Podcasts about lyfts

What if the air freshener in your car was more dangerous than the pollution outside? In this explosive episode, Darin reveals what's really inside those “harmless” little trees hanging from car mirrors—and why they could be silently damaging your health. Backed by real science and peer-reviewed studies, Darin uncovers the shocking truth about volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the health effects on the brain and lungs, and the corporations that won't label them. You'll also learn how to detox your air, reclaim your health, and even start a grassroots movement to get a fragrance-free option in ride shares like Uber and Lyft. Studies: There's this study called “Volatile Chemical Emissions from Car Air Fresheners”—and wow. Researchers analyzed 12 popular car fresheners—those trees, clips, sprays, gels—you name it. Here's what they found: 546 volatile organic compounds. That's VOCs. Out of those, 30 were considered potentially hazardous—things like formaldehyde, benzene, and other stuff you definitely don't want marinating your brain. And you know what's wild?
Not a single one of those hazardous chemicals was listed on the label.
(Steinemann et al., 2020) There's a study called “Fragranced Consumer Products: Effects on Asthmatics”—and it found that over 64% of people with asthma reported real symptoms from these scented products: wheezing, headaches, even full-on asthma attacks. And 41% said air fresheners were the trigger (Steinemann, 2017). Another one? “Migraine Headaches and Fragranced Consumer Products.” Nearly half of the people who get migraines said air fresheners specifically set them off (Steinemann & Nematollahi, 2020). And if you're neurodivergent—like folks with autism? This next one breaks my heart.
In the study “Fragranced Consumer Products: Effects on Autistic Adults,” 83.7% of autistic individuals said fragranced products triggered serious neurological and respiratory problems—and 63% said air fresheners were one of the worst offenders (Steinemann, 2018). In a study out of Nigeria, researchers exposed mice to a solid commercial air freshener. After a few weeks, the mice showed increased anxiety, depression-like behavior, memory loss, and signs of oxidative stress in the brain. Their brains were literally under chemical assault.
The study's called “Neurobehavioral Effects of Prolonged Exposure to Solid Air Freshener in Mice.” Check it out—it's eye-opening (Umukoro et al., 2019). Sorry to tell you… greenwashed products aren't any better. In the same 2020 study I mentioned earlier, researchers tested “natural” versions too—and found no meaningful difference in the chemicals they released (Steinemann et al., 2020).     What You'll Learn in This Episode: 00:00 – Introduction: The truth about air fresheners 00:44 – Why Darin refuses to use ride shares with scent trees 01:50 – The hidden study on VOCs in popular car air fresheners 02:30 – 546 chemicals discovered—30 considered hazardous 03:00 – Where is the regulation? Why there are no labels 03:55 – Formaldehyde, benzene, and what they do to your body 05:00 – The link between asthma, headaches, and fragrances 05:45 – 64% of asthmatics report fragrance-triggered symptoms 06:25 – What these chemicals do to neurodivergent individuals 07:10 – Mice studies: anxiety, memory loss, oxidative stress 08:40 – Ubers, Lyfts, and chronic chemical exposure 09:15 – “Greenwashed” products are just as toxic 10:00 – No regulation, no labeling: the wild west of scent marketing 10:50 – A call to action: the Uber/Lyft fragrance-free movement 12:02 – How to tag and campaign for safer ride shares 13:00 – What you can use instead: baking soda, charcoal, and nature 14:40 – Exactly how to ask a driver to remove chemical air fresheners 15:41 – Final message: take your air—and your health—back     Don't Forget... I just launched my brand new program Superlife Supermind. Visit my website https://superlife.com/ to learn more about how you can get rid of stress, improve sleep and overall health today.     Connect with Darin Olien: Website: darinolien.com Instagram: @darinolien Book: Fatal Conveniences   Key Takeaway: "Your car shouldn't smell like a fake ocean breeze—it should smell like clean, chemical-free life." – Darin Olien     Bibliography: 1. Steinemann, A., et al. (2020). Volatile chemical emissions from car air fresheners. Link 2. Steinemann, A. (2017). Fragranced consumer products: effects on asthmatics. Link 3. Steinemann, A. (2018). Fragranced consumer products: effects on autistic adults. Link 4. Steinemann, A., & Nematollahi, N. (2020). Migraine headaches and fragranced consumer products. Link 5. Umukoro, S., et al. (2019). Neurobehavioral Effects of Prolonged Exposure to Solid Air Freshener in Mice. Link

This episode starts off with some modification to the workout challenge due to Tamara having an ear infection in both ears. Rheannon is crushing it, while Tamara is struggling being sick. Tamara does a run down of the difference of the book and movie of Wicked. Additionally, a small rabbit hole around the history of the movie The Wizard of Oz. Tamara waited to watch Wicked until after she saw the play on Broadway. She took a train from Boston to spend 10 hours in New York City to see specifically Mary Kate Morrissey. There was also a trip to a museum and Stardust Diner, but the big excitement for the trip was to see Wicked. From the end of the play there was only 59 minutes before Tamara's flight back to Boston finished boarding. Would she make it? Or does the trip go downhill fast? Not to mention the night skiing or the trip to Vegas. 

My annual tradition of a winter ride in the sunshine state continues! Unlike past years, I'm shaking things up with the start and focusing on a coastal ride along the East Coast Greenway before turning inland. But the Florida Coast is the name of the game for this adventure, and on this episode we preview the ride! Florida Coast Preview The ride Jacksonville to WDW over 4 days! East Coast Greenway! A ferry! Mostly coastal riding with the ocean over my left shoulder (who knew?) Revisting the Florida Coast to Coast Trail Riding all the way to my finish line resort at WDW (no Lyfts at the end this time!) The gear Brompton 3 days of camping Backpack mode with front pannier (same as last year) Keeping things minimal as the camping gear takes up some room No stove Details JAX-St. Augustine St. Augustine - Daytona Daytona - Lake Monroe Lake Monroe - WDW Highlights Day 1 St. Johns ferry and St Augustine Day 2 All coastal riding to Daytona Day 3 Reuniting with the FLC2C trail and camping at the free Lake Monroe campground Day 4 Eff it we're doing it live! Another thrilling ride into the belly of the beast errr Mouse and then celebrating by flying the Falcon and drinking blue milk and hitting the cantina Potential issues I need this trip more than I've ever needed a bike adventure so there's a lot of mental energy riding on this one… so you just KNOW shit will go sideways! Have not gotten the Brompton checked and likely won't have an opportunity as I have only a day or two in DC before I fly down to JAX. What could possibly go wrong? Tour Journal episodes start… next week, AND this gets us almost all the way to episode 400. Stay tuned for a live show announcement for mid-April!

Y'all! February is finally here! And January is finally over. Whew—what a month! Trump has been working that executive order pen like it's a full-time job, leaving the left & right in a frenzy. Meanwhile, someone is out here suing Lyft, knowing good and well they can't even fit in the car. And let's talk about the Grammys—Beyoncé made history, but folks are mad she won both Country Album of the Year and Album of the Year. Then, there's Kendrick, the undisputed petty king, securing five Grammys off a diss track.So, grab your tea, coffee, or draaank, and tune in! Don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments and pass this episode along to your friends.

The 4:20 Crew is back this week to give you their smoked out views on the news, pop culture, politics, sports, hip hop, and whatever comes up in the conversation. Fire Up The Good Stuff... It's 4:20 In Vegas...

A state statute could mean criminal charges for fossil fuel companies. A proposal would strengthen the safety of taking Ubers and Lyfts.Yet another movie theater has closed. And a museum once again gets national recognition.

Well, folks. Here we are. 365 days in a row writing on LinkedIn. Rain or shine. Without fail. Kind of hard to believe, especially considering the year it's been. I've written from many locations in the world:  Trains in Switzerland, mountains in Europe, planes, Lyfts, airports, hotels, restaurants, Chicago, Death Valley, Louisiana, yoga studios, football games, gyms, the stair stepper, my car, my friend's car, my friend's friend's car, New Jersey, Palm Springs, San Diego, Portland, LA, Austin, Minnesota, Kelowna, emergency rooms, my home, my parent's home  -  The list is literally endless.  But regardless where we were in the world, or what was going on, The work got done. The writing got published. One day. One post.  At a time. I've developed a very personal relationship with writing throughout this experience.  Writing has been my therapist. My confidant.  My superpower.  My release. It's brought me clarity and confusion, direction and wonder, worry and excitement, laughter and tears.  It's re-triggered forgotten dreams, and sparked dreams for others.  It's even brought me incredible connections and friends with people I would have never met otherwise.  It's challenged me to grow in ways I never thought I would, and forced me to continuously show up for others, and for myself. It takes a lot for me to feel a strong sense of pride... but this one feels good. And just to think it all started with one simple question from friend and mentor, Ian Koniak: “

City är mästare och det är bara att lyfta på hatten. Historiskt starka och Phil Foden den stora omslagspojken. Arsenal fick lära sig den hårda vägen att chanser måste tas när de ges mot Pep och var det too soon igen från klubben att lyfta framgångar trots titelmässig besvikelse? Lyfts det hatt för City tas det av alla kläder för Alexander Isak och så får ni allt från Robins helg på Lilla Ibiza där Klopp tackades av. Även om det kanske hade önskats ännu mer känslor och tårar! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More and more kids are getting to school in different ways. But instead of taking the bus or having their parent drop them off... they are taking Ubers or Lyfts instead?

Are Ubers & Lyfts going to disappear from Minnesota?, a viral TikTok that's trying to catch a cheater, New Music Friday, and more!

What a weekend it was for the women of the Big Ten taking over Minneapolis - Chris and Henry recap last weekend's tournament and look ahead to the Men's Big Ten Tournament this weekend as they broadcast LIVE from the Host House at TOM'S Watch Bar in Minneapolis. Vineeta Sawkar made a quick appearance at the top of the show! We talked to the color commentator voice of the Gophers and former Gopher and Packer Darryl Thompson about NFL Draft projections and then talked to Leo Lewis about NFL free agency and got his thoughts on Danielle Hunter heading to Houston. Also Troy Bell pops by at the bottom of the hour to join in on the conversation of Uber and Lyft making headlines  

In Other News with Ethan: Snoop is still smoking, Lyft providing free rides tonight, A woman tips $7000 for a sub, and A woman is banned for life for bringing CBD gummies on a cruise

Mark Zuckerberg is refuting Elon Musk's Friday morning claims, saying no details of their potential fight have been finalized at all, adding that he still wants Dana White involved in the process. Forget Ubers and Lyfts, Gisele Bündchen got a ride home from the airport on Friday morning from her jiu-jitsu instructor, Joaquim Valente, further fueling rumors the two are, indeed, an item. UFC star Aljamain Sterling joins TMZ Sports, telling Babcock that he wants to move up and dethrone featherweight champ Alex Volkanovski after his fight at UFC 292. Floyd Mayweather is stepping up in a huge way for over 100 people displaced by the horrible wildfires in Maui, not only paying for almost 70 families to fly to safety, but also providing them with a place to stay, food to eat, and clothing to wear. NY Mets owner Steve Cohen's wife is showing out for her hubby's baseball team in a big way, gifting her a 14-karat white gold chain with 30 carats of diamonds, worth $65,000! Hosts: Michael Babcock & Mojo Muhtadi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting off August with the Wipe Down! Best Friend Weekend is here with your weekend fix for everything going down in the culture. Rumble Williams started off by taking a definitive stance in the Jay-Z vs. Boosie debate (01:00) which led to us discussing Boosie and the Chitterling Circuit (02:00) and Jason Luv's connections to Louisiana (12:00). Next, Aldo let us know What Burned His Boudin this week including towns with no Ubers and Lyfts (14:00), mid-level marketing on LinkedIn (24:00), being big wrong about the fight (26:00), and the LeBron school hating (35:00). After this, took some time to discuss the allegations against Lizzo (40:00) and the guy who put the cop in a chokehold (49:00). To end the episode, we gave a final RIP to Pee Wee and said our Big Three Folks Who Not Like Who They Play on TV (54:00).

You want to be generous with your tip, but SOMETIMES your rideshare driver makes it really difficult. What's up with Ubers and Lyfts nowadays? Moe wants to talk about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Folkmusikkurser lockar utländska deltagare. Nu börjar rättegången journalisterna som först uppmärksammade Mahsa Aminis död i Iran. Kulturnytts filmkritiker om Guldpalmen-vinnaren.

