference or I was talking to a new person on the phone, was I said, "Hey, I've got my views, you've got yours. I don't know that we're going to come to any synthesis in the course of a 30-minute conversation." But yeah, I did try and hue pretty closely to their language. People would refer to themselves as being members of a community. When I talk about flat earth I, even now, refer to it as a community. I think because I've spent so much time around them, and hearing that term and actually kind of accepting that it is for them, a very communally based thing. One thing I had to dodge quite a lot was discussions of religion. I'm very much an atheist. This is very much a religiously-influenced movement. Although flat earth doesn't necessarily have to be religious, it's predominantly quite Christian. So just kind of learning how to approach a discussion like that, and be able to honestly represent my views without putting them off. And that's a little challenging sometimes. I'm also of Jewish heritage, and a lot of, frankly, there was a good deal of anti-semitism there. So, you know, just talking in open terms about faith I found was helpful. And yeah, you do kind of adopt the vocabulary a little bit. And I hope to put it in a way in this book that folks can read and feel like they were somewhat immersed in flat earth without completely giving them credence. Mike: Yeah, I definitely got that sense. You devote a chapter to flat earth fascists, but in all, it didn't seem that significant to me. Is this a misperception on my part? It didn't seem like there were that many flat fascists. Kelly: No. I'm very glad to say that most flat earthers are not fascists. But by that same token, I did feel like it was relevant enough that I had to put it in the book. And I think that's because it speaks to a broader issue with conspiracy theories. I think conspiracy theories are very, very useful to fascists, to totalizing movements in general, because they do allow people to cast out information that they don't want to grapple with. They allow people to have a very reduced view of the world and to perceive enemies where they don't exist, to perceive persecution where it doesn't exist, to form these in-group out-group associations. So I was fascinated by the existence of some flat earth nazis, which they are around. One of the biggest flat earth video makers also has multiple neo-nazi rap albums. So it bore mentioning. But I thought it was maybe a good way to draw connections between something like flat earth, which is so zany that I think most people can laugh at it, to something like QAnon which is an equally absurd conspiracy theory but has way more fascist momentum behind it. QAnon is just a fascist fever dream. So I thought that I had to, in some way, make an allusion to how these conspiracy theories can be weaponized for something that's less funny than flat earth. Mike: Yeah. So your last chapter is about one of my favorite things to do, and that's leaving. Talk about the people that left flat earth and what we might learn from their stories. Kelly: Absolutely. It was challenging for me to find people who left the flat earth movement who were willing to speak for this book. And that's not because a lot of people don't leave flat earth, they do, but they're kind of embarrassed about it. They don't want to go on the record, because it is an embarrassing thing to be wrong about. So I'm very, very grateful for the people who did speak to me on the record about this. And something that they told me was that there was this intense feeling of overcoming themselves almost to leave flat earth. They had sunk so many relationships into this theory. They'd alienated people; they'd been very argumentative about this theory; they'd been passionate about it. There were sunk costs, right? They didn't want all of it to have been for nothing. And so they put off leaving the theory really as long as they could, as long as they could still plausibly believe it. One guy told me that he was–at the end of his belief–he was so distressed that he couldn't look up at the sky. He didn't want to see a sunset because it would disprove flat earth. And he didn't want to look at it and grapple with that. So I think it took a tremendous amount of personal honesty and bravery for these people to say, "You know what? I was actually wrong. And these losses that I've experienced from flat earth were exactly that, they were losses." But I do think what helped the people I spoke to was having a community around them outside flat earth who helped them leave and didn't make them feel like idiots, who welcomed them back even though they'd been on a long strange trip for a couple of years. And so I think going back to that idea of community, that idea of having alternatives, being able to have a safe landing, I think, was the most helpful thing for these people. Mike: Okay. Kelly, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about flat Earthers. The book again is Off the Edge out from Algonquin Books. Thanks again, Ms. Weill. Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. Mike: You missed reading Off the Edge with us in The Nazi Lies Book Club, but there are still plenty of great books from our upcoming guests to read. Come join us and support the show by subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start as low as $2 and some come with merch. Check us out at patreon.com/NaziLies and follow us on Twitter @NaziLies and Facebook at facebook.com/TheNSLiesPod [Theme song]

Kelly Mosser is an Aligned Success Coach and Consultant based in New York City. She supports big-hearted entrepreneurs in optimizing their businesses and doing their inner work so they can explode their impact and income while staying in radical energetic alignment. Kelly is also the host of the Top 10 podcast: “The Aligned Success Show.” Learn more about Kelly. Learn more about The Passionistas Project. Full Transcript The Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast, where we talk with women who are following their passions to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and today we're talking with Kelly Mosser, an aligned success coach and consultant based in New York city who supports big hearted entrepreneurs in optimizing their businesses and doing their inner work so they can explode their impact and income while staying in-radical, energetic, alignment. Kelly is the host of the top 10 podcast, The Aligned Success Show. So please welcome to the show, Kelly Mosser. Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored to be here. You two are just both so inspiring and I'm just already lit up talking to you. So, thank you. Passionistas: Kelly, what's the one thing that you're most passionate about? Kelly: I am the most passionate about helping people do the inner work. Like you mentioned in my bio just now that I think is the key to so many things. And I think it's something that we aren't taught growing up. And I think a lot of us kind of realize it a little bit later on in life and if we had known 10 years, 20 years earlier, not to say things would turn out differently, but maybe we would've had a few fewer hiccups along the way. Maybe we would've had the opportunity to make decisions that were more in alignment with who we truly are and who we truly wanna be. I think there's just so much pressure from the outside and from our parents and our friends and the people we went to high school with and society, TV, magazines, whatever Instagram now. It's wild and I think that there's a real loss of intimacy with self, and that's really what I'm so passionate about doing, cuz I think that really is the foundational building block that everything else gets built on top of. And so that's what I'm the most passionate about in the whole world. Passionistas: So speaking of parents and friends and high school and all that stuff, what was your childhood like? And were you already building these kind of blocks when you were growing up? Kelly: That's a really great question. My childhood was very unique. My father tragically was murdered. Sorry for, trigger warning, was murdered when I was 16 months old in my family home with my whole family home. And that obviously is a really formative experience to have as a young kid. So I actually grew up with a lot of grief around. I grew up with people who were obviously very, you know, very sad, very angry, still, very loving and I'm so in awe by every single member of my family, but there was a lot of grief around and there was a lot of fear because if this can happen in our home, what's gonna happen outside. So I was a very fearful child and I actually didn't know, but I grew. Basically from 16 months old, when that event happened until I was about 21, I had PTSD and I did not know it. So I was operating with a very dysregulated, nervous system, but I adapted to it because it was, it was kind of like, does a fish even realize there's swimming in water? It's just, it's all, you know, kind of thing. I didn't realize there was a more optimal way for me to be living. I didn't realize that other people weren't terrified of everything. I didn't realize that other people weren't anxious 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So that, was obviously a huge event in my life that required years and years of healing from, and it still is really fresh and raw sometimes. But that I would say was the catalyst for understanding how my brain works. Because when I got diagnosed with PTSD, I obviously didn't wanna live in a state of over stimulated, over tax nervous system forever. So I said, I have to figure. How to heal and I didn't choose what happened to my family, but what happens next is up to me. So that's kind of my, my healing story. I fell in love with meditation through my PTSD diagnosis, because I was told that that was something that could help me. And it was really not helpful for a long time. It was, it actually made things, kind of quite a bit worse. And I think that is why people start and stop a lot with meditation. We start when we feel okay. And then as soon as things start to bubble up that feel sticky and icky, we say, you know what, I'm just gonna put this away and I'm gonna turn on Netflix instead because that's less icky to sit with. It's much more comfortable to sit and watch “Bridgerton” than it is to sit with trauma of 20 years.   So that's what led me to meditation, which led me to all of, kind of the inner work that I do now. And the coaching that I do now is really based on intimacy with self nervous system regulation, inner peace. So that's kind of how, how all of this came to be. I do want people to know that that it's possible. Like it's not going to be an easy journey, no matter. Happens to you. And I'm, I'm very much against this idea of like comparing traumas. I think every, every traumatic event is awful. And I think that there is, there's always a step forward for you. There's always, a next step you can take, there's always support available to you. So that is a big part of my message as well. Like you can make it through anything, even though I wish you didn't have to I wish that nobody ever had to go through, you know, those terrible, challenging things, but we do it's life. It's kind of just the nature of what happens here on this planet earth. But yeah, we can always move forward. Passionistas: Was there an event that made you finally decide to figure out how to, how to move past this? Kelly: Definitely. So I grew up in suburban New Jersey, which is, you know, a relatively quiet place. All my siblings were much older, so I had a lot of quiet time, you know, growing up and I liked being alone. I was, I'm a little bit of an introvert, so I always felt like I had my space. And then I moved to New York city after college. And I started working in the corporate world in a very sort of demanding stressful. Maybe a little bit toxic environment. And I was just, I, my anxiety was through the roof. It was just one day I felt like I can't even function, I'm just barely getting through the day. I'm just hanging on by a thread and I have to do something about this because New York city, as it is, is overwhelming the noises that people I'm also very sensitive to energies and sounds like, I think that's all just a product of having such a heightened nervous system my whole life. That I felt very much like a shell of a human being, living in New York, working in this job. And I realized that I was not gonna do very well if this is the life that I continued to live. So that really was the turning point for me. Passionistas: You took a little detour. You said you were in the corporate world, but you went to Georgetown to study and got a bachelor's degree in foreign service. So tell us about that choice and why you wanted to do that and why eventually you didn't. Kelly: Oh, another great question. Wow. You, you all just understand all my, all my juicies questions. I did go to Georgetown. I was really in love with travel and places and people and the world. And so I wanted to study foreign service because I wanted to be a journalist. I thought that was going to be, I'm a huge fan of writing. I love communication and so that felt like the thing that I wanted to do. And then I actually got an internship in a newsroom my senior year and I was like, what am I thinking? This is the worst place for someone with a heightened, nervous system or the history of PTSD. It's like every day in here is another traumatic event. So that didn't work out. But I'm one of those people who I get to say, I really just loved everything that I learned in college. It was amazing and so much fun. So even though my degree doesn't apply to anything that I do now, or really have ever done, except that we did have to learn an entire map of the entire world countries, cities, rivers, lakes, currencies. So that feels like some, some interesting once in a while, I'll have a good jeopardy moment. But other than that, it's a little bit useless, but I had so much fun learning and it, it showed me that, and now I'm continuing my learning journey in a totally different direction, but it just let me be okay with. Learning for the sake of loving the subject and loving the topic and not because I had to go on to, so I let myself just let go of the news dream. It was the worst possible thing. I also think it's interesting. It just proves that your brain wants what it knows and I, because all I had known was like, stress and that's what I was so programmed to thrive inside of that, that's I just chose the most stressful thing I could even fathom. So I'm very glad that I did not choose to pursue that path cuz I don't think I would've. I don't think I would've handled it, but I did get into the business world. I, my first job out of college was for a major retailer working in the buying office and I had a really good time there and just life, you know, it's amazing. You just never know where you're gonna end up. You just never know. You just can't predict it. So you make the best choice that's available to you at the time and say when the next right choice is available, I guess I'll choose that. Passionistas: So you went on this personal journey of exploration. How did you decide to make that a business and to help others? Kelly: It really started as just a passion as my Passionista. It was just a hobby. I was really passionate about helping people who were in kind of similar situations or who were on some sort of healing journey. Um, just supporting them through coaching or whatever it was. And I had. I started to kind of build this just side hustle, air quotes, um, because it was fun. And I had a pretty demanding job at a startup in New York, in the wellness space. And I really loved that, but there's also sometimes this moment where you're doing something that you love and you say, I think there's something that I would love even a little bit more than what I'm doing right now. And I think it's letting a big part of my journey has been letting myself follow those little nudges, even when things are good. Definitely when things are bad. Definitely. I follow I've learned to follow my nudges when things are bad, but even when things are pretty good, I'm like, I wonder if this could be even just a little bit better. So I started building my coaching business on the side and then I realized, wait, I actually have this. Working in strategy and operations the whole time I was in my other roles in my other career. And I realized that I also had that really, I had a lot of skills in that area, too. I had a really strong brain for strategy and operations and I thought maybe I could just combine these two things. Wouldn't that be kind of cool. So I didn't actually go full-time in my business until my mom got very sick in 2020. She's totally fine now thank goodness. But I had to quit my job. I had to move in with her full-time and be her full-time caregiver for about six months. And after that, I was like, well, this is my opportunity to really take a chance on myself and see if I have the chops to do this full-time and create a full-time income and business off of this thing that previously has just been a little side dream. And I'm so glad that I took the chance. Passionistas: Talk a little bit about how you combine spirit science and strategy to give your clients a 360 degree approach to their healing and success. Kelly: Hmm. For me, the spiritual work is kind of the foundational work for everything. And I think about spirituality in a very grounded way. For me, it really just is what is your relationship with yourself? Who are you when your fancy job title gets taken away? Who are you when your Gucci bag gets stolen? Whatever it is like, who are you at the core essence of who you are underneath, even your thoughts and your emotions, the ways that you identify in the world, the roles and responsibilities that you have. Who, what are your values? How do you show up for yourself? How do, what do you think of yourself? So that kind of spiritual element, I think, is so important for anybody. I mean anybody, but especially people who are on a path of entrepreneurship or who are stepping into some sort of leadership role, cuz life's gonna knock you down and you're gonna have not, hopefully not macro failures, but you're gonna have a lot of tiny little failures along the way. And if you don't know who you are and what you stand for those little things that shouldn't be big, things can turn into really big things. So that's kind of where the spiritual work comes in. The strategy piece. I find that, when I'm coaching people, I find a lot of times that the things that they need help with, they think they need help with mindset. They think they need help with, you know, resilience and really a lot of reason, a lot of the time, the reason that they're coming up against so many experiences where they need to be resilient, where they need to really connect with themselves is because they're following a strategy. That's not actually aligned for them. They saw it on Instagram. They bought it in a course and decided, this is my thing. That's this is my ticket to everything I've ever wanted. And when you start with a strategy, that's not actually quite right for you. You need a lot of coaching because it's really hard to get yourself aligned with something that is just not meant for you. So that's where the strategy piece comes in. I find that people need a lot less. Ongoing coaching and mindset work and resilience work and confidence work. When the strategy that they're following is perfectly tailored to their strengths, their values, their goals. And I don't think that there's any strategy that doesn't work. I think absolutely any strategy can be successful for you. As long as it's aligned for you. If it's not aligned, could be the best strategy in the world, it's not gonna work. So those are how those two things kind of go together. Alignment is a word I use a lot, you have to feel aligned and alignment is something that you can actually feel. I'm sure you, we've all had that experience of maybe showing up to a job that we know now wasn't aligned for us, but it's a physical feeling. Your body communicates with you when something's not in alignment. And when something is in alignment feels really good and there's a lot less resistance and things come more easily to you. So it's my goal to get people on that path. That maybe they don't even realize is possible for them. And then to support them in implementing and executing everything that goes along with that, because of course there will still be little moments of resistance and fear is a big thing that comes up a lot. And knowing that the path that I think people really need to follow is the one that is most aligned for them. There's still gonna be challenges along the way. I fell in love with the brain, so I studying about the brain to help myself heal from PTSD was so important. It was like, if I'm someone who, if you tell me to meditate, I'm gonna say no, unless you tell me why on a mechanical level, how is this helping me on a biological physiological level? How is this helping? Then, Now I'm now I'm interested. I have a, I have a lot of Virgo in my chart, so I like need to understand things. Otherwise I can't, I have no interest. So I really got passionate about understanding the brain better and I've taken a few courses now about the brain, um, and I'm going to continue to study neuroscience because I'm just so fascinated by it. And I think it's a really important piece that a lot of people don't understand, but it's such a valuable to understand why your brain does what it does. Why it gets emotionally triggered or activated when certain things happen and how you can coach yourself through those moments of big fear or big self doubt, I think is just so valuable. So those are my, my three pillars that I'm obsessed with. And I think in order to really create whatever kind of success you want, whatever aligned success means for you, cuz it's gonna mean something different to every single one of us. Being able to understand yourself on those levels and have a strategy that is totally aligned for you are just kind of non-negotiables. So that's why I cover those three pillar. Melanie Childers: Hey Passionistas, I'm Melanie Childers, the business coach for feminist entrepreneurs and if you are ready to get off the hustle treadmill and create a sustainable six or seven figure business, head over to Melaniechilders.com, where I've got a free resource on how to have consensual sales conversations that feel amazing for you and your clients, so you can hit the ground running. See you there. Passionistas: Where Amy and Nancy Harrington. And you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kelly Mosser, to learn how to work with her and join the tigers eye community, visit KellyMosser.com. We'd like to take a moment to invite you to the third annual Power of Passionistas summit his September 21st through 23rd, 2020. The three-day virtual event is focused on authentic conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion. This unique gathering of intersectional storytellers and panelists harnesses, the power of our rich community of passionate thought leaders and activists to pose solutions to the problems plaguing women and non-binary people today. Tickets are on sale at the PassionistasProject.com. Be sure to register before this special discount rate ends. We'd like to thank our sponsors, Melanie Childer's Master Coach, Graceful Revolution, The Ossa Collective, Teas Drops, Aaron's Coffee Corner, Flourishing Over Fifty, Espanola Real Estate Team, Mermaid's Garden, Sarah Fins Coaching, Tara McCann Wellness, Espera Public Affairs and Trizcom Public Relations. Now here's more of our interview with Kelly. Passionistas: Are there some tips that you have for people that are hearing this and wanna kind of start on this journey that, that are a foundation to get started? Kelly: Absolutely. I think starting to become aware of how your body feels at different moments throughout your week, even throughout your day. So important. I find that the kind of key dynamic that I ask people to look for. Is, does this make me feel expansive and at ease, or is there some sort of contraction going on here? And if you pay a close enough attention, your body is always giving you those cues. Even if you turn on the TV and there's a show on that, you don't like, there's some part of your body that probably feels constricted or cold or tense. So just start to pay attention to how your body's feeling moment to moment throughout your day. Uh, an exercise that I love to direct people to is to actually pull up your calendar from last week. So these are now we're working with memories rather than real live real time situations, which can be a little bit easier to tune into the body for. Go back to last week and go day by day review all of the things that were on your calendar, all of your appointments, fill in how you spent your time after work. What did you do in the morning and go back and actually tune in and notice how your body feels thinking about the memory of that thing. And sometimes it's really helpful to go, oh, I'm thinking about this meeting that I had with this client and my body feels like I would not wanna do this again. If I had to do it again in an hour, I wouldn't wanna do it. There's a message there for you and then, you know, that's your opportunity to do some journaling on it, dig into it, ask yourself what about this didn't feel so aligned for me and you'll start to learn about, oh, it's because I actually don't really love connecting with people one on one I'd much rather connect in a group. This person, this particular challenge that we were working with, I feel very, I don't really feel confident in actually helping people with that kind of challenge. And it brings up a lot of stuff for me. When I think about having to do that, I don't think we stop and think a lot about, those small details to even just optimize what we already love doing. And sometimes, you know, people are in jobs that they really don't love doing and their whole week feels like a one giant contraction, one giant constriction. That's a great sign to, you know, start thinking about maybe making a change and even for people who love what they do, 99% of the time, what's feeling contracted that 1% of the time let's figure out what that is. Let's, you know, see if there's an opportunity for you to get even to a place of even greater alignment, even more ease and fulfillment. So those are, that's just a really simple, practical exercise. And I'm a huge fan of just taking time to sit in silence with yourself every day. It doesn't have to be a fancy meditation. Doesn't have to be a guided meditation. You don't have to empty your mind of thoughts. You just have to sit with yourself with no distractions and see what comes up and that's it. It can just be so simple because I think we are all moving so fast and things come up that we don't fully have the time sometimes to process, or we don't give ourselves the time to process. And then that just gets stored somewhere. So if you can just give all those things, the opportunity to come up and come out, as often as you can, it's not gonna feel as uncomfortable after a little while it takes a little practice, but the discomfort is good. Passionistas: So we were introduced to you at a recent MobCon mini event from Mob Nation and you gave an amazing speech about the history of money and how it relates to your self-worth. And we just thought that that was such a great speech and really mind opening. So could you just like give us a little mini condensed version of that and tell us just the basic philosophy behind what you were saying there. Kelly: Absolutely. So I struggled a lot with this concept of money. When I was starting my own business, I always felt like I was charging too much, even when I was charging $20 for a session, which that was the case at one point. It always felt like money was this very charged conversation and I realized that it's because my self-worth was so deeply connected to my concept, my understanding of money. So I decided to look into the history of money. I was like, why does this thing have such a hold over me? I'm sure it has a hold over other people too, I'm sure, you know, money is the driver of so many decisions that we make. And as I was researching the history of money, it kind of hit me that money is a manmade invention. It's a human construct. Some guy decided, you know what I think we need some sort of money system because the barter system is no longer working at scale, so we need some kind of money system. And for me to just realize that money is a manmade invention and it's not, I think sometimes we, especially if you are familiar with spiritual conversations about money or if you're in sort of tapped into the spiritual community on social media. There's a lot of conversation around money in a way that almost makes it sound like money is like love from the divine or money is confirmation that you are a good person or that you're doing something right. Which is so different to, I know how a lot of older kind of religious dogma talks about money in the complete opposite way. So it's kind of like we're ping, ponging back and forth between money is either the worst thing in the world, or it's the best thing in the world. And, but either way, it's directly tied to this, your morality to who you are as a person. And that just wasn't working for me, so to be able to kind of step out of that conversation and realize that money is just a man-made construct that's moving through a man-made system and humans are imperfect. Humans are imperfect. How could I not be worthy of something that has no inherent value of its own, money does not have in any inherent value. It's only valuable because as a collective, maybe it's not green is valuable and therefore I'm going to put stock in it and work in exchange for it and buy things with it. But money like the actual paper. Has no inherent value. And we used to humans used to trade seashells and cattle and tobacco as commodities, like in exchange of money. And I was just thinking to myself, would I feel this stressed out about money? If it was cattle that we were talking about? No, I wouldn't. So why do I allow it to be such a stressful thing for me now? So, kind of just stepping out of that deep enmesh between my self-worth and money. And just saying money is just a system. It's just a thing that exists made by humans perpetuated by humans. It could not exist tomorrow, but we'd all still be here. How could my self-worth be wrapped up in something like that? And it allowed me to just have a much more kind of experimental relationship with money. It allowed me to really drain the emotion out of my experience out of my relationship with money. And then I felt much more comfortable with it. I just, you know, I decided that my self-worth is constant. No matter how much money I make one month to the next, as entrepreneurs, we're like so focused on monthly revenue and it it's so exhausting and I just don't think that's how it needs to be. So if anyone is listening to this and they're, I'd invite you to think about how emotional is your relationship to money. If it is an emotional thing for you, can you think of it more as just this manmade thing that was invented out of necessity? Your self-worth has nothing to do with it, if money stopped existing tomorrow, you would still be infinitely worthy because you're a human being. How could you not be worthy of something that has again, no inherent value of its own. It's just green paper floating around. So hopefully that, you know, can help somebody who has an emotionally charged relationship with money to just, just experiment thinking about it that way and see if it works for you. If it doesn't by all means, let it go. But it really helped me, especially as someone who's like, this is my job now to make my own money. I don't get a, a paycheck from an employer anymore. So yeah, it's. Been a really interesting reframe for me. Passionistas: So what advice would you have for a woman who like you was trying to figure out how to price their product or service and they just don't know how to do it. Kelly: I think that people put a lot of stock into getting it right the first time. There's a lot of pride around, I want to put something out there and I want it to sell the first time, the way I want it to. And what I would recommend is just, you have to remember that the laws of supply and demand are real. And while you are worth your value as a human being is infinite, what you might be offering to someone is actually subject to the laws of supply and demand. So until you know what the demand for your, good or service is you don't really know how to price it. And I, someone just, someone said this to me once when I was agonizing over, I think it was a, like some kind of coaching package that I was offering. I was like, should it be this number or this number? And they were like, it's a hundred dollars different. How do you, you don't know? You just have to try one. And I was like, oh, I just have to try one and see if this is the price that resonates with the person that I, want to work with who I can help, but I think we, we make it about us. We make our prices about us and we say, we talk about knowing our worth, your worth is infinite. There it is not subject to laws of supply and demand. Your there's no price you could put on anything that you do that would accurately encompass how worthy you are. But I think when we are enmeshed with our pricing and our self-worth and know your worth, and what's my. all of that becomes very murky and muddy. So my advice is find a price that seems to be appropriate. Make sure it feels good in your body when you're talking about it. It takes a little practice sometimes to get used to saying, this is what my price is, but just practice. It just takes practice and then bring it to the marketplace. Just the same way that any company like Coca-Cola brings a new product to the marketplace. They don't know how it's gonna sell. You have to see, you have to experiment. A big, big thing that I stress with my clients is to have a mindset of experimentation. I always like to say, be the chief scientist, treat your business like a science experiment and not a soap opera, because if you treat it like a soap opera, every little decision that you make is going to have an impact on your self-worth and it's gonna bring you down. So how can you just be more of like an inventor, like a scientist who just says, I'm gonna try this. And I'm really curious to see what happens here. That's all you can do. And if you know, you sell out, then maybe your price is too low. If you don't sell any, maybe your price is a little too high. Again, it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with how much, how well people know you, how well you're communicating the value of what you do. There's so many different layers that go into it that I just hate to see people get so caught up in pricing when I would love to. And I think it makes them slow down and take too much time and they think too much about it. And it leads to a lot of self-doubt where my advice is, just get out there with a price and see what happens. And if it's not the right price, you can change it. That's the beauty of having your own business. it's, it's it really is so much more is within your control than you realize. Passionistas: So how can people work with you? Kelly: A few different ways. So I do offer that kind of deep dive strategy consulting for people who are like, I, my business just feels like a mess and I just want it to feel easier and simpler. So I do offer that kind of strategy consulting service for service based businesses. I do have someone on my team who is a retail expert, so she supports retail businesses and product-based businesses with their strategy. And then I also offer kind of ongoing support from a coaching perspective. So that's implementing your strategy. That's what to do when you come up against resistance. That's what to do when an unexpected curve ball gets thrown your way. So there is kind of that those two different pieces and lots of people do choose just one or the other. And a lot of people do choose both. I also have an amazing free membership that used to not be free. And it is just as of last month free and I'm so happy to offer it for free called my tigers eye community, which is like the ultimate one stop shop for inner work. So it's guided meditations, it's amazing live and on-demand workshops led by experts, not just me daily journal prompts. It's, it's just a really good place to start if you're like, I'm curious about inner work, but it feels overwhelming and YouTube is so scary and I'm not gonna spend time searching for things on there. It's a totally free resource, no strings attached free forever. Passionistas: Speaking of doing multiple things, what inspired you to start your podcast? Kelly: I felt very, so I've been a big Instagram girl for the last four years or so. And I started to feel very, like, not so great on Instagram sometimes. Like I could, I only had people's attention for like five seconds and I couldn't fully express what I wanted to say. I'm verbose, as you can tell from this chat, I won't learn from this conversation. I don't shut up. And I feel like I had more to say, and I wanted to provide a deeper level of value for people without them having to pay me anything. Because I feel like Instagram is just a little bit, I don't know. It's just like, it's like the, the bargain version. It's just a little bit cheap sometimes you can only get so much across, but I think there's something so magical, magical about being with people when they're on their dog walks and like being with people when they're commuting to pick up their kids. Like that is so exciting to me and I think that you can just create a better relationship with [00:31:00] people and you can give them more. And so that was why I'm so excited about the podcast world. And I, I love it so far. It feels so fun. Passionistas: So describe your show for people. Kelly: Sure. So my show is called the aligned success show and it is a show that helps entrepreneurs master the magical alchemy between spirituality, neuroscience, and strategy. So we talk about all those different things. Sometimes we talk about all three in one episode, sometimes we go, this episode's really focused on the spiritual. This episode's really focused on the brain. This episode is really focused on strategy and I've had a lot of people tell me that I'm not an entrepreneur, but I really like this podcast anyway. So the strategy piece, is definitely more general. I would say that it applies to more people than just entrepreneurs. There's a lot of good value in there about just finding more alignment in your life, learning how to coach yourself through different kinds of challenges. So, yeah, so it's definitely super valuable for entrepreneurs, but valuable for people who are not entrepreneurs as well.[00:32:00] Passionistas: What's your dream for women? Kelly: Oh my gosh. My dream for women is that we all wake up in a world that where we all get to live lives, that we actually chose for ourselves and we didn't choose them because our parents told us we had to, or because our partners think that we should, or that society told us that we needed to. That would be my dream to just live in a world full of women who really had chosen what their life looks like. Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kelly Mosser. To learn how to work with her and join the Tigers Eye Community, vVisit KellyMosser.com. Please visit the PassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and subscription box filled with products made by women owned businesses and female artisans to inspire you to follow your Passions. Double your first box when you sign up for a one-year subscription. Remember to get your tickets to the third annual virtual power of Passionistas summit from September 21st through 23rd, 2022. Tickets are on sale now at the PassionistasProject.com. And subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast, so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests. Until next time, stay well and stay passionate.  

This episode of Tech Sales Insights is the second part of our conversation with Kelly Breslin Wright, President and COO of Gong, and Founder and Thought leader at Culture Driven Sales. At the heart of culture-driven sales is people. This challenges the idea of a sales-driven culture where operating principles are the priority. A strong people-first approach gets you the best talent and creates a positive work environment, which ultimately drives toward more and better sales. This means that companies must be very firm with hiring based on behaviors that align with the culture that they are trying to create within their organization. HIGHLIGHTSCulture-driven sales has a common mission and challenges conventionsOn hiring: Determine the right behavior traits that align with your cultureFeedback and managing your culture with care and intention   QUOTESAttract top talent with a strong mission - Kelly: "It's culture-driven sales. If you have a strong mission, strong culture, strong operating principles, strong people-first approach, then you're going to be able to get the best people and help to provide an environment where it's a positive place to work where you can get the most out of those people because they're empowered and then that in turn will drive more sales."Be intentional in determining behavioral fit during the interview process - Kelly: "Mission is really important to make sure the whole company understands the purpose and their why. This is a really important way to determine who wants to work for you, who [does] not. Are they passionate about that why? Do they care? So that's the first.” "The second is making sure that we're asking the right questions in the interview process that are teasing out not only experience and resume, but also how they align with the right behavioral traits that are core to your culture and your operating principle." Find out more about Kelly in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellybreslinwright/Website: https://gong.io/Send in a voice message to us: https://anchor.fm/salescommunity/message

“I'm so fired up,” says Christi in regards to episode 9 of Dance Moms, “This is one of those episodes that I'm still pissed off about.” It's the episode in which the crew heads to Las Vegas, where the girls do their dance routine as each of the seven deadly sins. Kelly and Christi agree the theme was simply a way for Abby to get another dig in at the girls, (e.g. Chloe is envious of Maddie and Brooke wastes her talent by being lazy). The women discuss the den of lust that was the Rumor, a sleazy and completely inappropriate hotel for young children to stay. Abby herself commits the other sins like gluttony (only filming with the girls in Rumor's restaurant because there was ice cream involved), and she's as full of wrath as ever for anyone who gets in her way. She even breaks some commandments as Kelly insists that Abby truly wants the girls to disrespect their parents, and she spreads false rumors about all of the mothers knowing the audience will automatically believe her.   This episode is also a watershed as it's the first one where a group of new mothers come into Cathy's Candy Apple studios trying to be like the “core four” Moms and Christi and Kelly agree it doesn't work. The Moms visit an ice bar and as soon as they leave they attend the premiere of Dance Moms, which is pretty much the moment their lives completely change. Christi says the ice bar is her all time favorite moment as it's the last time they were just Kelly, Christi, Melissa and Holly–four regular moms from Pittsburgh.    Join the party to find out why the moms were escorted out of the premiere, and the two words that Christi shares with Kelly that will haunt them both for the rest of their lives.    Quotes “I think Abby would like none of the children in the world to have mothers, so she could just rule.” (12:36-12:43 | Kelly) “It didn't take much to make the girls happy, the producers should have done something every week to make them happy. It wouldn't have been that difficult.” (31:21- 31:29 | Kelly) “Kelly you say, ‘I'm so excited that the girls are seeing this, because it shows what they've been working for.' And then the very next sentence is Liz telling us that she works topless.” (32:02-32:15 | Christi) “The night we premiered we were still filming. We couldn't even have the night that our show premiered off. We were working.” (37:48-37:59 | Kelly) “Let me just say, the only way they got Abby to go down there was the ice cream. She was not babysitting our children. They said you have to come down and film for 15 minutes with ice cream sundaes, or she would not have been filming.” (39:02-39:17 | Kelly) “To be fair, Holly was probably only drinking because she was trying to use the alcohol to kill any germs she picked up at Rumor.” (52:30-52:36 | Christi)  “Abby tells us that I'm rude and arrogant and clueless. Funny though, Abby always talks about how I was smart and you had to watch me. It just goes to show that she knows that whatever she says, people will believe. And she says it a few other times in this episode about other things and it pisses me off because I think, ‘They're you go, just saying shit people will believe just because you're saying it.'” (56:28-56:53 | Christi) “We always start off strong at the beginning of the seasons, and then halfway through, by Nationals, when we get to the New Orleans episode in Season 3, you see me in New Orleans, and you when you're sitting on the dumpster at the end of Season 2. We look like we have been ridden hard and put away wet. It's exhausting. Rough.” (1:03:47-1:04:17 | Christi) Links Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w  Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarre   Thank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=   Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510   Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiak   Follow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland

About KellyKellyAnn Fitzpatrick is a Senior Industry Analyst at RedMonk, the developer-focused industry analyst firm. Having previously worked as a QA analyst, test & release manager, and tech writer, she has experience with containers, CI/CD, testing frameworks, documentation, and training. She has also taught technical communication to computer science majors at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow.Holding a Ph.D. in English from the University at Albany and a B.A. in English and Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame, KellyAnn's side projects include teaching, speaking, and writing about medievalism (the ways that post-medieval societies reimagine or appropriate the Middle Ages), and running to/from donut shops.Links: RedMonk: https://redmonk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/drkellyannfitz TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at MinIO the high-performance Kubernetes native object store that's built for the multi-cloud, creating a consistent data storage layer for your public cloud instances, your private cloud instances, and even your edge instances, depending upon what the heck you're defining those as, which depends probably on where you work. It's getting that unified is one of the greatest challenges facing developers and architects today. It requires S3 compatibility, enterprise-grade security and resiliency, the speed to run any workload, and the footprint to run anywhere, and that's exactly what MinIO offers. With superb read speeds in excess of 360 gigs and 100 megabyte binary that doesn't eat all the data you've gotten on the system, it's exactly what you've been looking for. Check it out today at min.io/download, and see for yourself. That's min.io/download, and be sure to tell them that I sent you.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance query accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service, although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLAP and OLTP—don't ask me to pronounce those acronyms again—workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time-consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. It's always a good day when I get to sit down and have a chat with someone who works over at our friends at RedMonk. Today is no exception because after trying for, well, an embarrassingly long time, my whining and pleading has finally borne fruit, and I'm joined by Kelly Fitzpatrick, who's a senior industry analyst at RedMonk. Kelly, thank you for, I guess, finally giving in to my always polite, but remarkably persistent requests to show up on the show.Kelly: Great, thanks for having me. It's great to finally be on the show.Corey: So, let's start at the very beginning because I am always shockingly offended whenever it happens, but some people don't actually know what RedMonk is. What is it you'd say it is that you folks do?Kelly: Oh, I love this question. Because it's like, “What do you do,” versus, “What are you?” And that's a very big difference. And I'm going to start with maybe what we are. So, we are a developer-focused industry analyst firm. You put all those things, kind of, together.And in terms of what we do, it means that we follow tech trends. And that's something that many industry analysts do, but our perspective is really interested in developers specifically and then practitioners more broadly. So, it's not just, “Okay, these are things that are happening in tech that you care about if you're a CIO,” but what tech things affect developers in terms of how they're building software and why they want to build software and where they're building software?Corey: So, backing it up slightly because it turns out that I don't know the answer to this either. What exactly is an industry analyst firm? And the reason I bring this up is I've been invited to industry analyst events, and that is entirely your colleague, James Governor's, fault because he took me out for lunch at I think it was Google Next a few years ago and said, “Oh, you're definitely an analyst.” “Okay, cool. Well, I don't think I am. Why should I be an analyst?”“Oh, because companies have analyst budgets.” “Oh, you said, analyst”—protip: Never get in the way of people trying to pay you to do things. But I still feel like I don't know what an analyst is, in this sense. Which means I'm about to get a whole bunch of refund requests when this thing airs.Kelly: I should hope not. But industry analysts, one of the jokes that we have around RedMonk is how do we explain to our families what an industry analyst is? And I think even Steve and James, who are RedMonk's founders, they've been doing this for quite a long time, like, much longer than they ever want to admit that they do, and they still are like, “Okay, how do I explain this to my parents?” Or you know, anyone else who's asking, and partly, it's almost like a very—a term that you'll see in the tech industry, but outside of it doesn't really have that much, kind of, currency in the same way that you can tell someone that you're like, maybe a business analyst or something like that, or any of those, almost like spy-like versions of analyst. I think was it The Hunt for Red October, the actual hero of that is an analyst, but not the type of analyst that I am in any way, shape or form.But you know, industry analyst firms, specifically, it's like we keep up on what tech is out there. People engage with us because they want to know what to buy for the things that they're doing and the things that they're building, or how to better create and sell the stuff that they are building to people who build software. So, in our case, it's like, all right, what type of tools are developers using? And where does this particular tool that our company is building fit into that? And how do you talk about that with developers in a way that makes sense to them?Corey: On some level, what I imagine your approach to this stuff is aligns somewhat with my own. Before you became an industry analyst, which I'm still not entirely sure I know what that is—I'm sorry, not your fault; just so many expressions of it out there—before you wound up down that path, you were a QA manager; you wound up effectively finding interesting bugs in software, documentation, et cetera. And, on some level, that's, I think, what has made me even somewhat useful in the space is I'll go ahead and try and build something out of something that a vendor has released, and huh, the documentation says it should work this way, but I try it and it breaks and it fails. And the response is always invariably the same, which is, “That's interesting,” which is engineering-speak for, “What the hell is that?” I have this knack for stumbling over weird issues, and I feel like that aligns with what makes for a successful QA person. Is that directionally correct, or am I dramatically misunderstanding things and I'm just accident-prone?Kelly: [laugh]. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. And especially coming from QA where it's like, not just making sure that something works, but making sure that something doesn't break if you try to break it in different ways, the things that are not necessarily the expected, you know, behaviors, that type of mindset, I think, for me translated very easily to, kind of, being an analyst. Because it's about asking questions; it's about not just taking the word of your developers that this software works, but going and seeing if it actually does and kind of getting your hands dirty, and in some cases, trying to figure out where certain problems or who broke the build, or why did the build break is always kind of super fun mystery that I love doing—not really, but, like, everyone kind of has to do it—and I think that translates to the analyst world where it's like, what pieces of these systems, or tech stacks, or just the way information is being conveyed about them is working or is not, and in what ways can people kind of maybe see things a different way that the people who are building or writing about these things did not anticipate?Corey: From my position, and this is one of the reasons I sort of started down this whole path is if I'm trying to build something with a product or a platform—or basically anything, it doesn't really matter what—and the user experience is bad, or there are bugs that get in my way, my default response—even now—is not, “Oh, this thing's a piece of crap that's nowhere near ready for primetime use,” but instead, it's, “Oh, I'm not smart enough to figure out how to use it.” It becomes a reflection on the user, and they feel bad as a result. And I don't like that for anyone, for any product because it doesn't serve the product well, it certainly doesn't serve the human being trying to use it and failing well, and from a pure business perspective, it certainly doesn't serve the ability to solve a business problem in any meaningful respect. So, that has been one of the reasons that I've been tilting at that particular windmill for as long as I have.Kelly: I think that makes sense because you can have the theoretically best, most innovative, going to change everyone's lives for the better, product in the world, but if nobody can use it, it's not going to change the world.Corey: As you take a look at your time at RedMonk, which has been, I believe, four years, give or take?Kelly: We're going to say three to four.Corey: Three to four? Because you've been promoted twice in your time there, let's be very clear, and this is clearly a—Kelly: That's a very, very astute observation on your part.Corey: It is a meteoric rise. And what makes that also fascinating from my perspective, is that despite being a company that is, I believe, 19 years old, you aren't exactly a giant company that throws bodies at problems. I believe you have seven full-time employees, two of whom have been hired in the last quarter.Kelly: That's true. So, seven full-time employees and five analysts. So, we have—of that it's five analysts, and we only added a fifth analyst the beginning of this year, with Dr. Kate Holterhoff. [unintelligible 00:08:09], kind of, bring her on the team.So, we had been operating with, like, kind of, six full-time employees. We were like, “We need some more resources in this area.” And we heard another analyst, which if you talk about, okay, we hired one more, but when you're talking about hiring one more and adding that to a team of, like, four analysts, it's such a big difference, just in terms of, kind of, resources. And I think your observation about you ca—we don't just throw bodies at problems is kind of correct. That is absolutely not the way we go about things at all.Corey: At a company that is taking the same model that The Duckbill Group does—by which I mean not raising a bunch of outside money is, as best I can tell—that means that you have to fall back on this ancient business model known as making more money than it costs to run the place every month, you don't get to do this massive scaled out hiring thing. So, bringing on multiple employees at a relatively low turnover company means that suddenly you're onboarding not just one new person, but two. What has that been like? Because to be very clear, if you're hiring 20 engineers or whatnot, okay, great, and you're having significant turnover, yeah, onboarding two folks is not that big of a deal, but this is a significant percentage of your team.Kelly: It is. And so for us—and Kate started at the beginning of this year, so she's only been here for a bit—but in terms of onboarding another analyst, this is something where I haven't done before, but, like, my colleagues have, whereas the other new member of our team, Morgan Harris, who is our Account Engagement Manager, and she is amazing, and has also, like, very interesting background and client success in, like, fashion, which is, you know, awesome when I'm trying to figure out what [unintelligible 00:09:48] fit I need to do, we have someone in-house who can actually give me advice on that. But that's not something that we have onboarded for that role very much in the past, so bringing on someone where they're the only person in their role and, like, having to begin to learn the role. And then also to bring in another analyst where we have a little bit more experience onboarding analysts, it takes a lot of patience for everybody involved. And the thing I love about RedMonk and the people that I get to work with is that they actually have that patience and we function very well as, like, a team.And because of that, I think things that could really have thrown us off course, like losing an account engagement or onboarding one and then onboarding a new analyst, like, over the holidays, during a pandemic, and everything else that is happening, it's going much more smoothly than it could have otherwise.Corey: These are abnormal times, to be sure. It's one of those things where it's, we're a couple years into a pandemic now, and I still feel like we haven't really solved most of the problems that this has laid bare, which kind of makes me despair of ever really figuring out what that's going to look like down the road.Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. And there is very much the sense that, “Okay, we should be kind of back to normal, going to in-person conferences.” And then you get to an in-person conference, and then they all move back to virtual or, as in your case, you go to an in-person conference and then you have to sequester yourself away from your family for a couple of weeks to make sure that you're not bringing something home.Corey: So, I have to ask. You have been quoted as saying that 2022—for those listening, that is this year—is the year of documentation. You're onboarding two new people into a company that does not see significant turnover, which means that invariably, “Oh, it's been a while since we've updated the documentation. Whoops-a-doozy,” is a pretty common experience there. How much of your assertion that this is the year of documentation comes down to the, “Huh. Our onboarding stuff is really out of date,” versus a larger thing that you're seeing in the industry?Kelly: That is a great question because you never know what your documentation is like until you have someone new, kind of, come in with fresh eyes, has a perspective not only on, “Okay, I have no idea what this means,” or, “This is not where I thought it would be,” or, “This, you know, system is not working in any… in any way similar to anything I have ever seen in any other part of my, like, kind of, working career.” So, that's where you really see what kind of gaps you have, but then you also kind of get to see which parts are working out really well. And not to spend, kind of, too much on that, but one of the best things that my coworkers did for me when I started was, Rachel Stephens had kept a log of, like, all the questions that she had as a new analyst. And she just, like, gave that to me with some advice on different things, like, in a spreadsheet, which I think is—I love spreadsheets so much and so does Rachel. And I think I might love spreadsheets more than Rachel at this point, even though she actually has a hat that says, “Spreadsheets.”But when Kate started, it was fascinating to go through that and see what parts of that were either no longer relevant because the entire world had changed, or because the industry had advanced, or because there's all these new things you need to know now that we're not on the list of things that you needed to know three years ago. And then what other, even, topics belong down on that kind of list of things to know. So, I think documentation is always a good, like, check-in for things like that.But going back to, like, your larger question. So, documentation is important, not just because we happened to be onboarding, but a lot of people, I think once they no longer could be in the office with people and rely on that kind of face-to-face conversations to smooth over things began, I think, to realize how essential documentation was to just their everyday to day, kind of, working lives. So, I think that's something that we've definitely seen from the pandemic. But then there are certainly other signals in the software industry-specific, which we can go into or not depending on your level of interest.Corey: Well, something that I see that I have never been a huge fan of in corporate life—and it feels like it is very much a broad spectrum—has been that on one side of the coin, you have this idea that everything we do is bespoke and we just hire smart people and get out of their way. Yeah, that's more uncontrolled anarchy than it is a repeatable company process around anything. And the other extreme is this tendency that companies have, particularly the large, somewhat slow-moving companies, to attempt to codify absolutely everything. It almost feels like it derives from the what I believe to be mistaken belief that with enough process, eventually you can arrive at the promised land where you don't have to have intelligent, dynamic people working behind things, you can basically distill it down to follow the script and push the buttons in the proper order, and any conceivable outcome is going to be achieved. I don't know if that's accurate, but that's always how it felt when you start getting too deeply mired in documentation-slash-process as almost religion.Kelly: And I think—you know, I agree. There has to be something between, “All right, we don't document anything and it's not necessary and we don't need it.” And then—Corey: “We might get raided by the FBI. We want nothing written down.” At which point it's like, what do you do here? Yeah.Kelly: Yeah. Leave no evidence, leave no paper trail of anything like that. And going too far into thinking that processes is absolutely everything, and that absolutely anyone can be plugged into any given role and things will be equally successful, or that we'll just be automated away or become just these, kind of, automatons. And I think that balance, it's important to think about that because while documentation is important, and you know, I will say 2022, I think we're going to hear more and more about it, we see it more as an increasingly valuable thing in tech, you can't solve everything with documentation. You can use it as the, kind of, duct tape and baling wire for some of the things that your company is doing, but throwing documentation at it is not going to fix things in the same way that throwing engineers at a problem is not going to fix it either. Or most problems. I mean, there are some that you can just throw engineers at.Corey: Well, there's a company wiki, also known as where documentation goes to die.Kelly: It is. And those, like, internal wikis, as horrible as they can be in terms of that's where knowledge goes to die as well, places that have nothing like that, it can be even more chaotic than places that are relying on the, kind of, company internal wiki.Corey: So, delving into a bit of a different topic here, before you were in the QA universe, you were what distills down to an academic. And I know that sometimes that can be interpreted as a personal attack in some quarters; I assure you, despite my own eighth grade level of education, that is not how this is intended at all. Your undergraduate degree was in medieval history—or medieval studies and your PhD was in English. So, a couple of questions around that. One, when we talk about medieval studies, are we talking about writing analyst reports about Netscape Navigator, or are we talking things a bit later in the sweep of history than that?Kelly: I appreciate the Netscape Navigator reference. I get that reference.Corey: Well, yeah. Medieval studies; you have to.Kelly: Medieval studies, when you—where we study the internet in the 1990s, basically. I completely lost the line of questioning that you're asking because I was just so taken by the Netscape Navigator reference.Corey: Well, thank you. Started off with the medieval studies history. So, medieval studies of things dating back to, I guess, before we had reasonably recorded records in a consistent way. And also Twitter. But I'm wondering how much of that lends itself to what you do as an analyst.Kelly: Quite a bit. And as much as I want to say, it's all Monty Python references all the time, it isn't. But the disciplinary rigor that you have to pick up as a medievalist or as anyone who's getting any kind of PhD ever, you know, for the most part, that very much easily translated to being an analyst. And even more so tech culture is, in so many ways, like, enamored—there's these pop culture medieval-isms that a lot of people who move in technical circles appreciate. And that kind of overlap for me was kind of fascinating.So, when I started, like, working in tech, the fact that I was like writing a dissertation on Lord of the Rings was this little interesting thing that my coworkers could, like, kind of latch on to and talk about with me, that had nothing to do with tech and that had nothing to do with the seemingly scary parts of being an academic.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats V-U-L-T-R.com slash screaming.Corey: I want to talk a little bit about the idea of academic rigor because to my understanding, in the academic world, the publication process is… I don't want to say it's arduous. But if people subjected my blog post anything approaching this, I would never write another one as long as I lived. How does that differ? Because a lot of what I write is off-the-cuff stuff—and I'm not just including tweets, but also tweets—whereas academic literature winds up in peer-reviewed journals and effectively expands the boundaries of our collective societal knowledge as we know it. And it does deserve a different level of scrutiny, let's be clear. But how do you find that shifts given that you are writing full-on industry analyst reports, which is something that we almost never do on our side, just honestly, due to my own peccadilloes?Kelly: You should write some industry reports. They're so fun. They're very fun.Corey: I am so bad at writing the long-form stuff. And we've done one or two previously, and each time my business partner had to basically hold my nose to the grindstone by force to get me to ship, on some level.Kelly: And also, I feel like you might be underselling the amount of writing talent it takes to tweet.Corey: It depends. You can get a lot more trouble tweeting than you can in academia most of the time. Every Twitter person is Reviewer 2. It becomes this whole great thing of, “Well, did you consider this edge corner case nuance?” It's, “I've got to say, in 208 any characters, not really. Kind of ran out of space.”Kelly: Yeah, there's no space at all. And it's not what that was intended. But going back to your original question about, like, you know, academic publishing and that type of process, I don't miss it. And I have actually published some academic pieces since I became an analyst. So, my book finally came out after I had started as—it came out the end of 2019 and I had already been at RedMonk for a year.It's an academic book; it has nothing to do with being an industry analyst. And I had an essay come out in another collection around the same time. So, I've had that come out, but the thing is, the cycle for that started about a year earlier. So, the timeframe for getting things out in, especially the humanities, can be very arduous and frustrating because you're kind of like, “I wrote this thing. I want it to actually appear somewhere that people can read it or use it or rip it apart if that's what they're going to do.”And then the jokes that you hear on Twitter about Reviewer 2 are often real. A lot of academic publishing is done in, like, usually, like, a double-blind process where you don't know who's reviewing you and the reviewers don't know who you are. I've been a reviewer, too, so I've been on that side of it. And—Corey: Which why you run into the common trope of people—Kelly: Yes.Corey: —suggesting, “Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. You should read this work by someone else,” who is in fact, the author they are reviewing.Kelly: Absolutely. That I think happens even when people do know who [laugh] who's stuff they're reviewing. Because it happens on Twitter all the time.Corey: Like, “Well, have you gotten to the next step beyond where you have a reviewer saying you should wind up looking at the work cited by”—and then they name-check themselves? Have we reached that level of petty yet, or has that still yet to be explored?Kelly: That is definitely something that happens in academic publishing. In academic circles, there can be these, like, frenemy relations among people that you know, especially if you are in a subfield that is very tiny. You tend to know everybody who is in that subfield, and there's, like, a lot of infighting. And it does not feel that far from tech, sometimes. [unintelligible 00:21:52] you could look at the whole tech industry, and you look at the little areas that people specialize in, and there are these communities around these specializations that—you can see some of them on Twitter.Clearly, not all of them exist in the Twitterverse, but in some ways, I think that translated over nicely of, like, the year-long publication and, like, double peer-review process is not something that I have to deal with as much now, and it's certainly something that I don't miss.Corey: You spent extensive amounts of time studying the past, and presumably dragons as well because, you know, it's impossible to separate medieval studies from dragons in my mind because basically, I am a giant child who lives through fantasy novels when it comes to exploring that kind of past. And do you wind up seeing any lessons we can take from the things you have studied to our current industry? That is sort of a strange question, but they say that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, and I'm curious to how far back that goes. Because most people are citing, you know, 1980s business studies. This goes centuries before that.Kelly: I think the thing that maybe stands out for me the most the way that you framed that is, when we look at the past and we think of something like the Middle Ages, we will often use that term and be like, “Okay, here's this thing that actually existed, right?” Here's, like, this 500 years of history, and this is where the Middle Ages began, and here's where it ended, and this is what it was like, and this is what the people were like. And we look at that as the some type of self-evident thing that exists when in reality, it's a concept that we created, that people who lived in later ages created this concept, but then it becomes something that has real currency and, really, weight in terms of, like, how we talk about the world.So, someone will say, you know, I like that film. It was very medieval. And it'll be a complete fantasy that has nothing to do with Middle Ages but has a whole bunch of these tropes and signals that we translate as the Middle Ages. I feel like the tech industry has a great capacity to do that as well, to kind of fold in along with things that we tend to think of as being very scientific and very logical but to take a concept and then just kind of begin to act as if it is an actual thing when it's something that people are trying to make a thing.Corey: Tech has a lot of challenges around the refusing to learn from history aspect in some areas, too. One of the most common examples I've heard of—or at least one that resonated the most with me—is hiring, where tech loves to say, “No one really knows how to hire effectively and well.” And that is provably not true. Ford and GM and Coca-Cola have run multi-decade studies on how to do this. They've gotten it down to a science.But very often, we look at that in tech and we're trying to invent everything from first principles. And I think, on some level, part of that comes out as, “Well, I wouldn't do so well in that type of interview scenario, therefore, it sucks.” And I feel like we're too willing in some cases to fail to heed the lessons that others have painstakingly learned, so we go ahead and experiment on our own and try and reinvent things that maybe we should not be innovating around if we're small, scrappy, and trying to one area of the industry. Maybe going back to how we hire human beings should not be one of those areas of innovation that you spend all your time on as a company.Kelly: I think for some companies, I think it depends on how you're hiring now. It's like, if your hiring practices are horrible, like, you probably do need to change them. But to your point, like, spending all of your energy on how are we hiring, can be counterproductive. Am I allowed to ask you a question?Corey: Oh, by all means. Mostly, the questions people ask me is, “What the hell is wrong with you?” But that's fine, I'm used to that one, too. Bonus points if you have a different one.Kelly: Like, your hiring processes at Duckbill Group. Because you've hired, you know, folks recently. How do you describe that? Like, what points of that you think… are working really well?Corey: The things that have worked out well for us have been being very transparent at the beginning around things like comp, what the job looks like, where it starts, where it stops, what we expect from people, what we do not expect from people, so there are no surprises down that path. We explain how many rounds of interviews there are, who they'll be meeting with at each stage. If we wind up declining to continue with a candidate in a particular cycle, anything past the initial blind resume submission, we will tell them; we don't ghost people. Full stop. Originally, we wanted to wind up responding to every applicant with a, “Sorry, we're not going to proceed,” if the resume was a colossal mismatch. For example, we're hiring for a cloud economist, and we have people with PhDs in economics, and… that's it. They have not read the job description.And then when you started doing that people would argue with us on a constant basis, and it just became a soul-sucking time sink. So, it's unfortunate, but that's the reality of it. But once we've had a conversation with you, doing that is the right answer. We try and move relatively quickly. We're honest with folks because we believe that an interview is very much a two-way street.And even if we declined to proceed—or you declined to proceed with us; either way—that you should still think well enough of us that you would recommend us to people for whom it might be a fit. And if we treat you like crap, you're never going to do that. Not to mention, I just don't like making people feel like crap as a general rule. So, that stuff that has all come out of hiring studies.So, has the idea of a standardized interview. We don't have an arbitrary question list that we wind up smacking people with from a variety of different angles. And if you drew the lucky questions, you'll do fine. We also don't set this up as pass-fail, we tend to presume that by the time you've been around the industry for as long as generally is expected for years of experience for the role, we're not going to suddenly unmask you as not knowing how computers work through our ridiculous series of trivia questions. We don't ask those.We also make the interview look a lot like what the job is, which is apparently a weird thing. It's in a lot of tech companies it's, “Go and solve whiteboard algorithms for us.” And then, “Great. Now, what's the job?” “It's going to be moving around some CSS nonsense.”It's like, first that is very different, and secondly, it's way harder to move CSS than to implement quicksort, for most folks. At least for me. So, it's… yeah, it just doesn't measure the right things. That's our approach. I'm not saying we cracked it by any means to be very clear here. This is just what we have found that sucks the least.Kelly: Yeah, I think the, ‘we're not going to do obscure whiteboarding exercises' is probably one of the key things. I think some people are still very attached those personal reasons. And I think the other thing I liked about what you said, is to make the interview as similar to the job as you can, which based on my own getting hired process at RedMonk and then to some levels of being involved in hiring our, kind of, new hires, I really like that. And I think that for me, the process will like, okay, you submit your application. There'd be—I think I'd to do a writing sample.But then it was like, you get on a call and you talk to Steve. And then you get on a call and you talk to James. And talking to people is my job. Like for the most part. I write things, but it's mostly talking to people, which you may not believe by the level of articulate, articulate-ness, I am stumbling my way through in this sentence.And then the transparency angle, I think it's something that most companies are not—may not be able to approach hiring in such a transparent way for whatever reason, but at least the motion towards being transparent about things like salaries, as opposed to that horrible salary negotiation part where that can be a nightmare for people, especially if there's this code of silence around what your coworkers or potential coworkers are making.Corey: We learned we were underpaying our clouds economists, so we wound up adjusting the rate advertised; at the same time we wound up improving the comp for existing team because, “Yeah, we're just going to make you apply again to be paid a fair wage for what you do,” no. Not how we play these games.Kelly: Yeah, which is, you know, one of the things that we're seeing in the industry now. Of course, the term ‘The Great Resignation' is out there. But with that comes, you know, people going to new places partly because that's how they can get, like, the salary increase or whatever it is they want for among other reasons.Corey: Some of the employees who have left have been our staunchest advocates, both for new applicants as well as new clients. There's something to be said for treating people as you mean to go on. My business partner, I've been clear that we aspire for this to be a 20, 25-year company, and you don't do that by burning bridges.Kelly: Yeah. Or just assuming that your folks are going to stay for three years and move on, which tends to be the kind of the lifespan of where people stay.Corey: Well, if they do, that's fine because it is expected. I don't want people to wind up feeling that they owe us anything. If it no longer makes sense for them to be here because they're not fulfilled or whatnot—this has happened to us before we've tried to change their mind, talked to them about what they wanted, and okay, we can't offer what you're after. How can we help you move on? That's the way it works.And like, the one thing we don't do in interviews—and this is something I very much picked up from the RedMonk culture as well—is we do a lot of writing here, so there's a writing sample of here's a list of theoretical findings for an AWS bill—if we're talking about a cloud economist role—great. Now, the next round is people are going to talk to you about that, and we're going to roleplay as if we were a client. But let's be clear, I won't tolerate abusive behavior from clients to our team, I will fire a client if it happens. So, we're not going to wind up bullying the applicant and smacking ‘em around on stuff—or smacking them around to be clear. That was an ‘em not a him, let's be clear.It's a problem of not wanting to even set the baseline expectation that you just have to sit there and take it when clients decide to go down unfortunate paths. And I believe it's happened all of maybe once in our five-and-a-half-year history. So, why would you ever sit around and basically have a bunch of people chip away at an applicant's self-confidence? By virtue of being in the room and having the conversation, they are clearly baseline competent at a number of things. Now, it's just a question of fit and whether their expression of skills is what we're doing right now as a company.At least that's how I see it. And I think that there is a lot of alignment here, not just between our two companies, but between the kinds of companies I look at and can actively recommend that people go and talk to.Kelly: Yeah. I think that emphasis on, it's not just about what a company is doing—like, what is their business, you know, how they're making money—but how they're treating people, like, on their way in and on the way out. I don't think you can oversell how important that is.Corey: Culture is what you wind up with instead of what you intend. And I think that's something that winds up getting lost a fair bit.Kelly: Yeah, culture is definitely not something you can just go buy, right? [laugh], where you can, like—this is what our culture will be.Corey: No, no. But if there is, “Culture-in-a-box. Like, you may not be able to buy it, but I would love to sell it to you,” seems to be the watchwords of a number of different companies out there. Kelly, I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more, where can they find you?Kelly: They can find me on Twitter at @drkellyannfitz, that's D-R-K-E-L-L-Y-A-N-N-F-I-T-Z—I apologize for having such a long Twitter handle—or my RedMonk work and of my colleagues, you can find that at redmonk.com.Corey: And we will, of course, include links to that in the [show notes 00:33:14]. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.Kelly: Thanks for having me.Corey: Kelly Fitzpatrick, senior industry analyst at RedMonk. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment telling me how terrible this was and that we should go listen to Reviewer 2's podcast instead.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

 Max: Hello and welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host Max Armbruster and today on the show, somebody south of where I am, all the way down in Perthestow in Sydney, Miss Mrs. Kelly Van Nelson, Managing Director at Adecco Australia. Welcome to the show, Kelly.Kelly: Thank you, Max. It's great to be here today.Max: Pleasure to have you, and Kelly how do you end up as a Managing Director? I'm not gonna ask you to introduce Adecco because if you don't know Adecco, you're on the wrong podcast. because you should as number one brand in the world and well I'm sure it's got a different strength in different markets. It's pretty well-known worldwide. I couldn't think of a geography where it isn't. So, I assume that the business in Australia is also quite wide-ranging from tech to you know more office temporary staff and everything in between?Kelly: Yes, it is. We have the Adecco group and all of the brands represented in Australia which Adecco is workforce solutions, but we do have all-tech solutions and we do have talent solutions which is our placements and upscaling and rescaling too. So yeah, the full complements of the Adecco group is here on the ground, in and around Australia.Max: And Australia is in the news right now for all kinds of reasons, mainly because it's impossible to come in and out of it. Has that been we'll talk later about how that's affected your team, but from the business standpoint, is it been good or bad for business?Kelly: I would say it's been good for business, challenging absolutely, and we have to very rapidly pivot our operations and elements of the business to leverage the opportunities, but nevertheless, it's actually been good for our business for a number of reasons. We can dive into them if you like but I would say definitely positive impacts.Max: That's great to hear. I've recently had on the show someone who's taught me about having to repurpose. Half of her team to do something other than recruitment in 2020 and I hope I wasn't too traumatic for the team down under. And sounds like things are good so we'll find out what well what you can share with us there. But before we go there if you could share with me and the audience were how you ended up where you are today because you don't sound Australian so I think it must have been a long road. Kelly: It's been a long road. Twenty-seven years in the recruitment and workforce solutions based on the technology in the street. Started out in Northern England as you can probably guess from the accent. But yeah, I moved around the world in the industry, lived in South Africa, Edinburgh, London, and many years in Perth and Western Australia in my early years of my career with the Adecco Group in the technology brand which is Modis. And two and a half years I go I moved to Sydney with the family and moved into the Managing Director role of Adecco. So yeah, been around a little while and seen a hugely changing industry that we work in which is actually exciting, no two days are ever the same. Max: Yeah, it attracts a good bunch of people who end up in recruitment. People who are empathetic and hardworking generally, but empathetic and hardworking may not be enough anymore. There's there are new skills required to survive in this dog fight. Can you elaborate on how you know those new changes have affected the composition of your team and you know what are people that have done well and those who have lagged behind?Kelly: Yeah, we definitely see it man, not just in our own business but with our own customer base for different sets of core skill sets. Resilience is the one we're always seeking and with that comes the ability to adapt and change and embrace change. And the resilience is not just from COVID but from the changing sort of industry that we work in and the rapid scaling of technology and the different demands of you know the global economy. So for me, resilience is the number one thing I look for when I when we are interviewing for new personnel to build a high-performing team. And when we have people in the business, the most successful recruiters and broader team members that I see who really have a good long career and good long tenure and great success would be the ones who have this aptitude for lifelong learning. Always looking to gain new skills, always looking at what's next not what's happening today, and being very very open to self-investment in their own skillset and you know personal capability in achieving personal best. So yeah, I would say having a huge aptitude for upscaling, rescaling, and lifelong learning is really critical right now. Max: And now to be able to assess resiliency in the course of a couple of interviews is sounds like mission impossible. I can't even think of a psychometric or competent assessment task that would get you there either. Intuition, career history, what are some of the good data points you can base those decisions on?Kelly: Yeah, definitely I probe a lot and run scenarios even with people that we're interviewing who don't come from the industry or don't bring a huge amount of experience, or they might be a graduate friend or for instance in early career. I tend to put some scenarios on the table around what has been a challenging circumstance that you've faced and how have you overcome an obstacle. And you know just different types of people like to self-manage and yeah just really probe around those examples and you can tend to you know to find what you're looking for in individuals who have risen above obstacles and removed roadblocks. So yeah, it's definitely something I've spent a lot of time on during an interview process probing on that one. Max: Yeah.Kelly: Yeah. I think I think the recruitment industry as a whole now is asking for this whole broad range of soft skills. You know if you look before what would be the core skills of recruiters, it would be probing on ability to meet targets and ability to sell, and you know customer skills on the telephone and all of the things that go with sort of a sale skill set or you know maybe a call center skill set. Whereas now it's really about these inner skills that you know can really set you apart when the going gets tough. Max: Yeah, it's about this lifelong learning, reinventing yourself a few times, and I think I wouldn't do very well in an interview. I've had my first of of of you know conflicts and difficulties, but you know the human brain I just kind of erased it all. I don't even, once it's once the when the challenge has been overcome I kinda tend to forget about it and pretend it never happened. That's maybe why I wouldn't do such a..I wouldn't be such a good recruiter. Maybe that's unique skill set for an entrepreneur. Kelly: You'd be surprised. We could make a recruiter of you yet I think. We could make good recruiters of most people. YeahMax: Thank you. That is a fine compliment. Great so so one change that recruiters and white-collar workers all over the world have had to take in is this hybrid work environment. Kelly: Yeah.Max: And and so I don't know how many people you managed in Australia and how big the team is but I'm sure you've had to some turnover with people who are either fed up with working from home or fed up with going to the office, one way or the other. It's very hard to please everybody. How is how do you know work around these challenges?Kelly: I think for us it's just again about being adaptable. We were very lucky in that when the first wave of the pandemic really took foothold in Australia, we were very well-positioned to rapidly move to work from home. We ran an overnight test done pretty much within 24 hours. We had moved our entire operations to virtual working and that was right across the country, which was quite extraordinary and that really enabled us to push on and do what was needed to be done with redeploying workers and helping the workforce to cope with the pandemic. It has been many workers coming out of employment or being stood down or having their hours cut back and needing to be handheld into new industries or new positions. And many candidates also needed assistance to use virtual tools, virtual interview tools, virtual application tools, onboarding tools. But our own recruiters inside Adecco were very very able to adapt literally within 24 hours. We had already been pretty good at allowing and supporting flexible working policies and embracing work from anywhere and mobility and things took quite a long time, which really bode us well in you know in what happened with the first wave of COVID. And as we progressed through some of the last you know more than a year now of the pandemic, what we've found is we've got this interesting trend where about half the workforce wants to be in the office half of the time. So, you've got this hybrid scenario emerging and the next normal continues to be this hybrid environment. Workers want to have a balance of time in the office where they can interact, they can upscale, they can learn from one another, they can you know find this team camaraderie face-to-face and have human interaction and social interaction in the workplace. Versus being highly productive if not more productive from home and you know being able to balance their home lives and you know to being able to balance the safety and the environment which we have to work in if we're going through different lockdowns. So, we see this globally, on average, globally 53 percent of workers want to spend at least you know some of their time working remotely. So, it's not really a trend anymore, it's actually a new norm this hybrid working. So, so organizations are having to adapt to this in different ways depending on the industry and the type of industry you run. But for Adecco, we're very much in a comfortable place now with being able to operate work from office work from home in varying levels of that and giving people flexibility. Max: That's that's to be expected progressive employers such as Adecco would be who'd have already spent a lot of time doing hybrid workplace. Maybe you have some customers who are less more traditional let's say, more resistant. The customer is king to a certain degree so have you kind of helped customers attract you know to change their recruitment marketing to attract workers that are more inclined towards the office? And then of course we know a lot there's plenty of offers for jobs that are fully remote. I think that the labor market is plentiful. But are you working with some employers that are you know that are still committed to having a purely office environment?Kelly: We definitely see that. We see some businesses still struggling to find their feet a little bit with what their business landscape looks like. And we also have a very large proportion of our workforce, especially in the contingent labor space that are essential work and doesn't necessarily always allow work from home for various reasons. If there is you know customer at face-to-face engagement or services needed, what we tend to do is typically treat each business with you know good listening and good understanding of what their business objectives are. And also have a good conversation around the skills shortages that we do face, and you know with no migration you know more than 70000 people only migrate into the country and unfilled a lot of the positions that we you know that we look for. And that workforce is not readily available anymore. Unemployment's at an all-time low and the talent pool list to a certain extent shrinking. So, accessibility to talent and the best talent in the market is key for any business, whether it's about small business right up to you know a large global Fortune 500. Giving your organization the chance to hire the best talent wherever they're located and bring them into your business, it really allows for diversity of your workforce into you know to really attract routine right now at a time that that's critical. If you don't, you would be, to a certain extent, left behind. So so sometimes it's a conversation around you know talent shortages and getting the best talent. You know there's a financial link to that and financial benefit to that. There are productivity gains that are proven to be really good if you can get this. And yeah, workers and our employees are commanding it right now.Max: Yeah, and in this market, I'm surprised anybody can hit their targets. What are some of their creative workarounds for you know industries where you have low unemployment, rising wages, more constraints about who can come in and who cannot. Can you illustrate some creative thinking that's going on or maybe you've reconverted people from one industry to the next in order to keep the wheels spinning? Kelly: Yeah, we definitely had exactly this scenario. So, if I can go back a year, we had whole industries that were downsizing and substantially so, for example, aviation and hospitality and retail to a certain extent, and you know sports and recreation. But entire industry is pretty much you know grounded and in parallel with that, you had many other industries experiencing extraordinary surges. So, for example, online trading of services, whether it be online buying and retail, consumer services at on the phone, or online. You know for example call centers, contact centers. You know the demand for skills second to none during the COVID coupled with healthcare changes in certain industries, you have this two-stream scenario of industries downsizing their workforce substantially and industries commanding extraordinary numbers of new jobs in different industries. So, we did a lot of work very very quickly. I'm talking in a matter of you know one to two weeks. Putting workers through very rapid upscaling and rescaling practical courses that were going to give them the tips and the techniques and the basic skills to be able to transition from one industry into another with some level of seamless you know ease. And that was enormously successful. We transitioned and redeployed a couple of thousand workers in a fortnight in the early stages of COVID by upscaling and rescaling any short-job programs and ways of working. So that was highly successful and a lot of them has remained. So, we are, still today is an organization in Adecco investing in upscaling and rescaling through our different brands, really working with candidates to best identify how we can use candidate pools smartly and sensibly to fill with skills gap even if their skills are not the perfect fit because, in the large part, they're not a perfect fit. The skills of the future and the jobs of the future are different and they're changing every day quite rapidly so. So, with that means skills of jobseekers also have to change and evolve. And our job as a recruitment firm needs to embrace that and help bridge those gaps and provide the transition from you know from one job into another or from one industry into another. That will remain and we have a big part to play as a recruitment industry to enable job seekers to find comfort and not be afraid of the future. Max: Yeah. Your inspiring story about how Adecco responded quickly to these changes makes me think. You know. You're a little bit like a financial trading company where some hedge funds really benefit from market instability. You know they're like when things are moving quickly, that's when they make money. You can think that I mean of course you it be very I don't wanna lay this in nick of Adecco as a profiteer of change you know traumatic situation but rather as an agent of change where the market will continue to change, most people will continue to look for jobs. Good year or bad year you know traumatic year. These changes needs you know need guidance. And so, you could imagine that Adecco would have I don't know I haven't looked at your I don't know if your results are publicly posted but it sounds like Adecco may have had a great year when you you put it that way. Kelly: We definitely did have a good year I think and ultimately, we have shareholders and we're publicly listed, and you have a business to run. But the reality of it is if we have last year have faced the wave of the first lockdown and sort of sat back to certain extent and accepted where we are you know good proportion of our workforce was being stood down or have you know we're having their hours reduced to absolutely no fault of our clients. You know we supply a huge number of small and medium enterprises, not just large organizations and many sectors that were impacted, we would have been in serious trouble, we would have in serious financial trouble, we would have had our own workforce impacted with not enough work to do, and it's not in our nature to sort of accept that. So, we were very very quick to look up the strategy and to pivot and to understand where the market was going short term and where the market was gonna go long term and that was incredibly difficult during COVID. But our workforce inside Adecco absolutely adapted and we moved people around internally from you know one team to another team internally. And people responded very well to that and got on with the necessary task of trying to help as many people as possible remain in work or come out of work in one job and get into the job work in another and that helped us to remain sustainable as a business, helped our workforce and our candidates, and ultimately helped our clients, even the ones that were downsizing. That helped them because they knew their workers were going to another home. And it was easier on everyone to do that, so it was actually really quite rewarding despite the pressure and the challenges of the economy and the market and you know the health crisis that everybody was facing. So yeah, we're a pretty resilient bunch in the large part in Adecco, but yeah there's business travis for sure that go without. We didn't our own workforce to have to be impacted but we didn't want our candidates and casual workforce to be impacted either and I think we did a really good job of leading the charge there. Max: Well, well done. Well done to the team and I hope of course that not every year has full of changes as last one and that we could have some more quiet time for people can settle into their industry and I'm getting some sense of stability. I have two more questions for you. One of them is about productivity and tech tools that are used by the team or that you use personally, that you would recommend. What are some productivity tips you can offer to our listeners?Kelly: I love this question and I am a big I mean I come from a technology background so I'm always keen to try and look at what tools are out in the market and technology in the market that would give us efficiency and give us advantage as well, differentiate us for our clients. If I look at some of the tools we've embraced and scaled, we are right now today we're you know embracing AI, we're embracing analytics and the data that we have is you know the power that's within that data. We're also embracing chatbots and finding ways to automate elements of the recruitment process that for many years have been manual load, very labor-intense, very cumbersome, and is often at lower on investment tasks. So, finding good ways to automate the recruitment process has been a real journey for Adecco and we are yes still advancing every day with what we're doing with our technology and tools. And that's exciting it's exciting because it doesn't displace our recruiters if we automate an element of their task and their business process. It actually enables them to focus on new work on you know where the market's going, what their customers really need, and their relationship-building, and focusing on different maturity of our solutions and what we're actually offering. So, what we find is as we brought in more tools to automate the process, the capability levels of our recruiters have improved, and we've got you know much higher-grade recruiters. I always say we have a high-performing team and that's absolutely true and we are enabling them to be that by taking away the low-hanging fruit from them through use of tools and technology. So, they embrace it. Our recruiters are not afraid of the tech. They actually will off my hands off of my bringing something new to the table which is a product that's going to help them in their day to be faster you know quicker speed to market, offering better service to their clients, helping their candidate supply and remain on our workforce you know on our workforce you know for a longer period of time. So, it's exciting. We're using many many tools in a really great way and they're here to stay. Technology has been enabling us the workplace, isn't it? It's here to stay.Max: They're lucky to have a leader that can embrace it so vividly because you know I started my company after doing a lot of recruitment myself, interviewing thousands of people over the phone, and feeling the dehumanization. You know I'm feeling my soul slipping away to know that that you know these days are for the most part gone that than now. It's much more value-added work. It's a redefinition of the role of recruiters that's happened over the last you know fifteen years which is yeah absolutely wonderful. Now my last question is about one of my favorite questions which is we all make hiring mistakes, and we try as I said we try to bury those memories. But sometimes it's good to wait a minute and remember and remember so we can draw the lessons from them. Can you walk us back through a specific hiring mistake you've made and what you know why you made that mistake and what we can learn from it?Kelly: This is a good question. I've never had this question before in my many interviews, so it's a nice first one. Maybe what I would say on this one is that if I go back, you know I've been around nearly three decades now twenty-seven years in recruitment, and one of the things we often used to do as leaders is hire multiple recruiters into the business and potentially at an average level. You know in the hope that a good proportion would step up and a good proportion would remain average, and you might have one or two strugglers that would not necessarily be the right fit and you would make that call and you would mass hire, especially in the large recruitment firms. And that works to a certain extent but it's not really great for the individuals and it's not the most rewarding way to you know build a high-performing culture in workforce. So, we definitely don't do that now. What we do now is just hold the line and very carefully wait for the right fit, the right cultural fit, never compromising cultural values or ethics. Waiting for the right fit even if it means we have an open vacancy for quite a long time and well losing productivity as a result of that because it pays off more. We've been hiring that way for the last two-three years and our everything has improved as a result. I would say our culture is better, our productivity per recruiter is better, the camaraderie has improved, and you know the level of business that we're selling is far far better. And it's because we make much more cautious hires, we just yeah, I'd rather sit with an open role than to fail you know to fail with more people and one of them might not make it. I'm not a lover of that model. I don't think it's good leadership practice and it doesn't really yeah it just doesn't serve you well in the long term. So yeah, I hold the line now while I draw the higher well and take time and be cautious about it and know that we are really getting that good fit than you know mass hire and hope. Max: Very good advice. Hold the line. Don't lower your standards.Kelly: Yeah.Max: You can always look back and say oh well I did this because of that mistake. But in your heart of hearts, you know when you're making a hiring mistake. When you're dropping the bar. So it's important to just accept the fact that your business is gonna be stretched and, like you said Kelly, sometimes at the risk of hurting productivity, but it's a small price to pay for a long-term gain. So thanks a lot Kelly for that advice and for your time and well I hope we'll get some of your followers to listen to our podcast. Kelly: Thank you, it's good to talk to you today. Max: That was Kelly Van Nelson, Managing Director at Adecco Australia, which tells us resilience whether at the company level or the individual level is one of the most valuable skills you can have in recruitment because things change fast and recruiters are change agents.They help whole economies reinvent themselves. I hope you enjoyed this interview and that you'll be back for more. Please remember to like follow and share. 

Kelly Bron Johnson is an Autistic and Hard of Hearing self-advocate, author, and founder of Completely Inclusive, which is a consultancy helping businesses transform their company culture to be inclusive and accessible to ALL. She lives in Montreal, QC, Canada with her husband and two boys. Her passion is to help people, and make all things easier for everyone. 25% of the population of the US and Canada has a disability, that's 1 in 4. It is something that definitely needs to be talked about. Big Takeaways When planning, and making accommodations for certain guests, you can ask them what would make it easier for them. This is, on course, is easier for people you are close to. Crowd sourcing can help, if you are not as close to the guests with disabilities. Weddings are difficult, but you can do things that are going to help a vast majority of people. It only takes a little extra labor. And you might be surprised that more people than you expected take advantage of the accommodations you make. None of this has to be hush hush. Talk about it. There are so many people around us with disabilities and special needs, and they should never have to automatically feel like a burden because of that. We can make it more normal to just accommodate everyone. What is Pagan Handfasting? Earth worshiping religion that follows the cycles of nature and the moon. Old tradition of Celtic hand fasting - joining together of two households, arms are tied together with ribbon during the ceremony. Promise to stay together a year and a day, considered a trial relationship and any child conceived would be taken care of equally, but if they don't stay together, they make a choice to untie a ribbon and walk away from each other and the kids will still be taken care of equally by each parent. Every year, you decide as a couple if they want to continue the commitment. Extra Tips: - Include notes on your wedding website, encouraging those with special needs to reach out - A room for guests to pop into when they need to decompress or step away is an awesome option. You have to let the guests know too! - Provide accommodations to everyone when possible. - Provide a bowl of cheap earplugs so any one can grab them. - Ask about food allergies or aversions Links We Referenced kbronjohn.club (https://kbronjohn.club) completementinclusif.org/en_US (https://completementinclusif.org/en_US/) intersectionsonthespectrum.com (https://intersectionsonthespectrum.com) Quotes “The disability community is the largest minority group that you can become a part of at any time in your life. You could have an accident. You could become sick. Anything could happen. And as we age, a lot of us join the disability community. So it's not just about who you are right now, it's also planning ahead for the future of what could be and what could happen.” - Kelly “As much as she knows her brother best, her brother knows himself best. You can have a collaborative session, brain storming session. What would work for you, what would you like to do, how would you like to feel included.” - Kelly “Getting diagnosed really helped me to understand. And it helped me to put boundaries. And to accept that, you know what, I'm not going to do everything the way that other people do. And it's not really useful to try and force myself to do these things. It gave me a way to accept myself and also to say no to certain things and say, 'I'm going to do it my way, and it's okay.'” - Kelly “It's not just about wheelchairs, sometimes it's about including people in different ways.” - Kelly We're able to produce this podcast because of YOUR support. If you want to learn more, check out our Patreon Page (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast). If you want to become a Patron (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast), and get exclusive access to our monthly newsletter, bonus episodes, and more, check out our Patreon Page (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast)! A giant thank you to all of our Patrons, who help keep this podcast running! Learn more by checking out our Patreon Page (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast). Plan your wedding using The Big Wedding Planning Master Class (https://www.thebigweddingplanningmasterclass.com/). A self-paced digital course created with love for you by Christy & Michelle. The Big Wedding Planning Podcast is... * Hosted and produced by Christy Matthews and Michelle Martinez. * Edited by Veronica Gruba. * Music by Steph Altman of Mophonics (https://www.mophonics.com/). * On Instagram @thebigweddingplanningpodcast and be sure to use #planthatwedding when posting, so you can get our attention! * Inviting you to become part of our Facebook Group! Join us and our amazing members. Just search for The Big Wedding Planning Podcast Community on Facebook. * Easy to get in touch with. Email us at thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com or Call and leave a message at 415-723-1625 and you might hear your voice on an episode * On Patreon. Become a member (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast) and with as little as $5 per month, you get bonus episodes, special newsletters and Zoom Cocktail Hours with Christy & Michelle! Our Partners (https://www.thebigweddingplanningpodcast.com/partners) Special Deals for Listeners - TBWPP Enthusiastically Approved! Wedfuly (https://wedfuly.com/bigwedding/) SuitShop (https://suitshop.com/?utm_campaign=EngagedLeads&utm_content=BWPPPartnership&utm_medium=BWPP&utm_source=ReferralLink) The Flashdance (https://www.theflashdance.com/virtual-party-the-big-wedding-planning-podcast) Cactus Collective (https://www.cactus-collective.com/the-big-wedding-planning-podcast/) Unboring Wedding Academy (https://www.unboringweddingacademy.com/bigwedding/) Special Guest: Kelly Bron Johnson.