Kevin Daisey, the host of the Managing Partners podcast and the founder of Array Digital, welcomed his guest Jon Groth to the show. Jon is a personal injury attorney in Wisconsin, with offices in Milwaukee and other parts of the state. He also has a unique practice with full time staff and attorneys that work with vaccine law, which has been around since the 1980s and is not limited to Wisconsin but is also international. Clients have come from as far away as Siberia. Jon's law firm website is GrothLawFirm.com. This conversation was a great opportunity to learn more about Jon's practice, the unique vaccine law he works with, and the stateside and international clients he serves. Jon discussed the impact of COVID on vaccine law. He stated that media outlets contacted him about people who might be injured due to the COVID vaccine and that currently the vaccine is covered by immunity, meaning it is difficult to get compensation. He believes that in the future the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program will include the COVID vaccine and will make it easier to get compensation. Additionally, there have been more flu vaccines administered, leading to an increased likelihood of injury. As a result, Jon expects to see an increase in cases over the years. The speaker is a personal injury attorney based in Milwaukee. He has recently been receiving a lot of calls and interviews due to the influx of vaccine-related questions. He mainly deals with single-event car crashes, such as a passenger being hit by an Uber driver or a person being hit by a UPS truck. In addition, he has been receiving a lot of cases involving passengers in Ubers and Lyfts, and Milwaukee has a high number of car thefts. The conversation is about a law firm and the growing gang problem in the area. The people stealing Kias and Hondas are mostly kids and one is stolen a week. Jon's dad was a race car driver who said that it was harder to steal a car in the 1950s than it is to steal a Kia in 2023. The law firm is always hiring and currently has five lawyers, with a goal of having around seven in the next few months to a year. They have around thirty staff in total.

The months with the wildly high one off expenses are always the months when I'm frugal everywhere else! If you'd like to see the full breakdown of our spending, I'm trying out a new format on LizGetsLoaded.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lizgetsloaded/message

Nyhetssändning från kulturredaktionen P1, med reportage, nyheter och recensioner.

Cosmopolitan, STRAT, Resorts World, vegan food, street food, snow, Ubers, Lyfts, CBD, MedMen, LAX, JetBlue. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

What I've learned about my break time and healing journey. Some recent things I'm doing in some steps with some not so serious but hobby passions and some more demanding tasks. Travel plans, rave plans, car rentals, Amtrak, flixbus, Ubers and Lyfts. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Carrie has done it again - gone to Walt Disney World without Francine!  This time she took her aunts and Mum to stay at Disney's Animal Kingdom in a 2 bedroom villa!  She's sharing how they navigated getting to the parks from Minnie Vans to Lyfts and of course the puzzles!!   Find Francine and Carrie online: Website: https://PixieDustFan.com Instagram: @PixieDustFan Carrie on Instagram: @MuppetCrazy Facebook: Pixie Dust Fan  Pixie Dust Fan Facebook group: PixieDustFanGroup Support Pixie Dust Fan by shopping our affiliates Find Pixie Dust Fan on YouTube: PixieDustFanSite

We're talking about Acura's new EV cars, Lyfts new wait fees, Apple Wi-Fi chips, and more!!!

Do Goats Have Hands 'Cause I Like Really Want to Know. Cool, like a Finger in the Anus. Sir Babycakes. Take the 20 leave the weed. Thanos, Moon Knight, and Aquaman walk into a room. Kentucky Fried Magarac. PhD In Neuro HooHaa. Not Enough Staff for Hotdogs or Sticks. Hand Farting for the love of it. Owner/Lover. Kentucky Fried Donkey. I can pee on the deputy for hours. Offending Muslims and people who like actual music. Welcome to the Motel Coulraphillia. 50 first Lyfts. Call Now and more on this episode of The Morning Stream.

Do Goats Have Hands 'Cause I Like Really Want to Know. Cool, like a Finger in the Anus. Sir Babycakes. Take the 20 leave the weed. Thanos, Moon Knight, and Aquaman walk into a room. Kentucky Fried Magarac. PhD In Neuro HooHaa. Not Enough Staff for Hotdogs or Sticks. Hand Farting for the love of it. Owner/Lover. Kentucky Fried Donkey. I can pee on the deputy for hours. Offending Muslims and people who like actual music. Welcome to the Motel Coulraphillia. 50 first Lyfts. Call Now and more on this episode of The Morning Stream.

Morgan Snyder, Executive Director for Visit Indy, joins Dane Neal who is filling in for Jon Hansen on Your Money Matters. What can people see and do for Labor Day weekend in Indiana? Morgan talks about visiting Indianapolis and the prize package that will be available in select wrapped Uber and Lyft cars.

Bill was fasting during today's show.  You be the judge on how he did.  On today's show:  Morgan has some research that actually getting up as early as us could be very beneficial for you!  Also, are the things that we thought were supposed to be cheaper (Ubers, Lyfts, streaming services) now actually more expensive than ever before?  We also got into the strangest thing you've cried over while pregnant, we played Battle of the Burbs, and a Cleveland Confessional that may have authorities calling us at some point today!  Plus, what are "fantasy" job perks and why do people want them?  

Mark and Ryan talk about Lyfts, a 9/11 blanket, and the Amish.

Dad Fights 69+6+9+6: Tom Cruise characters. Property of your mom's found in Ohio River. What's been left behind in Ubers and Lyfts. An interview with the couple who invented 69. The 93X Half-Assed Morning Show - Originally Aired June 10, 2022 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's stories: Former Ford company Spin has been spun off, and now they're working with Lyft to use their scooters in their app. That leads us to a great conversation about apps - how many pages of them do you have? KMart, with big historical Detroit ties as SS Kresge, is on Blockbuster watch with just three stores remaining. We share memories.  Shianne stans for local "Smile" artist Phil Simpson in what's become a whale of a mural debate. Plus, should Comerica Park change their bag policies? A number of women say that what they allow not only is small as far as Major League Baseball standards, but doesn't reflect the real needs of people visiting the ballpark. https://twitter.com/RobinRunyan8/status/1513527515326951425 If this is your first time meeting the show, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your favorite shows. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daily-detroit/id1220563942?mt=2 If you love what we're doing, consider support us at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dailydetroit  

Looking ahead to the spring and some new-to-me routes that can check some 2022 goal boxes! This episode, we take a look at the Texas Hill Country loop that begins and ends in Austin. Will this be the one? Route Scouting Texas Hill Country ACA route Ideal in spring Fly in and out from Austin Probably 5-6 days Mostly camping Excellent resources ACA maps Ride with GPS map with resources    Downsides limited services in spots water sprawl/traffic/bad interactions   Logisitics Brompton capable? Love the in-out via Austin (no car rentals, maybe even no Lyfts needed) Mostly camping, probably some hoteling needed   Initial assessment TX hill country gets a lot of great reviews Very unnerved by the reports of bad driver interactions Need to see what the camping situation is - state parks fill up but there might be city park options - Reddit post on camping I hear anecdotally that stealth camping in TX is tricky because it's mostly private land and high sensitivity to trespassing   Pedalshift Society   As always we like to close out the show with a special shoutout to the Pedalshift Society! Because of support from listeners like you, Pedalshift is a weekly bicycle touring podcast with a global community, expanding into live shows and covering new tours like this summer's upcoming bike tour! If you like what you hear, you can support the show for 5 bucks, 2 bucks or even a buck a month. And there's one-shot and annual options if you're not into the small monthly thing. Check it all out at pedalshift.net/society. Kimberly Wilson Caleb Jenkinson Cameron Lien Andrew MacGregor Michael Hart Keith Nagel Brock Dittus Thomas Skadow Marco Lo Terrance Manson Harry Telgadas Chris Barron Mark Van Raam Brad Hipwell Mr. T Nathan Poulton Stephen Dickerson Vince LoGreco Cody Floerchinger Tom Benenati Greg Braithwaite Sandy Pizzio Jeff Muster Seth Pollack Joseph Quinn Drue Porter Byron Paterson Joachim Raber Ray Jackson Jeff Frey Kenny Mikey Lisa Hart John Denkler Steve Hankel Miguel Quinones Alejandro Avilés-Reyes Keith Spangler Greg Towner Dan Gebhart, RIP Jody Dzuranin Lucas Barwick Michael Baker Brian Bechtol Reinhart Bigl Greg Middlemis Connie Moore William Gothmann Brian Benton Joan Churchill Mike Bender Rick Weinberg Billy Crafton Gary Matushak Greg L'Etoile-Lopes James Sloan Jonathan Dillard John Funk Tom Bilcze Ronald Piroli Dave Roll Brian Hafner Misha LeBlanc Ari Messinger David Gratke Todd Groesbeck Wally Estrella Sue Reinert John Leko Stephen Granata Phillip Mueller Robert Lackey Dominic Carol Jacqi McCulloch John Hickman Carl Presseault David Neves Patty Louise Terry Fitzgerald Peter Steinmetz Timothy Fitzpatrick Michael Liszewski Hank O'Donnell David Zanoni David Weil Matthew Sponseller Chad Reno Spartan Dale Carolyn Ferguson Peggy Littlefield Lauren Allansmith Eric Burns Thomas Pearl Darrin McKibben Richard Stewart Dave Fletcher Jack Smith Luke Parkinson Ryan Patterson Music You've been hearing about Jason Kent and his music for many fine episodes. Sunfields has a new album available NOW,AND Jason has a new solo album coming this year, AND his first solo album is now streaming on Spotify, including America, the Pedalshift theme. Go listen! And Jason is doing live events in and around Montreal, so go listen LIVE too!

We talk about weed Lyfts, phone tricks, and brown stars. Weekly Challenge: Movie – 8 1/2, Album – Leadbelly.

Nyheterna Radio 09.00

We just got a peek into the nuclear submarine industry after subs experienced their biggest drama since the periscope. Dutch Bros coffee popped 60% since its IPO because it's taking on Starbucks and Dunkin' with broistas (not baristas - you read that right). And Microsoft is splurging a whopping $60B on… itself (that's 3.5 Lyfts).  $BROS $THLLY $MSFT $GD $HII Got a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYork Want a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form: https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9 Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewform Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nyheterna Radio 07.00

Ford says it will deploy self-driving cars on ride-hailing service Lyft by the end of 2021. Ford and partner Argo AI will create defined service zones in Miami, and Lyft users will be able to choose an autonomous Ford Escape to pick them up.

Ford says it will deploy self-driving cars on ride-hailing service Lyft by the end of 2021. Ford and partner Argo AI will create defined service zones in Miami, and Lyft users will be able to choose an autonomous Ford Escape to pick them up.

Ep. 266 The Legend of Jimmy Brown This podcast is exclusively a part of The BYNK Podcast Network bynkradio.net/podcasts Listen and Watch: https://linktr.ee/Gubmintnamepodcast https://linktr.ee/bynkradio This week Shogun and Cole talk about the great time he had in the NOLA which consisted of Lyfts vs Uber, Airbnb life, Shogun getting WAYYY TO LIT, NOLA never left outside, learning your limits, also the guys get into Shogun watching Army of the Dead, an email from J Battle about men hugging each other, strip club tips and boundaries, Mayweather vs Paul, and Lloyd Banks new album. THE RUNDOWN -The Legend of Jimmy Brown -OJ is talking real hard to Bill Cosby -Free ass whooping to a good will -Did see John Cena apologizing -How much would you pay for invisible art -New Hustler of the year candidate ex fed cons a woman for $800k -Barber not paid shoots customer -NYC teaches 1st graders about masturbation -Fauci emails found Thank you to for supporting the podcast! ___________________________________________________ intro beat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4FvuAEgkx0 Chapters --------------------------------- SHOGUN Trip to New Orleans (5:28) Lyfts Vs Uber (12:18) AirBnB (19:07) Shogun TOO TURNT (22:55) New Orleans Back OUTSIDE (28:24) Learning limits( 31:41) Army of the Dead REVIEW (36:51) J battle Email (41:51) Check the cover art (46:06) J battle Email (46:31) Club Tip (55:11) learning Boundaries (56:44) In Love with a Stripper (58:01) Mayweather VS Paul (1:07:05) Cole's Interest in a Rapper (1:15:52) Lloyd Banks New album (1:19:46) RUNDOWN (1:25:40) THE Legend of jimmy Brown OJ VS BILL COSBY (1:37:24) FREE ASS WHOOPING TO A GOOD WELL (1:42:00) John Cena VS China (1:45:24) invisible art for $18,300 (1:57:42) Ex-FBI agent Conned woman out of $800,000 (2:03:14) pay for your ladies nails? Pay for your mans haircut(2:10:03) Ran off on the Barber (2:15:36) NYC private school cartoon about masturbation (2:25:12) Karen tells Burger King worker her uniform is a ‘distraction' to her husband (2:38:04) Fauci Emails (2:43:11)

For those of us in California, we've known for a while that it doesn't take much for gas prices to skyrocket -- if someone looks at a refinery the wrong way, gas gets more expensive. But now with the shutdown of that key pipeline along the East Coast expected to stretch into this weekend, what happens to gas prices here and across the country? We'll go In Depth. You've also probably noticed that *everything* is at least a little more expensive these days, from used cars to lumber. Are we seeing the effects of inflation creeping in, or is this the economy trying to get back to normal?   And what does the rideshare industry look like after demand for Uber and Lyfts plummeted during the pandemic? Demand is picking up but drivers are in short supply. Young teenagers are just about cleared to start getting their COVID vaccines, but will their parents take them? Welcome to another kind of vaccine hesitancy. Deadly tensions have once again flared up between Israelis and Palestinians, we'll ask about the root causes of the latest violence. And the pandemic changed a lot of our habits..........apparently daily showers might be one of them. People have been showering ... a lot less.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Daniel Cronin und Markus Raunig diskutieren diese Woche folgende Themen: 00:02:10 Basecamp Implosion & Politik im Office; 00:21:37 Daniel Ek will Arsenal kaufen; 00:28:30 Apple vs Spotify im Kampf um die Podcasts; 00:39:15 Facebook entscheidet über Trump Return; 00:41:52 Bitpanda sucht nach einem Meme Lord / Lady; 00:43:41 Microsoft sucht nach neuer Standard-Schrift für Office; 00:44:43 Bill & Melinda Gates trennen sich; 00:46:42 Toyota kauft Lyfts selbstfahrende Auto-Division; 00:49:11 Rockstar der Woche: Francis Suarez, Bürgermeister von Miami---Hintergründe & weiterführende Links im Future Weekly Newsletter:futureweekly.substack.com---Du hast Feedback, Ideen, Moonshots oder Predictions zu den heutigen Themen? Schick uns deinen Text oder ein Soundbite an podcast@austrianstartups.com und werde ein Teil der nächsten Episode.---Redaktion & Produktion: Elena Struber, Johanna Einsiedler, Julia Kruslin, Laura Fraissl, Laurenz Vavrovsky, Lena Silberbauer, Zlatimira Kuzmova---Musik (Intro/Outro): www.sebastianegger.com

Episode #83 Driver gets attacked some drunk lady, Lyfts out of the autonomous car biz, and much more gig economy news   Everything Gig Economy Podcast Related: https://linktr.ee/gigeconomypodcast Our Sponsors: Studio Sponsor: Ervines Auto and Grand Rapids Hybrid Call them at 616-532-660 or ervines.com New Sponsor! Womply They want to help you with getting your ppp loan for gig work. Check them out here: https://womply.com/gigeconomy WE NEED YOUR REVIEWS! Download the audio podcast GR Rideshare Telegram Group Download Telegram 1st, then click on the link to join. Love the show? You now have the opportunity to support the show with some great rewards by becoming a Patron. Tier #2 we offer free merch, and Extra in-depth podcast per month, and an NSFW pre-show Thanks so much for listening. We appreciate each and every one of you! Please email us with any questions at team@gigeconomy-podcast.com Gig Economy online Follow us on Facebook Subscribe on Youtube Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Get GR Rideshare Gear! Merch store The camera we recommend: Vanture N2 Pro Want to up your income while you drive? Octopus is a mobile entertainment tablet for your riders. Earn 100.00 per month for having the tablet in your car! No cost for the driver! Octopus Tablet Entertainment Drive for Uber! Drive for Lyft! Another podcast that  Jason is a part of is called Threads Podcast Life Unfiltered. Check it out! This podcast is produced by Hey Guys Media Group LLC  Want to start your own podcast? Reach out to them today!