Kelly Bron Johnson is an Autistic and Hard of Hearing self-advocate, author, and founder of Completely Inclusive, which is a consultancy helping businesses transform their company culture to be inclusive and accessible to ALL. She lives in Montreal, QC, Canada with her husband and two boys. Her passion is to help people, and make all things easier for everyone. 25% of the population of the US and Canada has a disability, that's 1 in 4. It is something that definitely needs to be talked about. Big Takeaways When planning, and making accommodations for certain guests, you can ask them what would make it easier for them. This is, on course, is easier for people you are close to. Crowd sourcing can help, if you are not as close to the guests with disabilities. Weddings are difficult, but you can do things that are going to help a vast majority of people. It only takes a little extra labor. And you might be surprised that more people than you expected take advantage of the accommodations you make. None of this has to be hush hush. Talk about it. There are so many people around us with disabilities and special needs, and they should never have to automatically feel like a burden because of that. We can make it more normal to just accommodate everyone. What is Pagan Handfasting? Earth worshiping religion that follows the cycles of nature and the moon. Old tradition of Celtic hand fasting - joining together of two households, arms are tied together with ribbon during the ceremony. Promise to stay together a year and a day, considered a trial relationship and any child conceived would be taken care of equally, but if they don't stay together, they make a choice to untie a ribbon and walk away from each other and the kids will still be taken care of equally by each parent. Every year, you decide as a couple if they want to continue the commitment. Extra Tips: - Include notes on your wedding website, encouraging those with special needs to reach out - A room for guests to pop into when they need to decompress or step away is an awesome option. You have to let the guests know too! - Provide accommodations to everyone when possible. - Provide a bowl of cheap earplugs so any one can grab them. - Ask about food allergies or aversions Links We Referenced kbronjohn.club (https://kbronjohn.club) completementinclusif.org/en_US (https://completementinclusif.org/en_US/) intersectionsonthespectrum.com (https://intersectionsonthespectrum.com) Quotes “The disability community is the largest minority group that you can become a part of at any time in your life. You could have an accident. You could become sick. Anything could happen. And as we age, a lot of us join the disability community. So it's not just about who you are right now, it's also planning ahead for the future of what could be and what could happen.” - Kelly “As much as she knows her brother best, her brother knows himself best. You can have a collaborative session, brain storming session. What would work for you, what would you like to do, how would you like to feel included.” - Kelly “Getting diagnosed really helped me to understand. And it helped me to put boundaries. And to accept that, you know what, I'm not going to do everything the way that other people do. And it's not really useful to try and force myself to do these things. It gave me a way to accept myself and also to say no to certain things and say, 'I'm going to do it my way, and it's okay.'” - Kelly “It's not just about wheelchairs, sometimes it's about including people in different ways.” - Kelly We're able to produce this podcast because of YOUR support. If you want to learn more, check out our Patreon Page (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast). If you want to become a Patron (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast), and get exclusive access to our monthly newsletter, bonus episodes, and more, check out our Patreon Page (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast)! A giant thank you to all of our Patrons, who help keep this podcast running! Learn more by checking out our Patreon Page (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast). Plan your wedding using The Big Wedding Planning Master Class (https://www.thebigweddingplanningmasterclass.com/). A self-paced digital course created with love for you by Christy & Michelle. The Big Wedding Planning Podcast is... * Hosted and produced by Christy Matthews and Michelle Martinez. * Edited by Veronica Gruba. * Music by Steph Altman of Mophonics (https://www.mophonics.com/). * On Instagram @thebigweddingplanningpodcast and be sure to use #planthatwedding when posting, so you can get our attention! * Inviting you to become part of our Facebook Group! Join us and our amazing members. Just search for The Big Wedding Planning Podcast Community on Facebook. * Easy to get in touch with. Email us at thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com or Call and leave a message at 415-723-1625 and you might hear your voice on an episode * On Patreon. Become a member (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast) and with as little as $5 per month, you get bonus episodes, special newsletters and Zoom Cocktail Hours with Christy & Michelle! Our Partners (https://www.thebigweddingplanningpodcast.com/partners) Special Deals for Listeners - TBWPP Enthusiastically Approved! Wedfuly (https://wedfuly.com/bigwedding/) SuitShop (https://suitshop.com/?utm_campaign=EngagedLeads&utm_content=BWPPPartnership&utm_medium=BWPP&utm_source=ReferralLink) The Flashdance (https://www.theflashdance.com/virtual-party-the-big-wedding-planning-podcast) Cactus Collective (https://www.cactus-collective.com/the-big-wedding-planning-podcast/) Unboring Wedding Academy (https://www.unboringweddingacademy.com/bigwedding/)

Episode 386 of Soulful Session with Chris Philps, LIVE on Zero Radio & In Africa on Old Skool Radio, Over 2 Hours Of Funky House Grooves Mixed with Love) Broadcasting from Planet Moon Studios, Brighton Every Saturday between 8pm & 12pm, Also available as a FREE Special Extended Podcast, to download or Live Stream directly from Apple Music, Amazon Podcasts, Podomatic or Listen Free To Every Episode, Any Time In High Quality Audio on Mixcloud Main Show Candido - Dancin & Prancin (Dave Lee 12" Remix) Stormzy Ft. Ed Sheeran & Burna Boy - Own It Ruger - Bounce Mbuzi Gang & Mejja Ft. Jofes - Shamra Shamra Althea & Donna - Uptown Top Ranking KC & The Sunshine Band - Shake Your Booty (Shed's 12" Re-Tread) Dean Parrish - I'm On My Way Joeboy - Show Me MadManOnTheMoon™ - Without You Otile Brown Ft. Jovial - Such Kinda Love Justin Bieber Ft. Burna Boy - Loved By You Dawn Penn - You Don't Love Me (No No No) Stoim Ft. Tracey Hamlin- - I Stopped Loving You (Richard Earnshaw Revision) Kc & The Sunshine Band - Sound Your Funky Horn Dave Lee Ft. Billy Valentine = Power Of The Mind (Dave Lee Redemption Mix) Angie Stone - Wish I Didn't Miss You Vaults - Midnight River Carmichael Musiclover - Pure Sweetness MadManOnTheMoon™ - Sikiliza Ukimya The Chi-Lites - It's Time For Love KC & The Sunshine Band - Please Don't Go The Big Soulful Mix Wez Clarke - Someday (Original Mix) Kentrell - In The Middle (Terry Hunter Club Mix) The Soultrend Orchestra Ft. More Blonde - King Of The Dancefloor (Submantra Remix) Blind Colors Ft. Melonie Daniels Walker - Found Love (David Morales Classic Mix) Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa - One Kiss (Jauz Remix) Chris Coco, Satoshi Fumi, Yoshi Horino & YoshiFumi - Thee Internet (YoshiFumi, Satoshi Fumi & Yoshi Horino Remix) Kerri Chandler - Keep Me Inside (Wolf Story Re-Edit) Daniele Baldi - Unconditional Love (Original Vocal MIx) Fanatix & Sterling Ensemble Ft. Sara Devine - Call On Me (Dj Spen, Gary Hudgins & Thommy Davis Vocal Remix) Ross Couch - Tender Love Reverendos Of Soul Ft. Kareem Shabazz - It's Over Now (John Morales M+M Main Mix) Emmaculate Ft. Kaye Fox - Gold (Terry Hunter Platinum Remix) Soul Power - Dance All Nite (Original Mix) Artful & Ridney Ft. Terri Walker - Missing You (Eric Kupper's 'Director's Cut Tribute To FK' Mix) R. Kelly - It's Your World (First Take) (Terry Hunter First Take Main Mix) The Layabouts Ft. Portia Monique - Colours Of Love (Mood II Swing Vocal Mix) For Full listings on All Episodes, Requests, Dedications etc, or to just give us your Valuable Feedback etc, please email: planetmoonradio@live.com or www.zero radio.co.uk Soulful Session Is Mixed & Produced Exclusively for Zero Radio by PLANET M☯☯N Studio's, Brighton, Sussex by Chris Philps © 2021 Soulful Session Is Available As a FREE Extended Podcast Every Week on Podomatic, iTunes & In HQ Audio on Mixcloud, Thank you for All your Support, Please Join us again LIVE Next Saturday 8pm-10pm (UK) on www.zeroradio.co.uk, Stand Up Against Racism & Police Brutality, Black Lives Matter xx ♪ღ♪*•.¸¸¸.•*¨¨*•.¸¸¸.•*•♪ღ ░S░O░U░L░F░U░L░ ░░ S░E░S░S░I░O ░N░ 386░ ░ ♪ღ ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ ♪ღ♪*•♪ღ♪*•.¸¸¸.•*¨¨*•.¸¸¸.•*•♪ღ♪* ᵗʱᵃᵑᵏઽ*♡ღ♪ ©℗™ 2021 An Earthnet Production for Ngata Music, Planet Moon & Zero Radio

AT Moms have a lot to deal with. Being mom at home and "mom" at work, breastfeeding in a football locker room at halftime...I mean come on. Cari Wood, Valerie Moody, and Kelly Salter join share some of their stories to encourage and lift you up as an AT Mom. Val, what is your family makeup? University of Montana Director of our program AT Journey Colorado, Nebraska, Colorado, Florida back to Nebraska Met husband in high school but actually met when she was back in Nebraska Cari? 22 year old and 19 year old Married 23 years Kelly? Born and raised in Michigan Husband was a coach at her first job 23 years this summer 21 and 20 year old sons Tell some stories of raising kids as an AT mom? Kelly - we now sleep with a phone on for our kids...but it can not be me as I get messages from former kids at all hours. I was able to provide AT care to my kids in little league. As the only AT at my school, I have to care for my kids.  It takes practice and objectivity. Cari - former athlete called her after a varsity football game and they had been having fun. I love they feel safe to call me A friend fell off the golf cart and broke her 5th metatarsal but Cari made her play through it. It is hard to evaluate your own kid. My son was a wrestler but my contract did not cover the road trips.  So I had to sit in the stands and sit and watch, but I can never really turn that off. Val - when my kids are playing I have the other AT doing the evaluation.  It gives me a layer of separation. “Will there ever be a game where I am just mom, not the AT?” What are some of the best moments? Cari - raising the kids in the high school and having them be included with the teams.  Allowing the high school kids to guide and instruct them. Realizing I had to lay down the law with the boys trying to date my daughter. Kelly - getting to see role models and how the teams can be like family. Now my boys are returning the mentor favors. Keeping my kids involved in what I do and allowing them to be pediatric patients and part of my regular routine How do you handle the dating scene? It was great for me but tough for the kids.  I always knew everything. It is a double-edged sword.  There was much more benefit than difficulty. Being relationship-driven has always been important to me so it caused some issues as I wanted to be friends with others. Am I an imposter? Val - It is easy for us to fall into that trap with social media. I try to surround myself with good role models that I can reach out to. I intentionally connected with another faculty member who is in a similar situation. Cari - I missed a lot of competitions because I had to work, my husband did a lot of the nighttime routines. Kelly - It is hard to be vulnerable, but it is so important to have a real conversation with someone you trust instead of just venting on social media. Once we acknowledge the feeling we give them less power. Being understanding of the schedule and requirements is really important to help and support the feeling of adequacy. Help with child care understanding daycare requirements. Val - bring coffee or chocolate What are some of the struggles of being an AT Mom? Breastfeeding can be tough Have a handheld pump as a backup Talk to your admin and say I need a space to do this. Having a pretty rigid schedule helps as well even though it is really tough. Planning ahead and making sure they had backups for the backups...diaper blowouts can derail your lesson. I allowed my students to help and that was crucial. People want to help you, let them. I feel many women have to choose to be an AT or a mom, speak to that thought. Kelly - I knew I wanted to be an AT before I knew I wanted to be a mom.  I was told several times that if I wanted to be a mom I would need my teaching certificate so I had something to fall back on.

On this episode of Is That Like a Thing podcast, we get to spend time with our very first and very special guest, Kelly Needham. She is a wife, a mom, and the author of a wonderful book that we will be discussing today called, “Friendish”. We dive into this idea that there are counterfeit friendships that might look good on the outside, but on the inside are not the healthiest or even godly. Kelly helps us to identify what a few of these look like in our own lives, while also dropping a few truth bombs on the way. We had so much fun visiting with Kelly on this episode and we each found her wisdom incredibly helpful and eye-opening in our own friendships. We know you will find her a breath of fresh air, incredibly relatable and so very much fun. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Is That Like a Thing. You can find all things Kelly Needham and “Friendish” on her website kellyneedham.com. You can also connect with her on instagram or facebook @kellyneedham.Want more info? Follow us on facebook, twitter and Instagram @isthatlikeathing or reach us at 469-854-9636HOSTS / GUESTSCrystal Yates, Magen Thurman, Becky Leach (feat. Emily Gentiles), with Special Guest Kelly NeedhamEPISODE NOTES“Friendish” by Kelly Needhamhttps://www.amazon.com/Friend-ish-Reclaiming-Friendship-Culture-Confusion-ebook/dp/B07KF27RZ4/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=friendish&qid=1617626961&sr=8-1Find Kelly at www.keelyneedham.com or on Instagram and Facebook @kellyneedhamQUOTES“A lot of our [friendship] issues are in the motivation - in the why we do what we do.” - Kelly“Real friendship is that I care about you, I am for you, and asking how can I serve you and bless you, not myself.” - Kelly“As soon as we start to need them more than we need Jesus, we start to be selfish with our friendship.” - Kelly“We should be for our friends' friendships.” - Kelly“The thing that's made the biggest difference in my friendship with Christ is embracing the costs that come with knowing Him. And they're different from the costs that come with knowing a friend.” - Kelly“It's only because of technology that we even have the option to refuse to let a friendship be seasonal.” - Kelly

Episode 363, Special Extended Edition of Soulful Session with Chris Philps, LIVE on Zero Radio & In Africa on Old Skool Radio, (Over Two Hours of Funky Non-Stop Ad Free House Grooves Mixed with Love!) Broadcasting from Planet Moon Studios, Brighton Every Saturday between 8pm & 10pm, Also available as a FREE Special Extended Podcast, to download or Live Stream directly from Apple Music, Amazon Podcasts, Podomatic or In High Quality Audio on Mixcloud Main Show Thommy Davis & Tasha LaRae - Do It Properly (DJ Spen & Reelsoul Chi Town Mix) Dj Romain - Like the Music (Main Vocal) MadManOnTheMoon™ - All Of My Love El Deep - Amani (Deeper Mix) Whitney Houston - Love That Man The Real Thing -Can't Get By Without You The Real Thing - You To Me Are Everything Soul II Soul - Love Enuff MadManOnTheMoon™ - African Angel Arthur Conley - Sweet Soul Music The Philly Devotions - i Just Can’t Say Goodbye Barry White - Let The Music Play The Wailers - Simmer Down Ruddy Simbal - A So The System Work Mykal Rose - Let Your Love Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Ain't No Mountain High Enough Andreya Triana - That's Alright With Me Anthony Hamilton - Best Of Me Prince Philip Mitchell - I'm So Happy Marvin Gaye - What's Going On Holland-Dozier-Holland - Don't Leave Me Starvin' For Your Love (Part 1) The Big Soulful Mix Wez Clarke - Someday (Original Mix) Kentrell - In The Middle (Terry Hunter Club Mix) The Soultrend Orchestra Ft. More Blonde - King Of The Dancefloor (Submantra Remix) Blind Colors Ft. Melonie Daniels Walker - Found Love (David Morales Classic Mix) Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa - One Kiss (Jauz Remix) Chris Coco, Satoshi Fumi, Yoshi Horino & YoshiFumi - Thee Internet (YoshiFumi, Satoshi Fumi & Yoshi Horino Remix) Kerri Chandler - Keep Me Inside (Wolf Story Re-Edit) Daniele Baldi - Unconditional Love (Original Vocal MIx) Fanatix & Sterling Ensemble Ft. Sara Devine - Call On Me (Dj Spen, Gary Hudgins & Thommy Davis Vocal Remix) Ross Couch - Tender Love Reverendos Of Soul Ft. Kareem Shabazz - It's Over Now (John Morales M+M Main Mix) Emmaculate Ft. Kaye Fox - Gold (Terry Hunter Platinum Remix) Soul Power - Dance All Nite (Original Mix) Artful & Ridney Ft. Terri Walker - Missing You (Eric Kupper's 'Director's Cut Tribute To FK' Mix) R. Kelly - It's Your World (First Take) (Terry Hunter First Take Main Mix) The Layabouts Ft. Portia Monique - Colours Of Love (Mood II Swing Vocal Mix) For Full listings on All Episodes, Requests, Dedications etc, or to just give us your Valuable Feedback etc, please email: planetmoonradio@live.com or www.zero radio.co.uk Soulful Session Is Mixed & Produced Exclusively for Zero Radio by PLANET M☯☯N Studio's, Brighton, Sussex by Chris Philps © 2020 Soulful Session Is Available As a FREE Extended Podcast Every Week on Podomatic, iTunes & In HQ Audio on Mixcloud, Thank you for All your Support, Please Join us again LIVE Next Saturday 8pm-10pm (UK) on www.zeroradio.co.uk, Stand Up Against Racism & Police Brutality, Black Lives Matter xx ♪ღ♪*•.¸¸¸.•*¨¨*•.¸¸¸.•*•♪ღ ░S░O░U░L░F░U░L░ ░░ S░E░S░S░I░O ░N░ 363░ ░ ♪ღ ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ ♪ღ♪*•♪ღ♪*•.¸¸¸.•*¨¨*•.¸¸¸.•*•♪ღ♪* ᵗʱᵃᵑᵏઽ*♡ღ♪ ©℗™ 2021 An Earthnet Production for Ngata Music, Planet Moon & Zero Radio

What's on the other side of fear and rejection? Kelly Chase joins the girls to talk about just that. She shares how you can go from a place of rejection to a place of love and worth. Oh, and she lets Erin and Rachel in on how her experience on the hit Netflix show Love Is Blind! You'll hear more about: The pivotal moment that began Kelly's personal development journey One important thing she makes time for every single day What events led her to mindset and empowerment coaching The power you have in sharing your vulnerability How you can bring awareness to the emotions your feeling Why having support in your life and business is key to success Books that have helped transform her life (and can transform yours too!) How Love Is Blind has affected Kelly's life Why you need to celebrate everything, including the small things And so much more! Let's take a listen! Resources: Kelly's Instagram: @chaselifewithkelly Erin's Instagram: @erin_travelsforlife Rachel's Instagram: @iamrachelbrooks The Confident Woman Podcast Instagram: @theconfidentwomanpodcast Quotes: Every single person who asked me what I was eating, no one asked me how much I was eating.” - Kelly “I find that time. I make that time.” - Kelly “How we do one thing is legit how we do everything.” - Kelly “It's crazy how we tie our value and our self worth to external things.” - Rachel “You have to create space for yourself.” - Rachel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theconfidentwoman/message

On this episode of our podcast, we speak with Kellianne Fedio, an Amazon consultant. She discusses selling her previous business for seven figures and the creation of her new podcast. Her journey is long and interesting, with a lot of twists and turns. Here, she shares her entire story and offers great advice to those who want to follow in her footsteps. Tune in to hear Kellianne's great insights. Topics: When she stumbled on Ecommerce, she realized it was a good fit. How Amazon has changed since she started. Why outside funding sources are necessary. The importance of Mastermind groups. Living through rocky periods. Explaining rebates. Kellianne's consulting methods.   Resources: Kellianne on LinkedIn Kellianne on Facebook Digital Shelf Strategy Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com   Transcription: Mark: Joe, we know that first-hand experiences of people that have gone through the process of building a business, preparing it for sale, going through that exit, that tends to be some of the greatest stories and stories where we can get a lot of lessons back to us that we can apply and learn how to optimize our own businesses for a better exit. I know you had Kellianne on recently and she shared her story of building her business and going through that exit and now her current pivot where she's starting up a podcast on this very topic. Joe: Yeah, Kellianne is good friends with another good friend of ours, Paul Miller, who owns Cozy Phones and Kellianne had a seven-figure exit. Technically, I guess it would be early this year that she closed on the transaction; early 2020. And she's learned a lot through that process and now she's sharing that experience and the knowledge and the networking and the story of building a business on Amazon; all the resources and connections that you need to make in order to build it well and build it right with an eventual exit in mind. So she shares her entire story and gives real tips and advice from her own direct experience during the interview. Joe: Hey, folks, Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and the Quiet Light Podcast, Today I've got Kellianne Fedio and I had to say that out loud several times to make sure I pronounced it right. Kelly is a former attorney, Amazon seller, seven-figure exit that she's had recently. And she's going to be moving into helping people build their Amazon businesses for a stronger exit down the road. Kelly, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Kelly: Thank you so much for having me, Joe. I'm such a big fan of everything you guys are doing over at Quiet Light and have done for the past several years so it's a real honor to be here. Joe: I appreciate that. I did more of an intro just now than I normally do, but I didn't read from the script. But why don't you go ahead and tell us who you are and your story and where you came from and what you've done here? Kelly: Sure. So I started out as an attorney in a former life, and after having kids, getting married, I became very unhappy in that profession. That was just a lot of long hours, not enough pay at least for what I was doing, and I really wanted to be there for my kids. So I became a stay at home mom for a while and loved every minute of it. And then when my kids started elementary school, I was like, okay, what's my next chapter here? And I never would have guessed it would have been entrepreneurship. I was very traditional type-A personality in high school. I'm going to get all A's. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to go to law school. I'm going to be an attorney. And that was like my plan for the rest of my life. And so fast forward to several years later, after having practiced law for 10 years and now having kids and a husband and a wonderful family life, I was like what am I passionate about? What can I put out there into the world that not only is going to hopefully bring in income to our family but also that I could be excited about doing? And so I just knew it had to have something to do with online; being online and creating value online. And so, like a lot of other entrepreneurs getting involved in the online space, I tried a lot of different things, made tons of mistakes, had tons of failures, learned a lot, loved every minute of that experience, but sooner or later stumbled upon e-commerce and pretty quickly realized this is something that I really could see myself doing for the foreseeable future. And so around that time, Amazing Selling Machine had become pretty prominent in terms of the Amazon education space. So I was in ASM3 and of course… Joe: I got to ask, what number were you? The early ones were the good years. They're coming back around. They're doing good stuff again. I talked to them last week. Kelly: They are. They're always innovating, always doing new stuff so, I mean I always bring that out when I'm on podcasts or other interviews, because if it wasn't for that course my life would be a lot different. So I met an amazing group of entrepreneurs with the affiliate group that I joined. It was Ryan Moran and his tribe. I met a lot of amazing people. I'm still friends with them to this day, and really just dug in and had some pretty early success early on. So it was really, really exciting and I knew that this was what I was going to be focusing on, probably forever. Joe: How did you choose your first product? Kelly: I chose something that I thought I could build a brand around. So I'm very passionate about talking to other Amazon sellers about when they're thinking about how to start their business. You know, people always ask, well, how do you pick a product? First and foremost, you have to build a brand these days. When I started, you could throw up kind of anything and just with a little luck and… Joe: How many years ago was it that you started? Kelly: 2014. Joe: Okay. Kelly: Yeah, so it was a while ago. Things have drastically changed, right, in the Amazon space? Joe: A little bit, yeah. Kelly: Yeah, a little bit. And so even back then; and I had no branding experience or consumer product experience, but I knew that this first product, I could build a brand around it and actually wasn't a product that had a huge demand at the time, but it was a product that I knew that I would love and that I knew that other active women would love. So that's really what I built the brand around and just continued to develop products; not all winners, lots of failures… Joe: Additional products all within that brand, yes? Kelly: Exactly, that would serve a core audience and solve a problem or need. Joe: How many products did you launch initially, was it just one? Kelly: It was just one. Joe: And it was a success out of the gate? Kelly: Not right out of the gate. So I launched it in August but by that Q4, I had reached seven figures on top-line revenue so it was really, really exciting. Joe: Cool, very exciting. Kelly: Just with one product, one variation. Joe: And probably not working as many hours as you did as an attorney. Kelly: No, I mean, I definitely was working a lot because I was still in learning mode. I mean, the thing about Amazon and e-commerce is you're not only learning the platform itself, but you're learning how to source overseas, perhaps, and manufacturing and product design and advertising and marketing. So there's a lot of different skill sets you have to learn. So I definitely was really, really passionate about learning as much as I could. Joe: When you learn all of those things, do you think it's things you need to learn and then do yourself or do you think that there are certain experts that you can outsource certain things to like photography or listing creation or whatever it might be; importing from China, dealing with different things? Are there certain aspects to an Amazon business you feel that should be outsourced and things that you should do in-house as the entrepreneur that started the business? Kelly: Oh, absolutely. In the beginning, I think you should do everything with the exception of maybe photography. Super specific skill sets, like graphic design or photography certainly, you can outsource that early on. But everything else I would say you have to learn first and foremost yourself before you can effectively outsource it. And there are I mean, so many great service providers now that have obviously spawned in this Amazon industry not only software services but also other types of services, whether it's Amazon brand management or writing listings, things like that. So now it's all out there, but you should really learn the components and the strategy behind it first before outsourcing. Joe: How much money did you start with Kellianne? Kelly: I started with about $5,000. Joe: Okay, and did you have to borrow more to keep up with inventory? Because that's the story that I consistently hear. I started out with X and then when you dig deeper the business didn't fund the growth. Did yours fund the growth or did you have to go and borrow more? Kelly: In the beginning, it did. But yes, even if you reinvest all of your profits, there's no way you can grow initially without getting capital from outside sources. So about a year into it, I was able to get Amazon Lending so that was great. But before that, it was a lot of credit cards. And then early on, I actually was able to get a line of credit after the first year. But until then, it was really credit cards. And I wouldn't recommend people doing that but sometimes it's just a necessary evil to get where you need to go. Joe: Yeah, I was playing golf with a mentor years ago before I grab my head and one of the things he said to me was get a line of credit set up now; before you need it, get that line of credit set up because you never know when you're going to need it. And I see so many people that are struggling to keep up with purchasing more and more inventory for growth or developers if it's a SaaS business because they don't have the ability to stroke a check when it's necessary. They go hunting for that line of credit when they need it as opposed to getting it set up beforehand so I think it's great to get it set up beforehand. So you hit six figures you said by the end of Q4 your first year… Kelly: Seven figures, I was very lucky. Yeah. Joe: And did a million in revenue in 2004. Kelly: Mm-hmm. Joe: Don't you like how I could do the seven-figure translation to a million? That was really; okay, all right. Anyway was it all with one SKU or did you add additional SKUs as well? Kelly: By that next quarter of 2015 then I started adding more SKUs, but it was really just on one product. And so that talk about funding the inventory for that, I got to say it was just a lot of luck. I was able to forge a really strong relationship with my supplier very early on in China without ever having met him. And he gave me terms once he saw that this thing; and that normally doesn't happen that early on in the relationship. Joe: No. Yeah, I know. Kelly: He was able to give me terms. So that's another way that I was able to fund that growth so quickly that that first year. Joe: Yeah, if you can get to China, folks, we did a podcast with Athena Severi from China Magic and before that with Dan from Titan Network all about negotiating terms with your Chinese manufacturers, and it does exactly what Kellianne did, which was it gives you more cash flow for buying more inventory. And if you can get terms, it's a lot better than an Amazon Loan because the interest rate is very different. It's nonexistent in most cases. During that initial journey Kellianne if we summarize things so far, you took ASM3, you invested $5,000, you did a million dollars in revenue. Sounds easy, but I'm sure it wasn't, right? Kelly: It was and I know it sounds easy and like I said, there was a lot of luck in there too. I'm not going to like take credit that it was just all my superpower genius. But I did have tremendous tenacity because between the time that I launched the product in August, it was like pushing a boulder uphill; August, September, October, November. It wasn't really till November that it really took off. And I had the foresight and maybe just stupidity to order a bunch of inventory in anticipation of Q4 and early on recognize that I could market this product as a gift in addition to just the primary keywords that were related to the product. So that was something that I did very early on and that allowed me to scale too because I was able to secure top positioning for keywords such as gifts for women, top Christmas gifts for women, things like that, very early on. So all of that came from me putting in the hard work of learning and masterminding, I can't underestimate the power of masterminding as well. I found a small group of; there were all guys, actually, I was the only girl. They are all amazed… Joe: So you were in charge essentially, right? Kelly: Yeah, sort of but we just were kindred spirits and we became very close and we would meet once a week and we were all building Amazon businesses, others went on to build SaaS businesses and all other types of businesses. They're all super successful entrepreneurs and that really made a huge difference in making me feel like I could really do this because I had other people in my corner so that was all. Joe: There's nothing more valuable than that and it didn't cost you anything. It sounds like there are groups that can get together just to help share information or you can join more formal groups like eCommerceFuel or EcomCrew Premium things of that nature. Kelly: Exactly. Joe: I think it's incredible. So let's talk money; ASM3, launched million dollars in revenue within the first year, you must be rolling in cash flow, yes? Kelly: No, absolutely not. Joe: I knew the answer to that. Kelly: I wish. Joe: How much did you; other than distributions just to make you feel good to pay taxes that were going to be due, did you put yourself on payroll or take any money out of the business for you and your family? Kelly: No, not the first couple of years I did not. And I was again, lucky that I had a husband who had a full-time career and that's the money that we relied on to support our family. So starting this business, that wasn't the mindset that we were going to do this to support our family. This was hopefully something that we could build into something bigger and perhaps fuel some bigger investing goals and things like that. Joe: So you would not recommend someone listening quit their job and they've got $10,000 and they're going to do $5,000 to start the Amazon business and live off the rest until revenues start rolling; bad idea, right, because they're going to run out of money very fast? Kelly: Absolutely, I would never recommend somebody quit their day job. You really need to start any business, in my opinion, as a side hustle. I mean, even my husband and I to this day, like right now, I'm really getting into real estate investing and he's getting into day trading and we're going to wait until we become masters of that and really start making significant sums of money before he would ever consider quitting his job. Joe: Yeah, good advice. All right, so 2016 rolls around how do things go? Did you have any rocky periods where you thought this isn't for me or did revenue just continue to climb? Kelly: Oh, no. There was a lot of rocky periods. So back then there was no brand registry, there was no; just counterfeiters galore and the initial product that I had launched all of a sudden came on everybody's radar. I can't remember if by then there were tools such as Jungle Scout or things like that to look at what sales revenue these products were doing. But it definitely; people caught on and started copying my exact listings, the exact product. I mean, certainly, I didn't have any proprietary rights. The product was a private label product, but definitely, competition grew and revenue; I was able to maintain revenue because I diversified my keyword traffic and wasn't going with what everybody else is going for. Slowly but surely the market grew. But my market share also grew with it and then declined at some point because so many competitors came in. Joe: Did your margins tighten; did you have to drop the price too? Kelly: Yes, I did. I remember actually, so Q4 of my first year of selling, I think I sold that particular product at a price point of I think as high as $35. And now if you were to look at this product on Amazon it ranges between $10 and maybe $17 tops. Joe: Wow. Kelly: Yeah, and that happens. I mean you don't get to; that product was still a winning product by the time I sold my business but I knew that this couldn't sustain me forever. I needed to obviously continue rolling out products, right? Joe: And that's how you combatted it; you continued to roll out new SKUs? Kelly: Yes, absolutely. Joe: How did you determine what to do next in terms of SKU expansion? Kelly: I did make a lot of mistakes there. I launched a lot of products that failed. Joe: How many? Just out of curiosity. Kelly: How many failures? Joe: Yeah, after the initial launch out of the next 10, how many were successes, and how many were failures? Kelly: I would say I was probably at a 50:50 rate. Joe: That's good. Kelly: I would have liked it to be higher. And I think nowadays, with all of the tools that are available and with the mindset that you have to cut losers quickly; that was my biggest downfall, is it was so hard for me to give up on a product that I spent not only time but a lot of money on developing and then to just let it go. That was really hard for me. I was emotionally tied and that's one area that if I had cut those losers quicker, I would have freed up my cash flow and been able to expand and scale a lot quicker and more efficiently. Joe: Let's go into that a little bit further. Let's define a loser in terms of products. Is it one that is negative profit-wise or is it at 5% profit where the others are at 43% profit? How do you determine what a loser is and then what action do you take with it? Kelly: Well, it also depends on the time period. So when you're launching a product; everybody has their own time frame, but I kind of give it a three-month cycle of pushing it out, launching, ranking it, advertising, heavy on advertising so you're usually in the red. At least I was okay with being in the red at that point, but then it should start to pick up after that if it's going to be a winning product. If you've done everything right with your launch, and ranking strategy, it should just start to kind of take off on its own, really. Joe: A three month period is that what you're okay? Kelly: Yeah, about three months. Joe: Okay. Kelly: At least for me back then. I would say now it's probably a longer time window. I would say probably about six months. But there becomes this like intuitive sense of you're still continuously pushing a boulder uphill with your nose rather than it's starting to gain some traction and go downhill. And so you've got to know when is that point to cut it off and it definitely took me a lot of failed products and a lot of wasted money and time to finally realize. Even up until when I sold my business; I mean, the buyer who bought my business, there were quite a few SKUs that he was just like I don't want to continue with these because these are just not making enough profit. They were profitable but not making enough profit. So everybody has their own standards. Joe: So yeah, there's SKU balance that offsets risk. If you've got one SKU doing 60% or 70% of your revenue, some buyers will perceive it as more risk other buyers will perceive it as less work, and they like that. Kelly: Yeah. Joe: How do you; I mean, if you're at a six month period now in your assessment of really it takes that long to push that boulder uphill until it's profitable and then you determine whether or not you get to keep that SKU that you've worked so hard on or if it's not profitable enough and you move on. How often are you launching SKUs? It sounds like you're probably needing to launch them every couple of months just to keep up and stay ahead of the game. Is that the case or is that something you recommend? Kelly: Yeah, it definitely depends on your product mix and what your revenue goals are and what capital you have to work with and your cash flow; all those things. But ideally, if you could be launching a new product I would say at least every quarter but there are sellers out there that are launching products every week or every two weeks. It just depends. I did not have nor did I want to have some big, huge behemoth of a business where I had a million employees and I was doing all the product design in the beginning; myself, along with my manufacturers, maybe hiring some outside design people to create changes to existing products to make them better. That was always kind of my MO. And really, you have to have a certain amount of capital that is allocated to new product development and know where that line is because then you don't want to let your other product suffer either and that's what's bringing cash in and keeping the lights on, right? So there's a fine balance there and I really do think that comes down to cash flow management; knowing your cash flow. Joe: And that's something so many people fail at. I probably looked at 8,000 profit and loss statements over the last eight, almost nine years now, and I'll be honest with you, probably 70% of them are inaccurate; wrong cash accounting, not using Quick Books or Xero, but the audience knows that. I know that's my thorn in my side. Let's talk about favorite tools. I mean, you obviously have figured out the Amazon game. You must have used some tools along the way. Have there been any that have stood out that you kind of you think must have? I mean, you mentioned Jungle Scout a few minutes ago. What tools do you use in your Amazon business or recommend as you work with new Amazon owners now to help them fine-tune their business and get it ready to sell? Kelly: Well, I wouldn't say I would at this point in time recommend a specific tool because there's a lot of competitors in the Amazon SaaS space, right? But you want a good tool for first and foremost, keyword research and keyword tracking. So, for example, Helium10 is a great one for that. But there are many others out there that are very good. So I'm not going to say that Helium10 is the best. They are one of the best and I like that tool a lot. And then you're going to want to have a tool for launching and ranking. These days that's all about rebates and so I recommend Six Leaf. My good friend Joe Junfola created Six Leaf and he's got a very new and exciting rebate option in there now and I'm helping my friend Paul Miller with his business in using that. Joe: Really? He's my friend, too. Kelly: What's that? Yes, your friend too; our good friend. Joe: Our friend. Kelly: Yeah, and so if you don't have outside traffic that you can send to your listings and have like a system for that, you definitely are going to need to do some I would say giveaways but these days that means rebates. And so there are other platforms that can do that but that's the one I recommend for that. And then Helium10 basically has all the other components that I would recommend, such as product research and keyword tracking. There are so many different tools out there and they've all kind of evolved over time and they all kind of overlap and what was most frustrating to me by the time that I sold my company is I had so many different tools. And even though they did a lot of the same functions, one did one better than the other and so I felt like I just had a lot of bloat in there and a lot of things that I could cut out. And so I wish somebody would just like focus on one thing and just do it right. Joe: Yeah, because if you wasted a thousand dollars a month, that's going to cost you an awful lot in the sale of your business. Kelly: Yeah. Joe: Can we talk about rebates for just a second? I want you to educate me and educate the audience because a rebate to me; from a novice standpoint and I don't sell on Amazon, I did once upon a time but it'd be a conflict for me now as I see it. Plus, I don't ever want to import from China. Kelly: I don't blame you. Joe: Yeah, I don't want to; I was at Helium10 back when it was a man he had Illuminati Mastermind and I was at the event. It was in Cancún and somebody was up on stage and she was literally talking about importing from China, talking literally about the thickness of the corrugated box that your products have to be in. And I swear to God I felt sick three times and I thought never will I import from China. Rebates, you're giving something away. They're getting a discount back or they're doing a review and they're getting a discount. Explain how it worked because it sounds like it's definitely against terms of services depending upon how it's used. Kelly: Now, I don't think it's against terms of services. I mean there's a lot of rebate services out there now. Joe: What is a rebate? Kelly: A rebate is the purchaser gets to purchase the products and then they get reimbursed the full amount usually to be most effective or it could be some percentage of that amount. So traditional retailers have been doing rebates for years. I mean, it's a very common thing in marketing. Joe: So there's no hey, we'll give you 100% refund for review it's just buy it and we're giving you your money back and that improves the algorithm rankings; organic rankings. Kelly: It's a keyword ranking strategy. I would not use it as a review strategy; absolutely not. Joe: Yeah, okay the review strategy definitely gets against terms of services. Okay, thank you. I needed to hear that. Kelly: I mean, I wouldn't say it's necessarily against terms of service if you're asking for a review after the fact. But it just can be on that blurred line that you could potentially; and I haven't heard of anybody getting taken down for this but if you were to rebate a customer and then after the fact ask for a review then Amazon could potentially look at that as gaming the system. So you just want to be really careful and I would just recommend that sellers don't ask reviews for customers that they've given rebates to. Joe: What about is it cheaper or should it be a dual strategy of sending traffic from outside; buying traffic on Facebook that would drive directly using a keyword directly to the Amazon page, is that going to have a similar effect as rebates, cost less, cost more, or would you recommend a dual strategy of both of those or have you not sent traffic from outside sources like Facebook? Kelly: Well, that's a great question, Joe, but the rebate is just kind of like the end result of what the customer is getting but the traffic and the quality of the traffic is the most important thing. So a lot of these rebate services that are out there, they're just for using the same audience that they've built on Facebook over and over again. And Amazon now is so sophisticated they can tell that all that traffic is coming from the same source that's just this incestuous pool. So you really want to be careful of the services that you use. And ultimately, the best way is always to build your own list, to have your own audience whether that's a mini chat list or an email list or if you're a master of Facebook Marketing and you know how to target and you know what kind of audiences are really going to go and actually buy your product and if you have enough profit margin built into your product to do Facebook advertising. That's a whole another thing in and of itself. But for ranking purposes, you need to send high-quality traffic and a lot of these ranking or rebate services you just have to be careful of where they're getting their traffic from. Joe: Okay, so far we've established you as an Amazon expert; one that's been there, done that. I had to ask a couple of questions; dumb questions, if you will, to get us to where we are right now. Let's talk about digital shelf strategy, your business, where you're going to actually help Amazon sellers. If somebody out there in the audience is thinking that they want to exit their business someday in the future, or if they're just struggling and they're barely able to keep up with inventory demands, not taking any money out of the business and they're pulling their hair out, how are you going to be able to help them? Kelly: Great question. I started digital self-strategy when I was still a seller because I've over the years, I love Amazon. I live, breathe, eat, sleep, Amazon. I still do. And I would get questions from people anywhere from one-off questions to people wanting me to help them with their businesses. And so I have been very, very generous I feel like with my time wanting to help people. But sometimes if it needs to be a little bit more work or more time spent with somebody then I set up this agency just so I could have a way to work with sellers ongoing. And so between that and then another new business that I started with, Paul Miller, Amazing Exits, the consulting piece of that is really helping sellers with being able to look at their businesses holistically and help them figure out what are the strengths and weaknesses of that business. So kind of like a SWAT analysis and being able to help them with the things that are going to really move the needle and increasing the value of their business, whether or not they ever want to sell it because if you increase the value of your business, you're going to be spending out more cash flow. It's going to make you healthier in the long run. And then it'll certainly make it a lot more attractive to a potential buyer someday if you've got all your financials in order and you've got a really healthy profit margin and ROI and all the other things that go into having a valuable and sellable business. So it's a one-stop-shop, really, in terms of being able to look at a business, identify what are its strengths and weaknesses. For the weaknesses, we want to connect them with the resources that are going to help them fix those weaknesses and then ultimately be kind of their white-glove concierge along the way to a successful exit. Joe: And the Amazing Exits Podcast, that's where you're going to talk to people that have actually sold their businesses and have those resources, those experts on as well. Kelly: Yes, that's going to be both. I mean, we are looking for as many sellers as we can who have exited so we definitely want to have those as guests on. But we're also featuring top experts such as yourself to talk about exit planning. We're really trying to make exit planning sexy. This is what I say all the time and to really… Joe: Good luck. Kelly: Well, we're very passionate about it. And I think that if we couch it in terms of making your business more valuable now, like do you want more money now in your bank account and your pocket to feel your life, to feel your investments? Well, that's what it takes to build a successful business. And you might not ever want to sell it, but you should be building a sellable asset and realize why you're doing this. Joe: You're preaching to the choir. Making exit sexy again or sexy to begin with is; I had David Wood on the podcast and one of his visions was for people that are planning to eventually sell their business to imagine themselves on the beach doing whatever they want because they've got enough money in the bank to live off of and that's the sexy part of it. Or if you're building a better business, it's kicking off more cash flow. You are struggling less. You're able to do the things that you want because you've got the money and that part is sexy as well. Accounting makes most people's eyes bleed. It's the foundation of understanding cash flow and running your business successfully to get a strong exit. As you know, Kelly, anyone listening that owns any kind of online business at this time odds are that their business is their most valuable asset. Also, if it's an e-commerce business that's growing odds are that more than 50% of the money they'll ever make from that business will come the day that they sell it. All of that combined should kick start them into wanting to do more exit planning or coaching or training or things; whatever you want to call it, just getting in shape. As you want to work out and get your body in shape you should exercise your exit strategy muscles so that you're in better shape for your eventual exit because you will have a better path to it, a better exit as well, and be better off afterwards so that you can all go on to your next adventures, whether it be start another online business or do what Kelly is doing which is consulting and helping other people or where she was just a few years ago. Kelly: I couldn't agree more. That's so well said. And I would just add to that then, I truly believe, Joe, that one of the fastest ways to build wealth is to build a business and in this case an Amazon business and sell it. And that's the word that I want to get out to people, is that this is, like you said, your most valuable asset, most likely. And I didn't retire after I sold my business. I made a nice chunk of change and now I'm able to invest that into cash-producing assets but I will never stop being an entrepreneur. But I have so much freedom; clarity now that I didn't have when I was on that hamster wheel of running the business. So I want to just be able to express that to other sellers that there is another option to get off the hamster wheel and you can sell and do this again if you want so you'll have a lot more freedom and peace of mind. Joe: And cash in the bank throughout though. Kelly: Yes. Joe: Great. Kelly, thanks so much for joining the Quiet Light Podcast. I appreciate it. We'll put URLs up in the show notes for people who want to reach out. Kelly is there any other way that they can or should find you? Kelly: Yes, absolutely. They can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active over there. @KellianneFedio on Facebook and then they can also go toAmazingExits.com and sign up for our email list for when we get ready to launch the podcast later in August most likely. Joe: All right, she rolled her eyes a little bit here folks for those not watching. She's got a hopeful goal of August. I think it's going to be great whenever you launch it. If it takes an extra few weeks is not a big deal. Kelly, thanks for being in the Quiet Light Podcast. I appreciate it. Kelly: Thank you so much, Joe.

Live on https://pressureradio.com/ DJ Spen & The MuthaFunkaz Ft. Ann Nesby - It's So Easy (MuthaFunkaz 12' Vocal) Bobby D'Ambrosio Ft. Kelli Sae - Optimistic (Fabulous & Jones Vocal Mix) Groove Junkies Ft. Carolyn Harding - Play (Michele Chiavarini Remix) Hallex M, DJ Fudge Ft. Omar - Ding Ding (BPM Vocal Mix) Jennifer Hudson Ft. R. Kelly - It's Your World (Terry Hunter Club Mix) Jill Scott - Golden (Conway's Afro-Latin Funk) Kyle Kim Ft. Sheree Hicks - All I Do (Luyo Kore Remix) Lovebirds Ft. Stee Downes - Want You In My Soul (Summer In London Edit) Nathan Haines Ft.Verna Francis - Earth Is The Place (Atjazz Remix) Ralf GUM Ft. Diamondancer - All This Love For You (Rocco Spoken Mix) Zepherin Saint Ft.Kholi - Inner Freak (Zepherin Saint Tribe vocal Mix) Black Coffee Ft. Hugh Masekela - We Are One (Louie Vega Roots Mix) Bobby D'Ambrosio Ft. Michelle Weeks - Moment Of My Life (JN Dubwise Re-Organ-ization) Andy Ward and Sister Sledge - Family (Inspirational Mix) Johnny Corporate - Sunday Shoutin' (Dr Packer Extended Remix) Spiritchaser Ft. Angie Brown - Wild Orchid (Main Mix) Studio Apartment Ft. Yasmeen Sulieman - Sun Will Shine (Mk Mix) Zepherin Saint Ft. Miranda Nicole - Butterflies (Tribe Vocal Mix) SoulLab Ft. Jay Nemor - Together (Put Your Hands Together) (Original Mix) Gumzito Ft. Sabrinah Chyld - I'm Loving Me (Lilac Jeans Vocal Remix) Atjazz Ft. Robet Owens - Love Someone (Lemon & Herb Uplifting Remix) 60 Hertz Project - Music Hands (Main Mix) 12Inch Music Ft.Zandile - Because Of You (Real Kue Soul Broken Mix) AfriQan Child Ft. Semi Brieve - Ever Heard (Demented Soul's Deep Imp5 Vocal Mix) Alicia Keys - In Common (Black Coffee Remix) &ME - Fairchild Augmented Soul Ft. Stephanie Cooke - My Lover (Deep Sole Syndicate Mix) Timmy Regisford Ft. Felicia Graham & Tiger Wilson - Taken By Dreams (Kenny Carpenter NYC Shelter Mix)

Live on https://pressureradio.com/ DJ Spen & The MuthaFunkaz Ft. Ann Nesby - It's So Easy (MuthaFunkaz 12' Vocal) Bobby D'Ambrosio Ft. Kelli Sae - Optimistic (Fabulous & Jones Vocal Mix) Groove Junkies Ft. Carolyn Harding - Play (Michele Chiavarini Remix) Hallex M, DJ Fudge Ft. Omar - Ding Ding (BPM Vocal Mix) Jennifer Hudson Ft. R. Kelly - It's Your World (Terry Hunter Club Mix) Jill Scott - Golden (Conway’s Afro-Latin Funk) Kyle Kim Ft. Sheree Hicks - All I Do (Luyo Kore Remix) Lovebirds Ft. Stee Downes - Want You In My Soul (Summer In London Edit) Nathan Haines Ft.Verna Francis - Earth Is The Place (Atjazz Remix) Ralf GUM Ft. Diamondancer - All This Love For You (Rocco Spoken Mix) Zepherin Saint Ft.Kholi - Inner Freak (Zepherin Saint Tribe vocal Mix) Black Coffee Ft. Hugh Masekela - We Are One (Louie Vega Roots Mix) Bobby D'Ambrosio Ft. Michelle Weeks - Moment Of My Life (JN Dubwise Re-Organ-ization) Andy Ward and Sister Sledge - Family (Inspirational Mix) Johnny Corporate - Sunday Shoutin' (Dr Packer Extended Remix) Spiritchaser Ft. Angie Brown - Wild Orchid (Main Mix) Studio Apartment Ft. Yasmeen Sulieman - Sun Will Shine (Mk Mix) Zepherin Saint Ft. Miranda Nicole - Butterflies (Tribe Vocal Mix) SoulLab Ft. Jay Nemor - Together (Put Your Hands Together) (Original Mix) Gumzito Ft. Sabrinah Chyld - I'm Loving Me (Lilac Jeans Vocal Remix) Atjazz Ft. Robet Owens - Love Someone (Lemon & Herb Uplifting Remix) 60 Hertz Project - Music Hands (Main Mix) 12Inch Music Ft.Zandile - Because Of You (Real Kue Soul Broken Mix) AfriQan Child Ft. Semi Brieve - Ever Heard (Demented Soul's Deep Imp5 Vocal Mix) Alicia Keys - In Common (Black Coffee Remix) &ME - Fairchild Augmented Soul Ft. Stephanie Cooke - My Lover (Deep Sole Syndicate Mix) Timmy Regisford Ft. Felicia Graham & Tiger Wilson - Taken By Dreams (Kenny Carpenter NYC Shelter Mix)

Learn More About The Content Discussed...No Boss Talk:https://nobosstalk.comKelly Roach’s Website:https://kellyroachcoaching.comKelly Roach on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/kellyroachinternationalThe Camp Elevate Facebook Group:hereBeth’s Instagram:@bethholdengravesBeth’s website:https://www.bethholdengraves.comProfit HER Way Course:https://www.bethholdengraves.com/profitKeynotes discussed:Now I feel like I can like look you in the eyes, I can have a real conversation, we can connect with one another. I never once felt like I could connect with people. It's like it almost stole my superpower because I was so good at selling when I could connect with people. (07:16)If you decide that you want this to be a moneymaking venture, you can, you know, turn it into a business where you can quit your day job, retire your spouse, travel the world, retire, whatever the case. (12:34)She did a $300,000 launch her first month and unstoppable because she leveraged her existing Facebook group that she had never really understood how to get maximum value out of. (15:22)The way that you create that is when you deliver compelling content that really meets people where they are and serves them in a really high level. (16:52)And this is the big piece that sets you apart besides just personable, valuable content that works by the connection is the accountability piece is, I have someone in my inbox saying, Hey, Beth let's chat. (20:39)When Did It Air...January 20, 2020Episode Transcript...Beth:Welcome to ‘You’re Not the Boss of Me’. If you are determined to break glass ceilings and build it your way, this show is for you. I’m your host Beth Graves and I am obsessed with helping you to not just dream it, but make the plan, connect the dots and create what you crave. Are you ready? Let’s get started.Hey bosses and welcome back. Another episode that I'm saying, oh my goodness, pinch me, how did I get this opportunity? I guess it happened because I visualized, manifested and just decided I will have Kelly Roach on the show. And it is happening! I'm excited for you to dive into this episode. A little bit about Kelly is, she is known as the Business Catalyst helping elite business owners become game changers in their field, achieving million-dollar breakthroughs in business. She has helped me to have my own personal breakthrough and you'll hear about that in this episode.She is a former fortune 500 executive and she transitioned from her big, big job in fortune 500 to working with online strategies for entrepreneurs. I am so grateful that she made this transition so that she could be accessible to all of us with her live launch strategies. She's been featured in every major publication on every major news station and now on You're Not the Boss of Me podcast. She has her own podcast too, which is called Unstoppable Success Radio. I listened to it without fail every single time when an episode drops. I cannot wait for you to hear what Kelly has to say. And trust me, you will want to hear about how the live launch method can help you grow your online or network marketing business. So, are you ready, bosses? Here we go.All right, everyone welcome. And you can't even imagine how excited I am to have like my girl crush idle with me. It's like when she said yes, I felt like, Oh my gosh. So, Kelly Roach, welcome.Kelly:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.Beth:So, I found you when I was scrolling Facebook one day and I saw this perky video about how we could use live video, to sell without being weird, spammy, all of those things. And I was so curious because most of our listeners are network marketers who are looking to be more authentic and genuine. And I know with your live launch programs, you work with a ton of us. I'm wondering, coaching clients. So can you talk about what comes to mind when, let's go back to when you decided that the webinar or, and we do a lot of that even in network marketing was old school and how you discovered life being the way to create better community, create better connections and have more sales.Kelly:Yeah, definitely. Well, you know, if I dial it back to where all of my original business success came from, I was literally going door to door business to business, working for a fortune 500 company doing sales. I literally would come in the office; I would pound the phones for four hours straight. Like literally didn't even put the phone down. It would rest on my shoulder in between calls until I got a headset. And, and then in the afternoon I would go out every day to 20 to 30 businesses. So, this was like hardcore, you know, sell it. Right? And, but what was really, really cool about it was Beth, when I could connect, you know, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, belly to belly with someone. I made the sale, you know? And then when I started my own business in 2012, I'm like, okay, cool.Like social media is awesome. It's this amazing like interface and platform and all of that. But what I started noticing was happening was like all of these layers and layers of technology and barriers and things to manage were coming in, but I was new to the online space. So, as I grew my business, I was listening to the people that were teaching how to build business online. I was still taking the principles that I knew, but I was like, okay, how do I apply this to social media? How do I apply this to the online world? And so, I'm layering in all the tech and the funnels and the emails and the webinars and the prerecorded videos and the list goes on and it's just exhausting, and it just never really resonated for me. It never felt good. I never felt like I could show up.Like right now I feel like I can like look you in the eyes, I can have a real conversation, we can connect with one another. I never once felt like I could connect with people. It's like it almost stole my superpower because I was so good at selling when I could connect with people. And then I felt like when I got into the online world, I had so many barriers between me and people that I lost my superpower. And so finally one day I was just like, screw this. I remember, you know, the girls are still on my team now that were with me and I was like, we're getting rid of it all. I'm like, I'm not doing any of that anymore. I'm like, it's ridiculous. It doesn't work. It's not working. You know, we worked so hard. So, I said, let's just try, like us and the camera.Like let's just try like removing all of these obstacles and barriers and try to focus on connecting once again with people. And low and behold, the second that we made that change, our business started to grow and grow and grow exponentially because now all of my competitors are doing prerecorded videos and prerecorded videos and edited, you know, stuff with, you know, all this fake like, you know, you know what you see online. It's like all fabricated stories of the fairies and unicorns, right? And glitter and dust and then here I am, just this person that's teaching and sharing real stuff and people are getting value from it. And it just exploded. And then I was like, okay, this is too good not to teach. And that's how I started teaching the live launch method. It was really out of necessity because we were failing not out of like something so great that was working so well, but it's now really revolutionizing the way that people do business online. It's really cool.Beth:So, I'll share with our listeners because I've shared with you that I felt really called once. And I'm saying this to network marketers, that I see too many people attempting to coach before they've, what I think is the before you've made $1 million. So, I just thought, okay, I want to share what I've learned. That is not all of the magic tricks. Like I kept seeing like build your business with automation. Never get on the phone again. And I'm thinking we're changing people's lives. We've taken what we've learned from you, in terms of our network marketing team. We're now doing laser coaching sessions, so they get to work with a Million-dollar earner. We are, and we'll talk a little bit at the end. Kelly just challenged me to create a live launch. So, stay tuned for how we can share the business opportunity with more people using what we call the live launch.So, some of you are thinking, what is live launch? And I want to give a little background of, I had invested so much money into thinking about how I could build out coaching programs and always got caught up in the tech, could not figure out how to put the Facebook pixel for an ad. And then it was overwhelming. I thought, screw it. I make plenty of money in network marketing, but my message, the amount of women that I can impact and help now is incredible, because that's my mission. So, I took a leap into live launch and literally just started sharing the tools and techniques, built a group and have women that I'm already working with in a program, and paid back my investment within 48 hours, which was insane. It's insane. It's crazy. So, we know it's magical and if you're wondering what is live launch? I want to connect those pieces to what we're doing in network marketing.So, I'm going to give Kelly a hot seat right now because I've been in the hot seat. So, let's, let's just role play this. If I was going to, let's say I'm in the travel business, which I'm not, and people could make money with me either booking travel or setting up travel agents to work with them. Okay? And normally they'd hop on a webinar and I'd share all the slides, which took me all day to put together. I missed picking my daughter up from school because I'm putting together the slides and literally it felt like my drunk uncle was driving me around. But I've decided I'm going to do this, the live launch. Wait, we're like creating something right here on, on the spot. And so, what comes to mind if someone's listening and says, okay, I want to use Facebook Live to share what we're doing with this travel business. So how would live launch work for that?Kelly:Yeah, definitely. Oh my gosh, I'm getting so excited. So, if it were me, the way that I would design the live launch would be like I would have part one of the content be you know, how to get your luxury travel paid for. Right? And never spend a dime while staying in the best resorts around the world. Right? So, it would be like you would teach them, the first thing that people want to do is they want to travel more, and they don't want to spend their life savings on it, right? So, you have to meet people where they are. Right? And then it might be like the second piece of content might be how I went from, you know, getting my travel paid for to getting paid to travel. Right? And then the third set might be how I went from getting my travel paid for to quitting my day job and being able to retire my spouse based on my travel, you know, my side travel business and then in might be how I can help you launch your own travel business, even in the pockets of your spare time, so that you can first get your travel paid for.And then if you decide that you want this to be a moneymaking venture, you can, you know, turn it into a business where you can quit your day job, retire your spouse, travel the world, retire, whatever the case. But really what it is, is you start off by meeting people where they are and giving them the content that they really crave. Everybody wants to travel more. Everybody wants to get their travel paid for. How can someone do that? Right? They can get into a network marketing couple company that offers travel, right? Buy and do it. Start taking the trips themselves, get the trips paid for, invite other people to do it. How do you do that? You share content. When you travel, you show the beautiful pictures, you show the video, you do live streams from there talking about, I cannot believe it, but this is me working right now, right?This is me working, I'm, you know, on the beach and you know, blah blah blah. I think it's just what we have to remember is that everybody in this day and age wants to feel connected. That is why we're on social media 24/7. But the problem is that, and scientific research shows this, although people are more connected than ever, they feel more disconnected than ever, right? But when you come live and when you teach and you add value for people and you show up in perfectly, that's a really important part. Like I let my dog in with me, I let my five-year-old daughter and with me, you know, like showing up in perfect is a huge piece of your human connection. That's going to get people really excited to buy into your brand because it gets them to open up to you to say, Oh, you know what? Beth is like human, like she's cool. You know, she's someone I want to get to know, right? She's not just this, you know, talking head on a white screen, you know, green screen behind her that's trying to present as you know, this, that and the other. So, I don't know if that answers kind of what you were looking.Beth:Yeah. Oh my gosh. My brain like is triggering and I'm thinking, okay, so that, that was just one topic. So when you think about the pillars of what I've noticed in Unstoppable Entrepreneurs, and even in the free group is, this is where people stay in network marketing businesses is, you talked about community and connection. So, a lot of us out there have these groups where people are hanging out learning products and we're missing the boat. It's sell, sell, sell, special, special, special, buy my stuff, join my team. And it's turning people away. What would your suggestion be for people that have existing groups using some of these awesome live launch tools?Kelly:Oh my gosh. So great. And this is so huge because I just did an interview with Michelle Bosh. She's in our program. She did a $300,000 launch her first month and Unstoppable because she leveraged her existing Facebook group that she had never really understood how to get maximum value out of. So, there's probably listeners right here right now that could be doing the same thing that just don't know. Like, you know, how do I take these pieces and make it work? I think exactly what you just described though; Beth is exactly what's been happening in the coaching space to be honest. I feel like, you know, there's so much selling and so much marketing that people forgot that we're here to serve.So what I say is first of all, if you have a Facebook group, start doing a weekly live show, right? You know, obviously Beth works with me, so you know, I'm such a believer in this, but start doing a weekly live show where you're not selling anything. You're not asking for anything. You are focused on giving. You are showing up to serve. You are showing up to add value for the people in your group. You're setting the tone as the leader and the group of what your values are, what kind of leader you are and that people should come hang out in your group and spend time there because no one wants to hang out in a group where all they feel like they're getting promos and specials and sales and buy more, and you know, do this and do that. Like people want to feel like there's something in it for them, right?There's a reason to come spend time here and as you said, Beth, they want community, real community, not just being in the group because it just so happened that someone's prospecting you to join their downline or you know they're in the group because you know, maybe at some point they've expressed an interest in a product. They actually want to feel a real sense of community. And the way that you create that is when you deliver compelling content that really meets people where they are and serves them in a really high level. What will happen is people start commenting on your chat and they start engaging with one another. They start getting to know other members of the group and now all of a sudden you have this dead group that you feel like you're pulling along on your shoulders to try and get people to engage to people.Looking forward to your weekly live show, building relationships with one another, posting of their own volition in the group because there's like a dialogue going. I always say it's like playing catch, right? That's like you don't want it. No one wants to play catch with themselves. They want to play catch with someone else and if they feel like it's just a one sided, they're being hammered with offers and specials and sales and do this, and there is no reciprocity. You know they aren't going to invest. Whereas if you build that reciprocity and build it and build it, this is why you see me constantly. Every day I'm doing either a podcast video or podcast, a video, some piece of free content. I'm going in someone else's group. I'm going on someone else's show because you to build a brand, which you guys are not as network marketers, it's really, really important that you're building a personal brand. When someone thinks of you, you don't want them to think of the name of your company. You want them to think of you as a person and as a leader and how you're leading people that have the same philosophy and values that are in alignment with the company that you represent. Does that make sense?Beth:Oh absolutely. And that is, you know, it's going on six years since being in the industry. And I feel such a shift, that it is people are joining because it's, it's not necessarily, yes, people love the products, but there's a million products we could all love. But the thing that I think is so interesting is that you're given a distribution channel, right? So, if you looked at live launch as a way to create more interest, more excitement around your opportunity or product, the winning pieces, you don't have to build the website. You don't have to collect the money. You don't have to distribute the product. So, all you have to do is show up. And we did. We did this in a let's get physical challenge. You would had been so proud, like the proud coach. Because we did the exact pillars that you teach in your free content. Like you literally could watch and what is, there's one going on this, you know, timestamped now, but isn't there a way to get that content now?Kelly:Yeah, I mean anybody who wants to get in the tribe, the next one we're doing and just a couple of weeks. I mean, we do it every couple of weeks. So, you know, anybody that wants to go through that free journey and then they can come to you to help them customize that content. Right? How does this work in network marketing? Right?Beth:Right. So, it's the tribe of Unstoppables, and Kelly and I just chatted before we started is, I'm already shifting. I have the 25 women that are going through the Profit Her Way program. Now we are going to live launch every single one of them, test it, see it for either opportunity, because I have a big travel group in there, so we just literally just wrote up the travel. We have a lot of health and wellness and so I'm so excited. Because my brain, I've started since working with you, every time someone is talking, I'll think, oh they should live launch that. Oh, they should…Kelly:It's so funny, because now I get phone calls and texts and pictures and messages from people like every day saying like I just told this person they need a live launch. Look for them. I just told this person I need to live lunch because everyone's just realizing like Holy crap, we've been doing it the hard way. Like the tools are there for all of us. You know what I mean?Beth:The tools are there and what I love is, I watched it the first round. This is, you might not know this. I watched it the first round and then didn't jump in to really digging in and learning. And then finally it was, and this is the big piece that sets you apart besides just personable, valuable content that works by the connection, is the accountability piece, is I have someone in my inbox saying, Hey, Beth let's chat. How's it going with your live launch? Let's do this. Not just a cheerleader. I mean she cheers for me every day, but accountability, and that is a big piece that is missing and the network marketing space. So, where did you come up with this idea, that Oh, people will sign up and pay for my program and they're going to be assigned an accountability coach?Kelly:Yeah, I mean we want the Unstoppable Entrepreneur to be the best business incubator on the planet. Like I literally wake up every morning and I asked myself, how do I make this the Harvard of online business money-making? You know, I think everybody deserves to be able to have the freedom to, you know, put their family first and be financially free. And I've experienced the opposite. And then I've experienced where I am now and all I want to do so badly in my life is just bring people across that finish line, you know? So, what we realized is that it's not just about education, it's not just about information. It's not just about coaching, right? It's a coaching program. It's not just about coaching. It's also about the fact that life happens, right? We all have a lot on our plates. We all have families and other obligations.Some people work a full-time job and they're building a business. Some people are running two companies, right? You can be caring for a sick parent. You have kids at home, whatever it is. And so, we realized that if we weren't dedicated to being in your face and in your inbox saying, Hey Beth, I haven't heard from you in a week and a half, are you okay? What's going on? You know, your live launch is coming up, you know, let's make sure things are okay. Let's get you on a hot seat. It's been a while. Whatever it is. We want to make sure that that commitment on our side is as high as we expect the commitment on your side to be. And I feel like that's a lot of what's lacking in the online world. And so instead of complaining about it, we're trying to be the change that we feel will be the catalyst and making a bigger difference for people.Beth:I love it. And that was huge for me, was even doing it before the first of the year, which is exciting because now we're going to take that even further and help these women too. And one man, it's Profit Her Way. But I had to say Profit Her/His Way. We had to vote him on the Island, and he made it. So, when you think about how your life looks now, because I am all about preaching that we have to block time in our calendar for joy, for self-care, for time with our kids. Because I didn't do that in the beginning. I was literally burning the candle from both ends missing really, really, really big events. And one day I read something that said, you want your husband, your kids to remember you as holding your phone or holding their hand? So, I preach be wherever your feet are, your multimillion-dollar entrepreneur who is so, so everybody knows Kelly Roach. But the thing that I love most about you, you do not have the hustle grind mentality. So, can you talk a little bit about that shift?Kelly:Yeah, definitely. I mean I think coming from fortune 500 I've already experienced that burnout. I always say I feel like I lived a whole life in my twenties before I moved over, because I had such a high level of responsibility that I learned so much so quickly, and I feel like that really informed my decisions and my path when I started in the entrepreneurial world. And I joke all the time because people will be like, Oh my gosh, Kelly, you worked so hard all the time. Do you ever take a break? Do you ever take a vacation? I'm like, yes. I take seven vacations a year with my family. I take off on Fridays in the summer I'm at the pool. I feel like the difference between me and every other online entrepreneur is I don't pretend to take a vacation so that I can have a photo op and be working so that I can show that I took a vacation.When I go on vacation, I'm not on my phone, my phone is off. It is locked in the safe for the week. I am present, I am with my family. And I think that's so important, right? You have to have that downtime. You know, I go out to dinner with my family at night and I'll leave my phone at home on purpose, because I know I run two companies. If the phone is with me, there's someone that needs me, but if it's not with me it will be there, you know, when I get back. So, I think just being really intentional, we have one vessel, one body. I woke up at five this morning, I did not want to work out and I was down there doing my little workout video, you know, getting ready for the day because I knew I'm going to be going hard and going straight through for you know, 10, 15 hours.But it's those really conscious decisions about, you know, what do you want your life to look like? And I know for me, I want to make sure that when Madison is like graduating high school, going into college, getting married, like I want to be in great physical form. I want to be in really good energy. I want to be in a healthy mental state. And so, I'm thinking 15 years, Madison’s five, just for everybody. You know, I'm thinking five and 15 years down the road, and I'm making my decisions today based on the person that I want to be when that time comes. And I think it's really important that as entrepreneurs we're thinking that way because it will take everything from you, entrepreneurship and building a business, because you care so deeply, because it is your passion. It will take everything that you give. So, unless you learn to set real hard boundaries for yourself and have a high level of discipline around that, you will always succumb to that. So, it's a learning that I think we all go through. But I think it's one of the most important things that you can learn as an entrepreneur, because your energy is everything, right? And you can't fake energy. Like you can try to show up in a certain way. People see right through it.Beth:It's that whole vibration they sense the energy. So, I always like to end the podcast with one question and you guys, I gave her no pregame session here. So, everything like, learning that travel piece hot seat is, and this is the piece that is a big mystery for many. And I know that you work so hard and you help us so much, with not only the strategies, the tools, but also what really has to happen between desire, belief and commitment. So, many of the people invest in your program and you will see some do $100,000 launch and some just not take that action. It's just always something. They have the desire. At one point they had the belief, what separates the people that in network marketing, I see it too. I'm all in. I'm all in. And there are some that do and some that don't. What is your belief about that?Kelly:Yeah. And it's so tough. I mean, we could do a whole show on this, but I'll give you a couple things. You know, number one, it's total ownership, right? You either believe that everything is happening to you or you believe that everything's happening for you. Amen. And that is it. Period. End of story. I mean, I am in an of the belief that we are wholly and completely responsible for everything that is or isn't in our lives. And the actions that we take every single day are the outcomes that we create, right? And I think when you have that mindset, you couldn't possibly not get up in the morning. And do the work because everything is possible, but also everything is, is up for grabs. Like you, you can't expect it if you aren't working. Right? So, I think that that ownership piece is huge.But I think the second piece is people that are called to something bigger than themselves, right? Because I think that it's enough to drive short term behaviors when you want to, you know, get the next payday, you want to get the next client, you want to, you know, pay your mortgage for the month. Like that's one thing, right? And, there is a hierarchy of needs. Like we all start down at the bottom of the hierarchy. But to show up consistently every single day, you have to be fighting for something bigger than yourself. Whether it's your family, whether it's your legacy, whether it's the people that you want to impact, the causes that you care about, you know, whatever it is, there has to be something bigger than you that you're working towards and fighting for. And that way on the days when you don't feel like showing up and the days where you don't feel good or you don't want to get on camera or whatever it is, you have something that's like, now you got to keep going, right?There's something you're doing it for. So, you know, it's always so cliché because people always say you have to find your why, and like I hate that advice because I feel like it gets twisted and manipulated a lot. But at the end of the day, you do need to know that why? Like my family is my everything, right? Like I make every decision with family first. And so, like when I got up this morning and I was thinking about working out, I wasn't thinking about myself. I was thinking about how am I going to feel after working for 10 hours when Madison gets home from school today and what person am I going to be? And I know I'm going to be a better, happier version of myself if I work out this morning. Right? So, it's like something bigger than you even in the little thing.Beth:I love that. I love that. And it wasn't until that I pushed the beyond, that the money piece, the financial freedom and knowing what foundation I wanted to build, and what my bigger mission and larger mission and we'll, we're going to add yours in the show notes so people can read about the work that you're doing. That's way beyond how much, you know, being a multimillion-dollar entrepreneur. We'll add that for people to see. And also, one more time, because you have so much free content that network marketers can apply to, and we're going to rewrite it for you guys. Don't worry. It's coming. We're going to rewrite how you can look at your recruiting, how you can look at your product sales using the live launch method. I've just decided, I'm like looking at my blank whiteboard. It's going there. And so, explain again how to find you, how to find the unstoppable entrepreneurs. Well, it's the tribe of Unstoppables that is the free group, right?Kelly:Definitely. So, yeah, I mean, you guys can just go onto Facebook and search Tribal Unstoppables, we usually run the free workshop like once every six weeks. My recommendation for everyone listening is come through our next round and then immediately go to Beth and be like, help me make this work for network marketing. Right? And I think if you bring those two things together, and I know with what Beth has up her sleeve, she's going to be changing the face of how you guys launch. So, I'm very excited to see where that goes and where you arrive. But yeah, of course we would welcome anyone into the tribe. And you know, I'm excited, I think there's a massive opportunity for, you know, I always say, I know we're wrapping up, but I just want to make one comment before we wrap. I always say that if kids, as soon as they became a working age, were educated about the opportunity of network marketing, we'd have no homeless people. We'd not have no jobless people, we'd have no one that is graduating college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. The opportunity in network marketing is unbelievable. And kudos to all of you guys that are listening to the show. They're taking that and bringing it out into the world because it really can change so many lives and makes such a huge difference for people.Beth:I love, I love that. And I always say too, it's the best training to become an entrepreneur because you get to learn about building community culture, marketing lives, money, though the energy…we have so many topics. We're going to have to have a part two.Kelly:I know…We'll have to set that up.Beth:So as soon as we get the live launch, I've got three that I think that we can get that ready to go. I'm going to check back with you because we could do some really fun things together on helping network marketers with that live launch method. So, I'm excited. Thank you, Kelly, for being on today.Kelly:Thank you so much for having me.Beth:Well that's a wrap and thank you so much for being with us today! Is Kelly not the most extraordinary human? I love hearing her speak. I wish I could just stay with her all day and climb inside of that brilliant brain of hers. So what we talked about today in the live launch method; using it to grow your network marketing business. This is one of our big pieces, our big modules and Profit Her Way, which is teaching you to build a business you love, that doesn't steal all of your time and joy, but gives you your own marketing, your own profit plan. This is my six month mastermind and doors are open. If you want more information, please go to bethholdengraves.com/profit. Thanks so much for being with us today, and as always be you bravely.Thanks so much for hanging with me today on the podcast and remember, you can create what you crave. If you're looking for a supportive sisterhood, I would love to see you over in our free Facebook group. As most of you know, I love camp. It's part of, 'You're Not the Boss of Me' because when we're building this thing, we're doing this thing. We need a supportive sisterhood and I also crave more fun and more connection. Join us at camp over in the Facebook world, thecampelevategroup.com or just click on the link above and we will see you around our campfire and help you to create what you crave.  