There is an underlying key to being a successful self-published author. Do you want to know what the secret is? It's all about your mindset. Autumn and Jesper delve into what that outlook is and why it can make such a difference to how you fair as an indie author in this episode. See if you have the attitude and why you need to develop it if you don't. Check out the FREE Self Publishing Success Course that we mention in the episode at https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/self-publishing-success/ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast in today's Publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need. And literary agent, there is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper. Autumn (32s): And I'm Autumn. Jesper (34s): This is episode 120 of The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. And today we are going to share some thoughts or tips that will be you. We got to break your career as a writer. And the personally, I think that this stuff is something that is often overlooked, but I don't know. What do you think about that? Autumn (52s): All of them. I think its definitely not talked about it, but I've just like, Oh wow. Don't pressure or this is going to make or break or you just don't get it into that stuff. And cheese hard stops like, Oh my gosh, am I ready for this episode? I don't know why, but no, I agree. This may be a sound better than it is. It's very, you've ramped the tension right up straight to the insight pull incident and boom. Jesper (1m 20s): Okay. Yeah, I should do it the other way around like, like maybe start out by saying this might be a completely useless Episode and there's going to be no tips for you at all. And then we can go from there because then it only got to get better. Autumn (1m 35s): That's something that I don't know if that's going to work right there. I think we just have to stick with what we started with. And this was one of the most important episode of your entire author career. And then we had to little bit on that two point, Oh my God. Now that you've set that and now I got conscious about it and no, that's not a good, that's why you thought of anything. And I would just apply that on like nothing ever happens. If someone is going to call you out and I am here for that. So it's all right. Yeah. And you have jumped off pretty quickly as well. So you kind of surprised me. Oh well. So how are things over on your side of the planet? Jesper (2m 15s): Well as good a school. So I close to this week here in the Denmark. Of course we are a recording a bit ahead of time. So it's East the holidays at the moment. So the kids are home, which means that the I get to sleep In and I could just get up like nine or 10 in the morning and then right. A chapter before lunch center, you know, I could get used to, this sounds really like my life, but that's one way except for the kids and no indeed. Yeah. I would say it's really nice. And a fantastic. Yeah. And also the fact that I can asleep in the also means that my wife and I have had some time to watch this TV series late in the evening where we are now, I would normally go to bed, but we didn't have been watching some, some stuff and I finished up or we finished up watching a show on HBO called a bear town. Jesper (3m 6s): Are you familiar with that one? No, no, no. I haven't even heard that line. So Bri, our town is a, a, a Swedish series. OK. And it's about a, a youth hockey team. Ah, which is not doing particularly well. Oh yeah. But then a former NHL player comes home from the us and he was like at the end of his career and he checks takes on the job of coaching this team. So at this point you're probably thinking, it sounds like some sort of sport series right here. Yeah. But it's not because here it turns a bit dark, but that's usually the type of stories out there. Jesper (3m 53s): Like as you know, you know, but so to start a player of the team, he actually ends up raping the coach daughter. Oh I, I, but then 'cause, it becomes very, it's, it's a very serious, serious series what it was about to say, but it becomes very, I don't know what the right word is, but interesting in one way or another, because it starts exploring because you are in a very small towns, society or community and its sort of explores, how does a close knit group of people who know each other really well deal with a situation like this, where you have like the popular kid that everybody's hoping that he's gonna be the next hot key star or a hockey star. Jesper (4m 39s): This is going to, you know, put this town on the map and then you have this new girl in town that basically nobody knows. And she, and of course he goes to the police with what happened and so on. And then this whole thing plays out about how the community as well as dealing with the situation. And I really feel like it's, it's very interesting. And it's also very interesting as it dives into details about how, how we, human beings are incredibly good at justifying things to ourselves. Even when we know that our standpoint is clearly wrong, they are because so many of these characters, they, they really convince themselves that they're point of view is the right one. Jesper (5m 28s): When, you know, when you're looking at it as, as the viewer and of course you are at a distance, but it makes sense from the person being inside of that community reacting that way. But when you're looking at it as a view at a distance, you can sort of see how completely wrong it is. And it is actually a very I'm, it's a very interesting story. Autumn (5m 47s): To be honest, it sounded interesting though, since I've spent 90% of my life in small towns, I have a feeling of that. I'd be like, Oh, I know this is so true. Jesper (5m 58s): It, yeah, It could be. Yeah. I, I mean, of course its a pretty serious topic, so it's not like a lighthearted thing that you sit down and watch, but, and I, I would maybe have liked the ending to have a bit more oomph in the end, but what I do recommend the people checking out bedtime time at town on HBO and of course watching it in the original Swedish language, trying to swap titles, instead of all the toppings stuff, I was about to use a nasty word. So the FCC does not broadcast, you know, register, watch over us as a Podcast thing. Goodness. I don't know how we got around that one way or the prolapse to swear. Jesper (6m 42s): Yeah. Yeah. Well technically we would have to market in our podcast hosting that there was wearing in the a seven mile language. Autumn (6m 51s): Ooh. Yeah. So a lot. Well I thought to the bullets just, just, just, well we can just add a beep. Yeah. Yeah. Jesper (7m 2s): Okay. But that, that's something I could recommend if people need something to a new shoes to look at. And so I guess it's the right way of saying it, but yeah. You need your stomach like a bit of a topic though. Yeah. So Coker prepared for a very serious topic. Yeah. Knowing small towns, I can see how it would totally grow out of proportion and being on an easy resolution that you would imagine. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, hopefully you have some more lighthearted stuff on your side of the Atlantic. Autumn (7m 37s): Absolutely. It's like spring here are all of our snow. I mean, Vermont, we had so much, well not so much, no. We had a normal winter For, you know, in 2020 in climate change, but it like melted in five days and now the weather is like in the sixties and it's sunny and the streams running. So its beautiful. But it's also, I feel that like I don't usually get spring itus or whatever you want to call it where you are. Like, I just want to go outside of my spring. I, this is what we use. It's cool. Yeah. Or senior-itis when you were a senior in school and you just could not concentrate cause you know, you're about to graduate. So this is a spring fever and I just want to go outside and go for a hike. And I got some work done over the weekend just because it was raining. Autumn (8m 20s): So I've got a chance to work on some covers and I'm almost done editing I'm in my book three and my tainted face series. So that's like, yeah, it's so much work going on. We just, we're almost done editing a reader magnet that we've got going on. So I don't know. I might have to take a break and go for a, a little bit of a walk soon. That would be kind of nice. But otherwise life is pretty good. I can not complain. It's hard to concentrate. It's my worst thing. I could say that I was speaking of shows. I sent you one that was, if someone wants a Fantasy that has amazing graphics as a major amazing CGI in a really good story. I sent that one to you that yin yang master's, which is actually proved is by China, which was trying not to read into that. Autumn (9m 6s): I'm like, is there any propaganda in here? So there's and what's funny is, and that's what I didn't tell you is there is use two movies so you can get a master's and then there's a second one that has a subtitle. I know that I can remember what it was, but you know what it reminded me of, it sounded like someone came up with like, there is a main character or here's a little bit of a story in a world in the background. And so two different people wrote an idea for it and they decided they liked them both and produced both. So they could almost relate. They feel more like a parallel stories of parallel ideas. And so it was very interesting to watch them back to back and be like, Oh, is that the same character? Autumn (9m 46s): But that's a totally different story for him. I don't know how this works, but the, the one in the yin-yang masters do it without the subtitle. I just, it was a fantastic story telling. Very good. And so if someone wants something much more fun, I wants to see ferret demons should have won a ferret demon. You get to watch that. Yeah. Will I we'll definitely watch it. Yeah. I have added to My, I have an app on my phone where I keep track of everything I need to watch a and then I added to it in there. It's where it was pretty good. Jesper (10m 21s): So every time I hear about a cool show or a good movie, I just add it in there because then it's it's there and I won't forget about it. And then every time I've done watching something, I go into the app and then I just find something I want to see next. Nice. That's a very useful app, right? Narrator (10m 40s): Oh, a week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Yeah. Jesper (10m 45s): Find a way of voices came out with their 2020 headphone report. It has where they share all the data that they collect it on the audio of that market over the past year. Okay. So it's up with audio books then. Yeah. And you know how I love to put you on the spot, Autumn. I, this is not fair. Yes. That's what I love it. This is because it's not fair. So I was wondering if you couldn't guess, which is young Rose had the most growth in the audio book market in 2020, but I have prepared some very, very short sound clips for you. Jesper (11m 32s): So it is going to give you a hint. Okay. So this is a podcast. So some clips are cool. So it is basically sound clips that is hopefully giving you some idea about a young, right. That's the point of the sound clip? So there is no words is just music. Autumn (11m 51s): Oh, this is true. It just me, I am going to argue, remember I'm half deaf. So it was just not fair, but lets go for it. Jesper (11m 59s): Okay. So I'm going to give you some clip number one and then see if you can guess what's younger. This is okay. Autumn (12m 13s): Yeah. Jesper (12m 13s): That's it that's like a fog horn. What could that be? Autumn (12m 18s): I'm guessing thriller, but I would almost have said for those clothes, it's a misery actually mystery. Jesper (12m 26s): Oh yeah. It's a mystery. We had a growth of 158% in 2020. That's exciting. That's a lot. That is a lot. Yeah. Okay. And number two on the list of the second, most growth in 2020 and let me know what this sound Clip. What do you, what do you think this is? Okay. Autumn (13m 1s): Yeah. Jesper (13m 2s): Yeah, of course. It's so obvious. Well, I'm going to guess because I, because I found this out Clip that is a completely obvious to everybody else is like, what is that? Autumn (13m 13s): I would say a memoir. I mean, it sounds too sad to be like cozy and romance. It sounds in the stallion to me. And that's why I would say memoir. Jesper (13m 25s): You just trying to be difficult. Of course a romance. Yeah. So I don't know if lifting at the end of the music, we really portrays romance. It's obvious growth rate by 146%. Autumn (13m 45s): Wow. That is amazing. And it doesn't actually surprise me. I mean, in COVID who was not looking for a good role mans to sweep you away from this place. Jesper (13m 55s): Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. It could be it, but Okay. Number three and a final show. Is that experience the most growth in 2020? Well, not the final one, but the top three final in the top three. Alright. So are we ready for this song? Clip? Yeah. I'm just going to be getting one, right? Are you ready? Autumn (14m 31s): I'm guessing Weston say something to do with Cowboys or a Western. It has to be Western. Jesper (14m 35s): No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Autumn (14m 38s): What is it? Jesper (14m 40s): It's Fantasy. Autumn (14m 41s): I can not be Fantasy. Yeah. It sounds like a Western. You misled me. You totally misled me, but okay. Jesper (14m 50s): So what's the Fantasy grow 68%. So it's not as smart as the other one's but it's still quite significant. That's good. That is it. What do you think of those growth numbers or Autumn (15m 2s): the growth numbers are a fantastic, there are in many ways, in some ways surprising because you know, COVID people are locked down, but it also, if your homie might be listening to Moore, I know, I think my husband has gone for the weekend and I actually ended up streaming a YouTube, a, a series called art at the highest actually he was on CuriosityStream or to the highest, but then when he got back, I'm like you have a subscription to audible. I want access to your books so I can see it when you're holding, when you were working on the computer or your music's. Okay. But its kind of fun to listen to a story so I can see audio books growing. Jesper (15m 43s): Yeah. It is growing very much about that. Oh, I also think that it also has to do with the distribution of it, that it, I mean, if you looked at the top three emerging markets after the us, it was Canada followed by Australia and I don't think those two were very surprising, but number three was Sweden. I wasn't really expecting that. So I, I think in part of the big growth numbers in part, because the base line is fairly low, so its easy to get into the triple digit growth rates kind of scary. That's true. So I think that there was that and then it's getting more and more widespread a and therefore as well as you're getting into many more new markets, which helps the growth rates. Autumn (16m 26s): I personally don't think it is. I still think it's early days when it comes to audiobooks. Jesper (16m 33s): I don't think that the market print tracing, is that a great to be honest. So it it's still Yeah, it's still early days and I was still, even though we keep hearing about these massive growth rates, I would still say that unless your e-books are selling really well, they don't get don't rush into creating an audio book just because you hear that that was great growth rate because honestly you probably not going to earn back to the production cost unless you're selling quite well already. I agree that that would be an, almost a whole talk because of, you know, how audio books affects sales. Autumn (17m 7s): But yeah, even my current series, I enjoy audio books, which I did couldn't say before I used to not, but I have no plans right now to put, turn the teen at Faye in the audio books, even though we're a couple of readers of asked for it is a lot of work in really expensive. And if it doesn't really effect your regular sales on Amazon, it's not like this major boost, No way. If the, if the production cost were low, which I don't think they will be in three or four years, maybe for now than it would be a no brainer to always just like we always create a paperback print on demand version, then you would always create an audio book just because it's another, it's another way of selling you a book right now. Jesper (17m 50s): I'm not a format, which I think is good, but when you have to pay like 5k or something for it, it's like, ah, now when they get to the AI, that has a very natural voice that you can just drop in your text and it creates a very nice sounding audio book. Autumn (18m 6s): I don't want to put voice actors at a work because they are amazing. But you know, if you could just upload an audio book file, like have it converted. And it was a few hundred bucks, Holy kind of, I would probably do it. Yeah. Or maybe I'm even thinking of you, if you could look in the future, you could look at a market where it's just a designated, like it, it will say here is the, you know, a cheap audio book and it will say this is a I rated and there will be an expensive version of an audio book where assess this is a voice acting narrated or something. Jesper (18m 39s): I, I could imagine that it would happen so that it's like, if you don't care or some readers don't care, you know that as long as that's the case then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And as long as it as decent, they are happy and then they will pay or paid at a discount or have the budget version. But I can imagine that will happen in three or four or five years maybe for now that, that you will have two versions of audio books. That's a whole other topic. So I could see that happening. Autumn (19m 6s): Definitely me too. It will be interesting Narrator (19m 11s): And on to today's topic. Okay. So Jesper (19m 16s): Yeah, I'm thinking that it's probably useful to just start up by stating that when Well, I was about to say we, but actually, I mean me when I'm talking about Mindset, because I can only talk about myself and I have my own biases, meaning that a for instance, when I'm tackling this topic in this episode here, I'm coming at the Mindset from a commercial point of view, meaning what is the mindset behind making a living from writing and earning money from it. And I also understand that in saying that not everyone is Writing to make money and that is perfectly fine, nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Jesper (20m 2s): However, I just want to share it. That's where I'm coming from when I'm talking about Mindset. So I don't know, maybe, maybe you have a different perspective on, on it out of, I don't know, but that, that sort of way I'm thinking, I think with you, when we come to author Mindset that is looking at it from a business perspective. So you're looking at the marketing and is sort of wrapped up into it. But I think I do have maybe a little bit of the artistic because I also think part of part of what makes you a good author platform, a good market or a successful author, hopefully, you know, making money is that you also care about the quality and your abilities as a writer. Autumn (20m 44s): So to me, I have a little bit of the artistic side, but I think it of overlaps, you know, the sphere is, are definitely where they joined is to me as the author of marriage Mindset. It's not a hundred percent marketing. It's not a a hundred percent craft, but there's a point where you merge those two. And that is my idea of an, a successful and a rewarding author Mindset. Yeah. Hm. Okay, good. Yes or no, but I, I think it's good to see if, I mean, we, we might come at it from like 80%, the same angle, but then slightly different anyway, which is probably good. Jesper (21m 23s): Yeah. That's probably a good way. Or you have to have something different. Autumn (21m 25s): I'll play devil's advocate if I have two, just so we are not always in agreement, you know, if you have two, like if I take it and you make it sound like you don't enjoy it at all, and this is like, Jesper (21m 35s): okay, I will sacrifice myself to do it, but in reality you love it. Autumn (21m 41s): They don't need to know is that I'm very, I would like to be Willy well in just play the play at the numbers, you know, but maybe one place to stop could be easy to talk a bit about catching reader's attention. I guess I could put that label on it because honestly, I think from a mindset perspective, you know, when you're thinking about how to get readers to read your work, I think the attention span is too big or as turtle probably, or one of the biggest hurdles we have in today's Publishing landscape. Jesper (22m 26s): And from a mindset perspective, I'm looking at it in the point of view about understanding who is it actually that we are keep competing against for reader's attention. That's true because they say it or the office. Autumn (22m 46s): No, not really. Well, Amazon, I do agree with that. A recent interview with Mark Coker, where he said Amazon is sort of pitting other authors against what their authors, because if you could do a search on Amazon for another, ah, for your, even yourself. So the first floor of slots are paid advertisers. And before you actually get to the person you are looking for, and that is really annoying, that is on Amazon. But in general, if you're talking about whose attention or, you know, we, as author's trying to pull readers' into, it's not for some other authors, that's there not our competition. It is the rest of the world. The app's the media games, Audio books. Autumn (23m 30s): There's so many other things that are competed to try to get a real game games is a good one. Jesper (23m 37s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean to some extent I, Yeah, I like you said, I, I think just some extent you could make an argument to say that there is some competition about A, between other authors, but I'm also of the firm belief that those people who really like to read, they will always go on to read more. And there's no way that we can write enough books for them on our own. So if they like to read, they will read more and other authors as well. So in some, some sense you are not really those people. I don't think we were competing that's as much for the attention because they love reading and they will continue reading. But all of the big chunk of people that sits in the middle, you know, we have those to reach a lot. Jesper (24m 21s): And all the time at the bottom may be of the, of the buckets. We have those who are basically never reads. And, and then in the middle we have the majority of people who reach sometimes, but not all the time. And for those people, I really think that our main competitor And I, that's why I said games. I think that's a good point that you made there. But what are the ones that I was thinking about was really streaming services like Netflix, HBO, Amazon, and that kind of thing, because one of those people are going to do, you know, they come back from home, they've even the dinner there. They have a sort of thinking, should I go and lie on the couch and watch the next episode of my series on Netflix? Jesper (25m 6s): Or should I open the eye book and start reading? All right. I mean, that's really the choice that they are making and that's not an easy competition to be him because it really means that you have to produce a very, very high quality content, meaning that you are you a story. It has to be really, really good. And that's not, I hope not for everybody Am I change? Hopefully you already know that you have to produce really good content, but there are also those that think that they can sort of get away with a half decent cover and they will get there on two, which is a, an English teacher to do the editing. Jesper (25m 51s): And then that should be fine. Right? And then they just put it that way. Autumn (25m 55s): Well, if you're trying to compete against Netflix, people are not going to read that book then, you know, it's, they will Peter out very quickly. I mean, there's so much more to it. I mean, having a little bit of psychology and knowing like you need to have a hook at the end of every chapter that makes them want to turn the page and then a good opening to the next chapter so that they don't want to be like, Oh, it's a different point of view. Or there is the answer to my question. You want to keep them going