In this week's episode, I interview Kelly Buck, a Dunstan Baby Language Educator and doula. She talks about the Dunstan Baby Language program and how it gives us a window into the first communicative interactions between baby and caregiver. From birth, babies make sounds that are reflex-based. When we understand what these sounds mean, we can respond to and interact with babies more confidently and effectively.   TRANSCRIPT: Sara: Hi, welcome to the Birth Words podcast. Today, I'm chatting with my friend and fellow doula Kelly Buck. Kelly is also a Dunstan Baby Language educator. And today on the podcast, I'm going to ask her more about the work she does with Dunstan Baby Language. So hi, Kelly, welcome to the podcast. Kelly: Hi, thank you for having me. Sara: It's great to have you. I'm going to just ask you a bit about your background with Dunstan Baby Language and the work that you're doing with that. So I'll jump into my first question. Kelly: Okay, sure! Sara: Great. So how did you find out about Dunstan Baby Language? Kelly: So, I learned about the program in 2008 when I had just given birth to my oldest. Sara: Oh, good. Kelly: Yes. And I was one of the rare cases of postpartum depression that happens almost immediately. Yeah, we’re talking, I was bawling in the recovery room. So and add to that, that my son was actually really colicky. And he had a lot of trouble latching. And I was just kind of like an emotional wreck. So, one day I was kind of I was on the phone with my mom. And she mentioned that she had seen the episode, an episode of Oprah where there was this lady that said she could understand why babies cry and I was like, okay, maybe I will look this up. Sara: Yeah. Kelly: Yeah. So that led me to looking up the video on YouTube and learning more about Patricia Dunstan and her programs. So at the time, you could only order the program online for DVDs. And so I did. And I'm telling you, it was a game changer for me. It was amazing. My husband and I both listened to it and we were just like this is… this is working! We tried it with with our son and he seemed to calm down. I still had a little bit of the depression, but I felt like I could at least care for my son, you know, do what he needed. So that I could, I could do that. And so I started like lending out all my DVDs telling my friends who were pregnant or who just had babies and I guess you could kind of say that new learning about Dunstan Baby Language actually kind of sort of paved the way for me to becoming a doula because I love talking about birth and babies and how just how much it did for me, specifically for my postpartum depression. So, so yeah, that's how I got my start. And then I, I went on to become a doula and then later on, I was thinking okay, what can I offer to my clients? What can I do and then I, I went online and lo and behold, you could certify to be an instructor. So I did, and I was like this is this it! And yeah, so I'm about six months into being an instructor and I love it. It's an awesome program. Sara: So sounds awesome. Kelly and I were chatting before we press record about how I was not as fortunate as Kelly that I didn't find out about Dunstan Baby Language until after one of my clients introduced me to it. And I had three kids that were well beyond the baby language stage. So I'm glad that you found that at a fortuitous moment for you and I'm sure all the friends that you shared it with, were glad, too. And now all your clients that you can share, but with your formal training, that's awesome. So, can you give an overview of just the premise of the program, like the main points that it operates on? Kelly: Absolutely. So the main points of the program are that infants are automatically born with certain reflexes that they are using to kind of communicate with us. And they've kind of boiled it down to five specific sounds that all newborns make. And again, like I said, they're based on reflexes that are happening in the body. And when you add sound to those you get these Dunstan baby words that can help parents understand what their baby needs. It's really a program all about helping families bond and bond from an early, age. Sara: That's huge. And it's true for whatever language the baby goes on, is exposed to and goes on to acquire Is that correct? Kelly: Absolutely. They have done studies with over—their first study was with over 400 mothers and parents and babies and they all found that whatever language they spoke these babies still made the same sounds. And so and also it applies to even autistic children. I can attest with my oldest who's autistic—he still made the sounds even though he has difficulty communicating. But I honestly believe that because I was able to respond to his needs so quickly that it might have helped a little bit with that. I can't say specifically or scientifically, but that's just my opinion, because he is high functioning and is able to speak. So… Sara: But that makes a big difference like you said before with bonding and with him recognizing that he has needs that he can express and that you can respond to them because you know what they are. That's huge, and I feel like so many young parents with little babies making sound that have no idea what they're saying, just feel this frustration. And it affects the bond that can happen when you can't communicate with your child. Kelly: Right, right. And I just think about those parents who are like, what happens now after the hospital doors closed, you know? And if I can give them these tools to say, okay, you don't have to feel that sense of kind of dread as what you do now that you can go home and be confident and in your ability to be a good parent. Sara: That's huge. Cool. So I have another question for you. That's a little long, but… So in one of my classes, we were talking about language acquisition—first language acquisition—and I read an article about how older babies are, “learning how to mean,” meaning that they're exploring with language and how they're able to communicate their needs and ideas with others through it. But as I was reading it, I felt like the author wasn't giving really young babies enough credit. He claimed that it was past six months, past nine months, even, that babies realized that they can learn how to mean. But I want to hear your opinion, when do you think that infants begin attempting to meaningfully communicate and what avenues do they use? Kelly: So, like I said, our philosophy is that infants are, are kind of unconsciously communicating from day one. And again, it starts off on these basic, these very primal reflexes, but they're finding that if parents respond to the sounds that our babies, babies are making, that they… They're finding that if, if are not responded to the sound, usually about after three months, they kind of stopped making the sound. But they found that if parents are responding with the sounds and with these words that babies will kind of learn to associate that, and keep on making these sounds well past three months. It honestly, I believe it. It's my belief that, that it's helping babies communicate earlier. It's helping babies learn how to trust earlier. Because they know that their needs are being met. And so they're, they're calmer. So, yeah, does that does answer your question? Sara: Totally. And that makes a lot of sense to me because like you said, initially, it's a physiological reflex-based, like not a conscious attempt to communicate. But when you realize that, hey, when I make this sound like I am communicating this message with my parents or other caregivers, then that invites communication earlier. I think that's great. I think that makes a lot ofsense. Kelly: Yeah. And and it also kind of dispels the belief that that babies are manipulating you. Because young babies actually can't. They don't… Sara: Right. Kelly: It’s not like they consciously choose at two or three weeks to, you know, be colicky, they don't choose these things. So it's, it's your understanding that changes your whole perspective. Sara: I think that's a really good point because we kind of thrust our perspective upon a baby like, oh, they're manipulating me. If you sat down with somebody who said that, they probably realize that didn't actually literally mean that they felt that their baby had the ability to like, recognize their desires and then thwart them by doing something different, right? Like toddlers, we know they do that, right? But little tiny babies, right? But if you shift the perspective and say, okay, where is the baby coming from and what cues is the baby responding to and what physiological things are going on? When we shift our perspective instead of putting our perspective upon our babies makes a really big difference. Kelly: Yeah, exactly. Sara: You're totally selling me. I love it. My next question I've kind of touched on before so if you don't have anything else to add, that's fine. But how has your work as a Dunstan Baby Language educator influenced your personal experiences, and then the work you do as a doula?   Kelly: Um, it To be honest, I love it so much. So sometimes it's hard to hold back, especially here in Utah, with so many women who are pregnant and then like.. YOU NEED THIS! But I hold back. And oftentimes, they'll be, I'll be in church or something and there’ll be a baby crying and I'm like, “I think that baby needs to burp.” But, you know, I just I can't just go up and say that to somebody. But there have been times where like, I've had family members who've had babies and, and I've listened to them and I'm like, “I think that baby is kind of gassy” and she's like, “No, she just pooped” or something. I'm like, “well, try this or try doing this…” And sure enough, 30 minutes later, the baby will pass gas again or, you know, if they, they'll be like, the baby will be hungry. And they're like, “Oh, they just ate” and I'm like, “no, they're still hungry.” So yeah, they'll latch right on. So, but I, I just I love being able to offer this to women to, again to just be able to build that family bond. And the other thing that I love about is that we focus a lot on the dad. And we… my husband was actually much better at hearing the sounds in my son that I was and it is kind of forced me to stop and listen to him and trust his instincts and improve my communication with him. I know a lot of times, moms are hesitant to, I guess leave their baby with her husband or something like that because they feel like they have to do everything. But couples who learn this are kind of able to let that go and say, “Okay, my husband knows what to do.” And a lot of dads will come in and be like, “I feel so good because I know what to do.” Sara: Awesome. Kelly: So yeah, I love that family bonding. Sara: Yeah! And empowering for for both parents. Because it can be disempowering for a mother to feel like I am the sole provider for my baby physically, emotionally… Especially a breastfeeding mom who has literally… her body is producing all of its food and then feeling like its emotional needs can only be met through her, that can be disempowering for her. And it's great that you can flip it and empower for the husband as well for everybody to work together as a team. And even outside of that, you know, if you have other caregivers or grandparents or partner, whoever is helping to care, that's huge. Kelly: Absolutely. This isn't just for for new parents. It’s or anybody who's working with newborns, just to be able to improve their confidence and their skills. So yeah, I tell I tell my clients all the time that if grandma is watching baby then teach them these sounds so that she can respond quicker. But yeah, I love empowering the dad. That was my that's kind of why I do doula work as well. It's fun to see the dads in the birth room and see them transform into fathers. So giving them another tool is just, it's just a great opportunity. Sara: So that's huge. Okay, you've totally sold me. I'm going to talk with you more and more about this and send my clients to you to take your classes and all of this. I think this is important work that you're doing. And I have two quick questions for you to wrap up. One is if you had to choose just one word to describe your views about birth and the surrounding perinatal period, what word would it be? Kelly: life-changing? Is that one word? Sara: Oh yeah, just stick a hyphen in there—totally one word. Kelly: And no matter how your birth goes it's definitely going to permanently affect you and in whatever way, it's something that always stays with you. You can ask any person who's given birth. If any person has given birth, they may not be able to remember what they ate yesterday, but I guarantee you they can tell you every single detail of their birth and their story. Sara: Great. Life-changing. I love it. And I feel like that applies, too, to the work you're doing with the Dunstan Baby Language that could be life-changing. Kelly: Thank you. Sara: My last question is, how can listeners follow you on social media or your website? How can they connect with you? Kelly: Absolutely. So my website is shebirthservices.com, and you can follow me on Facebook at SHE Birth Services. And Instagram is the same thing: SHE Birth Services. So I’d love for anybody who wants to come and take a class. You're welcome to. Sara: Great. Thank you so much Kelly. It was great to have you. Kelly: Oh, thank you.   Outro: Did words play an important role in your birth experience? If you're interested in sharing your story on the podcast, go to www.birthwords.com. If you're liking what you hear on the podcast, please leave a review on your podcast app. For more resources about harnessing the power of words to benefit the birth experience, visit birthwords.com   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The Investor's Guide to China from Fidelity International takes you deep into the workings of the Chinese economy and its financial markets. Paras Anand, Chief Investment Officer for Asia Pacific, brings you a cast of investment experts working in the world's second largest economy. Hear how they're uncovering this rapidly developing market and avoiding its pitfalls. Episode 2: Stock picking. China's businesses operate in a unique environment and understanding that matrix is imperative to those hoping to identify the best companies for investment. What are the most effective strategies for finding the winners and what are the warning signs of those to avoid? Joining Paras to take a closer look at China's equity market are Jing Ning, a senior portfolio manager at Fidelity with some 20 years experience investing in the country, and Casey McLean, an investment analyst with a focus on China's technology stocks. With additional contributions from portfolio manager Hyomi Jie and Fidelity's head of Asia trading, Kelly Clark. Click here (or below on Apple podcasts) for more episodes from this series. Transcript Paras Anand Hello and welcome to The Investor’s Guide to China from Fidelity International. I'm Paras Anand, Head of Asset Management in Asia-Pacific, and each episode I'll be taking you deep into China's economy to find out what's driving the country, where the exciting opportunities are and perhaps areas where we should be a little bit more wary. Today: stock picking - the art and science of researching and understanding which companies to invest in, whether those be SOEs - state owned enterprises - or POEs - privately owned enterprises - acronyms you'll be getting very familiar with. China is in many ways still an emerging market and it comes with its own idiosyncrasies. But as markets continue to open up - and there's been big news just as we record this episode - China offers significant rewards if you have the right tools. And bringing their toolboxes with them today to join me in Hong Kong are two of Fidelity's China experts. First we have Jing Ning, one of our senior China equity portfolio managers. Jing you've been looking at this market for some 20 years. What's the biggest misconception that you tend to come across when people think about investing in China? Jing Ning Every year I meet probably dozens of investors, they’re very interested in investing in China and they want to know what's going on from the policy and consumption story and new technology in China. But with that being said I can't feel there’s always a wall of worry with China. Everyone is asking about: China has been growing their credit very rapidly in the past decade and when is it going to stop. They've been building the bridges and railways and infrastructure investment - when is it going to be stopped? And I think the more pessimistic question is always asking, when is the reckoning moment that's going to come? So there hasn't been a year - I can be very honest with you - there hasn't been a year, if I visit my investors globally in Europe and Asia, that they I haven't asked this question, right. So there’s always been this wall of worry on China. Paras With Jing is Casey McClean. Casey, you’re an investment analyst who's covered Asia Pac for almost two decades. The last 13 years you've been really focused on China. You've covered almost every sector during your career in the region. From an analyst’s perspective, what are the big changes that you've observed? Casey McLean I think the biggest changes specifically with China really is the composition of the market. I think if you look back 10, 15, 20 years ago it was dominated by industrials, materials, financials, property. China was back then really the outsourcing factory for the rest of the world. But if you look at the market composition now it's changed a lot. You’ve had the emergence of internet. There's a lot of consumer brands with their own genuine brand value in China. And there's more and more services being delivered in the market every day. I think what's changed is China's gone from a an industrial manufacturing centre to a place of genuine innovation. And that innovation is being rewarded in the market as well. Paras So let's dive into the topic of today's podcast which is stock picking. Jing, how do you go about stock picking and what makes your investment approach unique? Jing You know China's an emerging market. The market is quite chaotic. Everyday we're dealing with policy changes, new competition, and there's always new changes to business models. I think for investors in the China market you really have to know your company well and it takes years, sometimes it takes ages to know the company, especially [because] you know your company better in a downturn than in the good times. Sometimes I tell my investors, although there are so many noises flowing around in the China market every day the key is to build conviction and what comes with the conviction is to know your company really well. And that takes time. Paras And Casey, how do you distinguish a good company from a from a bad company in a market like China? Casey For me, the first point of my process when I'm looking at a company will be to screen out any bad actors by looking for stocks that are potentially accounting manipulators or have some bankruptcy risk or what not. But I try and look for companies that have a minimum level of quality. I'm not saying high quality, I'm saying a minimum level of quality - one that's able to earn a return on invested capital above its cost of capital across a full cycle. There's a lot of cyclical companies in China, especially within the tech sector which I'm looking at. So I don't worry about what they earn last year, I worry about what they're going to earn next year. And if you pick a stock at the right point of the earnings cycle you can be rewarded for that. Jing Yeah, I think another thing is that most people coming to China are looking for growth. They're looking for the next Alibaba, the next Tencent, and people are constantly looking for the next growth story. But Paras, as you know, I’m probably one of the very, very, few value investors in China and actually I think that value plays a very interesting angle in China. The value story in China is not dull at all, it’s quite interesting. For example, Casey and I, we looked at a company called Lenovo. It was two years back and at that time Lenovo didn’t fit into any definition of a growth company. But when we looked at it, it used to have a great company history and it got into temporary trouble and we believed that the company still had a decent chance to turn around and to be a growth company sometime, a couple of years later. Would you say Lenovo was a value stock or growth stock? I would say it’s a very interesting growth stock but with an extremely attractive valuation at that time we looked at it. Paras Was it hard to get excited about Lenovo, Casey, as a technology investor? Casey Lenovo is probably not quite at the leading edge of some of the technology companies that you can look at out there. But I agree with Jing, it was very attractive value. It was spinning off a lot of cash flow from its main division which was PCs and if you could get confidence in their mobile division - which has been loss making for a long time - if you got confidence in that turnaround story there was a lot of money to be made. And so you do need to have very high conviction in those turnaround situations. But doing a lot of work and sitting down with management - we had a full day with management and every head of every division - we were able to gain that conviction. And fortunately that division did turnaround quicker than the market was expecting and they've gone on to do better things. Paras Turning to Jing, you talked at the beginning about this ‘wall of worry’ that investors often climb and one of the things that's often reflected to me is that corporate governance is a huge area of concern. People worry about protection for minority shareholders being different to what you might see in other parts of the world, balance sheets, ownership structures can often be sort of convoluted. So how do we consider those risks. What do you consider when it comes to corporate governance? Jing You cannot invest in China without thinking about corporate governance risks, that’s for sure. But for me, I think about the issue as many different layers of grey rather than straight black and white. Because when I talk to many companies, and sometimes they do things I wouldn't like them to do like related party transactions and they do irrational acquisitions. We you ask them, ‘Why you are doing that? You’re destroying minority shareholder value. As a result, your market value has been going downhill. And the usual answer I get from them, amazingly, is, ‘We don't think it’s a big deal. Why do you think it’s a big deal?’ It’s all about corporate culture and the way they think about what is a right form of governance for the minority shareholders. I think Casey, you probably agree with me, that the active manager plays a role here? Casey Yeah, definitely I agree. I think there is perhaps a perception and a reality that the level of corporate governance in China is lower than in some of the developed markets. But what I try and focus on is the delta in that corporate governance. It's the improvements which drive better quality in the companies and potentially the re-ratings in stocks. And you've seen evidence of that over the last few years particularly among some of the bigger SOEs who have really improved their capital allocation and doing a lot less national interest investing. Paras And you've talked a lot about this idea of trust and building trust in companies. How do we do that? How, Jing, in your process do you go and build trust in companies and the management teams that run them? Jing For me, people are the number one top priority in any business you look at. So usually when we meet a new company, identify a new interesting investment idea, the first step is you go to meet with senior management - CEO and CFO - but I don't think the research work usually stops here. Usually we'll try to meet further staff to try to meet the middle layer of the management - we want to meet the head of sales, the head of marketing, the head of PR and to understand the culture. But that takes time. Casey That's right. I think increasingly over the last few years we've been engaging, collaborating with companies a lot more and they're a lot more open to these discussions, dialogues, two-way streets here. We're not an activist investor in any way but we're trying to work together to generate better shareholder value. Paras So you actually feel your voice is being heard. When you go and see these companies and you engage with them, you feel that even as a minority shareholder your voice is heard and listened to. Jing Yes, sometimes. Every year we try to identify some companies and we send angry letters, we call them angry letters - just basically complaining about something that they have done, not taking care of the interests of minority shareholders. Sometimes they don't pay us dividend and sometimes we think they should do more. In the beginning most of our letters get ignored and we get no consequence whatsoever but gradually, very interestingly, and I think Casey would agree with me in the case of Sinopec, we sent a letter to them, to the board, asking for a sustainable dividend payout policy and they actually responded to us and said they would seriously take a look at our proposal. I'm not anticipating any fireworks coming at the end of the day, they're going to change their behaviour overnight, but that's a very encouraging development I would say. Paras And looking at the composition of the market, they're obviously state-owned enterprises as well as private companies. Casey, should investors approach those differently? Casey Not necessarily. At the end of the day you're just trying to find a company that's going to deliver a good return. But I think there's different risks that you need to be aware of when you're looking at those two different groups of companies. In private companies the potential for fraud, accounting manipulation, those things are probably higher. And they're also smaller, more nimble companies. They can move fast - they can break things though at the same time. Whereas you look at some of the SOEs, they're larger companies, they move more slowly. And I guess the biggest risk with those is that they have to undertake national interests and support the Chinese economy and other companies. Jing I think that basically what Casey is saying is there's always two sides of the same coin. SOEs - they’re taking the state support but on the other hand they will of course take on social responsibility, and private companies, they’re very nimble and very flexible but on the other hand they have a very strong incentive to do well and of course they will have incentive to cheat you to maximise their shareholder value. Casey But there can also be a valuation disconnect. Often the SOEs trade at a big discount to the private companies. And like we say, if you see this delta, the improvement in corporate governance or their earnings profile, that can be a great opportunity especially for a value investor like Jing. Paras So it really seems that it's all about making sure that you understand the individual company and doing the on-the-ground research. Jing Yes. Casey Yeah, that’s right. Paras Well, on the subject of on-the-ground research we spoke earlier to another one of our portfolio managers, Hyomi Jie. Our Asia Editor, Neil Gough, caught up with her for some window shopping in Shanghai to hear about her approach to consumer stocks and in particular how the trend of premiumisation is playing into her investment thinking. Neil Gough I'm standing here at a sprawling hypermarket in Shanghai with the Hyomi Jie, a portfolio manager at Fidelity International who focuses on China's consumer sector. We're at RT Mart in Yangpu, a mainly residential district a few kilometres north of Shanghai's historic riverfront Bund. It's a typical weekday morning in the summer and the store is busy with all kinds of shoppers from across generations. They're picking over produce, looking for bargains, stocking up on bulk items like rice. And this is a retail supercentre. They sell everything from leather shoes to air conditioners to live lobsters. Hyomi, you actively stock pick within China's retail sector and I'd mentioned to you previously that I was interested in seeing how you carry out research on the ground and I assume that's why you brought me here today? Is that right? Hyomi Jie Yes. Yes exactly. You come to this store and you see what kind of consumers are coming to the store and what kind of things they're buying, in which aisles they're spending more time. So that helps me to gain a bit more insight into what kind of brands are gaining traction and what kind of products are gaining interest from the everyday consumer. Neil One of the trends across the consumer space that we talked about before was premiumisation and how customers are upgrading their purchases across a whole bunch of different categories. How does that play out in an environment like this, in a supermarket? Hyomi Premiumisation is a trend that's going on across all the sectors in consumer, I should say. It's really driven by the growing income of Chinese consumers and expanding middle class and their desire to want and aim for higher quality products. And in a supermarket environment you can see that people will choose higher quality, higher price items within the same brands, or they might move up to the perceived higher-end brands. But also within the fresh produce that is happening as well. If you see that in the traditional supermarkets you can see the piles of meat products in the very typical Chinese supermarkets. Neil And some in front of us here today. I see the butcher swinging his cleaver here in the background. Hyomi That’s right, that's very normal and that's still the majority. But you can see in a small section, which is expanding, you can see that there’s branded pork, branded beef, and it is packaging in a small format that's suitable for a single households and younger generation who don't want to spend too much time cutting and cooking. Neil So individually wrapped in plastic as opposed to a giant slab of ribs or something like that. Hyomi Indeed. The per unit price should be higher by easily 20-30 per cent but from consumers’ perspective maybe you can actually save food by not buying too much at once. Also it's much easier for you to prepare your food. Neil So you're paying more per unit but you're probably wasting less on the whole. What does it mean for a company at the bottom line level? Are you seeing that feed through in revenue and in sales? Hyomi It's still a small portion of their revenue but the companies who can take advantage of this kind of trend with better marketing and better merchandise will obviously be able to attract more customers to lead to better revenue and at the product level, at the unit level, they should be able to generate better returns and better margins. Neil Beyond supermarkets, when you look across retail, what other areas are you seeing premiumisation playing out? What are some of the other sectors? Hyomi I should say that in services the premiumisation is also happening. The overseas travel has been growing faster than domestic travel in a very consistent way for the past few years. And that’s shown in the duty-free stores’ revenue growth trends in the past few years. Neil And then when you're not running around the aisles of supermarkets like these what are some of the other things you're doing on the ground to carry out research when you're coming to China? Because I know you do travel here quite often. Hyomi When I come to China I try to spend my time here as much as like locals. So, I take Didi and go to other department stores or I go to meet my friends and on the way I get to see many different things like what's happening, what's changing. Also, the payment pattern is definitely changing in China. So, it is indeed a cash free economy at the moment. You really need to pay for things with Alipay or Tenpay. Another thing that I have been doing for more in-depth research is to spend a couple weeks with a Chinese family doing homestays. So last year I spent two weeks in Shenzhen with a Chinese family of four members where I could learn about their consumption behaviour, their aspirations, what they care about for their children and their parents and their wealth creation, all these things. Soon I'm going to go to Chengdu and will spend another two weeks with a Chinese family over there. Neil Thanks Hyomi. That's a really interesting look at how stock pickers are doing their research on the ground in China. Paras So Jing, Hyomi paints a rich picture there. She's spending time in the new engine room of the Chinese economy as we can hear, in these shopping malls and spending time with families, really going in deep to help her understand the country's changing consumer trends. But stepping back a little bit, what about the equity markets more broadly. How have they been developing? Jing I think there is a key element currently missing from the whole story which I think is very important going forward which is the income element in China. The income story globally has been a very popular strategy but very few people associate China with the income element because people come here looking for the growth story, they’re not looking for the dividend story. But China is actually changing into a very interesting income story. We're not growing 10 per cent every year, right? This year we're going six, next year we’ll probably be growing at five or something. But for corporates they’re free cash flow is improving and with cash coming in they now have an opportunity to think about another capital allocation perspective which is paying dividends. Paras I mean when I think back to some of the changes we saw in the European market, so going back 10, 15, 20 years ago, companies were prevented from paying dividends because boards would often think that you were taking money out of the out of the pockets of the employees and giving it to shareholders. But I've always thought that there's an association with companies paying dividends and treating minority shareholders well with a maturity of an investment market. So, Casey is this good news from an analyst’s perspective? Casey Yeah, it definitely is Paras. I think the thought process for some of the Chinese companies in years gone by was that dividends were simply paying money out of the company away to foreigners. That's gradually changing and I think there's a recognition that the capital structure is more important. And they have made some significant progress. It's been helped by the government: SOEs are now mandated to pay out 30 per cent of their earnings. And I think if you look at the market as a whole I think it trades on about a 2.5 to 3 per cent dividend yield, which is actually higher than the US, the S&P 500. So, it's still got a long way to go but they've definitely made some significant progress. Paras And of course it's such a strong signal of the continuing evolution of these markets. As I mentioned earlier in the introduction there's another significant development, which is that the Chinese regulators have dropped quotas for foreign institutional investors, or QFII. This is a really big deal, isn't it Jing? Jing It is. It is indeed a very big deal. That means that the market will in some way become open access for everyone. You don't need a quota to buy China A shares. That actually brings a sweet memory for me. I remember back in 2004 I was at the door of CSRC [China Securities Regulation Commission] applying for the QFII license and applying for the QFII quota and we got thrilled when the regulator awarded us $50 million QFII quota. And we thought that was quite an achievement back in 2004. And now, 15 years later on you don't need a quota to buy China A shares - very exciting as well. So, I think that with the years it’s moved along, and without a quota or any kind of restriction tacked on to it that just means that the market becomes a very friendly, even playing field everybody. Casey Yeah, I remember I had a similar circumstance about 10 years ago, as well. I remember applying for an additional QFII quota and the process was very laborious, very bureaucratic. It was almost government-to-government-style negotiations and removing that sort of hindrance to foreign investors is a huge plus for the opening up of the China markets. Paras And obviously when we think as investors we're always thinking about investing for the long term and there's a difference that often people think about between long term investing and and then thinking about the market in China which they see as being very volatile and retail driven. Do you think that there is an opportunity reframe the investing proposition for those domestic savers? Casey Yeah, I think it's a gradual process. But all of these measures that the government’s instituted to get foreign investors, foreign institutions investing into China means that they're less driven by speculation, they become less short term, the market becomes much more fundamental-based. And I think if you have a long history of following those fundamentals you’ll have a big advantage in the A share market as it develops. Paras So what exactly do recalibrations like these mean on a practical level in terms of trading with and inside the country? Investment director Catherine Yeung spoke to Fidelity's head of trading in Asia, Kelly Clark, to find out. And a short caveat before we hear the interview: this conversation was recorded before the latest announcements around the scrapping of the QFII quotas. Catherine Yeung We've seen a whirlwind of changes relating to access and regulation for trading when it comes to the Chinese markets. Volumes have skyrocketed but there's still a number of hurdles to navigate. I'm with Kelly Clark, Fidelity's head of Asian equity trading, based here in Hong Kong. Kelly, you've been in the market now for eight years. Can you share some of the biggest changes you've seen over this period? Kelly Clark Sure. For starters, when I first started trading the only way to access China was through QFII. And I was actually at a hedge fund at the time so the only way we could do that was synthetically, which made it very difficult and very expensive to actually access the market. So, I would say the biggest change in my tenure has been Stock Connect, which went live in 2014 and that was far more affordable to reach. You didn't have the issues with putting cash upfront or with repatriating cash back out of China. So it made it much more palatable to invest in. That also piqued the interest of the MSCI and FTSE and why you have the interest I think you have in it now. Catherine So, in layman's terms, Kel, what's the key differences between QFII and Stock Connect, especially from a trading perspective? Kelly You've got the ability to trade with different counter parties, again you can move cash more freely, it's a lot more familiar and the counter parties that you’re trading with as well. It was just a lot easier to access and open accounts. Catherine With QFII? Kelly So QFII still has its advantages. You can trade during Hong Kong holidays, which you can't do through Connect. You can also invest in the full universe of stocks versus the limited amount that you have in Connect, which is about 1200. The bigger one being now that it's the only way that foreigners can access the Star IPO Board. Catherine Yes, the Star IPO Board, I'm glad you mentioned this - so this is a science and technology exchange similar to Nasdaq? Kelly Correct. So I think the driver of this, as you mentioned, was for the Nasdaq. So for new sort of unicorn tech type companies to come to market within China. Catherine So we are seeing more foreigners - whether it's institutional money, retail money - going into the market. This is obviously being driven a lot by the Chinese government's policies to open up the capital markets, both equities and fixed income. So when we have the second largest economy in the world, a government who's very pro opening up the capital markets, can you please put into perspective just how big China is? Kelly So China actually represents 70 per cent of all of the turnover in equity in Asia. Catherine If we're seeing all this turnover, is it an easy market to trade? Kelly It's a liquid market to trade. I wouldn't qualify it as easy because it's actually still very volatile considering you've got the retail investor base that you do. I think there's still a few hurdles in getting more foreign investment into China. One of them being access to hedging instruments, so futures would be the main one there that everybody's looking for as a way to hedge out their index risk. So, there are there steps that the government's taking there or that the exchanges are taking there too in sourcing solutions for that issue. There's also a number of nuances still around settlement cycles, funding, broker settlements, but again they're pretty small nuances and the government is focused on getting those looked at. Catherine Kelly, thanks so much for your time. I mean it's a fascinating market to trade and to watch the developments in terms of the progress. Paras, that's all from us here on the trading floor in Hong Kong. Paras So Casey, with your tech focus on China what do you make of the launch of the Star Board that Kelly just mentioned? Casey Yeah, the Star Board is a really interesting development. It's another one of these baby steps to opening up and broadening the Chinese markets. But I think the fact that it's a registration rather than approval structure to list a company there is is quite important. It means that these loss-making companies, these high-tech companies which are innovating, can list and it gives them a new source of funding. I think from then from investor point of view it also opens up the opportunities to some of these smaller innovative companies that were probably only available to PE or VC type investors previously. Paras And Jing, you’re a self-proclaimed value investor. Have you been looking at technology stocks at all recently? Jing Of course. Actually, last year a very decent amount of my time was looking at the technology sector, in particular in the context of the trade war between the US and China. A lot of technology stocks were falling victim because of that and valuation for some of them looks really, really compelling even from the perspective of a value investor. Paras Trade wars was one of those things that we talked about on the last episode and we made a call that it would be not a short-lived phenomenon and so it's proved. But for a stock picker such as yourself, Casey, how do you deal with a backdrop of trade wars when you're trying to find individual opportunities. Casey Like Jing says, the tech sector really has been in the crosshairs of the trade war and the volatility that that's brought has made it quite difficult, especially when the sentiment of the market can turn on a dime after just a single tweet. But having said that, it did introduce some value into the sector and there have been buying opportunities. And if you focus more on the longer-term trends there is an opportunity for Chinese companies to become more self-sufficient in some of the tech areas, take some revenue, some business opportunities off the US companies. And so I am increasingly looking for those opportunities on a long term basis. Jing I think like the Chinese always say, every crisis comes with an opportunity. So when we think about a trade war of course the relationship between these two countries - I think, in my personal view - is fundamentally changed going forward. But that actually leaves an opportunity for China to rethink its supply chain. They want to reduce their dependence of some of their key supply chain components to external parties and they want to rebuild some of the supply chain companies. And, of course, they want to build a domestic economy to fend off any uncertainty coming from global trade. And I'm hoping that this trade war will push policymakers to really seriously think about market reform because when one door is closed you want to open the other window. Paras So it really sounds like when we come to think about China from a stock picking perspective that despite all of the development of the market, all of the maturity and some really key changes that we've talked about with respect to companies looking at returns to minority shareholders, actually there's no shortcut to doing your homework properly. Jing Of course. For me, I have been investing in China for the past 15 years. That market for me today versus 15 years ago is equally challenging, equally new, and equally interesting. It’s just like a brand new market. Casey Yeah, I don't I don't think there's any substitute for boots on the ground and kicking tyres. Paras Great. Well that brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you to my studio guests Jing Ning and Casey McClean, and to our other contributors: Hyomi Jie and Kelly Clark with Catherine Yeung. And thank you for listening. If you like what you've heard then please rate and review us on your podcast app, we really appreciate it. And if you want to read more of what's been covered today then please go to our website. Our producers were Seb Morton-Clark and Neil Gough and our editor is Richard Edgar. Until next time, from Fidelity's Hong Kong studios, goodbye. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Investor's Guide to China from Fidelity International takes you deep into the workings of the Chinese economy and its financial markets. Paras Anand, Head of Asset Management in Asia Pacific, brings you a cast of investment experts working in the world's second largest economy. Hear how they're navigating its markets to uncover the opportunities and avoid the pitfalls. Episode 2: Stock picking. China's businesses operate in a unique environment and understanding that matrix is imperative to those hoping to identify the best companies for investment. What are the most effective strategies for finding the winners and what are the warning signs of those to avoid? Joining Paras to take a closer look at China's equity market are Jing Ning, a senior portfolio manager at Fidelity with some 20 years experience investing in the country, and Casey McLean, an investment analyst with a focus on China's technology stocks. With additional contributions from portfolio manager Hyomi Jie and Fidelity's head of Asia trading, Kelly Clark. Click here (or below on Apple podcasts) for more episodes from this series.   Transcript Paras Anand Hello and welcome to The Investor’s Guide to China from Fidelity International. I'm Paras Anand, Head of Asset Management in Asia-Pacific, and each episode I'll be taking you deep into China's economy to find out what's driving the country, where the exciting opportunities are and perhaps areas where we should be a little bit more wary. Today: stock picking - the art and science of researching and understanding which companies to invest in, whether those be SOEs - state owned enterprises - or POEs - privately owned enterprises - acronyms you'll be getting very familiar with. China is in many ways still an emerging market and it comes with its own idiosyncrasies. But as markets continue to open up - and there's been big news just as we record this episode - China offers significant rewards if you have the right tools. And bringing their toolboxes with them today to join me in Hong Kong are two of Fidelity's China experts. First we have Jing Ning, one of our senior China equity portfolio managers. Jing you've been looking at this market for some 20 years. What's the biggest misconception that you tend to come across when people think about investing in China? Jing Ning Every year I meet probably dozens of investors, they’re very interested in investing in China and they want to know what's going on from the policy and consumption story and new technology in China. But with that being said I can't feel there’s always a wall of worry with China. Everyone is asking about: China has been growing their credit very rapidly in the past decade and when is it going to stop. They've been building the bridges and railways and infrastructure investment - when is it going to be stopped? And I think the more pessimistic question is always asking, when is the reckoning moment that's going to come? So there hasn't been a year - I can be very honest with you - there hasn't been a year, if I visit my investors globally in Europe and Asia, that they I haven't asked this question, right. So there’s always been this wall of worry on China. Paras With Jing is Casey McClean. Casey, you’re an investment analyst who's covered Asia Pac for almost two decades. The last 13 years you've been really focused on China. You've covered almost every sector during your career in the region. From an analyst’s perspective, what are the big changes that you've observed? Casey McLean I think the biggest changes specifically with China really is the composition of the market. I think if you look back 10, 15, 20 years ago it was dominated by industrials, materials, financials, property. China was back then really the outsourcing factory for the rest of the world. But if you look at the market composition now it's changed a lot. You’ve had the emergence of internet. There's a lot of consumer brands with their own genuine brand value in China. And there's more and more services being delivered in the market every day. I think what's changed is China's gone from a an industrial manufacturing centre to a place of genuine innovation. And that innovation is being rewarded in the market as well. Paras So let's dive into the topic of today's podcast which is stock picking. Jing, how do you go about stock picking and what makes your investment approach unique? Jing You know China's an emerging market. The market is quite chaotic. Everyday we're dealing with policy changes, new competition, and there's always new changes to business models. I think for investors in the China market you really have to know your company well and it takes years, sometimes it takes ages to know the company, especially [because] you know your company better in a downturn than in the good times. Sometimes I tell my investors, although there are so many noises flowing around in the China market every day the key is to build conviction and what comes with the conviction is to know your company really well. And that takes time. Paras And Casey, how do you distinguish a good company from a from a bad company in a market like China? Casey For me, the first point of my process when I'm looking at a company will be to screen out any bad actors by looking for stocks that are potentially accounting manipulators or have some bankruptcy risk or what not. But I try and look for companies that have a minimum level of quality. I'm not saying high quality, I'm saying a minimum level of quality - one that's able to earn a return on invested capital above its cost of capital across a full cycle. There's a lot of cyclical companies in China, especially within the tech sector which I'm looking at. So I don't worry about what they earn last year, I worry about what they're going to earn next year. And if you pick a stock at the right point of the earnings cycle you can be rewarded for that. Jing Yeah, I think another thing is that most people coming to China are looking for growth. They're looking for the next Alibaba, the next Tencent, and people are constantly looking for the next growth story. But Paras, as you know, I’m probably one of the very, very, few value investors in China and actually I think that value plays a very interesting angle in China. The value story in China is not dull at all, it’s quite interesting. For example, Casey and I, we looked at a company called Lenovo. It was two years back and at that time Lenovo didn’t fit into any definition of a growth company. But when we looked at it, it used to have a great company history and it got into temporary trouble and we believed that the company still had a decent chance to turn around and to be a growth company sometime, a couple of years later. Would you say Lenovo was a value stock or growth stock? I would say it’s a very interesting growth stock but with an extremely attractive valuation at that time we looked at it. Paras Was it hard to get excited about Lenovo, Casey, as a technology investor? Casey Lenovo is probably not quite at the leading edge of some of the technology companies that you can look at out there. But I agree with Jing, it was very attractive value. It was spinning off a lot of cash flow from its main division which was PCs and if you could get confidence in their mobile division - which has been loss making for a long time - if you got confidence in that turnaround story there was a lot of money to be made. And so you do need to have very high conviction in those turnaround situations. But doing a lot of work and sitting down with management - we had a full day with management and every head of every division - we were able to gain that conviction. And fortunately that division did turnaround quicker than the market was expecting and they've gone on to do better things. Paras Turning to Jing, you talked at the beginning about this ‘wall of worry’ that investors often climb and one of the things that's often reflected to me is that corporate governance is a huge area of concern. People worry about protection for minority shareholders being different to what you might see in other parts of the world, balance sheets, ownership structures can often be sort of convoluted. So how do we consider those risks. What do you consider when it comes to corporate governance? Jing You cannot invest in China without thinking about corporate governance risks, that’s for sure. But for me, I think about the issue as many different layers of grey rather than straight black and white. Because when I talk to many companies, and sometimes they do things I wouldn't like them to do like related party transactions and they do irrational acquisitions. We you ask them, ‘Why you are doing that? You’re destroying minority shareholder value. As a result, your market value has been going downhill. And the usual answer I get from them, amazingly, is, ‘We don't think it’s a big deal. Why do you think it’s a big deal?’ It’s all about corporate culture and the way they think about what is a right form of governance for the minority shareholders. I think Casey, you probably agree with me, that the active manager plays a role here? Casey Yeah, definitely I agree. I think there is perhaps a perception and a reality that the level of corporate governance in China is lower than in some of the developed markets. But what I try and focus on is the delta in that corporate governance. It's the improvements which drive better quality in the companies and potentially the re-ratings in stocks. And you've seen evidence of that over the last few years particularly among some of the bigger SOEs who have really improved their capital allocation and doing a lot less national interest investing. Paras And you've talked a lot about this idea of trust and building trust in companies. How do we do that? How, Jing, in your process do you go and build trust in companies and the management teams that run them? Jing For me, people are the number one top priority in any business you look at. So usually when we meet a new company, identify a new interesting investment idea, the first step is you go to meet with senior management - CEO and CFO - but I don't think the research work usually stops here. Usually we'll try to meet further staff to try to meet the middle layer of the management - we want to meet the head of sales, the head of marketing, the head of PR and to understand the culture. But that takes time. Casey That's right. I think increasingly over the last few years we've been engaging, collaborating with companies a lot more and they're a lot more open to these discussions, dialogues, two-way streets here. We're not an activist investor in any way but we're trying to work together to generate better shareholder value. Paras So you actually feel your voice is being heard. When you go and see these companies and you engage with them, you feel that even as a minority shareholder your voice is heard and listened to. Jing Yes, sometimes. Every year we try to identify some companies and we send angry letters, we call them angry letters - just basically complaining about something that they have done, not taking care of the interests of minority shareholders. Sometimes they don't pay us dividend and sometimes we think they should do more. In the beginning most of our letters get ignored and we get no consequence whatsoever but gradually, very interestingly, and I think Casey would agree with me in the case of Sinopec, we sent a letter to them, to the board, asking for a sustainable dividend payout policy and they actually responded to us and said they would seriously take a look at our proposal. I'm not anticipating any fireworks coming at the end of the day, they're going to change their behaviour overnight, but that's a very encouraging development I would say. Paras And looking at the composition of the market, they're obviously state-owned enterprises as well as private companies. Casey, should investors approach those differently? Casey Not necessarily. At the end of the day you're just trying to find a company that's going to deliver a good return. But I think there's different risks that you need to be aware of when you're looking at those two different groups of companies. In private companies the potential for fraud, accounting manipulation, those things are probably higher. And they're also smaller, more nimble companies. They can move fast - they can break things though at the same time. Whereas you look at some of the SOEs, they're larger companies, they move more slowly. And I guess the biggest risk with those is that they have to undertake national interests and support the Chinese economy and other companies. Jing I think that basically what Casey is saying is there's always two sides of the same coin. SOEs - they’re taking the state support but on the other hand they will of course take on social responsibility, and private companies, they’re very nimble and very flexible but on the other hand they have a very strong incentive to do well and of course they will have incentive to cheat you to maximise their shareholder value. Casey But there can also be a valuation disconnect. Often the SOEs trade at a big discount to the private companies. And like we say, if you see this delta, the improvement in corporate governance or their earnings profile, that can be a great opportunity especially for a value investor like Jing. Paras So it really seems that it's all about making sure that you understand the individual company and doing the on-the-ground research. Jing Yes. Casey Yeah, that’s right. Paras Well, on the subject of on-the-ground research we spoke earlier to another one of our portfolio managers, Hyomi Jie. Our Asia Editor, Neil Gough, caught up with her for some window shopping in Shanghai to hear about her approach to consumer stocks and in particular how the trend of premiumisation is playing into her investment thinking. Neil Gough I'm standing here at a sprawling hypermarket in Shanghai with the Hyomi Jie, a portfolio manager at Fidelity International who focuses on China's consumer sector. We're at RT Mart in Yangpu, a mainly residential district a few kilometres north of Shanghai's historic riverfront Bund. It's a typical weekday morning in the summer and the store is busy with all kinds of shoppers from across generations. They're picking over produce, looking for bargains, stocking up on bulk items like rice. And this is a retail supercentre. They sell everything from leather shoes to air conditioners to live lobsters. Hyomi, you actively stock pick within China's retail sector and I'd mentioned to you previously that I was interested in seeing how you carry out research on the ground and I assume that's why you brought me here today? Is that right? Hyomi Jie Yes. Yes exactly. You come to this store and you see what kind of consumers are coming to the store and what kind of things they're buying, in which aisles they're spending more time. So that helps me to gain a bit more insight into what kind of brands are gaining traction and what kind of products are gaining interest from the everyday consumer. Neil One of the trends across the consumer space that we talked about before was premiumisation and how customers are upgrading their purchases across a whole bunch of different categories. How does that play out in an environment like this, in a supermarket? Hyomi Premiumisation is a trend that's going on across all the sectors in consumer, I should say. It's really driven by the growing income of Chinese consumers and expanding middle class and their desire to want and aim for higher quality products. And in a supermarket environment you can see that people will choose higher quality, higher price items within the same brands, or they might move up to the perceived higher-end brands. But also within the fresh produce that is happening as well. If you see that in the traditional supermarkets you can see the piles of meat products in the very typical Chinese supermarkets. Neil And some in front of us here today. I see the butcher swinging his cleaver here in the background. Hyomi That’s right, that's very normal and that's still the majority. But you can see in a small section, which is expanding, you can see that there’s branded pork, branded beef, and it is packaging in a small format that's suitable for a single households and younger generation who don't want to spend too much time cutting and cooking. Neil So individually wrapped in plastic as opposed to a giant slab of ribs or something like that. Hyomi Indeed. The per unit price should be higher by easily 20-30 per cent but from consumers’ perspective maybe you can actually save food by not buying too much at once. Also it's much easier for you to prepare your food. Neil So you're paying more per unit but you're probably wasting less on the whole. What does it mean for a company at the bottom line level? Are you seeing that feed through in revenue and in sales? Hyomi It's still a small portion of their revenue but the companies who can take advantage of this kind of trend with better marketing and better merchandise will obviously be able to attract more customers to lead to better revenue and at the product level, at the unit level, they should be able to generate better returns and better margins. Neil Beyond supermarkets, when you look across retail, what other areas are you seeing premiumisation playing out? What are some of the other sectors? Hyomi I should say that in services the premiumisation is also happening. The overseas travel has been growing faster than domestic travel in a very consistent way for the past few years. And that’s shown in the duty-free stores’ revenue growth trends in the past few years. Neil And then when you're not running around the aisles of supermarkets like these what are some of the other things you're doing on the ground to carry out research when you're coming to China? Because I know you do travel here quite often. Hyomi When I come to China I try to spend my time here as much as like locals. So, I take Didi and go to other department stores or I go to meet my friends and on the way I get to see many different things like what's happening, what's changing. Also, the payment pattern is definitely changing in China. So, it is indeed a cash free economy at the moment. You really need to pay for things with Alipay or Tenpay. Another thing that I have been doing for more in-depth research is to spend a couple weeks with a Chinese family doing homestays. So last year I spent two weeks in Shenzhen with a Chinese family of four members where I could learn about their consumption behaviour, their aspirations, what they care about for their children and their parents and their wealth creation, all these things. Soon I'm going to go to Chengdu and will spend another two weeks with a Chinese family over there. Neil Thanks Hyomi. That's a really interesting look at how stock pickers are doing their research on the ground in China. Paras So Jing, Hyomi paints a rich picture there. She's spending time in the new engine room of the Chinese economy as we can hear, in these shopping malls and spending time with families, really going in deep to help her understand the country's changing consumer trends. But stepping back a little bit, what about the equity markets more broadly. How have they been developing? Jing I think there is a key element currently missing from the whole story which I think is very important going forward which is the income element in China. The income story globally has been a very popular strategy but very few people associate China with the income element because people come here looking for the growth story, they’re not looking for the dividend story. But China is actually changing into a very interesting income story. We're not growing 10 per cent every year, right? This year we're going six, next year we’ll probably be growing at five or something. But for corporates they’re free cash flow is improving and with cash coming in they now have an opportunity to think about another capital allocation perspective which is paying dividends. Paras I mean when I think back to some of the changes we saw in the European market, so going back 10, 15, 20 years ago, companies were prevented from paying dividends because boards would often think that you were taking money out of the out of the pockets of the employees and giving it to shareholders. But I've always thought that there's an association with companies paying dividends and treating minority shareholders well with a maturity of an investment market. So, Casey is this good news from an analyst’s perspective? Casey Yeah, it definitely is Paras. I think the thought process for some of the Chinese companies in years gone by was that dividends were simply paying money out of the company away to foreigners. That's gradually changing and I think there's a recognition that the capital structure is more important. And they have made some significant progress. It's been helped by the government: SOEs are now mandated to pay out 30 per cent of their earnings. And I think if you look at the market as a whole I think it trades on about a 2.5 to 3 per cent dividend yield, which is actually higher than the US, the S&P 500. So, it's still got a long way to go but they've definitely made some significant progress.  Paras And of course it's such a strong signal of the continuing evolution of these markets. As I mentioned earlier in the introduction there's another significant development, which is that the Chinese regulators have dropped quotas for foreign institutional investors, or QFII. This is a really big deal, isn't it Jing? Jing It is. It is indeed a very big deal. That means that the market will in some way become open access for everyone. You don't need a quota to buy China A shares. That actually brings a sweet memory for me. I remember back in 2004 I was at the door of CSRC [China Securities Regulation Commission] applying for the QFII license and applying for the QFII quota and we got thrilled when the regulator awarded us $50 million QFII quota. And we thought that was quite an achievement back in 2004. And now, 15 years later on you don't need a quota to buy China A shares - very exciting as well. So, I think that with the years it’s moved along, and without a quota or any kind of restriction tacked on to it that just means that the market becomes a very friendly, even playing field everybody.  Casey Yeah, I remember I had a similar circumstance about 10 years ago, as well. I remember applying for an additional QFII quota and the process was very laborious, very bureaucratic. It was almost government-to-government-style negotiations and removing that sort of hindrance to foreign investors is a huge plus for the opening up of the China markets.  Paras And obviously when we think as investors we're always thinking about investing for the long term and there's a difference that often people think about between long term investing and and then thinking about the market in China which they see as being very volatile and retail driven. Do you think that there is an opportunity reframe the investing proposition for those domestic savers? Casey Yeah, I think it's a gradual process. But all of these measures that the government’s instituted to get foreign investors, foreign institutions investing into China means that they're less driven by speculation, they become less short term, the market becomes much more fundamental-based. And I think if you have a long history of following those fundamentals you’ll have a big advantage in the A share market as it develops.  Paras So what exactly do recalibrations like these mean on a practical level in terms of trading with and inside the country? Investment director Catherine Yeung spoke to Fidelity's head of trading in Asia, Kelly Clark, to find out. And a short caveat before we hear the interview: this conversation was recorded before the latest announcements around the scrapping of the QFII quotas.  Catherine Yeung We've seen a whirlwind of changes relating to access and regulation for trading when it comes to the Chinese markets. Volumes have skyrocketed but there's still a number of hurdles to navigate. I'm with Kelly Clark, Fidelity's head of Asian equity trading, based here in Hong Kong. Kelly, you've been in the market now for eight years. Can you share some of the biggest changes you've seen over this period? Kelly Clark Sure. For starters, when I first started trading the only way to access China was through QFII. And I was actually at a hedge fund at the time so the only way we could do that was synthetically, which made it very difficult and very expensive to actually access the market. So, I would say the biggest change in my tenure has been Stock Connect, which went live in 2014 and that was far more affordable to reach. You didn't have the issues with putting cash upfront or with repatriating cash back out of China. So it made it much more palatable to invest in. That also piqued the interest of the MSCI and FTSE and why you have the interest I think you have in it now. Catherine So, in layman's terms, Kel, what's the key differences between QFII and Stock Connect, especially from a trading perspective? Kelly You've got the ability to trade with different counter parties, again you can move cash more freely, it's a lot more familiar and the counter parties that you’re trading with as well. It was just a lot easier to access and open accounts. Catherine With QFII? Kelly So QFII still has its advantages. You can trade during Hong Kong holidays, which you can't do through Connect. You can also invest in the full universe of stocks versus the limited amount that you have in Connect, which is about 1200. The bigger one being now that it's the only way that foreigners can access the Star IPO Board. Catherine Yes, the Star IPO Board, I'm glad you mentioned this - so this is a science and technology exchange similar to Nasdaq? Kelly Correct. So I think the driver of this, as you mentioned, was for the Nasdaq. So for new sort of unicorn tech type companies to come to market within China. Catherine So we are seeing more foreigners - whether it's institutional money, retail money - going into the market. This is obviously being driven a lot by the Chinese government's policies to open up the capital markets, both equities and fixed income. So when we have the second largest economy in the world, a government who's very pro opening up the capital markets, can you please put into perspective just how big China is? Kelly So China actually represents 70 per cent of all of the turnover in equity in Asia. Catherine If we're seeing all this turnover, is it an easy market to trade? Kelly It's a liquid market to trade. I wouldn't qualify it as easy because it's actually still very volatile considering you've got the retail investor base that you do. I think there's still a few hurdles in getting more foreign investment into China. One of them being access to hedging instruments, so futures would be the main one there that everybody's looking for as a way to hedge out their index risk. So, there are there steps that the government's taking there or that the exchanges are taking there too in sourcing solutions for that issue. There's also a number of nuances still around settlement cycles, funding, broker settlements, but again they're pretty small nuances and the government is focused on getting those looked at. Catherine Kelly, thanks so much for your time. I mean it's a fascinating market to trade and to watch the developments in terms of the progress. Paras, that's all from us here on the trading floor in Hong Kong. Paras So Casey, with your tech focus on China what do you make of the launch of the Star Board that Kelly just mentioned? Casey Yeah, the Star Board is a really interesting development. It's another one of these baby steps to opening up and broadening the Chinese markets. But I think the fact that it's a registration rather than approval structure to list a company there is is quite important. It means that these loss-making companies, these high-tech companies which are innovating, can list and it gives them a new source of funding. I think from then from investor point of view it also opens up the opportunities to some of these smaller innovative companies that were probably only available to PE or VC type investors previously.  Paras And Jing, you’re a self-proclaimed value investor. Have you been looking at technology stocks at all recently? Jing Of course. Actually, last year a very decent amount of my time was looking at the technology sector, in particular in the context of the trade war between the US and China. A lot of technology stocks were falling victim because of that and valuation for some of them looks really, really compelling even from the perspective of a value investor.  Paras Trade wars was one of those things that we talked about on the last episode and we made a call that it would be not a short-lived phenomenon and so it's proved. But for a stock picker such as yourself, Casey, how do you deal with a backdrop of trade wars when you're trying to find individual opportunities.  Casey Like Jing says, the tech sector really has been in the crosshairs of the trade war and the volatility that that's brought has made it quite difficult, especially when the sentiment of the market can turn on a dime after just a single tweet. But having said that, it did introduce some value into the sector and there have been buying opportunities. And if you focus more on the longer-term trends there is an opportunity for Chinese companies to become more self-sufficient in some of the tech areas, take some revenue, some business opportunities off the US companies. And so I am increasingly looking for those opportunities on a long term basis.  Jing I think like the Chinese always say, every crisis comes with an opportunity. So when we think about a trade war of course the relationship between these two countries - I think, in my personal view - is fundamentally changed going forward. But that actually leaves an opportunity for China to rethink its supply chain. They want to reduce their dependence of some of their key supply chain components to external parties and they want to rebuild some of the supply chain companies. And, of course, they want to build a domestic economy to fend off any uncertainty coming from global trade. And I'm hoping that this trade war will push policymakers to really seriously think about market reform because when one door is closed you want to open the other window.  Paras So it really sounds like when we come to think about China from a stock picking perspective that despite all of the development of the market, all of the maturity and some really key changes that we've talked about with respect to companies looking at returns to minority shareholders, actually there's no shortcut to doing your homework properly.  Jing Of course. For me, I have been investing in China for the past 15 years. That market for me today versus 15 years ago is equally challenging, equally new, and equally interesting. It’s just like a brand new market.  Casey Yeah, I don't I don't think there's any substitute for boots on the ground and kicking tyres. Paras Great. Well that brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you to my studio guests Jing Ning and Casey McClean, and to our other contributors: Hyomi Jie and Kelly Clark with Catherine Yeung. And thank you for listening. If you like what you've heard then please rate and review us on your podcast app, we really appreciate it. And if you want to read more of what's been covered today then please go to our website. Our producers were Seb Morton-Clark and Neil Gough and our editor is Richard Edgar. Until next time, from Fidelity's Hong Kong studios, goodbye.  