and going because it is a lot of marketing. It is a lot of trying to feed their curiosity so that they want this more than the ease of sitting back and watching a show because even science-wise watching a movie, it's only a lighting up part of your brain. Autumn (26m 36s): So I mean, it is really couch potato. It is truly low energy, low, low need of a paying attention. You can still surf On your phone and you've watched a show and talk to your spouse and you know, you can do a multi-task when you read it. If you're really reading, it's like just the rest of the world could be on fire. And you're like, just one more chapter, just one more time. So it's a little more energy. And to have it fires up your brain, like your actually there doing it, if it has a well-written book, all of your senses are firing. It's like, you're dreaming it. It's your it's becoming part of you and movies do not actually do that to you. So it's a totally different process that you're trying to get readers hooked on, get that adrenaline rush going, You know? Jesper (27m 23s): Yeah, that's true because essentially the, well, what do you know, watching a slow a, a, a, a show on Netflix, for example, if it is just being served to you right now, whereas the reading is an immersive, may you are inserting yourself into the story. Whereas watching his show on Netflix, it's just a couch potato or wanting something. And, you know, you don't, unless the character mentioned a smell or sneezes, or does something to clue you in that they're smelling something. It doesn't even Dawn on you that, you know, they're sitting by the campfire in there going to smell like Ash. But when you're reading it, there are a good writer is going to have layer that in or the smell of a dragon, or is it the smell of something? Jesper (28m 6s): And it's going to immerse you, like you said, in a far different way. And that's what the people who love reading. That's what they love has because it really drags you in and you don't get that quality unless you're working on it, unless you're doing it, you know, on purpose. Autumn (28m 22s): Even after 20 some books, I still have a Check where I check all of my chapters for things like the five sentences and stuff, because it's easy to get into the mood and you're done writing and you go all the visual and very little auditory because I'm half deaf. So let me do, you know, you got to add that stuff and yeah. Jesper (28m 42s): Yeah, that's true. Autumn (28m 44s): And, and that's really where the Mindset thing comes in. Meaning that if you have to be conscious about the fact that you have to produce really, really high quality work, because otherwise, if its sort of halfway there, you can imagine like somebody is sitting there with the Kindle Or whatever they are reading on. And There are sort of, well maybe they read two chapters and they're like, Oh, well it's not really engaging me the stuff. And then they are watching over at the TV, hanging on the wall over there and it's like, no, let me, let me go watch some TV or is that right? Jesper (29m 17s): Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem. So it is, it's not an easy for sure, but a, but it is important to be aware of. Autumn (29m 25s): Definitely. And I think that's, I like that you started on that one. Cause like I said to me, the quality, the artistic, the desire to keep trying to improve yourself and your craft and your writing to me, it's very important. It's important, artistically, as important as your mindset that always having that curiosity, you never say I Am good enough. I do not need to learn anything else about Writing. I don't need to read any books because I don't need to learn anything. That's not going to, it's not the right mindset to have to be a successful author. You should always be thinking, what can I do better? How w who is another author? Who's better than I am. So I'm going to read there and see what I like. And I'm going to break it down. Every time we read a book, every time we watched a movie, you are like breaking down the plots and the characters in the person next to you. Autumn (30m 9s): I was like, Oh my gosh, just please it enjoy this. And you were like, no, I'm going to tell you that that was foreshadowing. I know that that's true because, well, at least for me, when I started writing myself, the way I experience stories was like, if you a, if you were looking at it one way, you could say broken forever. Jesper (30m 38s): But if you look at it on another way, it's just changed forever because, well, yeah, I don't know how to improve because in some way it has broken because I cannot enjoy a story. Like it could be four because I'm looking, I'm looking at a structure behind the words and, and I cannot help myself. Or even sometimes I try consciously to ignore it and just read the story. She would go up, but I cannot help myself looking at, Oh, that was a forest at foreshadowing hint there. And there was something that I might pick it up and I just can't let it go. I'm reading one. Now I just started, I'm probably like 20% Intuit. I'm not going to mention the title of anything. So don't worry. Ah, I'm not going to put any time anybody down on it, but actually, you know, but, but honestly I really liked it. Jesper (31m 22s): It was so far, it's a really good book. It's a really good story. But the one thing that I did pick it up already is that because it's a FANTASY, so you have multiple characters and I've done this myself in the past as well. So I'm not thinking on the author at all. But the introduction of the point of view characters is quite aggressive in the early phases of the book. Meaning that you're, you are sort of, are you jumping from one to the next, to the next, to the next, like the, for the first four or five chapters in a row? And it is slightly confusing, but as you, because you don't quite understand how it connects together. And, and also you are a bit like when you get back to the characters, like which character was this again? Jesper (32m 7s): Because it was introduced too fast and I've done this myself. So I'm not thinking on anybody at all, but I just think that there is something there I notice is a slightly detour, But, but there's something there about thinking about how are you eating new characters into the story and not going too fast. I think I'm 25% in the, according to my Kindle now. And is it starting to make sense? I can see how it connects now, but the first like 15%, maybe 2015, 20% of the book, it was pretty confusing even though what was happening was really cool. And I really liked it. It, it was cool. Cool action scenes and everything was really good. Autumn (32m 48s): Well, billing is great, but it's just a small things that might tick some people off. Some readers me like, no, this is too confusing. I'm going to give up it's right. Jesper (32m 58s): And you can't write it for everyone. So there is going to, you're never going to satisfy everyone, but it's definitely something to think, to keep in mind, as you learn your craft, you know, you have someone who maybe will point that out to you or something for yourself to think about. And I think that's where the idea of always improving, you know, looking at how things are working, reading other books and seeing what worked and what didn't work, so that you can look at your next story and you keep writing and keep going. Autumn (33m 26s): Indeed. And the other thing that I also feel like it is really important when it comes to Mindset is long-term thinking a little bit. I like that one, because this is of course where I'm looping back to the fact that I was set in the beginning, that I am looking at this from a commercial perspective, but overnight riches almost never happens. So if you're trying to plan for, or even hoping that your debut novel we'll be like this major Success, it probably won't a, and I'm sorry, but the truth of the matter, and we can take a couple of examples here. So Lee child, for example, a highly, highly successful British a thriller author. Jesper (34m 10s): I, he is, I think last time I tried to look it up, he was estimated to have a net worth of around $50 million. Okay. So I guess we can call that successful. Can we, Autumn (34m 22s): Yeah, I guess, I mean really? Yeah. Jesper (34m 24s): Yeah. But he didn't really find much success until he had published about 10 books and George RR Martin is similar. Yes. Autumn (34m 32s): Yeah. I'll say he has had a very long career to finally reach the pinnacle that he has. And he's no, you know, the kid anymore either. Jesper (34m 43s): No, indeed. So it's, it's small like millions. I know it's not just going to start rolling and you know, it's, it's a matter of over the longterm to build a catalog of books with each will earn you a little bit more and to make that career out of writing, you have to consistently be working on a new book. And this is not me saying that you have to release a new title every month. Not at all because I, I know some people do and that's how they enter the living and find if that's what you can do. But to me, it would stress me out. If I felt like I had to release a new title every month and write 6,000 words a day as something, Nope, not going to happen. Autumn (35m 25s): I'm not that kind of a writer. And I don't want to be either, but at least put your butt in the chair and at least two, some writing so that you are at least working on your back a back catalog all the time or building that back catalog 'cause At the end of the day, that's where the money is going to come from. And then they go down the line 15, 20 books later, or like with your tire Martin, 20 years later, if you finally get some awesome success than great. But I, I think planing for that, or even expecting that it's not going to bring you any good. No. And especially in today's market, I mean, maybe you will hit it out of the park with one book, but you, I think we've both seen it. Autumn (36m 6s): I think Chris Fox as a few other authors who have try it a couple of a different series and they still, even once they become popular, they can have something that doesn't sell because it's not as much of an interest. So you have to keep trying in generating new content and trying to find maybe the book that hopefully Lyfts all of them up, but you could always have that one series and everyone's like, Oh, Oh, well, that's the one we don't talk about, you know? Jesper (36m 30s): Oh yeah. You remember when he wrote that, you know, it's, it's always going to be a challenge, but it's definitely, you want to keep writing and you want to remember that this is a marathon. If you're doing this as a passion, if you were expecting to write three books and you're going to be as famous as George R. Martin or Stephanie Meyer or a JK Rowling's those that really is the less than a 1% have the 1% have the 1%, there are so many millions of authors and there are many, you know, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe just thousands that are making a full time living off of Writing. There's many more who are having it as a very solid PR part time job, or as a part of a different part time job, or, you know, balancing several things. Autumn (37m 14s): And then there's others that this is literally just going to be a hobby. That's not going to be a huge revenue stream. So you need to remember there's all of these different tiers and it is sort of onto you two have the mindset, the strategy is the goal was the marketing, the skills, the quality, all of those tools to help sometimes the luck to make this into something more. Jesper (37m 40s): Yeah, Yeah. Agree with that. And everybody fits into those categories differently. And, and, and, and that's also absolutely fine. Autumn (37m 47s): I just think from the front have mine set perspective, I just think it's important not to sort of set yourself up for failure, meaning that you get into it with the idea that I'm going to be in the top 1% of all authors globally. And I'm going to be as rich as a J K Rowling or something like that. It's well, great if it happens, but it's probably not. And if you're setting yourself up for that, you can see you're almost only gonna fail and you are going to disappoint yourself. One of the reasons is not all of them, but one of the reasons why people stop writing is because they get disappointed and they feel like, no, this is not what I expected. It should be. I had hoped that I was going to learn a lot more money by now or, or, or whatever. Autumn (38m 33s): But if they had just kept writing maybe four books more Jesper (38m 37s): From the word AI, it now it would make it a difference. So it was just a shame too, to drop your writing because of something like that. And I think it's important to try to set yourself up by thinking long term, maybe earning 50 K a hundred K a year. Maybe that's modern enough for what you want. I mean, who says you have to earn millions, maybe even 10 K if it's the sidekick, the 10 K can pay your summer vacation every year. And maybe that is Autumn (39m 7s): Yeah, absolutely fine. Yeah. I mean, nothing wrong with that. You should definitely have, you know, your idea of what, what is the, what is, I think everyone should have a solid, this is my goal to get to and know that it might take time to get there. And do you, like you said, maybe it's only 10 K a year, but to say, if I hit five K a year, 10 K a year, if I could do this much money, I would feel like I was totally successful and no, it doesn't hurt to have that like, you know, shooting for the stars. That's Okay. Because maybe then you'll hit the moon. That there's nothing wrong with that. But to know, to at least know that thinking you're going to hit JK Rowling's level is probably really going to be amazing and lucky and hard, but that's okay if you just hit Jupiter, the Jupiter is nice. Autumn (39m 54s): You know, you don't have to go outside of the solar system, but just to have that Real, that reality check where it's great to maybe dream big. But remember that is dreaming. The reality is going to be in something a lot closer to home and know what that is. Do you know what you really want to work towards and then working towards it? And for me, this is one part of my mindset, I think is really important. And I remember when I was first becoming an entrepreneur and I read that the sign of someone who will make a good entrepreneur is someone who can work for 12 hours, go to bed and feel like I'm out of ideas. I am disappointed nothing work today. And they will wake up in the morning and they'll go, all right, what am I trying to do today? Autumn (40m 35s): And you will start over with all the same passion, all of the same curiosity, problem solving, look at things from a new perspective, you have to wake up in the morning and say, I am doing this again. Cause this is what I want to do. And you're going to look at it from a different angle. And if you feel like you need to, someone keep bolstering you and telling you because you can everyone, you know, cheerleaders. But if you need that over 50% of the time, like 80% of the time, you are looking for someone telling you you're going to be okay, you're going to do a good job. This is going to be really hard for you. You need to have a certain level of confidence in what you're doing, your marketing. And if you don't have it, now go take the lessons, go get the skills, bring yourself up to where you feel. Autumn (41m 15s): You are capable of succeeding. You just need to keep, you need to work, keep working and getting there because it is a lot of hard work. And if you don't believe in yourself, and if you're not trying to improve yourself, then it's going to be that much harder and you probably will give, so you need to have that mindset of what am I gonna do now? This was a tough day. I'm having a glass of wine in some chocolate and tomorrow we are going to hit the ground running. Jesper (41m 46s): And tomorrow I'm going to make waffles dog. The dog Shrek is secretly. Autumn (41m 57s): One of my favorite movies. It's just awesome. Is the first one I ever watched the turnout, all of the fairy tales in their heads. And I'm like, this is it. This is why I love This. So yes, tomorrow you will have to make waffles if you were going to get up and you're going to do the waffles. And if you had to end the day in wine again, that's OK. But the next day you're doing waffles again. Jesper (42m 18s): Not, not, not everyday, hopefully ending the day with wine. That's that's not going to be very healthy in the long term waffles in the morning. And why did the evening, I think is going to be the end of you at some point. Yeah. Autumn (42m 29s): Why not? If you want me to, if you were enjoying life. Yeah. Jesper (42m 33s): But at least if, if, if you need some encouragement and if you need some support and back up the head off, over to the Am, Writing Fantasy Facebook group, 'cause, there is a lot of good people helping each other in their, and an offering SUPPORT. So, so that's at least the community that will help you. So feel free to join there. If you just go to the group session section on Facebook and search for Am Writing Fantasy, and you will find us. Yeah. But I have one more Autumn. And I think this is probably the most important one of them all Autumn (43m 2s): I used to be. I'll see. I'll see if I agree with you. Jesper (43m 5s): Yeah. Of course. Devil's advocate over there. You can see how we love it. Yeah. Autumn (43m 9s): Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Jesper (43m 13s): I think, and again, this is coming from the commercial perspective again. Right. But they are those who have the mindset that if the writing is just good enough, then the readers will come to me and it will grow from there. They will start reading the next book I write and the book after that. And if I got through that because of the writing is so great. So the only thing I really need to focus on is my writing skills. And don't get me wrong. Writing skills is incredibly important. Of course, you have to be able to tell a really, really good story and have really good writing as well. Jesper (43m 53s): But yeah, Yeah. It's not everything. Autumn (43m 57s): No, no, no. It's not every day and age. You just, Jesper (43m 59s): Or you have to advertise your books, but above all, you have to build an email list so that you can get in touch with your readers when you release a new book, because honestly, readers, I'm not as loyal to the author. As you might think. In many cases, they don't even remember what the author's name was. Then they might not remember the title of the book, but they don't really remember who the author was. And they don't really according to research. And I cannot remember the exact numbers, but I, it was something to do With that in an average Rita's I would have to have read three or four books of the same author before they started remembering what the author named was. Jesper (44m 42s): Because otherwise you just don't remember if you had them on your e-mail list, you can send them an email and you can say, Hey, the new book is ready here. Here's the link. So you can pick it up right now. And then they might not necessarily, but they might go on and do that because they know there's a reason why they ended up on your list and the first place it was because they liked what they read. So they don't have to remember to check Amazon. I wonder if this author here really is something new, because nobody will do that, right. That they won't go on to Amazon once a month to check if you uploaded the new book. Autumn (45m 14s): But if you get them on your email list, you could just tell them, and that's not a sale right there. So for me, the mindset around thinking that the writing is the only important thing, I think that probably worked 10 years ago, but not anymore. And even in 10 years ago, I'm not sure if it was, I mean, it helped when eBooks were, if you were out with eBooks, we're new and you were in a good writer, you were probably right now on the forefront. But for most people, it's not just about being a good writer. I mean, I, I, my true, true deep fans, you know, they tell me that I'm better than Told can. I just love them so much, but it's not enough if you don't have the mindset of how to market, of how to stay in touch with your readers, how to connect with them and even know some of those like little marketing tips, like this is why I saved. Autumn (45m 59s): I wrote an entire series and now I'm releasing them. Back-to-back it's not just because of, you know, the excitement of releasing them. Back-to-back but it's also because readers will then, you know, not get lost in the series. They will be like, Oh, it was the next ones out. Oh, the next ones out. And they come right along with it very quickly, because most series don't sell until you get to the last book anyway. So you might as well say to them all up to the end, but those are the things again. So you're always looking for it's more than writing. I love the writing craft. If I could just be a little hermit in the woods. Oh, Hey, nevermind. So if you could just sit in and right now we have to worry about marketing is fantastic, but it's not the reality. Jesper (46m 41s): You have to know how to Mark it and you have to be able to talk to your readers and know where they are and they have to be able to find you. And the email list is definitely the easiest way of doing that. Autumn (46m 54s): Yeah. It's a devil's advocate in the woods have spoken. Jesper (46m 57s): That's right. Autumn (46m 58s): And I got quite a hermit because I have a, another hermit with me. So what are two hermits? I don't know what the term would be. Hermits assists. Well, I know a hermit or a place where hermit lives as call it a hermit Todd. It was just so I can go with that. Jesper (47m 16s): Okay. Well, anyway, if you liked what you heard today, and if you want to sort of dive much more deeper into all the different aspects of being a self published author, what you Should be aware of, what you should think about everything to do with like creating covers that fix Fitz, the markets, how is the Amazon algorithm works? How to run book launches and so much more, the good news is that Autumn and I created a a hundred percent FREE costs that we call it self publishing success course. And I would encourage you to go and check that one out. We will place a link to the sign up page in the show notes. Jesper (47m 60s): A and it's not going to cost you anything other than you need to put it in your email address two too, so that we can email you the different modules and you get onto the cost platform. But I suggest that you check it out and there is so much good content in there that you can dive into. And of course, if you don't like it, you can unsubscribe at any time. No questions asked. So it's easy. Check it out for FREE. And yeah, that's pretty cool. So I think it's an amazing Course. So yes, it is. It is definitely something that if you're starting out or even just stalled or just have questions, this is definitely the thing to take. I wish I had it when I first started in 2012. Jesper (48m 41s): So I'm glad we have it now and can help out authors and helped them on their journey and help their mindset because there are things as a whole module on mindset you want to, Autumn (48m 54s): Okay. Jesper (48m 54s): Yeah. So next Monday we will do a deep dive into a tool that we are finding incredibly valuable when editing and that's the software called pro Writing. I, yeah. Narrator (49m 5s): Yeah. If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patrion.com/ Am. Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, going to stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The Invisible Man (2020). The premise of the show: Two or one of us explain a movie to the other two or one of us-- in its entirety! So there's this man... can't see him. Enjoy our first film of Round 7 in the comfort of your own homes and #FlattenTheCurve! This week Kimmy and Kayleen explain the latest male nonsense poor, sweet Elisabeth Moss is subjected to. Spoiler alert: The ENTIRETY of the 2020 film WILL be spoiled in our discussion of ladders, Lyfts, and laboratories. For spoiler time-stamps, check out our Instagram and Twitter @WeExplainMovies. Episode Chapters:  1:35 What did you watch this week? 8:55 Movie-related questions 20:05 Film discussion: The Invisible Man (2020) 1:24:15 Ratings and reviews 1:30:15 Watchlist and Recommendations