Thursday night Lifetime debuted a documentary series titled, “Surviving R. Kelly” It is a multi-night event giving voices to the women who have alleged to been victims of R&B singer R. Kelly's alleged predator behavior. The documentary includes over 50 interviews of not only alleged victims but also family members, musicians, and creator of the me too movement, Tarana Burke. For its efforts to provide a voice to women where they have previously been unheard, Lifetime received a scathing cease and desist letter from R. Kelly's legal team. They alleged that they have proof that Lifetime knows that some of the women being interviewed are lying. In today's episode of the Legal Tea we are discussing defamation. What it is and the burden of proof. Remember the content in this podcast is not legal advice and is provided for informational purposes only. Top three takeaways from today's episode are: 1. Libel and slander while both defamation, are different. Libel refers to written defamation while slander refers to oral 2. Defamation is not just about false statements. It is about the intentional, reckless, or negligent communication of false statements 3. Defamation is not a federal matter and is defined specifically according to each individual state's law Remember if you found this information useful, share it with your friends, subscribe, and leave a review. If you see a story you want to share send it to podcast@thelegaltea.co --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Welcome Back and Happy New Year! #Shoptalkpodcast EP 135 This week J and Dame are back to kick off the new year with one of our favorite things…#AskTheShop! During the week the fellas put up a number of questions via social media that they wanted your feedback on so they discuss those answers as well as their own. Some of the questions/scenario include: A young man faced with a choice to walk away from a confrontation or fight, What would you do if you won 30M dollars and your spouse needed 29M to keep themselves out of jail for 5 years, has Detroit seen its last black mayor, would a woman take a house free and clear if the only stipulation was that you can’t bring men into the home, and of course they touch on the #SurvingRKelly special that aired. There was some really good dialog in this episode. Hope you enjoy! Who’s mans is this - R.Kelly (It literally has to be him). Music Pick - Bang Belushi (I think I’m ODB) https://youtu.be/i-dmrBg8Eho ❶ iTunes ☞ Search #shoptalkpodcast ❷ Youtube ☞ YouTube.com/jjohnson313 ❸ SoundCloud ☞ SoundCloud.com/shoptalkpod ❹ website: www.shoptalkpod.com Follow @Shoptalkpodcast on Instagram! Follow @jjohnson313 on Instagram and Twitter Follow @damegonewild on Instagram and Twitter Follow @TheShoptalkPod on Twitter Follow Shoptalkpod on Facebook - https://m.facebook.com/ShoptalkPod/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/shoptalkpodcast/support

15-40 Connection is focused on educating and empowering people about early cancer detection. This education helps individuals become aware of the early warning signs of cancer. Most cancer organizations focus on research for a cure, treatment or support. There are also many cancer organizations that focus on prevention. Unfortunately, we still don't know what causes all cancers, so while some preventative measures can reduce risk; it can't remove the risk completely. Research shows that detecting cancer early improves effectiveness of cancer treatment and also improves the chance of survival, which is why 15-40 Connection is empowering individuals to be aware of the early warning signs to give them their best chance at effective treatment and survival. 15-40 Connection aims to educate and empower individuals with the skills to recognize subtle health changes in themselves, rather than rely only on medical professionals. Through 15-40 Connection's 3 Steps to Early Detection individuals learn how to become active participants in their own health care so cancer as well as other illnesses can be diagnosed earlier. The result is a quicker return to health and most importantly lives saved. For more information: https://www.15-40.org  As Vice President for Engagement for 15-40 Connection, Kelly Fattman supports educational outreach and national communication that teaches people how to detect cancer earlier. She is passionate about saving lives through the power of early detection. While working in this role, she experienced health changes herself that lead to a brain tumor diagnosis. Kelly put into practice the exact education she was delivering to change the outcome of her situation. Using 15-40 Connection's 3 Steps Detect, Kelly became one of the most valuable members of her health care team. After describing how her health changes felt, she was told by two doctors. “That doesn't make sense.” Her health changes were different from what they had seen most often. As they put the piece of the puzzle together to determine her diagnosis, Kelly continued to trust how she was feeling and shared that information. It was because of one of her symptoms that were not making sense that her doctor ordered additional tests which revealed her brain tumor. Had Kelly not shared that information, her diagnosis would have been delayed, the brain tumor would have continued to grow, her treatment options would have been more limited, and the chances of lasting side effects would have risen significantly. Prior to her role at 15-40 Connection, Kelly, helped companies large and small launch products, reach new audiences and improve customer engagement. Some of the major brands she has worked with include Reebok, Dunkin Donuts, American Express, New Balance, and the Boston Marathon. Here's the Transcript of the Interview Hugh Ballou: Welcome to this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange. And yet another interesting guest, Russell. What do you think of that? Russell Dennis: Good-looking and interesting and smart. Dedicated. Those are the kind of people that show up here. I like it. Hugh: We attract really brilliant people who have good stories. Kelly, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Kelly Fattman: Thank you for having me. Hugh: We had a struggle with technology, but we conquered it. Here we are. Let's start out. I don't like these dry introductions of people. I like people to tell me a little bit about themselves. What about you is important to the work you do? Then talk about this organization, 15-40 Connection. Kelly: It's interesting because I have a background in marketing and development. I have spent the last part of my career, probably the last ten years, in strategy, development, and activation, specifically around customer engagement. When I came to 15-40, my role was to really help to drive engagement and scale because we really needed to scale our message. We knew it was life-saving education, and we needed to get to as many people as possible. What is unique in my story is I was working as a consultant, and then I had a health change. Part of our education is about noticing changes in your health and acting on them. I did that. I call it my orientation to the business. I was in real time in my life testing our education. Does it work? My health change was significant. I did see a doctor. I had some challenges with getting a diagnosis, but I pushed. I became the empowered patient, which is something that we talk about, and got to an accurate diagnosis, which really changed my life. That makes me not just a business professional, but also a consumer. That combination has been very successful as we enter the drive of this mission and our need to scale it and our ability to scale it. Hugh: Kelly Fattman, y'all aren't from the South, I can tell. Where are y'all from? Kelly: I am actually born and raised right outside of Boston, Massachusetts, but my parents are from Pennsylvania. I have a little bit of a mixed problem going on here. Hugh: Russell is over there in Denver. They got a really distinctive accent, which you can't tell. The South is very distinctive, and in New England, it is of course really distinctive. Tell us a little bit about 15-40 Connection. Kelly: Our mission is we teach people how to detect cancer early. It's that simple. There is a ton of companies. Once you are diagnosed with cancer, there is a bunch of resources to access for treatment, care, mental health, and research. When it comes to the path that leads to diagnosis, there is nobody who does what we do, which is unfortunately why we are doing it. The founder wasn't necessarily looking for something else to do, but when he saw this opportunity and the gap that was available to people to maintain their health and survive cancer, he acted on it. Our education is teaching people how to recognize symptoms, act on those symptoms, and connect with their doctors to get an accurate early diagnosis. Hugh: Outstanding. On your site, there is a core educational message called Three Steps Detect. Kelly: Correct. Hugh: Say more about that. Kelly: The Three Steps Detect is our core education. It is really the entry point of what you learn when you're learning about early detection. We broke it down into three simple steps. If you follow these three steps, it will lead to not only potential cancer diagnosis early, but really diagnose anything. We have heard from people this year that have diagnosed heart disease, kidney stones, things along those lines. We know that it's not just cancer that can be detected early. It can be anything. We know that anything detected early gives you a better chance of survival, better health outcomes, getting back to your life quicker, back to health quicker. Hugh: It's not just cancer? Kelly: We are focused on cancer, but the interesting byproduct of our education is it's helping people find other things as well. But our primary focus is cancer. Hugh: Wow. So you started telling a story that you had a health change. It brought you- How did you connect with 15-40? Was it already in existence? Kelly: I was actually working here, and they were developing the curriculum Three Steps Detect. We had been doing education before I got here but knew that we needed to tighten it up, be clearer on the message, get something that was memorable and actionable. That is what I was working on. When I had the health change, I followed the three steps quite honestly. The biggest step we talk about is the part where the patient interacts with the doctor. Doctors, we call them detectives. They only can solve the case based on the clues that are provided to them. We are the people who provide the clues. I was providing my clues; however, the doctors basically outlined to me that what I was saying didn't make sense, that my explanation of my symptoms couldn't be what they are. I stayed true to my story because of what I learned here, and ultimately they ordered the right test and got to an accurate diagnosis. I had two diagnoses prior to the third, which was the accurate one. Hugh: Some of us listening that are paranoid. When I visit people in the hospital, I start hurting when they start talking about their operation. Can you give us an idea of those three steps? Kelly: Sure. First step is to know you're normal, to know that you're great. What's good for you? When you wake up in the morning, how do you feel on a good day? We don't have a checklist, but it's setting benchmarks. What's your normal sleep patterns? What is your normal energy level? What are your bowel habits? Those are the things you should be checking in with. How is your skin? Do you have a lot of moles or just a few? Are you watching your skin? If new things come in that weren't there before. It's knowing what your normal is so if something changes, you can recognize the change. That is step one. Step two is the two-week rule. Since you have set the base of your normal, when something changes, you'll notice. Your stomach starts to act up. Maybe you're going to the bathroom differently. You're more tired than normal. Most things will clear up after two weeks. The flu, pneumonia, the common cold. There are lots of things that after two weeks solve themselves. If after two weeks you are still feeling these symptoms, we recommend you go check it out. It does not mean you have cancer. The two-week rule helps people not to be a hypochondriac, as you stated; it helps them to be calm because they say, “Okay. In two weeks a lot of things go away.” Two weeks gives them a reason to go check it out. The third step is the sharing with your doctor. That piece is the most critical in that it's what I outlined earlier. What you say to your doctor is going to determine what they know about you. They don't have X-ray vision. They can certainly order tests, but they don't know which ones to order if you are not sharing the right information with them. Ultimately, that relationship is critical. In this time where health care is so challenging and so variable across the country, it is understanding all the different scenarios that people can enter. Some people have long-term relationships with primary care. Others use urgent care or medical clinics, so it's a one-and-done environment. It's making sure the patient is driving the conversation, and they are driving the outcome to early diagnosis because if we don't drive, the doctors and the way the model is now built, they don't have the infrastructure and support systems, most of them, to do the follow-up and the additional work. They also don't know how you're feeling, so you go to the doctor and leave and don't follow back up with them, but you're still not feeling well. How are they going to know? Those are really the three steps. Hugh: I guess it's tricky. We all assume that the doctor knows everything. They tell you something, and it's a tendency for us to want to shut down. What I hear you saying is that we learn to be assertive in talking about ourselves. Is that the context you're talking in? Kelly: We say the best chance is you, the empowered patient. It's all of those. It's the strength of believing in yourself, trusting in your instincts, not being embarrassed. Some of the cultural norms. In the times we grew up, people didn't question their doctor. I'm not sure people are being raised the same way now. I think now is the right time. You know you the best. It's about a partnership with a doctor; it's not about us versus them. It's about creating a partnership between you and them. Hugh: That is a really helpful paradigm because- You called them a detective a minute ago. We have to give them the clues. They depend on us telling them. I have a very good doctor who listens very carefully and spends time and asks me very good questions. Sometimes those are questions about things I have never thought about, but you are helping me think about being prepared in case I wake up and it's not normal. If you are not normal, you wait two weeks, and if it doesn't go away, then you make an appointment. Is that what I heard you say? Kelly: That's exactly right. We also say that if something changes significantly, like you break your leg or you have a really sharp pain or something along those lines, then you don't wait two weeks. It's making sure you understand the difference. Our teaching is about the subtle, persistent changes that hang around that wouldn't necessarily impact your ability to go about your day. Those are the ones you wait two weeks and they usually clear up. Things that are more like the symptom I had was more significant. I had a sharp pain in my head that would come and go, but it was nothing I had ever felt before, very different from my normal and was more dramatic. It wasn't subtle, I should say. I acted quicker than two weeks. Hugh: Why is 15-40 Connection a 501(c)3? Kelly: Essentially because a nonprofit is the best way to get to everybody. Our mission is to educate people on how to detect cancer early. The fact is it wasn't being done before. Now that the issue is raised, you have to build the case to get the education out there. What we were able to do is build the case with funders and people who are interested in the nonprofit space to make a difference and save lives. That is how we landed as a nonprofit segment versus a for-profit who would be selling the education, which is not the motivation of the founder and the other people who work here. Hugh: It's to make it accessible to more people. Kelly: Yes. Hugh: Russell, what are you hearing here? Do you have questions or observations? Russell: That is remarkable. I can think back to a health change that I had when I was working for the IRS. There was some signs. I did not act. In my case, I can speak for myself. I think fear was a factor. Does your education program go to address those things that people may have, these fears that going to the doctor could cause me to miss work or my insurance may not be adequate? Fear is unreasonable often. It doesn't make any sense, yet it is there. Does your program address any of these fears that people may be experiencing or provide a space where people can discuss it? Kelly: Yes. Fear is the #1 issue. People say, I'm afraid to go. If I don't go, it will go away. The reality is that that fear, where it's unfounded is if you catch it early, great. That's a win because you can take care of it. If you don't have anything, that's great, too. Both are celebration points. We do have a natural fear of what the doctor is going to say. We also on the flip side of that want the doctor to say you're okay. Once the doctor says you're fine, we say, Oh, great, even though you still don't feel well, even though the symptoms still persist. You heard them say you're okay, and that's what you want. We call it the get out of jail free card because that is what people are looking for. You have to trust your instincts. You have to trust yourself. A lot of the teaching is about recognizing the obstacles, all that you just outlined, that keep people from going and keep people from getting the early detection because of those obstacles. Russell: Do you have any statistics—I think you might be a source for it—of people who are finding out that they have cancer, let's say late detection? Are there- How many cases are there where people are finding out too late that they could have been treated or the treatment becomes more difficult because they waited? Do you have any of those numbers per chance? Kelly: I don't have them at my fingertips. What I can share with you is one in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Those numbers are staggering. That is about 40%. That is a big number. We need to get as many of those people to detect cancer in stage zero or stage one. We also know the cost is significantly different. We do have data that supports stage one care versus stage four is the difference is probably 300-400%. The other thing is they just started to publish these studies now in the National Journal of Medicine and a few others around. Misdiagnosis is a blind spot that has been ignored for the last 20 years. The misdiagnosis leads to the lack of early detection. The more diagnoses you get that are inaccurate, the longer the pathway is to the correct diagnosis. There has been a lot of studies published on that. But the actual numbers of early versus late haven't found that yet. But we are continuing to see stuff like that pop up. Russell: That is a lot of people, 40% of the population. That is staggering. Is that how it's been historically? Have we seen an increase historically? Kelly: I don't know how long ago it was tracked. I can't answer that. But I know certain cancers are on the rise, some in younger people, like colon cancer and some others. I am not sure to answer your question if it's on the rise. But the number is staggering. And not rising at a percentage increase like the opioid epidemic. It's relatively static from the way the government sees it. I know that. Huge numbers, but not these kind of growth rates that are alarming to people. Hugh: You said with men, it's one in two. That would be us, Russell. Russell: That would be. I get that. The funny thing is because Kelly was plugged into 15-40. Kelly, because you were plugged in there, you were looking at being proactive about this problem and actually going out to solve it. In my case, I just instinctually shied away from it. My boss and her boss had two separate one-way conversations with me to tell me to go to the doctor. They actually had to threaten to fire me before I did it. That is how strong the fear around facing this was. With men in particular, and it doesn't surprise me, we like to be angry and flex our muscles and growl, which is a good mask of fear, to be angry for guys. Kelly: No one looks forward to sitting on a stool in someone's office. It's not a position of power, I like to say. Hugh: No, it's not. Russell, thanks for sharing that story. I guess you went to the doctor then. Russell: I did because they threatened to fire me. It was crazy. Once I found out what was going on with me, I was a lot calmer. I approached it a lot better. I was a lot more optimistic than letting go of it. Because I chewed on it and kicked it around for a while. I had a support system of people around me who were there to help me gather information. Good friends that came. My goddaughter and other friends. They said, “Okay, we are going to go with you. Just listen to the doctor. We are here. We can take notes. We can use your voice recorder on the phone. Just lean into it and listen and share where you are, what's going on.” It was a partnership. It was a team approach. Some of the things that I heard, whoever went with me didn't hear. There were a lot of things that people went with me to these appointments heard that I didn't hear. We were able to gather all of this information because when you sit in the chair, facing the treatment, a lot of times you're overwhelmed with things going on. There is economics, your affairs going forward, how I am actually going to feel. Am I going to be able to go back to my life as it was with work and with family? There are just a ton of uncertainties and a ton of questions that people face. Having people that have gone through it, having the education, having that support network to say, “Look, it's better to face this stuff sooner rather than later, and you're not alone” is critical to getting better. I have recovered fully. I have been in remission. I am approaching six years since the completion. Kelly: Yay, I like those stories. You bring up a good point about examples of people sharing examples. That is our model of education. We use storytelling. We use people who have had cancer diagnoses and gone through the process. They either detected cancer early or they didn't. The different outcomes they had as a result, it really is powerful because it helps people live the situation through other people, which can make it less scary. I appreciate you sharing your story, and I am very happy for your outcome. Russell: The unspoken thing my doctor said: We have some challenges, but he hinted at the fact that if I had come in a bit earlier, it would have been easier to treat. He wasn't sure how things were going to go. They are not always sure. They don't have crystal balls. It's important to get all of that information out there. No detail is too minor. Get that information out there to assess the situation to find out exactly where you are and what steps you can take. Hugh: Kelly, earlier in your dialogue, you talked about the support systems you have. When people find out, there is an emotional side to this. How do you help people there? Kelly: We are really the path that leads to diagnosis. We are trying to encourage and engage and empower people to go through the process to get to the diagnosis. As I had said when we started, there is a lot of groups and organizations that support once the diagnosis is made. That is not our focal point. Our focal point is making sure people get to the doctor and get that diagnosis if indeed that is what is wrong with them so they have more options and better chances for care and better health outcomes. Hugh: Two more things I am thinking about. People like to say, “I'm too busy to do some of this.” How do you encourage people to cut through that excuse and do what's important? Secondly, when they actually make the appointment, how do you empower them to have that meaningful conversation with your doctor? Kelly: An hour today could save you ten hours tomorrow. Busy is busy. Everybody is busy. At the end of the day, getting to the doctor, taking the time today to get the early diagnosis could save you so much time, so much money, and your life quite frankly. It's about prioritization. It's not easy. At the end of the day, how many people prioritize themselves first, especially when you are a parent with children and with a job? But you have to reinforce it as often as possible that to the people who love you, alive is the option. They want you alive, and if it is going to mean that you don't get to make that lunch because you went to the doctor early or you might miss the last meeting of the day, you are not effective if you are not in the meeting at all. Fortunately, that is one thing that is shifting. It does feel there is support out there in corporate wellness and those environments to focus on health. It sounds like even your experience, people were like, “Get to the doctor or you're fired.” I love to hear that because they are prioritizing your health over the bottom line of the company. Not everybody does it. Not everybody works for supportive people. You have to be number one, or the consequences can be significant. Hugh: Wow. Equipping people to have that conversation. Kelly: It doesn't have to be us or them or me or you. It's more about I'm having something I have to deal with, and I need support for me to go do that. It shouldn't be too much to ask, but I know it can be trickier than it sounds. Hugh: But getting there. When you talk to the doctor. I am guilty of when I get to the doctor, it doesn't hurt anymore. Kelly: Yep. Hugh: So I have to have a good recall. This is what I was feeling. I am self-conscious or nervous, so it has surpassed the slight feeling of pain that I had. I guess there is making notes and being prepared for the doctor. What other ways can people be prepared? Kelly: You just touched on something. In advance of the doctor, make sure you write down everything that you experience. Symptoms, changes in your health, that piece. Make sure you make that list in the Notes app or handwrite them. Inevitably, when you get to the situation, you forget half the things. When you are there, make sure that you go through everything and that you don't, even if you are feeling rushed, it's your time in that room. You have to command it. It's that empowerment thing again. I am not done. I haven't shared everything I am feeling. The two other pieces that have been very helpful in the education are: ask them if they don't know what it is, what could it be? It could be this, or it could be that, or something in between. It gives you some framework to work from. Then you say, Okay. What is the path to the answer? You treat the minimal thing they think it probably is. If it doesn't work, when should I feel better? When should I come back? You have a plan on what the next act is, and you're not waiting around for somebody else to reach out to you. In this day and age, you don't traditionally get a follow-up call. The other one I just touched on is when should I feel better? If I get this ten-day antibiotic, on the tenth day, should I feel better? On the fifth day? When should I feel better? What do I do if I don't? Those two things have been powerful statements to keep people in the driver's seat of the process. Hugh: We don't know what questions to ask. That is helpful. Your website is 15-40.org. The logo is 15-40 Connection. Tell us a bit about the website. There is a Donate button. A Contact. You have a blog. What is on the blog? Kelly: To set the stage, our product is education. It's early detection education. We offer through Train the Trainers, through webinars, and through live presentations with panelists. To support the education we have provided, we have a social infrastructure. We are on all social media platforms, and we have a blog. What we do with our blog is enhance and continue to tell the stories of what we have taught. It's everything from last Valentine's day, we had a blog post on the most important relationship is the one with your doctor. We actually just are launching the 12 Days of Early Detection. Each day someone sings one of the days. At the end, on December 22, you will be able to hear the whole 12 Days of Early Detection. Each day is reinforcing our education. That is what we use all of our social platforms and our blog to do. A lot of it also is through storytelling, highlighting stories of people who have had successful health outcomes as a result of our education or because they didn't have our education, they value it and want to make sure other people have it. Hugh: Start the Conversation. Know the Power of You. Know Your Role. Be Informed. FAQs. The Three Steps Detect. Remember You're Great. Two-Week Rule. Share with Your Doctor. Learn from People Like You. Get Involved. Education & Outreach. Share Your Story. Events. Donate. Find out About Us. You have a team for the marathon. 2018 Boston Marathon. Kelly: We do. We have seven runners who are collectively already over $25,000 in funds raised. That is super exciting. Hugh: That's great. I ran for the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society raising money for cancer. Kelly: For Boston? Hugh: No, I ran Atlanta. Yuengling in Virginia Beach. It is a grand event. They give you a name of somebody who is in cancer treatment who you run for. On your website, you can click on that and find out about joining the team. Is that the idea? Kelly: Our team is full. We have filled all seven slots. You can certainly support our team. Three of our seven runners are cancer survivors. They are out pushing the mission forward and empowering themselves and running a marathon and supporting early detection education, which is amazing. Hugh: I love it. You are sitting in the office? Kelly: I am. Hugh: You're in Boston. Kelly: We are about 35 minutes west of Boston. Hugh: West. Tell us about your staff, your founder, and your board. Kelly: Our founder, Joe Coghlin and his family. It is a good story. Jim, his best friend, Mark Ungerer. Jim said, “He is my best friend, second only to my wife.” How romantic, right? Mark lost his son at the age of 15 to leukemia. Mark, as a lasting legacy to his son, started a successful golf tournament. He funded research to help continue to find cures for leukemia. Mark, years after this tournament started, said to Jim, “If something ever happens to me, would you keep this going?” Jim said, “Of course, I will, but you'll outlive me.” Unfortunately, shortly after that, Mark died. Jim had a commitment to this tournament. He continued to fund the research. He is a very successful businessman. He decided to check out the ROI. For all the funds that were being put into research, what was the outcome? As a result of some of that work, he found this statistic, which showed that there had been an issue around delayed diagnosis and the impact of delayed diagnosis on cancer survival rates. Once he found that and recognized that nobody was focused on it, he met with a family and said, “This is a calling. We can't let this be. We have to do something about it.” That's how 15-40 was founded about eight years ago. We have an active board. We just had a board meeting last night. We have eight members at this point. We are actively pursuing additional board members as we scale and build new curriculum. Our staff has eight people who work across all categories: development, marketing, education, outreach to support the mission and to scale the mission. Hugh: That is music to our ears, isn't it, Russ? Russell and I reframe the word “consultant” to “WayFinder.” We don't give people fish; we teach them how to fish. We work with many nonprofits, and boards are not as active as they ought to be. Russell's specialty is funding. We think about donors and grants, but there are six more streams of funding. It sounds like you have a good thing going, a really solid platform. How many people like you in the office? There is nobody like you, but how many others? Kelly: There is eight total people who work in the office each day. A lot of us are out of the office because our education is we are out in schools, in corporate wellness, on college campuses. We are spread all over. There is eight total in the moment. Hugh: Do they all wear black furs to work? Kelly: Exactly. This is to celebrate our 12 Days of Early Detection. I wore a fancy jacket so that I could sing. Stay tuned. Watch our Facebook page. Hugh: You are going to sing. Your Facebook page is 1540 Connection. Twitter is @1540connection. YouTube is The1540Connection. Instagram is 1540connection. No hyphen. Just written out. Kelly: Each day, we will post. Everybody is singing a day of early detection. Hugh: Love it. That is clever. Russell, we are on the last stretch of our interview. I bet you got some observations and closing questions for Kelly. Russell: I love the fact that everybody is cross-trained and understands everybody's function and role and taking that responsibility onto yourselves. It's marvelous. Spreading the wealth and spreading the joy. I love what you're doing. I'd be interested to know more about your Train the Trainer process. That is something that should be spread beyond Boston. I think it should be spread around the country so that people understand what they are looking at. Kelly: Because of technology, we were able to do a Train the Trainer in Florida. We are national. Our feet on the street is here in Boston, so we have deeper traction here. We are definitely moving across the Mississippi and trying to hit all four corners and the center of the U.S. and make sure everybody gets the education. Hugh: One of your tabs says Get Involved. If people are not in Boston, how do they get involved? Kelly: So many ways. You can get involved through social media. You can share our story with your network. You can bring our education through your schools or corporations. You can also sign up for Train the Trainer. You can bring us to your college campus. It really is endless. All the opportunities are posted there. There is also an email capability to tell us what you're thinking. We are nimble, so we are constantly looking for new ideas. We welcome all ideas. Hugh: Amazing. So Kelly, as we wrap up here, is there something we haven't covered that you want to share? What parting thought do you have to leave with our listeners? Kelly: As our founder says, “Health is wealth.” At the end of the day, if you are not healthy, everything is a struggle. We have the capacity to get well. Most people can access a doctor or a hospital. Taking the extra time to do that if something changes in your health can be a life-saving decision. Our founder says often, “Don't be selfish. Think about all the people who love you. If you make this decision and you are negatively impacted as a result, they are, too.” That is a strong statement. It's not just about you. It's about everybody around you. I have young kids. I am being wheeled into the hospital with a ten- and eight-year-old. That is not an easy pill to swallow. You want to come out and make sure that you are there for them. I think that is the key component of all of this. Make it a priority because at the end of the day, nothing else matters. If you don't have your health, the rest is not going to happen. Hugh: Amazing. Russell, those are good words, aren't they? Russell: They are wonderful. Thank you for making this information available to a lot of people. It's a worthwhile cause. Access to information and resources is critical, especially in today's climate of rising costs. The thing that I would say to people as a closing thought if you got some things going on and you are stopping to think, Well, I don't know if I have the money or the resources to pay for it, I will point out that I have never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse. Dead people don't pay bills. Hugh: Kelly, thank you for making time. I know you have a lot of things to do. Thank you for sharing your story with all of our listeners. Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Rebels!  Today we are bringing you a throwback episode and one of our faves. We can't thank you enough for your continued support of our podcast! In this episode Caroline and Kelly talk all about the importance of giving back. This is actually how Caroline and Kelly met!  Kelly and Caroline talk about how important giving back is to them and their biz. Kelly wanted to continue her love and passion for teaching. By giving to  Pencils of Promise each month she is working towards building a school! Caroline continues her passion by giving to a non profit organizations.  Her inner hippy came out after her Colorado trip.  After her trip she decided to use recycled paper and products for her biz and she wanted to plant trees. Now her donations go toward an organization that plants trees and educates people for “green jobs.” There is also an option of adding planting a tree at checkout when you shop with Caroline! Ways to Give Back: Recycle your materials you use to produce your products or use in your office Volunteer in your community Donating items for various causes/events Being a mentor Give back at what you are good at-business specific-get creative   Quote Love From Kelly & Caroline: You don't have to give away the farm -Kelly You are doing more than someone who is doing nothing -Kelly It makes a difference when you are doing something you love -Caroline When you give back, you are in total control -Caroline I was single handedly killing all the trees -Caroline   Kelly’s Pencils of Promise School Page Toms Shoes Start Something That Matters- By Blake MyCoskie* The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun* Website that will help you find a reputable charitable organization: Charity Navigator   Follow us on instagram (Creative Biz Rebellions) and interact with us for a shop shout out!!! If you have a second please jump over to iTunes and leave us a review! Click on the link and then click on “view in iTunes” to leave us a review.  We give you all the virtual fist bumps.  Thank you! JOIN THE REBELLION! Signup for our newsletter and get our fave list of Instagram hashtags FREE! YOU CAN FIND KELLY ONLINE AT: www.helloworldpaperco.com www.kellyparkersmith.com www.helloworldstamps.etsy.com YOU CAN FIND CAROLINE ONLINE AT: www.carolinecreates.com www.carolinecreates.etsy.com   SHOW YOUR REBEL SPIRIT WITH SOME AWESOME GEAR FROM THE CREATIVE BIZ REBELLION SHOP: www.creativebizrebellion.com/shop *This post does contain some affiliate links*

SOLO SWEET IBIZA CHAPTER:019 Tune in Harmonic Mix, from Ibiza Sweet Music Play List or alphabetic order: Alkali - Punch Drunk Bs As Deep - Thinking In Space (remix) Daweird - Cloud (Original Mix) Jennifer Hudson Feat. R. Kelly - It's Your World - Eric Faria & Mr.Kris Remix Magnifik, Andrea Kirwin - Any Given Sunday (Original) Master Mello, Jaidene Veda, Kafele Bandele - Believe (Main Mix) Nu Bros - Funkin' Now Sebas Ramis, Tutsi Girl Play House - In The Name Of Love (feat Florencio Cruz) (Original Mix) Skyy, Kenny Dope - High (Inc. Kenny Dope Mixes) (Kenny's Classic Remix) Tonbe - Clavs Rules (Original Mix) Tonbe - Once Again (Original Mix) Vincent Kwok, Nina Lares - Didnt Waste No Time (Jackin The Jazz Remix) Thanks to all the labels and artist for their music. All tracks selected and armonic mix by Jordi Carreras http://www.jordicarreras.es Encoded by MUSICZONE PODCAST SERVICES

Raheem DeVaughn - Ridiculous 2 Paul Taylor & Regina Belle - How Did You Know. 3. Boyz to Men– Yesterday. 4. Jhene Aiko – Spotless Mind. 5. Bruno Mars – Straight Up and Down 6. Boney James feat Heather Headley – I’m Waitiing. 7. Ashford & Simpson – Destiny.  8. Montell Jordan - What’s On Tonight. 9. Dreezy – Close to You. 10. Robin Thicke – You’re my Fantasy. 11. Bryson Tiller – Let Me Explain. 12. Snoh Aalegra – In Your River. 13. Boney James feat Mario – That look on your face. 14. Keke Wyatt – No Peace. 15. Jennifer Hudson feat R. Kelly – It’s Your World