Karl Hedberg från vårt aktiemäkleri presenterar dagens marknadskommentar. Avsnitten släpps för Carnegies Private Banking-kunder kl 16:00 i Carnegie Online. Disclaimer Denna podcast är utgiven av Carnegie Private Banking inom Carnegie Investment Bank AB (publ). Risker Investeringar i finansiella instrument är förknippade med risk och en investering kan både öka och minska i värde eller komma att bli värdelös. Historisk avkastning är ingen garanti för framtida avkastning. Ingen del av podcasten skall uppfattas som en uppmaning eller rekommendation att utföra eller disponera över någon typ av investering eller att ingå några andra transaktioner. De uppfattningar som redogjorts för i podcasten återspeglar de medverkandes uppfattning för tillfället och kan således komma att ändras. Informationen i podcasten tar inte hänsyn till någon specifik mottagares särskilda investeringsmål, ekonomiska situation eller behov. Informationen är inte att betrakta som en personlig rekommendation eller ett investeringsråd. Adekvat och professionell rådgivning skall alltid inhämtas innan några investeringsbeslut fattas och varje sådant investeringsbeslut fattas självständigt av kunden och på dennes eget ansvar. Carnegie frånsäger sig allt ansvar för direkt eller indirekt förlust eller skada som grundar sig på användandet av information i podcasten.

In this episode, we cover the horror of losing very important things in Lyfts, “bossy” women, side hustles, and much more! Who’s looking into selling pictures of their feet? Tune in to the Facial Recognition Comedy Podcast on your podcast app, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM, or Spreaker to find out!Video versions of the podcast available at https://tinyurl.com/y9rzlxbbPodcast Website: https://www.comedypopupla.com/facialrecognitioncomedyFollow us:https://www.instagram.com/fizaadosanihttps://www.instagram.com/reallyzahrahttps://www.instagram.com/pallavigunalan

In this episode, we cover the horror of losing very important things in Lyfts, “bossy” women, side hustles, and much more! Who’s looking into selling pictures of their feet? Tune in to the Facial Recognition Comedy Podcast on your podcast app, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM, or Spreaker to find out!Video versions of the podcast available at https://tinyurl.com/y9rzlxbbPodcast Website: https://www.comedypopupla.com/facialrecognitioncomedyFollow us:https://www.instagram.com/fizaadosanihttps://www.instagram.com/reallyzahrahttps://www.instagram.com/pallavigunalan

One of the busiest sections of San Francisco's Market Street is now car-free. Nearly a week ago, after years of planning, city officials closed a 2-mile downtown stretch of Market Street to private vehicles, including Ubers and Lyfts. We'll talk about the changes and we want to hear from you: whether you're a biker, pedestrian or driver, join us with your reactions.

Apparently Coach Kev was seen in Houston a few days ago driving an Uber on his day off. Sources say he was asked if he “fell off,” and Coach kindly reminded the passengers that he’s just taking care of his responsibilities. Did he really fall off? If a man works a minimum wage job but feeds his family does that make him less of a man? Does Coach Kev listen to Usher’s most famous song while ubering? Was the story even about a Coach Kev...or Yung Joc? If you meet someone in the club, is it going down? Can you truly know when you are 100% ready for marriage? At what point should social media life coaches be careful of the narrative they push to vulnerable people? We got questions...and we are sure y’all have answers! So come join us for the Chop Up Session.... Shoutout to all the Ubers, Lyfts, McDonald’s employees, and anybody else working just to take care of business. This one is for you!

From the Simplr studios in San Francisco, this is your daily briefing.  IntroductionThis is Today in Five, for today, Thursday, January 16th. Here are today’s headlines in digital disruption.Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft have waged a not so silent war on taxis. The effect can especially be felt in Los Angeles, but now the city and taxis are trying to evolve to compete with the ride-hailing services.  First, here are the latest headlines.Retailers Rediscovering Importance of Physical StoresAfter the National Retail Federation’s Big Show, one thing was clear. Many retailers have a newfound appreciation for the value of their physical stores, but also many are struggling with the limits of the online channel. A principal at venture capital firm Comcast Ventures said, “The pendulum has swung.” He noted it has become easier to launch a direct-to-consumer company than to sustain or grow one. While some companies are seeking further investment on the public market, like Casper who recently filed for an IPO, other brands like Billie and Dollar Shave Club were acquired by consumer product goods conglomerates. The store experience is valuable for not only providing in-person, touch-and-feel experiences for shoppers, it also provides marketing that so far online search or sites have not been able to match. The trend seems to indicate that just as e-commerce has become a given for traditional retailers, it now seems like a must to maximize and measure the value of connections and discovery possible only in-store.  Target Sales Fall ShortTarget, who has posted strong quarters and been considered a standout in retail, fell short over the holidays. Target revealed its same-store sales during November and December were up just 1.4 percent, compared with growth of 5.7 percent the year before. Target said it found strength in apparel and beauty, while electronics, toys, and parts of its home business didn’t perform as well as they’d hoped. CEO Brian Cornell said in a blog post, “While we knew this season was going to be challenging, it was even more challenging than we expected.” Cornell also said that while Target faced challenges in November and December in key categories, they were maintaining their guidance for fourth-quarter earnings per share because of the durability of the company’s business model.Secondhand Beauty Industry GrowingYou’ve no doubt heard all about the secondhand apparel craze that has become a booming industry, but what about the secondhand beauty industry? Online platforms like Poshmark and Glambot are normalizing makeup and skincare reselling by using technology that authenticates, sanitizes, and repackages products. The process is just like clothing resale platforms where customers send in lightly used items and, if approved, sell them to other shoppers. Beauty resale allows fast beauty consumers to remain on-trend while solving the consumption problem that fast beauty created.  Los Angeles Taxis Try To Get With The Ride-Hailing TimesRide-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft have waged a not so silent war on taxis. The effect can especially be felt in Los Angeles. According to Los Angeles World Airports, which operates LAX, taxis handled just 22 percent of pickups at the airport for the first three quarters of 2019, with ride hails claiming the rest. The divide in numbers was similar throughout the rest of the city, with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation estimating taxi business was down 75 percent since 2012, the year Uber first rolled into town. Now, the taxis of Los Angeles are fighting back. Instead of calling an individual company to request a cab, passengers will be assigned rides through a centralized dispatch that connects all the cabs in the city. The taxis can be requested with an app or phone call and passengers will know the cost of their rides before getting into the car. Meters will be modernized and cabs’ typical garish colors will be optional. Jarvis Murray, an administrator with the city Transportation Department said, “We want to give them an opportunity to be able to retain and add customers, to be innovative and nimble.”  Dr. Anne Brown compared taxis and ride-hail services when she was a researcher with the Institute of Transporation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. She found the average cost for an Uber or Lyft was less than when using a taxi. She also found that in 10 percent of the trips, taxi drivers traveled twice as many miles as necessary. After interviewing students who had assisted with the research, most said the unreliability of taxis didn’t end once they were in the car. They didn’t know how much the trip would be and there wasn’t always a recourse if they were unsatisfied with the driver. With Uber and Lyft, they could complain and get their money back.It’s these issues that Los Angeles is trying to address with its new taxi permit system. Dr. Brown said taxis have tried to innovate. Many companies have developed their own apps, but they work only for that individual fleet and may not operate in the area where a customer needs a ride. At least one developer has tried to bring all the cabs’ apps under the same umbrella to operate more like Uber or Lyft, but the app doesn’t work well, she said. The findings bring up the question: why not let the taxi system fail if Ubers and Lyfts are superior options?Dr. Brown said, “Taxis are this legacy service...They’re a really important mode for so many travelers.” They’re important for travelers without cars or don’t have the necessary smartphone or debit or credit card to use a ride-hail app. Dr. Brown noted that taxis were used most often by the city’s lowest-income people, who pay with cash.  It remains to be seen how the city’s attempt to modernize the taxi industry will stack up against services like Uber and Lyft who have successfully disrupted the industry.  ClosingFind out how Simplr can cut your customer service response time through cutting-edge technology and on-demand talent at simplr.ai. That’s S-I-M-P-L-R.ai.Thanks for listening to this latest episode of Today In Five. We’ll see you tomorrow. 

It’s big bank earnings season, so we went financial on this one. JPMorgan Chase apparently covers half of America, which led to its record profit (more than the value of 2 Lyfts). Visa dropped $5.3B to acquire Plaid, the fintech app that sits on a treasure trove of financial info, like your Venmo account. And BlackRock’s CEO whips up a new mandate: $7T to fight climate change through good, clean, financial pressure.

This was a fun week at the Some Random Podcast studios! Mike was MAD about a few random things, Tony lost his phone in a Lyft and much much more. Weight Watchers Updates, Joker got ALLLLL the Oscar nominations, #theKaiden thinks he is a savage, Iran is shooting missiles at us, #TheWyatt is still saying weird stuff, George Lopez is in hot water with the FBI, Bernie Sanders doesn't think a woman can win the presidency, school zones are dumb and a ton more! SomeRandomPod@gmail.comBiggMikeSmooth (@tattoofacemike)#TheAnonymousTony (@DarthMeme34)

A special bonus episode of the Florida State Podcast of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. This episode is a presentation given by Lisa Boyd, Lyft's Senior Manager of Social Impact. In this episode, Lisa Boyd talks about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), perhaps the biggest sea change in business since the tech revolution and Lyfts's commitment to Corporate Responsibility, implementation strategy, and the metrics they used to determine impact.

My name is Audrey Powell, and this is NYShe! GOBBLE GOBBLE HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I am joined by my good Judy Alec Beiswenger for TURKEY LURKEY TIME BBY!! We are giving you all of the BLACK FRIDAY DEALS you want to know about, why America is wrong about not liking green bean casserole, taking Lyfts to Taco Bell, and is Alec ready to take on NYC? Make sure to follow us on Instagram @nyshepodcast, and don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and follow us on Spotify! Hope you have a fabulous rest of your day, and we will NYShe you next week! Love, NYShe. ©

Eddie Murphy was on Kimmel and had big news about his plans for SNL - could be epic.  Did you watch Dolemite yet?  Meanwhile, Shane Gillis returns to the stage.  Finally, please don't put screens playing stand up comedy in the backseats of Ubers and Lyfts.  Don’t.

Running time: 21 minutes A white paper from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) advises clinicians, health planners, and emergency responders that the old ways of responding to mass casualty events no longer hold. Wounded people arrive in Ubers and Lyfts at hospitals that are unprepared to be trauma centers. It’s […]

Vermont's ultra rural Northeast Kingdom and small towns in Sonoma County California find that fare free is the way to go. It's filling bus seats; connecting residents to jobs, healthcare, education, shopping, and social opportunities; and even enticing drivers out of their cars. 