Sun Tzu and Woody Harrleson Help Banks with Revenue Creation Narrator: He learned strategy by playing chess with his older brother. Narrator: Kelly Coughlin is a CPA and CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast, Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover reward. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Greetings, this is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun, helping community banks navigate risk and discover reward in a sea of risk, regulation, and revenue creation threats. Today we are going to talk about marketing strategy, tactics, and revenue creation. BankBosun has a program for banks called Tactical Ecosystem Marketing. It is the results of three years of research and discussions with marketing experts and community bank executives. It’s a program guaranteed to generate new revenues from all bank business lines. And get all the banks’ centers of influence – that is those people and companies who influence and recommend banks and bankers – get them fully on board and engaged to help you get new customers. Guaranteed. How you might ask? Spoiler Alert: By primarily promoting them – your clients, prospects and influencers – and their businesses and services -  and then secondarily promoting your services and yourself. In 2014, I started researching ways that complex financial technology or financial services companies could be more efficiently and effectively marketed and closed. I use the terms efficiency and effectiveness carefully and intentionally, because they imply a reduction in time, as in shortening the sales cycle; reduction in expenses, travel, entertainment, and other direct business development costs; and reduction in effort, as in reducing the days, months or years it takes to close a deal. This was the challenge and, believe it or not, I actually figured it out.  But first it requires some attention to strategy and tactics and then a discussion on marketing and revenue creation. I have invited my friend Chris Carlson to join us in a few minutes. You see, Chris is one of my favorite people on the planet. He is a lawyer and an actor. Not one of those Hollywood elite actors though – he lives in South Minneapolis. But I think he has a small part in a movie coming out this summer. Chris has been very helpful to me in helping me craft my message and public speaking skills and style to conform not to dull and boring business standards, but to the stage and theater standards. Not that you need to be an entertainer. I certainly am not. Rather, you need to be your true and authentic self. Chris is terrific with this. So I asked him to help me with my messaging on this. And I thought, let’s do it as an interview and a podcast. I know you have heard plenty of people talk about strategy…and some business people use strategy and tactics interchangeably. In war, if you do that, it can be life threatening. In business you can sometimes get away with blurring the two with the result ranging from financial and operational inefficiencies to the ultimate penalty in business…death through bankruptcy. I don’t like to blur them. Because I think it is critical to achieving success to define your strategy and constantly be revising your tactics to implement that strategy. In short, strategy describes the destination and tactics describe the specific actions you will have to take along the way. Generally speaking, strategy doesn’t change that much, but tactics will constantly be adjusted and modified. When I lived in Seattle, I used to have a sailboat. I loved participating in sailing races. There was one race in the winter of 1985. I think they called it the Frostbite Series. This taught me at the age of 25, the real difference between mission, strategy and tactics. There was some heavy weather on the Puget Sound…probably around 25 knot winds. The mission was to have no more or no less a crew suitable to lead, navigate and operate the boat in that competitive situation and in that weather condition. Round each buoy and finish the race in the shortest time; and win the race. Before the race we developed our strategy on buoy placements and how we would round them; wind direction and speed and what sails we would need; and the number of boats, competition and the starting line placement and how we would approach the start. In a sailboat race, if you have a lousy start, you will have a very difficult time making up that time lost. Taking too much risk to cross the finish line ahead of the gun and have to circle back and re-cross could cost you five minutes. In a sailboat this can be painful. Our tactical decisions went something like this. We added one more crew to the boat. We used a starting tactic where we went to the finish line two minutes before the gun, and sailed perpendicular away from the line for one minute. And then we tacked and turned around and started sailing back to the start line. The tactical theory here is that if you sail away from the start for one minute, it should take you more or less one minute to return to the start. If it takes you more, you are late, if it takes you less, you are early. I liked that starting tactic. We decided to not fly the spinnaker because it was so windy. The cost of that decision was a loss in boat speed. But the gain was that we expected others would be more aggressive and fly their spinnaker and either struggle with that during sail changes or perhaps experience a knock down. We adopted a more conservative tactic and hoped our competitors would be more aggressive and get hurt by that. The end result was while we were winning the race, but because one of the buoys had blown free during the gale storm, the race was canceled. We actually chase that windward buoy for about 90 minutes past the original placement of it until they finally notified us by radio the race had been canceled. This one race taught me so much about the relationship between mission, strategy and tactics. In this race our mission never changed. Win the race. Our strategy was defined at the beginning based on conditions and competitive landscape. But our tactics were constantly being modified and adjusted and corrected to deal with the ever-changing conditions and our competitors’ reactions to those conditions. It taught me to not get caught into myopic thinking about how we win a sailboat race. The concept of not flying our spinnaker seemed so very foreign to me at the age of 25. Now, at 59, it makes total sense. In 1980 a Harvard business school professor, Michael Porter wrote a seminal article, “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors". Commonly referred to as Porter's Five Forces. Porter maintains there are five undeniable forces that play a part in shaping every market and industry in the world. If you haven’t created your own, Five Force Analysis, you need to do so. I love doing these things.  This will help you determine how to modify your strategy and tactics based on your competitive landscape. And always update it at least annually, if not quarterly. So in summary, strategy and tactics work together as means to an end. There are a number of good quotes on strategy and tactics. More on strategy than tactics actually, because frequently the same principles in strategy apply to many, many areas including war, sports and certainly business. I just finished reading the book, POWER by Robert Greene. He even claims that there is strategy and tactic in romance. He quotes the 17th century French poet, Francois La Roche Foe Cou. I bet I butchered that name. Sounds a little like….Well anyway…“A reasonable man in love may act like a madman but he should not and cannot act like an idiot.” I love that quote. Many of the concepts in strategy, apply to many if not all human endeavors. But tactics are more specific to a particular business and industry. There are hundreds of great quotes on strategy and tactics ranging from Caesar in the war versus the Gauls to Norman Shwarzkopf in the first Iraq war. I certainly have a couple favorite quotes on strategy and tactics including this one by Sun Tzu: Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. But my favorite quote on strategy and tactics especially for smaller banks with limited capital and budgets competing against big banks and big brokers with much bigger capital and seemingly unlimited budgets. It’s a quote by Napoleon, one of the most brilliant military strategists and tacticians, ever. Napoleon said, “The amateurs discuss tactics. The professionals discuss logistics.” I’m going to repeat that. “The amateurs discuss tactics. The professionals discuss logistics.” To me this plays exactly in to my core message in this podcast of revenue creation strategies and tactics that are both effective and efficient. Napoleon is saying, I don’t want to talk about tactical ideas that can’t be implemented, because of logistical constraints…only those we can actually implement. For community banks, this means, let’s not talk about big picture ideas that we cannot afford. Rather, if you have ideas that fit in our budget, then terrific. If not, let’s not waste each other time. Well, rest assured, if you keep listening to this podcast and other video and audio content we have produced on BankBosun.com you will see or hear that these meet the Napoleon standard referenced above. It is a discussion on tactics that are logistically feasible and reasonable for all community banks. So with that in mind, I think I have my friend Chris Carlson on the line. I’m gonna start with a quote from a director who actually despised actors…recall Chris is an actor. Let’s see if Chris can identify the source: “I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.” So with that said, Chris time to come to the slaughtering pen…can I hear your best moo cow imitation? Chris: I’ll try to give you my best moo cow imitation. But I’m first need a motivation. What is my cow trying to communicate? Kelly: First of all, can you identify the source of the quote? What is the source of that quote? Chris: I don’t know. It would have to be some sort of director. It can’t be Woody Allen, because he likes actors. Kelly: Alfred Hitchcock Chris: Alfred Hitchcock, that would make sense. What is my cow trying to communicate? I mean, because it could be Moo (uplifting). He’s trying to solicit an answer from the other cows. Or it could be Moo (forcefully). Like, move out of the way rancher, because he’s trying to cattle prod me into a slaughtering pen. Or it could be maybe a seductive Moo, that wants to get something going with one of the other cows. Kelly: Let me hear that seductive one, again. Chris: Moo, Kelly, Moo. Is that good? I mean. It’s not as good as a pugilist. You can do a good impression of, can’t you? Kelly: What I thought you would do is just like a Mooooooo! Chris: Oh wow! See, that’s why I’m in a nationwide movie opens tomorrow and you’re not. Kelly: Why, ‘cause mine was just too kind of stereotypical? Chris: Well I don't think they'd put your picture on the poster with Woody Harrelson peeing in a urinal. But they did for me. Kelly: Did they? What's the name of the movie? Chris: Wilson. I haven't seen it yet so I can't speak to the quality. But Woody Harrelson is pretty good. Kelly: Alright that is terrific. Chris: And I will not be mooing in it. Kelly: So let's get down to business. Chris you heard my introductory statements, or as you actors call it, a soliloquy. What questions do you have about what I'm doing or how do you want to start? Chris: As an actor you know I want to know how to make money. But you’ve got these kind of inventive ideas with generating revenue as you call it. So why don’t you fill me in and let me know if I can get in on it. Kelly: As I mentioned earlier in 2014, I started researching ways that complex financial technology or financial services companies could be more efficiently and effectively marketed. Technology, the Internet, and mobile devices have enabled many businesses to operate more efficiently and effective in my mind…I think of Uber and many other kind of virtual companies. Many of these companies don’t even have a human being available to sell, support or service. They pride their business models on the ability to open up a sales funnel and close a deal without ever having to talk to or “touch” the customer. Those are “air quotes” under touch. Build a technology platform. Offer it to consumers. Make it easy for the consumer to pay for the services. And collect the money and deposit it. And spend more to capture more consumers and more money. No human interaction at all. If any of you have had to deal with Uber for ride sharing or Facebook or LinkedIn for advertising, you know exactly how challenging it is to talk to somebody there. In their minds, they are the perfectly fine-tuned efficient and effective revenue generators. I use the terms efficiency and effectiveness carefully and intentionally, because they imply a reduction in time, as in shortening the sales cycle; reduction in expenses, as in travel, entertainment, and other direct business development costs; and a reduction in effort, as in reducing the days, months or years it might take to close a deal. This was the challenge and, believe it or not, I actually figured it out. Chris: Well wait a minute though. I mean hasn’t digital marketing and especially social media don't they help with efficiency and effectiveness. That has to have been a good thing, isn’t it. Kelly: Well, yes. In part, it has. Here’s how I see it. There really are two ways we develop business relationships: directly to the buyer and indirectly to the influencers of or to the buyer. The combination of customers, prospective customers, and influencers of customers plus the other businesses and individuals that also sell services to members in that ecosystem, comprise the total ecosystem. All require an investment in time, expense, and effort. Social media like LinkedIn has helped us stay easier connected to buyers and influencers. And this ease has certainly helped with efficiency, as it doesn’t cost much to connect on LinkedIn or Facebook. But in terms of effectiveness, it doesn’t quite get it done in that it really just the beginning of the relationships. It’s more like an advancement of the old days of giving somebody a business card and they stick it in their rolodex. And hope they remember you some time. Do you even remember what a rolodex is?? Chris: Yes, I do remember what a Rolodex is. It's a thing you wear on your wrist, right? Kelly: That would be a Rolex. Chris: Rolodexes are no longer. How do you parse that problem? What's your way to phrase the big dilemma? Kelly: The reality is the method by which we initiate business relationship has changed a bit with social media and email. But developing the relationship, hasn’t really changed that much. We make contact. We connect. We get them in the funnel. Then we do some mix of pounding them with emails, and sending them articles about our products and services or information that we think they would find interesting and useful. We might call them on the phone. Maybe get a face to face. There is always a challenge to deliver sufficiently good and interesting content to get the buyer motivated to accelerate their sales cycle with you. And there is always a struggle to keep your product and your company top of mind to the influencers of the prospect. This all takes time, expense, and effort. And also a patient CEO, board and shareholders. Chris: Well wait, wait, wait. What did you figure out? What did you figure out in terms of efficiency and effectiveness that you were talking about earlier? Kelly: It was my experience as a sales and marketing professional and as a CEO and manager of sales people and responsible for revenue creation, that sales cycles were dreadfully long; sales messaging was painfully repetitive and uninteresting; and there were constant and continual struggles to come up with a new excuse to call a prospect to see where they were in the sales cycle – hot, warm, or cold; and to make sure the center of influence still remembered you as the go-to company for a client referral or recommendation. We’ve been exploring this and we’ve developed a revenue creation strategy that solves the problem of efficiency and effectiveness. We call it Tactical Ecosystem Marketing. It utilizes the cost efficiencies of digital marketing, especially audio content that is produced and syndicated on iTunes, google play and YouTube; coupled with connecting with the client on social media and promoting THEM…not you. At its core, Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a marketing strategy whose primary focus is not to promote your company and your products, rather to promote your CUSTOMERS’ and PROSPECTS’s company and products. The secondary focus is to promote YOUR business and YOUR products. And the same applies to the Centers of Influence.  You focus on promoting THEIR business and THEIR products and a secondary focus on YOUR business and your products. How do you promote them? Through your own audio podcast program. It delivers high quality content for your sales people to distribute and discuss with your clients and prospects. High quality content for your ecosystem members to distribute and discuss with their clients and prospects. It’s one big fat happy symbiotic ecosystem. Everybody wins. It’s highly effective. It’s very efficient. It’s very Sun Tzu. You attack your enemies’ weakness and avoid their strengths. This strategy and tactic does just that. Chris: So, Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a revenue creation strategy. And the tactics are designed to help community banks create, publish and syndicate on websites, YouTube, iTunes and GooglePlay and all those other things. And they promote all the products and services of the bank’s ecosystem, as well as its members. Kelly: Yes, Chris. It’s kind of like Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a way a community bank can pay it forward and in return good things will happen. Well, we're up to the twenty-minute mark. Is there anything you want to add about what you're doing with Narrative Pros these days with you, Chris.   Chris: We're just trying to help people like you Kelly make their point and connect with their audiences. Some people don’t have the gift of gab like you. So, what we do is we try to help them come up with a clear way of conveying their message and do it in an authentic and genuine way. Unfortunately, you do not have need of our services. You're a master and we respect that. Kelly: Hmmmmm, I don't know. I think I have paid you a few dollars over the years to help me Master those skills though. Chris: That's true. You're one of our star pupils, so I will accept that. Kelly: Chris, I appreciate your time. Take care of yourself. Chris: You too! .Narrator: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.

Hey Rebels!  In this episode Caroline and Kelly talk all about the importance of giving back. This is actually how Caroline and Kelly met!  Kelly and Caroline talk about how important giving back is to them and their biz. Kelly wanted to continue her love and passion for teaching. By giving to  Pencils of Promise each month she is working towards building a school!   Caroline continues her passion by giving to a non profit organizations.  Her inner hippy came out after her Colorado trip.  After her trip she decided to use recycled paper and products for her biz and she wanted to plant trees. Now her donations go toward an organization that plants trees and educates people for “green jobs.” There is also an option of adding planting a tree at checkout when you shop with Caroline! Ways to Give Back: Recycle your materials you use to produce your products or use in your office Volunteer in your community Donating items for various causes/events Being a mentor Give back at what you are good at-business specific-get creative   Quote Love From Kelly & Caroline: You don't have to give away the farm -Kelly You are doing more than someone who is doing nothing -Kelly It makes a difference when you are doing something you love -Caroline When you give back, you are in total control -Caroline I was single handedly killing all the trees -Caroline   Kelly’s Pencils of Promise School Page Toms Shoes Start Something That Matters- By Blake MyCoskie* The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun* Website that will help you find a reputable charitable organization: Charity Navigator   Follow us on instagram (Creative Biz Rebellions) and interact with us for a shop shout out!!! If you have a second please jump over to iTunes and leave us a review!Click on the link and then click on “view in iTunes” to leave us a review.  We give you all the virtual fist bumps.  Thank you! JOIN THE REBELLION! Signup for our newsletter and get our fave list of Instagram hashtags FREE! YOU CAN FIND KELLY ONLINE AT: www.helloworldpaperco.com www.kellyparkersmith.com www.helloworldstamps.etsy.com YOU CAN FIND CAROLINE ONLINE AT: www.carolinecreates.com www.carolineannhull.com www.carolinecreates.etsy.com   SHOW YOUR REBEL SPIRIT WITH SOME AWESOME GEAR FROM THE CREATIVE BIZ REBELLION SHOP:www.creativebizrebellion.com/shop *This post does contain some affiliate links*

  Kelly: Hello, this is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun. Today we're going to launch a series of podcasts on community banks and the role they have played in our history and the future. Community banks are critical to a community's social and economic ecosystem. I use the term ecosystem carefully and intentionally to describe a system of inter-connected elements formed by the interaction of a community with their environment, and in terms of a social and economic community, in my mind community banks are critical members of that ecosystem. That brings me to this podcast series, in which we're going to focus on community banks. In this series we're talking to a number of executives who are leaders in community banking, and I'm asking them to make community banks more fun and interesting. I think I used the term “humanize” community banks. The community bank has been around a long time. From the Revolutionary War in Massachusetts to the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas; expansions and contractions, recessions and depressions, community banks have seen it all. With that in mind, I have one of those leaders, Sammie Dixon, CEO of Prime Meridian Bank in Tallahassee, Florida. He's not been around since the Revolutionary War, I don't think, but he has seen a lot. Sammie, are you on the line there? Sammie: I am. Kelly: Have you been around since the Revolutionary War, Sammie? Sammie: No, I barely made the '60s. Kelly: Barely made the '60s, excellent.  Sammie, I wanted to talk to you because when I look at your bio and some of the community involvement…I looked at all the involvement that you guys have…and I counted nearly 50 organizations, whether it be the Treehouse of Florida, Toys for Tots, Young Actors Theatre, Good News Outreach, Holy Comforter School, Lee's Place, Opening Nights. I'm not sure what Opening Nights is but..., you've got Florida Tax Watch. You've got over 50 organizations that you guys support one way or another. Talk to me about that. Sammie: Well, Kelly, there was a famous banker here in town by the name of Godfrey Smith, that always stated that a healthy community makes a healthy bank. And if you take care of the community, then the bank will be taken care of, if you're providing good service and charging good, honest rates, paying people good rates, and just making sure that the well-being of each individual client and the community as a whole is taken care of. Kelly: Kind of jumping forward here, what happens in a community when a community bank ends up getting acquired by a national bank or a large regional bank? Does that go away do you think? Sammie: It does to some extent. You've got someone outside of the individual community that really doesn't understand what's important, making decisions or providing budgets to the local leadership of that regional or money center bank. And they cannot react as quickly to the needs of the community. Whereas your community banks are able to really provide a nimble outlook. And by that I mean that if there's something happening that needs to be taken care of. The decision can be made within 5 minutes and let's get the problem squared away, from supporting one of the individual not-for-profits that are providing services to our community to the hospitals, the school system. It's having that ability to make a decision on the ground floor. Kelly: That's a segue into maybe the bigger picture here. That dynamic doesn't just relate to non-profit involvement, but it gets at the for-profit activities that a bank is involved in. When you're not part of that community, you can't respond as quickly, whether it be granting a commercial loan or that sort of thing. Talk about that a little bit. How is that impacted? Sammie: Every business is nothing more than a story with substance behind it. Having people and having the executive leadership having the opportunity to not only listen and hear the story, but live it. You get to see what they do each and every day and you're able to make decisions and make judgments in extending credit; what type of depository services they need; and there's nothing about a story that fits in a box. Every one of them is different. Every individual character, if you want to say, within the story is different. Having that ability to take the time, sit down, understand what the story is and where it's going, gives us an opportunity to make very quick and rational decisions that helps each individual business that then helps the community. Kelly: You mentioned story. What's your story? What's Prime Meridian's story? Sammie: Well, Prime Meridian Bank is a newer bank, one of the last in the state of Florida to get chartered. We opened our doors February 4th, 2008. We initially capitalized with about $12.9 million dollars. We have now since grown in excess of $275 million, over the last 8 years. We decided to start the bank, myself and Chris Jensen, and we thought we could provide service to our clientele, and decisions that would help them move more prudently and faster. Kelly: You saw a need specifically in the Tallahassee market? Sammie: We did. We thought that we could provide service and compete with everybody in town. We didn't have a group of people come together and say, "Let's start a bank." We put our story together and put our model together, and went to individual business leaders within town, here in Tallahassee and said, "We're going to start a bank we'd like you to be a part of," and that was the genesis of Prime Meridian Bank. Kelly: Was there a lot of consolidation and acquisitions that had gone on prior to that, and so that kind of created this market opportunity for you guys? Sammie: No. You had several community banks here in town already, most of your southeastern regional banks and your money center bank. We just thought there was an opportunity for us to come in and provide a little different level of service that would make us a profitable entity and serve Tallahassee very well. Kelly: Let's talk about the name Prime Meridian. You do know that you're not on the Prime Meridian? You do know that you're 84 degrees west, right? Sammie: I do, but the Prime Meridian for all metes and bounds in the state of Florida is here in Tallahassee. Kelly: Oh, got it. Sammie: If you look at the Prime Meridian, what is it? It's a starting point of the metes and bounds here for the state of Florida, and starting point of time, or the starting point of a new financial institution. The Meridian line is an unwavering line going over the Earth. We're unwavering in our outlook and care of our shareholder's money, but more importantly, our clients. Kelly: The Brits claimed Greenwich was the Prime Meridian. They don't own that, so you'd redefine Tallahassee to be the Prime Meridian. Sammie: At least for a new financial institution. Kelly: Very good. Continue with the evolution of the bank and the challenges you've faced in the past, as you went from de novo Bank? You didn't acquire another bank, right? Sammie: Right. Several things that we're proud of through the evolution of our company. Number one, which goes back to the quality of our team. When we started our bank, the average startup cost was about $800,000. The day that we opened the doors and took the write-off to capital for the expenses, we wrote off $395,000. That goes to the knowledge and expertise of our team of not having to hire a lot of consultants, and understanding each and every thing that we did. Going on to 2012, four years after we opened, we looked around with the team that we had, and realized that we could do our own data items processing. Instead of having a service bureau that was processing our checks, we decided we would do it ourselves. That added an immediate $8,500 a month to the bottom line. Kelly: Wow. Sammie: That same year, we also became cumulatively profitable. That was pretty exciting for us. And then in December 11th of 2013, we became an effective SEC registered company and then started listing our stock in 2015 on the OTCQX. So those are some of the things that we have done and we're very, very proud of. Dealing with the SEC, we went through a full review, when we filed our S1, our initial going public document. Our comment letter back from the SEC was simply 2 1/2 pages, which goes to say just how good our team is, and how detailed we are in each and every thing that we do. Kelly: Yeah. I know access to capital has been good once you go public, but it's quite a task to a) go public, and b) maintain that. The requirements are immense as you know. Was it worth it, do you think? Sammie: Absolutely. We went public for 3 reasons. Number one is we could raise our capital the way that we wanted to. We didn't have to worry about an accredited offering or anything of that nature. Number two is we're looking to grow the company and grow outside of the Tallahassee MSA, and if we do that we want to have a currency that we can use. In order to have your stock act as a currency, you've got to have a market for it, and the only way to do that was to be an SEC registered trading company. Then number three, when we decided to do it, our bank is still very clean. We do not have many non-performings or any crazy things on the books. It would never be easier to go through and do it. And we look at it like these days, with capital, you can't say, "Okay, we're going to go buy someone or do something. Now let's go get approval and say, 'Okay, if you give us approval we'll get the capital.'" You've got to have capital already on hand. There's no more just in time capital. And the same way we look at it is there's no just in time human capital. Kelly: Let's talk about human capital for a minute. How challenging is it for you to compete for new talent and retain existing talent with the compensation structure that community banks have to deal with? Sammie: Well, Kelly, that's been one of our strong points. When we started the bank in 2008, we were the new kids on the block. Nobody knew us. All we had was a story. It was nothing but air. So going out and getting the top absolute talent was difficult. People had their banks, things were going well. So we decided that we would start building our own bankers. And being here in Tallahassee and having Florida State and FAMU and TCC here, gave us the opportunity to go get a lot of talented younger folks to bring in, that had the capacity, train them, educate them. And one thing that we've done is we've been very transparent with our team. Up until we went public, we went through our financials with our entire team once a month. Now that we're a publicly traded company, we do it once a quarter. But giving them the exposure, I cannot give them experience, but giving them the exposure to what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it, is as important as finding experienced people. And our entire culture is surrounded by a one-word question and that's “why”. Any teller, relationship manager, operations person, whoever, can ask me or anybody in the bank why are we doing something. And that causes two things. Number one, the hardest thing to get people to do is think. If they're asking you questions, then they're thinking. And if you answer their questions: Why did we go public? Why did we raise capital? Why are we looking to acquire banks? What does that mean to the bottom line? Now, all of the sudden you've created an inclusive ecosystem, as you say, that people can buy-in. The biggest thing people want is to be a part of something, and what we've afforded a lot of folks to do is come in and be a part of building something from the foundation up. And constantly giving them that transparency of what we're doing and why we're doing it, is very, very inclusive. And we listen. I can't tell a teller how to make a teller line more efficient. So if I can't listen to what they're doing like I ask them to listen to me and do what I say. If we don't have a partnership there, we're not going to get any better. That's the number one. Number two, if someone asks me a question. Why are we doing this? and I can't answer it, then I might need to rethink what I'm doing. Does that make sense? Kelly: It certainly does. Have you used non-qualified benefit plans as part of that overall compensation structure? This is not a pitch for that. I was just curious if you'd ever talked about that. Sammie: Yes. We're in the process of looking at our entire compensation structure now, and figuring out how to better enhance it to a) retain, b) attract, and c) incentivize. Kelly: So say another side of say the balance sheet, since we're talking about that, municipal bonds. Anything that you've seen change here since the 2008 Dodd-Frank and all this other stuff of municipal bond rating agencies? Have you guys had to modify any of your practices on that? Sammie: We're using a third party right now to monitor our municipal portfolio. So in the old days of just buying bonds and putting them on the books, we actually have a quarterly review of all of our municipalities. Kelly: So you've had to upgrade that since the regulatory changes? Sammie: We have. And I don't think it's all that bad from the standpoint that you look at a lot of municipalities out there that are having weakness due to the down-turn, and the one thing that we have made the decision from day one, is we take risk, and there's risk in everything you do, but we take the real risk in our loan portfolio. We do not want any risk in our investment portfolio. We're looking at it as simply a hedge against interest rates, and also as just a liquidity source. Kelly: Well then you better load up with bank-owned life insurance. You've got about 50% of your financial assets in muni’s and I like the lower balance sheet risk that BOLI offers. That’s another discuss with you and Glenn. What's the future look like for community banking in general, threats that you see, opportunities? For example, 80% of millennials haven't even walked into a bank before. Sammie: Let's stop right there for a second and talk about the millennials for a minute. Number one, I talked about how we hire and what we do. The average age of our bank is 38. The average age of our management team is 41. As far as dealing with millennials and all, one thing most people have forgotten is most millennials have yet to start a company. A lot of them, due to the recession, still live with their parents. So therefore, they really haven't needed to walk into a bank. Now a lot of the millennials that we have found, and we talk with, and we do this a lot. They want to be a part of something. And they're much more community driven and doing something for the greater good. Once you are able to show them from a teammate standpoint what we're doing, they buy in. Once they actually need something other than just a regular checking account, i.e. buy their first house; buy a business or trying to finance the start of a business, they need to sit down and talk with someone who understands the market. And we have found, we've been very successful with millennials. Now we're not out there with everything online, rocket mortgage and things of that nature. We're finding a lot of success dealing with the millennials. What that comes back to is we generally don't get them until they need something. And every individual, every household is nothing different than a story too. Where's your income coming from? Is it going to be sustainable? Can you afford whatever asset you're trying to purchase? That has been very, very beneficial to us. As far as whether or not banks are going to be here, I've talked with bankers that go back to the '60s that said the community bank's not going to be around much longer. Well, as long as you have people, there's a certain segment of the population that wants to talk with people, when it comes to their financial situation. Coming up from a small town in south Georgia, and growing up the 3 most important people in the town was your doctor, your preacher, and your banker; your health care, your faith care, and your financial care. And you generally didn't do that via an email. I truly believe that there will always be a place for the community bank. Now with the regulations and thought process out there, there's going to be fewer and fewer community banks due to the fact that what we're required to do. We're operating in most cases from an asset-liability standpoint, overall balance sheet management standpoint, like a larger bank. However, we don't have the economies of scale to do it. So we have to be more innovative and more nimble. And that goes right down to talking with your regulators on a consistent basis to understanding what the rules are. If you're going to form a hospital, or if you're going to start a power company, there's regulations you have to abide by. As a community banker, you had better understand the rules and abide by them or find something else to do. That's just the approach that we've taken. And it creates a lot less heartache and stress, when you come at it from that standpoint, versus saying, "The regulators are going to kill me." Regardless what they're going to do, they're going to do it. So you better find out or figure a way to cope with it. Kelly: Great. What's the biggest threat, other than let's say cyber-security risk, which probably keeps you up at night…other than that, what's the biggest risk or fear that you have, say for the next 10 years? Sammie: As we expand, finding the human capital, finding the talent, the teammates. Kelly: Really? Sammie: The human capital. Kelly: So in Tallahassee or in some of your outlying branches? You have access to plenty of talent there, right? Sammie: There is a good supply, and it's just finding the right people that believe in what we believe in. Our culture is the most important aspect of what we do each and every day, and I go back to the question “why”. If you're questioning why we're doing something, some people look at that as somewhat of a negative. We look at it as a positive, because if you cannot explain what's going on, and you cannot understand it, then the “how” really doesn't matter. Kelly: What's the biggest opportunity that you see? What gets you up every morning after you've had a sleepless night worrying about cyber-security risks? What gets you going? Sammie: The opportunity to grow, to build our franchise here within Tallahassee; the opportunities outside of Tallahassee. Within our investor presentation, we show that we don't want to go any further north than Macon, south of Ocala, east of the Atlantic and west of the eastern border of the state of Mississippi. That is south Alabama, south Georgia, and north Florida. The opportunities to be there are endless. And that is something to get excited about and get out of bed every day, and figuring out a new challenge to go build upon. Kelly: That's great. All right. In closing, I always like to ask either your favorite quote and/or the stupidest thing you've done in your business career. Sammie: I will give you my favorite quote, and it's on our boardroom wall, and it is by a retired General, Eric Shinseki, who has been re-retired. The quote is, "If you do not like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less." Shinseki is the most recent former head of the VA. He's pretty irrelevant right now. Kelly: I would say so. Alright. Very good. Anything else you want to add Sammie, or should we sign it off? Sammie: You tell me. Thank you. Kelly: I think we're good. Thank you very much for your time. It was a pleasure talking to you. I wish you well, Sammie. Stay safe! And that’s it for my interview with Sammie Dixon from Prime Meridian Bank in Tallahassee, Florida. Thank you.

Introduction: Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards.   And now your host, Kelly Coughlin.   Kelly: Good morning. This is Kelly Coughlin. I've got David Shoemaker on the line. We’re going to do a podcast with David. He's the President of Equias Alliance.   David: Good morning.   Kelly: Good morning David. How you doing?   David: I am well.   Kelly: Just to kind of lay the foundation here I thought we’d talk very briefly about my relationship with David and Equias. As David knows, I'm a CPA. I've been in the investment and banking ecosystem for many years and as part of a consulting gig about a year and a half ago I came across the BOLI industry, the bank owned life insurance industry, and then Equias Alliance. I decided at that time, after looking at this asset class, that this is a space I wanted to get into. And I looked at the competitors, once I decided I liked the product, and decided who are the competitors, Equias, in my mind, rose above everybody else out there.     It wasn’t just me that thought that. I believe American Bankers Association selected Equias as their endorsed vendor. I think another dozen or state banking associations also selected them. Is that a fair statement?   David: Ten of them.   Kelly: Ten, clearly they emerged in my mind and in other’s mind as the key player out there. I met with David and I found him to be a key player in the industry, so I thought I'd do a podcast disclosing that I have an independent consultant relationship with David’s company, Equias. I thought we’d do a podcast and talk about first of all just give us a brief background on who you are, how you got into this space, some background and then we’ll talk about the product generally and how you got into this space and what your take is on that. You want to kick it off with some brief bio on who you are?   David: I graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a major in accounting, then worked for Deloitte Touche for nine years and an investment banking firm for three years. Then, while I was in investment banking, one of my clients was looking at an insurance product and asked me to help evaluate it knowing that I was a CPA technical type.     I liked what I saw, but what I didn’t like was that, it had a four percent front-end load charge. I thought it was a good asset class, but if we could get rid of the load charge we could make it very viable for banks to want to use as an asset class. I've been in bank owned life insurance and nonqualified differed comp for the last twenty-seven years now. I've worked with hundreds of banks over that period of time. I live in Memphis. I have a wife and six children. There’s a lot to do on a daily basis just keeping up with the family.   Kelly: All right, taking from your statement that you saw what was going in the market, the four percent front-end load. Let's elaborate on that because my understanding based on discussion with others including yourself is that you were one of the early pioneers of crafting the product offering as it is right now. What was the need in the market at that time? Give us a general year when that was. Then, where was the gap in products available and the products needed by the bank? What did you see at that time?   David: The year was 1989. There were several products available in the market, but they all had loads of between two and four percent. That means if you purchased a million dollars of BOLI asset and you had even a two percent load that was a $20,000 initial reduction of your cash value. You’d have to reduce your earnings and capital by $20,000 per million. I saw that as a hindrance to banks wanting to buy that asset.     So my partner at the time, who was an attorney, and I decided we could go to insurance carriers and see if they could provide a product that had no-loads which would be more viable for a bank. During that process we found that there's more to it than we’d initially understood. The carriers have to pay a premium tax to the state which generally averages about two percent. Then the federal government has a tax called the DAC or Deferred Acquisition Cost tax that effectively costs around a point and a quarter.     Carriers at time were not comfortable with essentially front ending that asset to give a hundred percent credit after they paid the taxes because they would potentially lose the money if the policy didn’t remain on the books. It took a fair amount of discussion and a fair amount of time, but my partner and I were able to convince four carriers to do no-load contracts.     At that time, I guess there were two other firms that we knew of in the business. They were Bank Compensation Strategies who pioneered the business and then there was Benmark. They were the primary players in, it wasn’t called BOLI then, the bank owned life insurance market. The need for it was to find a product that was viable to banks that didn’t have these loads charges and the idea behind it, back in that day, was primarily to fund nonqualified, deferred compensation plans for management and Boards of banks.   Kelly: That was the primary need for the product, not as an investment per se, but to help fund the nonqualified benefit portion.   David: Yes, to maybe take it a step further. There were not really any regs back until 1991 that were clear as to what a bank could purchase and couldn’t purchase. They could not buy life insurance as an investment asset. They could buy it to fund specific needs. A nonqualified, deferred comp plan was widely considered to be one of those specific items that could be funded with life insurance. It was not clear at the time that you could buy life insurance to informally fund health care and 401K and other retirement benefits and group life benefits and so forth.     Even in the first regs that were issued in 1991, bank reg; I think it’s called BC249, essentially said that you can’t buy life insurance as an investment. You can buy it to offset the cost of certain benefit plans. Even then it wasn’t clear whether that covered health care and 401Ks and things like that, so the initial design of bank owned life insurance was primarily for the purpose of nonqualified deferred compensation plans.   Kelly: The regs specifically prohibited it as an alternative investment asset class. Is that mainly because of that front-end charge and regulators didn’t want to see the hit to capital?   David: That was not the reason. They just viewed life insurance as not a normal asset for a bank from an investment standpoint. It was for specific purposes, but not considered to be an investment in the same terms as Treasury’s and agencies and municipal bonds.   Kelly: Now, that has changed since those early years correct that regulatory perspective?   David: Technically no, in 1996 there was a guidance issued under OCC96-51 which specifically gave authority for a bank to buy life insurance to informally fund retirement benefits and health care. So even today you can't buy life insurance purely as an investment. You have to purchase it from a regulatory standpoint to offset and/or recover the cost of employee benefit plans.     For instance, if a bank had no employee benefit plans; if they weren’t providing health care or 401K’s or retirement plans or nonqualified plans, they really could not buy life insurance and hold onto it until the death of the insured because they would not have a valid reason under the regs to buy that life insurance.   Kelly: They could only buy like Key Man life insurance.   David: They could buy the Key Man, but when that Key Man would leave the bank they’d have to surrender the policy because there was no need for it once that key man left.   Kelly: A bank does not have to have a nonqualified benefit plan. It could just have any sort of benefit plan. It could be health insurance. It could be 401K, any sort of benefit, correct?   David: That's correct, as long as they're providing employee benefits. From experience, if a bank provides health care coverage typically the cost of health care in today’s market is so high that health care alone is enough to justify buying bank owned life insurance generally up to twenty-five percent of capital.   Kelly: Right, so do you see BOLI as primarily an alternative asset class or an insurance product with investment benefits or does it kind of depend on what the needs of the bank are?   David: I would say it depends on the needs of the bank. I'd say it probably leans more toward the alternative asset class in that you look at the features of bank owned life insurance as a tool to produce earnings that would help the bottom line and help recover employee benefit expenses. BOLI has features that are attractive from that standpoint.   Kelly: As an alternative asset class, and I know you and I've had this discussion offline a couple times, if you consider the investment features as an alternative asset class what asset class does BOLI compete against best or worst I suppose? Where do you think, if you were a bank and they liked the features and benefits of BOLI and they need as a replacement. What asset do you think it replaces best MUNI’s, agencies, loans? As I see it, it could be a loan to an insurance company. Where do you see it?   David: It's hard to say that BOLI replaces any particular investment because the features are different than all the other asset classes that are traditional for a bank. If you go down that path and talk about, for instance, BOLI versus MUNI’s there is some common characteristics in that they both have income that's not taxable that helps produce generally higher returns than most taxable asset classes.     There are a lot of differences in those two asset classes, for instance, MUNI’s generally have a fixed rate interest rate, whereas BOLI is an adjustable interest rate. The credit quality of both are high. The BOLI carriers tend to be large, very well-known, highly rated carriers, so very strong credit quality. BOLI has no mark to market in the asset, that in reporting periods whereas municipal bonds generally have to do a mark to market of capital through the OTTI adjustment. BOLI essentially doesn’t have a diminution of value when rates rise whereas municipal bonds could.     Now, from the value of municipal bonds relative to BOLI is that it's always tax-free rather than tax deferred. BOLI’s tax deferred technically, but if held until death its tax free. If you surrender a BOLI contract before maturity, before the person dies, you have a tax liability for the gain plus an extra ten percent for the it’s called a modified endowment contract penalty. BOLI effectively has minimal liquidity from the standpoint of once you buy it you intend to hold it until death, because you don’t want to incur the tax liability.     Whereas a municipal bond if you decided to sell that you would still retain all the income that you've earned to that point tax free. Sometimes banks put municipal bonds in the hold to maturity buckets so they can't really sell the bond; it becomes an illiquid asset for them as well. There's some pros and cons to each, but BOLI does hold up well generally considering the pros and cons of it to any of the asset classes.   Kelly: But, especially MUNI’s.   David: Yes, I think from that standpoint rather than one versus the other it might be some combination of the two for diversification.   Kelly: From my perspective, I see MUNI yields to get higher yield you have to extend duration, so you look at the risk of extending duration versus investing some assets in bank owned life insurance. I've only been doing this for a year now. It’s seems that like half the banks have BOLI on the balance sheet and half don’t.     From my perspective, it's kind of a CPA, risk manager, investment person I don’t really see why a bank wouldn’t max out their twenty-five percent of net capital. Now, that sounds pretty self-serving I know, but in your experience what's the single biggest reason for a bank to not include BOLI in its assets class, because there certainly is a reasonable amount of bias and hesitancy for Boards and CFO’s to get BOLI. What's the single biggest reason that you see for a bank to not include it in their asset class?   David: The stats on BOLI are that sixty percent of the banks across the country have BOLI and forty percent don’t. For banks over a hundred million it's about two-thirds that have BOLI and one-third that don’t. It’s fairly common for banks above one hundred million to have an investment in bank owned life insurance. For those that don’t, it generally falls into one of two to three reasons.     Probably the most prevalent is a bank that has high loan demand. The bank wants to make loans to its local market because that helps build franchise value. If they have high loan demands, say their loan to deposit ratio is over a hundred percent, they may not have the liquidity to hold BOLI at the current time. All their attention and all their liquidity is going into making loans. While BOLI competes with loans well on the yield side, the tax equivalent yield side, banks tend to want to have loans for building the franchise value versus owning bank owned life insurance. If they have the option, they're going it put it into loans rather than BOLI assuming they feel comfortable with the credit quality of those loans. That's probably the biggest reason.     Number two is that some banks don’t fully understand the asset, haven’t taken the time to fully understand it. The pros and cons and features of BOLI is not traditional with a lot of banks. There's this uncertainty about something that's not traditional. They may think “We haven’t done that before and I don’t want to take the time to learn pros and cons.” Maybe they’ve had a presentation and it wasn’t presented in a way that made it clear what the pros and cons are. They maybe saw it as too much of a sales push instead of laying out all the pros and all the cons kind of thing.     Keep in mind that for BOLI to be approved by a bank it generally requires a hundred percent agreement, meaning you must have the CFO of the bank, the CEO of the bank and usually everybody on the Board to be in unison that they want to buy BOLI. You can have one person dissent out of ten, for instance, and that could keep it from happening.   Kelly: Why is unanimity required?   David: It’s not required. It's just generally the way it is. First off, if you don’t have the CEO and CFO on board it probably won't go to the Board. You need both of them. The Board, they normally just don’t want BOLI to be something that causes dissention among the Board members. That's not always the case, but typically they need all Board members or at least eighty to ninety percent approval before they would invest in the asset. I haven’t really run into it, but I don’t think you’ll see BOLI being approved on a five to four vote.   Kelly: Yeah, but that would be true with just about any asset class. Let's say the bank wanted to, the CFO proposed extending duration. Don’t you think that unanimity would be expected or the same standard would be expected for that decision to extend municipal bond duration versus like in a BOLI decision?   David: Yes, I would think so. On investments they have their investment policy that's been approved by the Board and that decision would have to be made within the investment policy about extending duration. Yes, I would think you would need a very high approval rate of the Board members before you would change the investment the policy to do something that effectively increases the risk.   Kelly: Do you see BOLI as being subject to…say within the scope of the banks investment policy in your experience?   David: No, BOLI has its own policy. One of the requirements under the regs is that you have to have a BOLI policy before you can purchase it. You would establish a bank owned life insurance policy; in a sense it's an investment policy for BOLI all to its own. It explains within the policy the bank’s view of BOLI; the percentage of capital that the bank would be willing to purchase; the percent to any one carrier; the due diligence that would be done before purchase; carrier selection; vendor selection. How would they go about deciding which carriers, which vendors and so forth? That all has to be documented in a policy before the bank can even go about purchasing a BOLI product.   Kelly: The bank either includes that as a chapter within the investment policy or they have it as its own separate investment policy.   David: I have pretty much only seen it as its own separate policy. If they include it within the investment policy it would be its own chapter. It's fairly lengthy. It's usually ten - fifteen pages of policy all to itself.   Kelly: How has the industry changed since the early years?   David: In the early years, I guess from a salesperson’s standpoint the hard part was to get a bank to talk to you about BOLI because it just wasn’t common and owning life insurance as an asset was not normal. It was outside the box and a lot of bankers didn’t want to discuss doing something that was outside the box. The biggest hurdle was getting the audience.     Today, most banks know about BOLI so they've heard about it and they have had many, many sales calls about it. Other banks they know have purchased it, so they understand at least the term and what it is. Now, there are just a whole lot of sales calls from insurance sales folks asking about BOLI. They're aware of it. It's just very, very competitive and maybe difficult for the bankers to understand the difference in firm A versus firm B.     The other way that's changed, when I started doing this the only products available were what's called general account products where the carrier provides a universal life insurance product or some whole life products that have an interest rate or dividend rate. Then the main risk to the bank was a carrier’s credit whether the carrier would be able to pay the claim later. Today, you have not only general account which are still very popular, but since then there's been a lot of purchases of what is called hybrid separate account products and also variable separate account products.     Variable separate account products are where the assets are segregated from creditors somewhat like a mutual fund. The bank can choose to invest the money within a particular investment bucket; although, for a bank it as to be eligible investments unless it's used as a hedge against a deferred comp plan. Those have some higher risk features, a little bit more moving parts. They have a stable value wrap sold by a registered product or private placement memorandum and so they're more complicated. Most community banks shy away from those because of the complications and the mark to market within the portfolio.     Then, there's a hybrid separate account product that has features very much like a general account. It has an added credit enhancement that if the carrier were to ever become insolvent the assets within the separate account by legal definitions are segregated from creditors of the insurance carrier so that those assets would only be available to the policy holders. These new asset classes have been pretty popular and have essentially enhanced the options for banks to buy bank owned life insurance.   Kelly: The first generation of BOLI was the general account, no-load product and then the second generation would be some of these the hybrid accounts and some of these more sophisticated product structures. But the core concept was the same, right?   David: That's correct, basically similar structure from a standpoint of no loads, no surrender charges, single premium, just a difference in the chassis if you will.   Kelly: Right, the risk sharing to a certain extent, right, because was the separate account available back then in the early years?   David: You could buy a separate account that was called variable universal life. It was a shelf product, but banks really didn’t buy it then because you had mark to market. Say it was all in a bond fund but the interest rates went up and the value of the bond fund went down five percent you’d have to take an immediate mark to market on your balance sheet and income statement. That was not very attractive to a buyer. If you're a bank you don’t want that kind of volatility on your income statement.   Kelly: Even though that's the nature of a municipal bond portfolio, they have to mark those.   David: A municipal bond portfolio they mark to market, but not through the income statement. They mark to market through the capital account.   Kelly: Right.   David: It doesn’t flow through income.   Kelly: Right.   David: Whereas if you were to do the same thing in a variable universal life insurance contract and have that mark to market risk you’d have to mark that through your income statement because the cash value is changing.   Kelly: One of the things that I noticed about Equias, again this sounds somewhat self-serving, but I’ll say it anyway. This relates to the industry changes. When I see Equias, it just seems to be a highly professional organization. I think eighteen consultants and thirty some support personnel and I believe seven CPAs and a bunch of attorneys, MBA’s that kind of thing. It just seems that one of the things that appears to have happened with Equias having emerged as the key player is the element of professional consulting capabilities versus I would suspect in the early years, and currently, many of potentially our competitors, it's mainly a bunch of insurance guys, right, trying to sell product?  I would think in the early years that's what it was all about, insurance guys trying to sell insurance to a new market…banks.   David: Yes, there was a lot of that. The business model that Equias developed was this is not an area that banks have a lot of expertise in and that they need support services so that they can spend a minimal amount of their time dealing with the technical stuff and don’t have to pay a lot to CPA firms and law firms to help them through the process.     We set up the firm with the idea that we could provide those services at costs that are competitive with anybody in the marketplace. Through volume we could provide more services and all the technical services that a bank would need, but do it in a very cost effective way. That’s where we actually have eight CPAs and two attorneys and a former OCC regulator, former bankers, bank directors, and a former head of the BOLI area for one of the major insurance carriers.     We've staffed our firm with very, very experienced, competent, technical people including the consultants are all very experienced, so that we could be a real asset to the banks. It'd be hard for our competitors to match our knowledge and experience and to duplicate what we can do.   Kelly: One of the things that got my attention was I think you're one of the few that has a SOC 1, Type 2 audit. Not many insurance “agencies” have that kind of thing going on. That was a good plus in my mind with you guys.   David: Yeah, it covers our implementation process, as well as our administration process, and covers not only the BOLI side of it, but covers the nonqualified benefits side. We’ve set up internal controls when we established the company and we followed those controls. We've been able to go through the audit process very efficiently and effectively.   Kelly: I’ll probably be criticized for this being an infomercial for Equias, but what the heck. That's what we can do. All right let's finish with one final thing. I’ll give you the choice. This is a question I ask every guest either your favorite quote or, what I like the best, is tell us what one of the stupidest things you’ve said or done in your business career.   David: One of the early days in my career I remember having gone to this bank to explain BOLI and the nonqualified plans probably for the seventh or eighth time. Some of the Board members were wearing out with me coming back almost it seemed like every month. One of the Board members, who was an attorney, when I came back this time she just looked and “Oh no, not you again.” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Look, if I vote for this, does that mean you won't come back and you'll leave us alone?” I said, ‘You’ve got my word on that.” I guess in that case persistence paid off.   Kelly: It's good, yeah.   David: It wasn’t one of those real positive “I'm glad to see you” kind of moments.   Kelly: That's right; you got the deal done though.   David: Yeah, I was able to get it done through persistence, not through the sales process really.   Kelly: Yeah, that's good. All right, David, thanks for your time. I appreciate it.   We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC;  and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant.   Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States.  The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.  

Kelly Coughlin interviews Wes Sierk, President and Co-Founder of Risk Management Advisors. Wes is the author of the book Taken Captive: The Secret to Capturing Your Piece of America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Insurance Industry. Wes is a recognized expert in using captive insurance strategies to manage and fund certain types of risk. Kelly Coughlin believes that such a strategy could be used to manage and fund cyber security risk. This is the first in a series of three podcasts covering captive insurance and cyber security risk management.   Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Hello this is Kelly Coughlin with the BankBosun. This is the podcast that’s the first in a series of three podcasts that are going to be related to using captive insurance strategy to manage and ensure cyber security risk and loss. I’ve talked to many bankers over my 25-year career and I have observed in the past five years cyber security going from a concern of IT guys and techno geeks to top of mind attention and concern of CEOs, CFOs and boards of directors. In fact, I was at a conference in Kansas a while back, and a number of the sessions were on cyber security risk. I was thinking, “Well, should we go to that? Should we not go to that?” We talked to C-level execs. These sessions were all standing room only, completely filled with C-level execs. It occurred to me that in this environment, we have potentially overpricing of all services related to the risk management of this risk including prevention, detection, hardware, software, consulting. I thought the subject of these 3 podcasts would be the transference of this risk. I think one of the areas that I detect as potentially being mis-priced is the cost of insurance, partly because the risk of loss is all over the map. We thought, “Let’s explore cyber security risk through a captive insurance enterprise.” To help kick this series off, I am interviewing Wes Sierk, President and Cofounder of Risk Management Advisors. I came across Wes through a book that he wrote, exciting title called, Taken Captive. That sounds good so far. Here’s where it goes downhill: “The secret to capturing your piece of America’s multi-billion dollar insurance industry.” I’m interviewing Wes remotely. He’s in Long Beach, California. Wes, you heard my introduction, and the reason you would be on this call, but let’s start with a couple of minutes on your background, how it would connect to bank cyber security risk management. Wes: Well first of all thank you for having me on the show. I started out in the insurance business in 1993 in a division of Northwestern Mutual, which was a life insurance company called CCI, Compensation Consulting Inc. Mostly what we did there is qualified and non-qualified planning, retirement plans and deferred comp, things like that. I came across captive insurance companies in 2000. My first thought was, it was a perfect alternative to deferred comp. That’s how I got into it. My background is … I’m a researcher, so I started digging into why life insurance was all the same. It was you go to a life insurance company and you get a 45-year-old male, and you say, “How much is a million dollars of coverage?” The insurance company prints out that ledger. If you had ten agents going to the market, they would all come back with the same quote. PNC is completely different. You actually have one broker who goes to the market for you and it’s much more of a negotiation, which leads into the pricing issues that you alluded to earlier in your call. My partner Jared and myself went on to form Risk Management Advisors in 2004 and all we’ve been doing since is just the design, implementation and management of captive insurance companies. On a personal side, married for about 24 years, two kids, I coach baseball, and Risk Management Advisors has a Nascar team. Kelly: Give us a definition in two sentences of captive insurance. Wes: It’s an insurance company that a business sets up to insure their own risk. It’s pretty simple. Kelly: It could be a bank? Wes: Yes. Instead of them buying their general liability, their cyber, their property, all of their coverage from AIG, Zurich, Liberties of the world, they actually form their own licensed regulated insurance company and they pay those premiums to their own company. They deduct those premiums, just like they would by paying any other company. Kelly: All right. In terms of primary motivations, my research shows that one, you’ve got access to cheap insurance rates because you’re paying them directly to your own carriers so to speak, right? You’ve got first dollar loss coverage, you can accelerate loss deductions, which appears to be a fancy term for you can over-fund the risk premium and build up tax deductible reserve. Are those the three core motivations to do this, or are there others? What’s the primary motivation to do this? Wes: I think you hit the nail on the head. One thing it does give you, if you’re an insurance company, is it gives you access to the reinsurance marketplace. Kelly: How much would a bank be saving? Are you talking 5% or are we talking 40%? Wes: Well it depends on the kind of policies they’re writing and the amount of risk that they’re willing to take. One thing is, the reason why reinsurance is less expensive is because the insurance industry, insurance companies, have thousands of employees. I read somewhere that the insurance industry has three times as many employees as the US Post Office. They do a lot of the processing of paperwork and claims and things like that, so they have higher overhead. A re-insurer can get away with having 5% of the employees of an insurance company, because they only attach at a certain level whether that’s 50, 100, 250, a million, whatever. They’re not getting involved in the day-to-day operations of the insurance company and the day-to-day pay out of claims. That’s left to the insurance company level. We see, for regular insurances, I would say you could see a 30% savings over your traditional insurance. Kelly: In the banking business we have what are called banker’s banks, and they provide banking services to banks. They don’t do anything directly with the public. So would a reinsurance company be an insurance company’s insurance company where they provide services only to another insurance company, so you cut out all of the sales process I suppose, the distribution expenses? Aren’t those the core things that are cut out plus the servicing part because they’re not dealing with million to 20 million dollar cases, they’re dealing with whatever the number is, 50 million or above, the larger ones? Wes: You’re exactly right. Your analogy is very good. Where bankers have banker’s banks, this would be like an insurance company’s insurance company. Kelly: If one were going to set up a captive, that entity would have to also sign up, unless they were going to absorb all of the risk themselves, which is unlikely. If they want to transfer or share some of that risk, they have to set up relationships with reinsurance companies, correct? Wes: Correct, unless they want to take that risk themselves, which we don’t usually recommend the first couple of years. Kelly: I suppose companies like you, this is not an infomercial for your group, but is that part of what you do, is you have these relationships and there’s probably some vetting process that you would go through to bring on a new captive client, I suppose, and introduce them and negotiate terms, etc with the reinsurance company. Is that one of the roles that your company provides? Wes: Yes it is. Clients come to us because they want us to set up and manage their insurance company for them; deal with the departments insurance; do all of the regulatory filings and in most cases, not all cases but most cases; they’ll have us go and negotiate the reinsurance contracts for them. The good thing about reinsurance, reinsurance is always sold net of commissions, unlike an insurance policy where you pay an insurance agent, we’re just negotiating on behalf of the insurance company as a manager of the insurance company. Kelly: That’s where the big savings comes from. Wes: Yeah, there’s a lot of savings in that. I’m not going to begrudge brokers because brokers bring a tremendous amount of value to clients. Kelly: There are a couple of ways to set these things up from what I can tell. You could set them up as a single parent captive or a group pooled collective type where you have a group of banks. You have a single bank, Bank A that decides, “We’re going to set this up.” It’s only one bank in there. Then you have a pooled or group approach where you have Banks A and B setting up the collective. They either do it alone or with others, like kind business I suppose, right? Is that a fair assessment? Wes: Yeah, they either do it by themselves or they do it with other people. Then within the other people, there is many different ways they can do it. Kelly: You know the context and setting that this call is about. It’s specific community banks, cyber security risk, captive insurance. If you had to Google this, those three terms would be in there. One other risk if you do it as a group or collective, let’s just say there are two banks in the collective – you have Bank A and B that are, let’s say they’re putting in an equal amount. Let’s say Bank A has great internal controls and risk management processes, Bank B has terrible ones. Bank B incurs all the loss and Bank A has insured it all. There part of the reason was to put in a bunch of excess premium perhaps, build up this reserve. Then you have Bank B eating up all the reserves. Is there a way that a bank can set up a hybrid of this where they could share say, the operating expenses, maybe consulting expenses, a number of things related to the entity? It could be another class of stock, something where the actual risk is only absorbed by the individual bank and ultimately a reinsurance carrier downstream. Wes: There could be, but I wanted to go back to one point you made, which was Bank A has great internal controls and Bank B doesn’t. The issue with cyber security is many banks have good security or great security, but it’s also the luck of the draw. The person with bad security could be fine and the one with great internal controls could have that one in a million chance where somebody comes in and breaches their security or takes millions of dollars out of their company. Within the group captive there’s also cell companies. You can have a cell captive. A cell captive is one where it basically looks at and smells like one large insurance company but each individual bank has its own cell, so they kind of wall off the assets and liabilities on a bank by bank or cell by cell limit. That could go a long way to protecting the bank. Then you go get one reinsurance treaty for all of the banks, and then you carve it off. You go get 100 million dollars of coverage and you carve it off at 5 million dollars per bank for twenty banks. The insurance companies like that because they know that if they’re writing 100 million dollars in coverage and they basically divided it at 5 million between twenty banks, they know their chance of loss is actually smaller. The frequency may be higher but the severity probably wouldn’t, and that’s where they get into the pricing. They’d much rather spread it 5 million over twenty banks, than one bank have a 20 or 25 million dollar claim. Kelly: I accept your point that Bank A may have great controls and Bank B not, but Bank A could be hacked, right? I understand that’s a valid point, but I think in this environment what is going to happen is certainly you have the Top 10 banks, they’re the high-value targets of cyber criminals. They have the budget to always attempt to put up the adequate defenses to that. I fear what is going to happen is the less target-rich environments like community banks will, as the Top 10 banks for instance, get better at defense, then the smaller community banks are going to be the target and they don’t have the resources to fund that. It’s an expensive undertaking. where you’ve got hardware expenses, software, consulting, insurance, all of this stuff, and staff of course. My thinking was that you set up this captive and you develop best practices. I’m going back to my PWC days in consulting, where in consulting business you’re always looking for best practices, but you develop best practices and you share the costs. You buy them properly, buy them at the right price, right terms, etc, and then you share the cost over twenty entities and not one community bank. The reality is these banks can’t afford to set up the high-level controls that a Top 10 bank can do it. Wes: You’re exactly right. It’s the philosophy of build your ark before the flood comes. By creating their own insurance company and warehousing dollars today, because of the way the policies are written, they basically expire every 15 months. If they are the targets of cyber criminals three years from now, they would have already stockpiled a ton of money, so they can weather a claim if they have it and maybe not have to hit their reinsurance. To your point, we both know what’s happening in the cyber marketplace as far as the premium dollars in the traditional market. The reason why … it’s because insurance companies are doing the exact same thing. They’re charging exorbitant fees today because they don’t know how big this is going to be. It reminds me of the old asbestos claims. Remember when asbestos started being a problem? All of the insurance companies started raising their rates dramatically. Then what happened was, a couple of smart insurance guys said, “You’re charging $700,000 for a million dollar general liability policy for asbestos, but if the people actually get hurt, it’s going to be a worker’s comp claim.” It’s not going to be a general liability claim, but the insurance company hadn’t thought that far ahead. They just wanted to get as many dollars in their coffers as they could in case they got hit. For cyber, you went to that conference … you’re exactly right. Five years ago it would have been just the IT people and you’d have fifteen people in the room. Now it’s actually the C-level. It’s CEO, CLO, CFO that are doing this. Kelly: The board members are the ones that are saying, “Get to the conference. I want you there.” They’re telling their CEOs to get there. Wes: It’s huge. It’s such a huge problem. I was just reading an FBI report on cyber crime. Their prediction is all businesses in the next five years will be spending at least 10% of their gross income on cyber for protections and hardware and software, and everything. You can’t even fathom that today, but it’s coming. Now we have passwords on top of passwords to get into password programs. They listed off that the FBI did a study and they went into the Apple iTunes store where people get the applications and they have all these password programs. 10 of the top 20 were programs that were sold that said, “Number one password protector.” They were sold and designed by organized crime, downloading these programs for their iPhone and their Androids, putting all their passwords in, all their banking information, and all that stuff was being directly fed to Russian organized crime. They don’t have to steal cartons of cigarettes anymore when they can make 20 to 30 million dollars in one financial transaction. Kelly: Absolutely. Wes: It’s staggering. I can see why these board members and CFOs and everyone else would be concerned about it. It’s a big issue. One of our clients was just hit with it. Kelly: Let’s say we set up Newco captive insurance for community banks. You set up as part of this synthesis of best practices and captive insurance for cyber security. I’m going to throw in another term, “best practices.” I don’t necessarily think they’re into gouging. They just can’t efficiently price it because the risk parameters or the level of risk that they’re taking on an entity basis per entity, per insured, is all over the map. When you take in a company to join the captive … would you call them a shareholder? Wes: Yes. Kelly: Okay. When you take a shareholder, they have to adopt the best practices standards that the new captive insurance carrier says. Does that make sense, that would be part of the admission process? Wes: I would say you definitely want to do that. Some insurance companies, it’s really a risk assessment for cyber preparedness. There are some insurance companies that have done a great job at this. In fact, one of them, these people developed this cyber preparedness company for Ace and Chub insurance company, as freelancers. They said, “Well we want this to make sure.” For them they realized that, “Hey, there’s a real market for this.” They basically bought company back for nothing. This was a few years ago. They’re like, “Well this isn’t going to be as big as we thought it was.” That’s all they do is analyze cyber preparedness. They give you a full report. We just had them come into ours because we have a lot of data in our stuff. We have a lot of HIPPA stuff because we run insurance companies for medical, for example. They gave us a whole big report of change this, change this, change this, and some stuff you’d never even think about. You’re like, “Whoa.” The cost to do it … I thought it was going to be very expensive but it was nothing on the scale of things. Kelly: You just hope that they’re not owned by the Russian mob, right? Wes: Yeah, exactly. Three of my clients had used them and the one that just got hit for cyber, their system was set up in such a way where they were instantly notified that this was happening. This was a server in Toronto. Instantly they had to switch the whole thing offline. They flew two of their internal programmers from here in California up to Toronto. They were back online in under 24 hours without an ounce of data. I’m like, “You know what? I’ve got to have your people come in and do this.” This is a company that does 100 million dollars in sales. I think everyone should be requiring this. Kelly: I think there’s some really cool things you could do when you have many entities splitting the cost of this. I’m certainly set up best policies, procedures, all that kind of stuff. You could buy licenses. You get quantity discount, volume discounts there. There’s a lot of benefit to having a larger group in there. Even just the project team, these banks don’t have the resources to have a really good project team to do a good vendor search, for instance. That’s a costly undertaking in and of itself is, “Well what email provider should we do?” They just don’t have the resources free to do that. You threw out the 10% number. My goal would be to let’s set it up so the goal we could make that a 5% of revenue number, not 10. Wes: Or 1%. What I was saying was, that was what the FBI’s projection of what people would be spending on their cyber stuff was. In my business, I can’t even fathom that. We spend all this money a year on hardware and software, and our business is X. If I were to extrapolate that out to say, “Well how much would we do if we did 10%?” There’s like, “There’s no way.” We could buy server hubs. We could buy everything. I guarantee you if you picked ten of your banks who listen to this, one of them is doing something great that the other nine aren’t, and so having a depository … You say, “Hey this was a great idea that this bank is doing and then you could take it over to the other one.” Kelly: Yeah, but what happens, Wes, is that everybody is going to these conferences. They get the heck scared out of them, they come back and they talk to their IT guy and say, “You know I just went to a conference. We’ve got to start controlling this risk.” Then they look at it and realize that, “Oh this is going to cost $100,000? Oh I guess we can’t afford that.” There’s plenty of ideas out there. There are some great ideas and there is some not great ideas, but there’s loads of ideas. Taking the idea and having the resources to actually implement is the big challenge. I believe that the captive program is a way to pull those things together buy cost-efficiently, do vendor searches efficiently. It all comes together there through that thing. Yeah, there are some tax benefits by throwing in higher premiums, that kind of thing. That’s great but I don’t think this is primarily a tax-driven … It just so happens that taxes will be favorable … favorable tax treatment. I really think it’s the cost-effective way to manage risk and to get best practices adopted in community banks throughout the country that otherwise just can’t quite afford it in their budget. Wes: I was going to say, and you’re using double duty dollars. Right now if they buy cyber insurance from AIG, they’re not getting internal controls, they’re not getting all of this due diligence, they’re not having somebody come in. They pay them and then if there is a claim … They still on top of their premiums have to go out and do the best practices and do all of the stuff to make sure they’re secured vs. paying premiums to their own company. Let’s say the insurance company takes 10% of all the premiums that it takes in from all the companies and then uses that to go in and install the best practices and stuff, so you’re actually using money that you would have just given to somebody else to now improve your overall business operation. We’ve had people do that with worker’s comp where, hey they can’t afford a safety guy and their worker’s comp rates have gone up, so they create their own worker’s comp company and now they use the money they were giving to Liberty and AIG and all these other companies to hire their own full-time safety person. That’s actually now just an expense of the insurance company vs them having to take money out of the bottom line of their company. Kelly: One other thought that’s a great image that I have of you is set up this captive, you have fifty banks involved and you also fund a cyber security SWAT team comprised of Navy Seals and Rangers that are deployed in the event of some ransom war type deal, right? Then they get engaged, they’re ready to go, and then they go out and take them down. Wes: Yeah, that’s a great idea. Kelly: Otherwise it’s a call to the FBI and okay, they do great work, granted, but man it’d be nice to have our own team. That could be Phase 2 down the road. Anyway, let’s wrap it up. I really appreciate your time. Let me ask you this. Do you have a favorite quote? Wes: Yeah, well I do but it’s a Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged they talked about Rearden Metal and it was going to be too expensive to rebuild these bridges for the trains using Rearden Metal because of the engineering. The quote was, “When men got structural steel, they didn’t use it to build steel copies of wooden bridges.” Kelly: Good one. Wes: I look at captives and things like that as you can use it as a powerful tool to do something in a completely different way. You don’t have to just use it for the same way you were always doing stuff. I would say that would be the first one that popped into my mind. Kelly: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your business career? Give people a laugh. Give people a chuckle here. Wes: Oh, I have an album on my bookshelf. You know Bill Withers, “Lean on Me”? Kelly: Lean on Me and “Use Me”. Wes: I got an appointment. His wife called and wanted me to come talk about overall financial planning and stuff. I went to see him and I’m like, “I love your music. I love the movie and everything.” They’re just sitting there like uh-huh, uh-huh. The meeting didn’t go well and I left there. I had it confused with Stand by Me instead of Lean on Me. My dad found this Bill Withers album and he said, “Keep this on your bookshelf and any time you don’t know the answer, you won’t make a complete fool of yourself.” Kelly: Oh that’s a great one! That’s very good, I love that one. All right, Wes. I appreciate your time. How can people contact you? Wes: Yeah, my website is Risk Management Advisors. It’s riskMGMTadvisors.com and my email is WSIERK@riskMGMTadvisors.com. I create a website that’s not branded by us, but it’s captiveinsurance101.com and it just has general info on captives. You were kind enough to mention my book. The book is called Taken Captive and it’s just takencaptive.com We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

Kelly Coughlin interviews Donald Moore about generating more revenues from trust and wealth management clients and managing risk in that business line. Moore is a former OCC examiner.   Donald Moore Jr., CEO of Bearmoor, LLC has over 20 years of experience in the asset management and fiduciary industry. He has served in senior fiduciary positions with various US Treasury agencies, as well as a leading financial services consulting firm. He began his career as a Trust Examiner with Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. He has examined over 50 trust divisions, including the lead position at two of the nation’s largest trust institutions. He has assisted in the development of national policy and guidelines at both the Comptroller’s Office and the Office of Thrift Supervision. Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: I’ve got Don Moore CEO of Bearmoor LLC. Don, how are you doing? Don: I’m doing well, thank you Kelly, I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you today. Kelly: Don, you’re in Boulder? Don: I’m not quite in the Republic of Boulder, I’m a little bit closer to the Breckenridge area up in the hills of Colorado. Kelly: You’re happy because the Broncos just won the Super Bowl, I take it. Don: I’m slightly indifferent to the Broncos winning, although they had their ginormous parade yesterday down in Denver. Everyone’s excited that Peyton got his Super Bowl, but again, I think it was the defense that won it for him. Yeah, we’re happy here in the state. No one’s going off the edge yet. Kelly: Let’s get right into it. Tell me what Bearmoor does. What’s your value proposition? Don: Basically, it’s the optimization of risk-adjusted revenue from an organization’s existing fiduciary activities portfolio. It’s basically their personal trusts, their investment management accounts, their retirement accounts, foundation endowments and custody. All those off-balance-sheet activities within the fiduciary world. Again, the optimization of their risk-adjusted revenue from their existing portfolio. Kelly: First of all, it’s banks that are in the wealth management business. They have trusts, they have wealth management capabilities, correct? Don: Correct, a lot of organizations that are clients, their definition of wealth management differs, but it does include trusts, insurance, and private banking. Kelly: You help those kind of banks do what? Don: Optimize top-line revenue. What we mean by that is, I like to use a quote from Bono, the lead singer for U2, he was up at his concert and doing one of his social announcements where he was clapping his hands and he said, “Do you know, every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies?” And someone screamed out, “Stop clapping your hands.” We don’t focus in on expense because for the past 10 years in the industry, the industry’s been focused on nothing but expenses. The expenses have outpaced revenue growth 6 out of the last 10 years. Their focus on expenses I don’t think, has been all that fantastic. We like to say, “Well you’re already focused on expense reduction, we want to help you grow top-line revenues.” Our value proposition leads to an increase to revenue top-line. Kelly: Before we get into how you do that, let’s talk about some personal background. Don: All right, I’ll start out with education. I went to school, got a degree in finance and accounting, after I graduated from that I went to work for the United States Treasury Department as an examiner with the Office of the Comptroller. The currency, the OCC, I found an opportunity to begin examining in the fiduciary world and I became a fiduciary examiner. Through that, I went to Washington, DC. For those of you in the fiduciary world that have an understanding of Regulation 9, when I was in Washington, DC I helped draft and write that regulation that now national banks follow. For most states, it’s been adopted verbatim on that. I left there, and went over to another Treasury Department, the Office of Trust Supervision, which has now been rolled into the OCC and wrote their fiduciary training program and some of their examination procedures over there in a fellowship capacity of 18 months before leaving and going to the consulting world, and focused on consulting in the fiduciary world, and that brings us to where we are right now. I am married to my wife Toni, we live out here in Colorado, we have four children. Hobbies; I would say right now we’re doing lots of skiing, got some good snow out here in Colorado, so that’s one of my hobbies. Do a lot of running, outdoor activities is me. That’s who I am, I’m 52 years old and I feel it every day. Kelly: Don and I have known each other for probably 15 years, and we made a good connection when we found out you grew up in Minnesota, correct? St. Louis Park? Don: Yeah, sure, you betcha. Kelly: Let’s talk about the business. How do you help these banks make money? How do you help a wealth management bank make some money? I want to come up with let’s say five take-aways on how our listeners can make money through what company like yours offer. Don: Let’s start out with, the opportunities for increasing top-line revenue within your fiduciary activities exist. They are out there. I like to use the phrase, “You’re standing on a whale, fishing for minnows,” because there’s already opportunities to increase your top-line revenue within our organization. What we mean by that is we go through and do an analysis account by account basis and identify opportunities in three phases: one, gap analysis which is, “Hey, where are you missing it?” From the standpoint of what you think you’re getting. You may have some system errors, system inaccuracies that can help you identify opportunities, that’s one phase. Second one is competitive analysis. Where is it that you would like to beat your competition, and where is it that you actually are? We ask you what your business’s strategic plans are, we go out and do mystery shopping and competitive shopping for the organization to make sure that they understand where they are and where their competition is, and where they can go with their current level of pricing. The third analysis is a regulatory analysis. What’s changed in regulation that allows you to either understand the regulation and generate additional revenue, or do we have some risk there? Again, gap analysis, competitive analysis, regulatory analysis to help you identify those opportunities, because they do exist. I would say that’s the first area. Kelly: You exposed that just recently, gap analysis. You’re looking at pricing, and how competitive they might be in pricing in addition to more of a qualitative, these are the type of services they would offer? Don: Along the lines of both, Kelly, with regards to the types of services we want to break it down so we understand the types of services they offer. Then the pricing that they have on each of those services. When we talk about pricing, we all know that there are committees, and then there are boards, and we’re talking about the board-approved pricing for these services. Kelly: This is for wealth management services. These are the basis points. This is how much we charge for a $5,000,000 fiduciary trust account, correct? Don: Correct. Absolutely. Those are established by, I would say, the business line which then goes to the committee and the boards approve. These are the pricing and it would include not just basis points, but it would include minimum account fees, it would include fees for ancillary services such as real estate administration, closely held business administration. Maybe there’s a tax prep fee or a tax information letter fee. Maybe there’s a stand-alone fee for extraordinary type services. All the fees charged for the services provided within wealth management on the fee schedule. We then go through and see what accounts are actually on that schedule, and what accounts are not, what accounts have customization, what accounts have discounts. It doesn’t make sense for the level of service being provided. What’s critical with that, from a Bearmoor perspective, is what I would say would be the second take-away, which would be a risk understanding of your accounts. If you haven’t done a risk assessment on an account by account basis, it would be highly recommended that you do so. This would allow you to identify the level of risk for each account and type of account using system information. This isn’t something that’s subjective, it’s based upon system criteria that you’ve established and put risk weightings on it. Let’s say you have an account that is an irrevocable trust account with two co-trustees, five beneficiaries, some unique assets in there, and maybe it’s over $2,500,000. You would assign various risk criteria to each one of those factors. Maybe that has a higher risk than a revocable trust. Kelly: You’re not talking about portfolio risk, you’re talking about risk of an unhappy client (other than portfolio volatility). Don: Correct. What we’re seeing is a fair amount of, I hate to go back to the regulatory side, but a fair amount of regulators are saying, “Hey, we can risk rate loan accounts on the banking side, why can’t we individually risk rate these off-balance-sheet trust accounts from an administration standpoint, from a level of risk?” and then get some understanding about what may be some levels of capital might be for this entire portfolio. It’s not investment portfolio risk management, for lack of a better term it’s complexity rating the account. Kelly: Give us three things that you like to look at, that might go into the calculus of that. Don: I would say type of account. Kelly: The fiduciary, non-fiduciary. Don: Correct, you would have the fiduciary accounts would be those revvocable and irrevocable trusts, investment management accounts, foundation endowments, IRAs. Then the non-fiduciary lower risk would be a custody account, where you don’t have any investment management responsibilities. Another item would be the type of assets in there, so maybe less risk would be a mutual fund portfolio, that’s made up of a bunch of mutual funds to meet the account’s objective. A higher risk would be, “Hey, it’s a stand-alone investment in a large piece of commercial real estate.” High risk on that. The third thing would be type and/or number of beneficiaries. The larger the beneficiary pool, the more risk you may have because you have different competing objectives. Some of those might be income beneficiaries, others might be remainder beneficiaries, or growth beneficiaries. Kelly: The high-risk account would be one in which there’s a fiduciary relationship to your holding assets that are perhaps individual securities and not mutual funds and the third? Don: Number of beneficiaries. Kelly: Number of beneficiaries. Is that because the more people you have in the equation, the more likely it is you’re going to have somebody complaining about it? Don: More likely there’s going to be a complaint there, but more likely that there’s going to be conflicts of interest. What I mean by that conflicts of interest is those beneficiaries may all have different needs and you as the fiduciary that’s managing that account, have to take all those into consideration and make sure you treat them equitably and fairly based upon the information you have. Kelly: Tell us how you help the bank make more money. Don: From that account by account analysis on the gap analysis and identifying opportunities within their portfolio. Not just from a best practices from what we’ve seen over the past 15 years of doing this, but also what’s taking place within their lines of business and their strategy. Overlaying that on that analysis and saying, “Hey, here is the opportunity, and here’s how that opportunity impacts each account.” Kelly: This is for your part one you look at the market, you look at competitors, and you say, “Oh, your competition’s charging 200 basis points, you’re only charging 150. You could charge 180,” for example. Don: Correct. If you still want to be the low-cost provider and the lowest-cost provider is charging that 200, and you’re at 150, you could go all the way up to that 200 and charge 190, 180. Right. Kelly: Right. Don: Do that complete analysis. Or your minimum fee is stated to be this, we’ve done in a cost analysis of your portfolio and you’re not even covering your costs with your minimum fee. You’ve got to adjust your minimum fee. Kelly: Don’t you think most banks know their competitor? Let’s say pricing, and their level of service, because they either get clients poached frequently, or infrequently, and if they find out why, then it’s well, his is cheaper, or better service, whatever it was. Don’t you think they know that? Don: That’s what we thought. That’s what we were counting on, but when we started doing the mystery shopping, because we asked our clients who are their competitors, who do they want us to mystery shop. Then we also provide them all the other information that we have. That, other than the actual opportunities, was one of the most highly prized pieces of information that we provided to our clients was, “Oh, look at all this competitor information.” My business partner and I looked at each other and said, “Wow, we didn’t realize how valuable this was. We thought you guys knew it, we’re showing it to you to let you know that we know it.” You would think they would know it, but a lot of times that isn’t the case based upon the information that we were able to gather and the reaction that we get from those. I think they have an understanding of it, but once they actually see the documentation and support for that that we’re able to gather, that brings it full circle. Kelly: I’m intrigued by, and I always have been intrigued by you being a former regulator with all due respect to your former profession, the dark side I suppose, or actually I think when you go into industry, they say you’ve gone to the dark side, I believe. However you look at it, how a former regulator can help on the revenue side is always been amusing to me. I know you do have a pretty good reputation out there, so kudos. You’ve been doing it quite a while, I believe. Don: Yeah, I appreciate those comments. Perhaps my capitalistic views weren’t always the right forum to be a regulator, so maybe I’ve always had to get back to this side. Maybe I was on the dark side and came back to the light. Kelly: Any more takeaways? Don: I would say re-acceptance, and what I mean by re-acceptance is, based upon the information that you have today on your existing accounts, the level of administration, the level of responsibility, the potential problems associated with the risk audit compliance items, the regulatory issues, and the revenue that you’re making on it, would you re-accept the accounts in your portfolio today? If the answer to that is no or maybe, you need to actually go through and do this risk assessment and the revenue opportunity assessment to make sure be able to answer that question yes or these are accounts we no longer need to be a part of. Kelly: It isn’t just no longer be part of, it may be no I wouldn’t accept it under these terms. These terms being pricing, but would you accept it at 50 basis points? No. Would you accept at 150? Yes. Isn’t that as much of a relevant question as acceptance or non-acceptance, it’s how should we price this thing? Don: Proper pricing is critical. We have top 10 risk piece that we do and one of the top 10 risks is appropriate pricing, so you’re absolutely right. “Hey, I wouldn’t re-accept it because of the assets.” That’s one thing. I wouldn’t re-accept this because of the price and the assets. Could we price it accordingly where you would accept it? Absolutely. That’s part of the analysis we do. Kelly: Why don’t you post on our website the top 10 risk pieces in a blog post? Don: Absolutely, I can do that. Kelly: That’d be nice to accompany this. That’s it for now, give us your favorite quote. Don: It’s Milton Friedman the great economist. “The question is, do corporate executives, provided that they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities, other than to make as much money for their shareholders as possible?” My answer to that is, no they do not. Basically, everyone should stay focused on generating revenue for the shareholders for where they have their fiduciary duty. Kelly: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve said or done in your business career? Don: This is classic me, and this took a long time to live down. This was years ago. I basically said, I used another quote when I was giving a presentation because someone asked a question with regards to revenue enhancement and I said in front of this entire group, “Life’s tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” Yep. Kelly: Good one. Don: I was much younger. Kelly: Don, I enjoyed talking to you, thanks so much for your time. We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

Audiowhores - Rhythm Is Love (Original Mix) Romanthony - Ministry Of Love (Andre Crom Remix) JayLo (Jennifer Lopez) - The Block (Consoul Trainin Bootleg) Inaya Day, Lee Dagger - Shelter Me (Soneec Remix) Tigerskin - Personal Computer (Original Mix) Dr. Kucho! & Adonis Alvarez - La Tarde Se Ha Puesto Triste (T.Tommy & Victor Perez & Vicente Ferrer) ATFC - Bad Habit (Jerome Robins Bored As Hell Bootleg Mix) Basement Jaxx - Fly Life (Jerome Robins Simple Edit) Mary J. Blige feat Alex Metric - Family Affair (Bobby Cooper BootyMash) Olivier Giacomotto - Postgalactic (Original Mix) Pete Moss - Tried To Tell You (Karizma Told Ya Remix) UMEK, Simon Doty Vs Bon Garcon - Freek You Divine (Dj Star Sky Mash) Steve Lawler - House Record (Original Mix) The Face, Kym Mazelle, David Morales - Lovin Presented By David Morales (Disko Mix) Radio Slave - Children of the E (South London Mix) Dr Dre, Surfdisco - The Next Episode (Surfdisco Smoke Bootleg) UMEK, Mike Vale - All I Want (Dosem Remix) Lonya, Asymmetric Soul, Meital De Razon - If I Change (DJ MFR Summer Of Joy Remix) Kings Of Tomorrow & Rae - Finally (Jerome Robins DOMESTIC LAUNCH PARTY Simple Edit Mix) Kiesza - Giant In My Heart (Loe Remix) Daft Punk - Robot Rock (Victor Ruiz Bootleg) Joeski, Harry Romero - My Money (Original Mix) Beyoncé - Drunk In Love (Cosmic Dawn Club Mix) Carlo Cavalli Feat. Si Se - Mariposa (En Havana) (Original Mix) James Newton Howard ft. Jennifer Lawrence - The Hanging Tree (Hector Remix) Bellatrax feat. Sophia May - What Love Is (Original Mix) Jennifer Hudson f. R. Kelly - It’s Your Word (Terry Hunter Club Mix)

Jennifer Hudson, R. Kelly - It's Your World (Terry Hunter Club Mix) [T’s Box] Tony Humphries, Junior White, Aaron K. Gray - Wonder Why (Vocal Mix) [Tony] DJ Ermi - The First Violin Feat. Gracy Lagana [Double Cheese] Royal Music Paris - Your Love (Club Mix) [Royal Music Paris] Eddie Matos - Better Daze [Vital Vibes] 9Lives - If This World Were Mine [Open Bar Music] Kenny Summit, Tom Gianelli - This Is The Return [Good For You] Dario D'Attis - The Good Old Days (Original Mix) [Defected] White Soul Project - Ever Love (Earnshaw's Dub) [Duffnote] Ministry Of Funk - Spacer (Original Mix) [DJ Xpress]

Hunks from Down Under: Jay (left) and Pottsy. Tamarama Grooves with Amber and Kelly It you’re not ready to rock, do not tune into tonight’s Access New York. But if you are, it’s the only place to be. Because everyone’s favorite perpetual party girls Amber Lee Ettinger and Kelly Brady are welcoming Nicholas “Pottsy” Potts and Jay Lyon from the scorching-hot Aussie duo Tamarama. MTV fan may also recognize Pottsy and Jay from the network’s new reality series The City. And if you’ve really got a sharp eye, yes, Jay is the same Jay who’s dating the show’s star, Whitney Port. But these formidable musicians won’t just be getting their – and your – grooves on. They’re also helping to raise money for Music Unites, an organization dedicated to nourishing next-generation performers and audiences, by performing at the Norwood club in Manhattan tomorrow, April 30. Also on the show will be soul diva Niki J. Crawford, whose single Surrender rocks something fierce. Niki can also be seen in this year’s hit flick, He’s Just Not That Into You.And she’s getting philanthropic as well this week, by performing in Manhattan this Friday, May 1 with the African Children’s Choir. Proceeds from the event will go toward funding the Music for Life program at the ACC’s primary school in Entebbe, Uganda.

Hunks from Down Under: Jay (left) and Pottsy. Tamarama Grooves with Amber and Kelly It you’re not ready to rock, do not tune into tonight’s Access New York. But if you are, it’s the only place to be. Because everyone’s favorite perpetual party girls Amber Lee Ettinger and Kelly Brady are welcoming Nicholas “Pottsy” Potts and Jay Lyon from the scorching-hot Aussie duo Tamarama. MTV fan may also recognize Pottsy and Jay from the network’s new reality series The City. And if you’ve really got a sharp eye, yes, Jay is the same Jay who’s dating the show’s star, Whitney Port. But these formidable musicians won’t just be getting their – and your – grooves on. They’re also helping to raise money for Music Unites, an organization dedicated to nourishing next-generation performers and audiences, by performing at the Norwood club in Manhattan tomorrow, April 30. Also on the show will be soul diva Niki J. Crawford, whose single Surrender rocks something fierce. Niki can also be seen in this year’s hit flick, He’s Just Not That Into You.And she’s getting philanthropic as well this week, by performing in Manhattan this Friday, May 1 with the African Children’s Choir. Proceeds from the event will go toward funding the Music for Life program at the ACC’s primary school in Entebbe, Uganda.