Is Solo Travel for YOU???  Afraid to travel solo – especially solo adventure travel? Today's guests share their insights as to the Pro's and Con's of solo travel and share what they consider the benefits and challenges, plus their tips to make adventure travel solo safe and fun.   Is Solo Travel for YOU???  Afraid to travel solo – especially solo adventure travel? Today's guests share their insights as to the Pro's and Con's of solo travel and share what they consider the benefits and challenges, plus their tips to make adventure travel solo safe and fun.   Today's Guest Interviews on Solo Adventure Travel  This episode is a rebroadcast of an episode on our companion Active Travel Adventures podcast.  Jackie Nourse of Traveling Jackie and the Budget Minded Traveler, Jason Waitkinsand Monica Arangurenshare their thoughts on taking a solo holiday and what it's like to travel by yourself.  See some of their solo adventures photos down below! Seven Reasons to Solo Travel There are lots of reasons you might travel solo: 1. Maybe you can't find anyoneto travel where you want to go, when you want to go.  If you want to go, but aren't comfortable going completely on your own, consider small group travel.  Be aware of any single supplements and look for companies that pair you with someone if you don't want to pay extra to travel alone. My affiliate, Active Adventures(different company with a similar name) does NOT make you pay the dreaded Single Supplement. 2. You need some time to yourself to just THINK! If you need to figure some things out in your life, consider taking a long distance hike or cycling trip.  You'll have all day to yourself, but will meet people along the way for when you could use a little company.  Check out my West Highland Wayand Cotswold Waylong distance walking holiday adventures for some inspiration. 3.  You want to develop your ‘Grit Bone'or what Jackie calls her “Courage Muscles”. There's nothing like adventure travel, and in particular, solo travel to test your mettleand to expand what you think possible for yourself!  It's a great way to boost your self esteem and self reliance, too!  If you want to feel empowered, try adventure travel, and in particular SOLO Adventure Travel! 4.  It's easier to meet new people when you travel solo.  Locals are more likely to come up to introduce themselves when they see you alone, so you'll have more local interaction. 5.  You'll develop better problem solving skills.  When it's just you, YOUhave to figure out what to do when something goes awry.  You'll learn that you are quite good at finding a solution, no matter how clumsy it is, when you know that you simply HAVE to! 6.  You'll discover what you really like and dislike:  when your schedule is completely your own, you have to make ALL the decisions, from what time to wake up, to what, when and where to eat, to how to spend your time, etc.  If you go someplace and decide you've had enough, you can simply leave without conferring with travel mates, or you can spend all day in a museum that rocks your boat, but would bore your normal partner. 7.  Traveling solo can sometimes be lonely, so even introverts learn how to strike up a conversation(my go to questions is, “So how was your day?”  People love to talk about themselves.  You'll always find other solo travelers at the bar next to a hostel, so head there at cocktail hour to find others that would love to chat.  For that matter, consider even staying in a hostel so you can meet folks in the common areas.  Many offer single rooms so you don't have to sleep dorm style.   Alternately, stay at an Airbnb where the people live there as well and the comments from previous guest indicate that the hosts like to be social with guests.  Consider Couchsurfing.  Also sign up to do a Walking Tour or other group activity to meet others.  See if there are any interesting Meetups going on while you're in town and reach out to the group organizer to attend. Solo Travel Tips and Rules I've been traveling solo for five years now and I've come up with some rules that help keep me safe and reduce stress (in no particular order): 1. When ‘winging it' while traveling, I make sure that I know where I am going to sleep before noon. 2. Whenever possible, I make sure that I arrive at the night's accommodations before dark. 3. When out, I never leave my food or drink unattended. 4. Don't drink too much or do any drugs.  Get back to your room at a reasonable hour. 5. Be careful of overly cautious locals who might be setting you up… does someone on the bus or train rush to try to share a cab with you?  This could be a setup: the cabbie could be a partner in crime.  Check the US State Dept Travel advisoryfor the country you are visiting to see what the current local scams are.  Register your trip with the Smart Traveler Program. 6. Ask your hotel to call you a cab or take highly ratedUber or Lyfts to avoid rogue cabbies.  7.  Ask a local to circle bad areas on a paper map. 8.  Be mindful of your surroundings at all times and have an exit plan.  9.  Hold onto your luggage, going so far as to bike lock it to yourself should you be on a long train or bus where you might sleep. 10.  Make sure someone knows where you are supposed to be and what time you are supposed to arrive AND when to sound an alarm should he or she not hear from you. Some of the adventures Jason has taken that have been covered by ATA include: Patagonia(Argentina & Chile) Ecuador Kilimanjaro Nepal Peru  [Machu Picchu] New Zealand South Island  Part I New Zealand South Island  Part II New Zealand North Island Part III Some of Monica's epic trips that ATA has covered: Dolomites Mont Blanc Galapagos New Zealand South Island  Part I New Zealand South Island  Part II New Zealand North Island Part III One of our guests today, Jackie, is also a travel blogger and podcaster. She did an excellent episode on Solo Travel you can access here.  You can also find her at Traveling Jackie, the Budget Minded Traveler(nowJump). Also be sure to check out my interview with Jackie on the Active Travel Adventures podcast on her adventures in Quebec! Other Links Mentioned in Today's Show: Travel Safety Tips Cotswold Way Mont Blanc Dolomites Galapagos Kilimanjaro Part I Kilimanjaro Part II Annapurna Travel Insurance When you buy travel insurance, please use this link to my affiliate World Nomads.  At no additional cost to you, you'll be helping to support this podcast and website - thanks! Training for your Adventures If you need some coaching and advice on how to prepare for your upcoming adventure, please consider using this link to Fit For Trips.  At no additional cost to you - in fact, use Promo Code ATAKIT10to get a 10% Discount, you'll be helping to keep the lights on - thanks!   Active Travel Adventures Podcast Be sure to check out our companion podcast,  Active Travel Adventures.  On ATA, I encourage you to lead a bigger life through adventure travel.  Each episode features an exciting adventure travel destination like the kinds Monica and Jason talked about today! Solo Adventure Travel We're going solo. That's right. Even if you have a partner, I want you to read this blog post because there are definite advantages and challenges to traveling solo. Even if you think, “There is no way I would ever travel solo,” please read on with an open mind. You might change your mind. I'll be interviewing three solo travelers about the challenges and joys of traveling solo. Since I usually travel solo myself, you'll hear my two cents worth as well. It's a great show. Even if you think, “No way, I could never travel solo.” I beg you please read on and see if you don't change your mind. If you're like me, you don't want to live an ordinary life. You want to live a kick-ass life, and one way to do so is to add adventure travel to your life. I find adventure travel brings out the best in me. It challenges me, it encourages me, it enlightens me, and it inspires me to lead a bigger life. On this program, you'll learn about amazing adventures from around the world plus get the tools and information you need so you could do these adventures with confidence. You'll come home feeling empowered and with amazing memories and stories that you can relive forever. Don't worry, the bar is such that my relatively fit 58-year-old body, particularly with some training, can do these adventures and you can too. This episode is a roundup episode. I've got three guests that I will be interviewing separately about their experiences with solo travel. Our first guest is Jackie Norris, who we met on one of our episodes. She is the host of Traveling Jackieand The Budget-Minded Travelerand has been traveling solo for a long time. She has a ton of insights to share with us. When I interviewed her in Quebec, I asked her casually about solo. We got engrossed in it that I decided to take that section of our interview and added to this solo episode. Our other guests are Monica and Jason. I'll let them introduce themselves. Let's start with my interview with Jackie. Jackie, why do you travel solo? The reason I do solo travel is that I'm solo. I don't let that stop me. For years and years, a lot of people struggle with the idea of getting out on their own. It's a necessity for me. It's what I have to do and so I do it. I never thought I would enjoy it, but I do love it now. You have to get to a point where you're comfortable with it. I've already been traveling for a number of years by the time that I went nomadic like fully solo nomadic a few years ago. Even after that much time of being comfortable traveling, it was weird to be on my own all the time. For the cons, you are by yourself. All of those travel decisions are made only by you. Even where you're going to eat for breakfast in the morning or if you're going to get a beer this afternoon, everything is solely up to you. There's no one that you can confer with. That also happens to be one of the advantages of it. Sometimes it depends on which perspective you have looking on it. Maybe it depends on the day. Sometimes it's amazing and sometimes you wish there was someone there. Loneliness is a real thing. I have written about that before and most solo travelers will face real loneliness. It's not just the point of being solo in a place, it's feeling alone. There's a big difference and that can get to you if it's a while. I traveled for months at a time and it can get draining on me to be alone. At the same time, this is where I am in my life and this is what I'm signing up for. This is also my work and this is what I'm choosing to do. It's part of the territory if you look at it that way. The freedom that solo travel provides is unmatched in this world. There is a feeling that comes with being on your own in some far-flung corner of the planet completely left to yourself and your own thoughts. What you want to do for the day, everything is your will. It is the most freeing feeling ever. It's incredible. You can do whatever you want. There are definitely pros and cons of solo travel. I always encourage people to at least try it out because you get to know yourself very quickly. Even if you think you know yourself, you don't, not until you solo travel. You could see what you're capable of and what your weaknesses are. It's an incredible tool for life to solo travel. Everyone should do it at least once. You had a quote in your the Budget-Minded Traveler episode number 63 that I loved. It was, “Lose yourself until you find yourself.” Could you talk a little bit about that? I thought that was excellent. It gave me chills when you read it. That came from a piece that I wrote on my Travelling Jackie blog. It was when I decided to leave everything behind and go out on my own to travel the world solo for real for the first time. This was many years after having traveled a whole bunch already and studying abroad and all that. This was different because I had a relationship, I had a house and I had all these things. I felt very lost at times, but it's because I had to recreate what my life looked like. That was my moment to decide what my new normal was going to be going forward. I did lose part of myself there in that in a good way though. It's like you have to go see what the world has for you and then figure out what you look like in that new normal. Figure out what the path forward is in this new reality that you've created. That's at least how it applied to me. It depends on what your situation is and why you're choosing to solo travel. Where you are and you’re like so much about experience outwardly when you travel, has to do what's going on inside. That was my experience at the time. I totally went out and lost myself until I started to rebuild and find what that meant to start over. It's obvious that travel in general and solo travel in particular, changed your life. I'm grateful for that because I feel so much surer of who I am. I'm so much stronger now. I have so much more confidence. These are the things that come with being on your own for so long in a place. It's not saying being on your own at home where you're comfortable with everything and you know the name of the store owner down the street, whatever. It's not like that at all. Everything is different. Everything is new. Foreign languages, foreign currency, borders, flights, hotels, everything is a challenge. When you add that element to being completely on your own for a long time, maybe for the first time, it changes everything. Your personal growth is expedited more than anything.       In the last few years since I lost my husband, I've been traveling solo. The one question I get over and over again is about safety and the Boogie Man at night. How do I deal with the safety issues? How do you respond to questions like that you get? Are you not afraid about those things at home? Bad things can happen anywhere. It doesn't matter where you are. In fact, US these days could be a lot less safe than a lot of other places that I travel. I don't dwell on that stuff at all. I have some tricks up in my sleeve to make sure that I'm safe and my belongings are safe. I pay attention. I always say that common sense is your best defense. I stand by that 110%. Don't leave your common sense behind when you walk out your door. The world outside of your comfort zone is not a place to invite fear. It's a place to invite curiosity. Go explore that and find out what it looks like because it's not about fear and safety, it's about adventure, life, growth, people, connection, culture, food, language, activity and beauty. That outweighs the fear. It's not a thing. I've been traveling for many years, knock on wood, but nothing's ever happened to me. I've never been in a situation I couldn't handle. Maybe that's because I carry my common sense close by. Maybe I've gotten lucky. Maybe a lot of things, but I do speak a lot about safety because I know that people ask about it and are concerned. You can't let that stop you from doing anything. Otherwise, you'd be stuck in your own house. What happens if there’s an earthquake and your house fell down? You can't be safe anywhere in this world if you look at it that way. Go do it, get out there and go experience it. You'll find the confidence over the fear the more you go. I want to go back to something you said about being more aware and things can happen to you even at home. It could be safer while you travel because you're more on red alert and you're more aware of your surroundings, whereas at home you’re lackadaisical. You know how they say that most accidents happen within our house like car accidents. You've got your guard down. You may be doing other things. Whereas when you're traveling solo, you're paying attention. It's an interesting metaphor. It's the same thing with hiking on a trail. If I’m on a trail I don't know, I'm acutely aware of everything that's going on around me and my surroundings. If I'm on a trail that I know very well at home, I'm not paying any attention whatsoever. I'm glad you made that point. It’s such a good point. Another question I get asked all the time is, “How do you eat dinner alone?”   It's great. I'm used to that by now. It's funny. A lot of the women I know are uncomfortable eating dinner in a restaurant by themselves. That is something you have to put your big girl pants on and go do it. What are you going to do? Not eat? Hide in a corner with your takeout? Go do it. Here's the thing. No one cares. I’ve finally figured out after all these years that if someone is staring at me, which does happen, I know why. It's because they're curious. They're curious about something. Whether it's why I'm wearing a backpack in this town or why am I sitting by myself or, “She's speaking French with an accent. I wonder where she's from?” People are curious. They're not out there like, “Look at that girl. She's by herself.” It's not like that at all. It's not like you're wearing a big L on your forehead. Think about it with you. If you see someone solo walking down the street of your town with a big backpack on, aren't you curious? “I wonder where they're going. What are they doing? Are they traveling?” It's all curiosity and it's not negative. If you're worried about what people are thinking, that's the first part. It is not negative. If you can figure out how to make that place comfortable for yourself, like for example, one of the things I love to do as I travel and as I'm at home is I love craft beer. I love trying different beers all around the world. You could do this with wines or cheeses or whatever, anything that has to do with a restaurant. What's your thing? When I get to a new place, a bar or whatever, I love to sit down and get a new beer. Beer is like home to me. I can do that anywhere in the world. I have the thing that I can go to that's my company. I work at breweries often. I will go to a brewery and get a beer. I call it a focus beer, #FocusBeer. I work that way. It's part of finding comfort anywhere I can be in the world. Those things matter. I will make sure if I'm going out by myself, I will get a drink. Something that makes me feel a little like maybe takes the edge off, I will get a beer and I will enjoy myself. I will people watch, whatever. You can choose to get out your phone and have a conversation with someone across the world if you want to or you can choose to put your phone down. You can bring a book. It doesn't matter. It's about you, it's not about what other people think. It's funny because sometimes I'll pass by a restaurant that's super full. I'm like, “I don't know if I want to go into that one all by myself.” If I pass by a place that I can see that there is a table where I might feel comfortable, that's where I'll go in because I'm still introverted. You’ve got to take care of yourself. That's what it's about, it’s taking care of yourself, making it comfortable for you, and adventure. I find too, if I'm traveling solo, I'll have more opportunity to meet locals because they feel more comfortable coming up to you when you're traveling solo than if you're with other people. If you're putting out an energy that says, “I'm approachable,” then people will approach you for sure. For people who don't want to be alone. Maybe you're only traveling solo because no one else wanted to go with you and you'd rather have a buddy. I highly recommend staying in hostels. It does not matter how old you are. You can find hostels with a private room, which is what I like to do. The beauty of that is you have an immediate community if you choose to have it. You can meet people in the communal areas. That's something that hotels do not offer. Finding either like CouchSurfing, staying at a hostel or staying at an Airbnb where there's a host on site and you can expose yourself to other people. If that's where you are in your travels, your life, and you want to be around other people, then put yourself in those positions. It's easy to retract and do things on your own if you want to be solo. That's easy. In fact, you'll probably still get approached because people are curious. There are other people who are solo who are going to sit down at the bar next to you and start talking about beer with you, and realized you're not Italian and be curious about where that accent comes from. I love that about hostels. I learned that for the first time about a few years ago because it is lonely. If you go to the hostel community rooms, you meet the people. If you're not staying in the hostel, my week time of being alone is cocktail hour. That's when I want to talk to somebody. I don't care the rest of the whole day, dinner, no problem, but at cocktail hour, I want to talk. Go find the bar next to the hostel because that's where they'll be and they're traveling solo too so they're looking for somebody to talk to as well. What advice would you give someone who's considering traveling solo for the first time?    Go and don't be afraid. I don't think you're going to regret choosing to travel solo. You're going to learn something that's time well spent. Getting out, seeing the world, any of these things, these are adventures. This is our one life. We get one shot so go do it. You'll find that you're much more resourceful than you realize. You're going to be the one with a story to tell afterward. I encourage you to try it, test yourself, get out there and make it happen. --- Next up, let's hear what Monica has got to say about solo travel. After her interview, we'll get a guy's perspective. Can you start by introducing yourself and perhaps telling us your age? I'm Monica Aranguren and I am 58 years old. How did you get into adventure travel? Quite honestly, I found myself single again. That was back in 2007, 2008. I started to do a lot of hiking on my own at that time. When I got to my 50th birthday, I decided I wanted to do something bigger and that's when I started to look into adventure travel and planned to go to New Zealand at that time. Was that your first trip to do the New Zealand hike? I take it that you were going solo because you were single again? Yes. I didn't want to leave adventure behind. That's great that you're adventuresome. How did you make the mind shift to say, “I'm going to go on my own?” because it's a scary concept for a lot of people to go on a trip all by themselves. The comments I've also gotten from friends when I've let them know what I'm doing. I've been an independent gal all my life and it's like let's push on through. I was like, “I'm not waiting for life to happen to me. I've got to do it. I'm going to go on these trips because I want to see these places.” That was my motivation. Did you do that on your own solo or did you go with a tour company or how did that work out?   The New Zealand trip I went with a group. I went with Active Adventuresthere and had been making different trips of that nature since. Our regular audience will recognize Active Adventures as one of my favorite companies and affiliates. I'm super excited that I will be going on the same trip that Monica went on. Monica, how do you decide where you're going to go? Sometimes I see a photograph and I’m like, “I want to go there.” I might get a vision in my mind of a place I had been thinking about and then I start to investigate the location and how I might be able to get a taste of it. Are you still traveling now? That's been many years since you were single. Are you still doing solo travel as your primary way? Is that all you do or do you mix it up with others? How does that work? I've made some group-led trips. I've also done some that are self-guided where I'm still with a company that's moving my belongings, setting up the itinerary and the maps and all of that, but I'm doing it on my own. I would imagine when you're in the group setting on the guided trips, that also gives you some more socialization. Can you talk a little bit about that? Each experience is a little different. Meeting people from different places and learning about them, joking with them, creating songs with them, eating with them, all kinds of things. It's a lot of social interaction with the group. When I'm on a self-guided hike, it's a little quieter, but I also tend to favor that sometimes because I like to be in the quiet of nature. Sometimes I like to interact with the culture on a different level. I enjoy that piece as well. What are the pros and cons in your mind of solo travel? The pros are that solo travel lets you expand a little bit more in "getting out of the box." It lets you meet new people that you might not otherwise meet when you're traveling with a companion that you've known for a while like a friend, family member, whoever that might be. Cons, I don't think there are any. I will say I choose a single room so that I don't get any snoring so I can sleep on my own. For me, that's important. That would be the only con for me if I can't sleep. That's why I tend to choose a single room. Other than something like that, I can't think of any, quite honestly. Since I lost my husband and now that I'm traveling solo, the thing I'm always getting is, “Aren't you afraid about the big bad wolf, getting raped, mugged or whatnot?” Can you talk a little bit about the safety issues?       I have never felt not at ease. I've always felt safe on these trips. With a group, you're surrounded by your group all the time because you're doing all the activities with that group. The only time you're separate is maybe if you have a specific day that you have in a particular town on your own. You might visit that, but never any concerns of safety in that sense. When I've been on self-guided tours, in the case of the company that I worked with, I had a GPS, I had instructions and I had a phone. I had a contact I could call 24 hours a day if there was an issue. I always had someone who would check on with me. I felt like I was supported in both styles of travel. How about loneliness? Is that ever an issue? I would say during the self-guided hikes because I might see something and not have anyone to talk about it. Other than that, not really. When I'm with a group hike, I'm with other people. I've always got companionship with me. Another thing I always get is how do you eat by yourself? I've been asked that as well. I carry a book with me and go with it that way. I've gotten used to it. I'm not very self-conscious about it and enjoy interacting with the waiters, waitresses and the hosts wherever I'm eating, and enjoy myself that way. There's also more attention and curiosity when you're traveling solo and that you get a lot more local interaction, which I enjoy very much and think of as a plus. That is true, especially if you're at little small restaurants. The host or the owner might chat with you more, which is great. I was on a trip where an older gentleman, I was walking around and I had my camera going, came up to talk to me in Italian. I was in Italy and he was talking to me about how he had owned a camera like that. We had a nice little chat and then I was back on my way. That was fun to be able to chat with him for a while. If somebody is sitting on their couch saying to themselves, “I’m like Monica, if I don't get off this couch, I'm never going to see the places that I want to see.” What advice would you give them so they get the courage and the confidence to go try this on their own? Don't wait. If you're attracted to making this trip, do it. It will open up a whole other level of possibilities, experience and independence. Do it and enjoy yourself and don't wait for another opportunity. Have you found that solo travel is important too, that it's somehow changing who you are?   I'd love the companionship, but it supports my being independent and doing my life. Living my life the way I want it and taking advantage of the opportunities, especially outdoor hiking opportunities, while I can do it. That's how it positively helps me out. It empowers me. When I get back from one of these trips, I'm like, “I did that.” If I can do that, then I can do this, whatever my current real-world problem is. It's self-empowering. If maybe a particular trip is going to be a little more challenging, I've got to rise to the occasion to work out and get read. It feels great when I'm out there and accomplishing it. It's an empowering experience and one that supports a good sense of independence and moving forward the way you want. Have you kept up with any of the people that you've met on your trips? I have. I made a trip in the Mont Blanc area of France, Italy and Switzerland a few years ago, back in 2016. There were four singles on that trip actually. The four of us have had a couple of reunions. Our last one was in Toronto. We always go out a little hike and then eat out and see wherever we're visiting together. It's a lovely experience and this time, we were also able to hook up with a couple that was from the Toronto area that had been on this same track and got to have a lovely dinner with them. It was a great time together. I found that usually in each trip, there are one or two people I'll meet that we ended up becoming friends. Even if it's just Facebook friends, we keep up that way. In fact, when I go to the UK, I will be staying with a gentleman and his girlfriend that I met in theWest Highland Way for a couple of days before I start the long distance trek on the Cotswold Way. I'm excited about that. Can you tell us some of your favorite stories about some of your trips? I know you went to New Zealand. When you look back on New Zealand, what's the one story you tell? It was deciding to do the bungee jump. There were only two of us in a group of ten that had the courage to do that. I'm glad that I did that and the rest of the group cheered us on. I had a blast doing that. It was a little scary and I was a little nervous once I got on the plank that I was supposed to drop off from. It was so freeing and so much fun to be hanging down on this large rubber band. I'm happy I had that experience, especially celebrating my 50th birthday then. You've also gone to the Galapagos. What's your favorite story about the Galapagos? What struck me is there are many amazing animals, penguins, sea lions, fish and iguanas. It's fascinating to be surrounded by these wonderful creatures that are not timid at all with humans. That was wonderful. I remember, in particular, going snorkeling and seeing manta rays, these giant ones underneath floating and then swimming below me. It was amazing to see their size and beauty. They were golden and had some black spots on them and they were moving on their leisurely pace. It was fantastic. We did cover the Galapagos episode. We also covered Mont Blanc, which you've done too. What's your favorite story there?       This is a social story. All the hiking was fantastic in particular because we were above the tree line a lot of the time. That was beautiful to see these huge snow-covered mountains in your face and you are looking at them. It was a splendor for me. The social story is that the group I was with, a few of us somehow got into rapping while we were hiking. They come up with these silly tunes and that made me start to create this particular rap, based on all the food that we were eating. I presented that at the end of our tour at our last dinner. One of my colleagues in the group backed me up, making all the funky little rap sounds. We put it together and it was a hoot. We had a great time doing that. That sounds fun. That's a great story. You've got another fun place you're going to, which also has been covered on the Active Travel Adventures Podcast. Tell us about that. I’ll leave to make a trip in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, north of Venice. I'm very excited about that. I'm excited to be back with a group because I've done some more self-guided hiking in the last couple of years. I'm going to be with a group again, which I look forward to. I'm looking forward to the scenery and the exercise because that's what we love about hiking is the workout too. It's going to be good. Annie, who I interviewed on the Dolomiteepisode, has traveled all over the world. She's done everything and she said that was the perfect trip.She said it was the best mix of exertion, the hiking, the scenery, the people and the foods. I’ll carry that with me for sure. Any other thoughts on solo travel or adventure travel you'd like to share? Seize the day. There's so much to see out there and so much to do. Get out there and do it. --- There's nothing like going on an adventure. Finally, for our last interview on solo travel, we're going to get a guy's perspective. Can you start by introducing yourself, please? My name is Jason Waitkins and I am 37. How did you first get into adventure travel?   My first trip was in 2003. I wanted to visit New Zealand. I was reading about it growing up and it sounded like a cool and awesome place. The Lord of the Rings came out and that propelled me even more. I'm like, “I have to go here.” In 2003, I went. I didn't want to go there just to sightseeing. I wanted to hike. That's what drove me into that being my first trip. Were you already pretty active before you got into adventure travel? Yes, I hiked. I grew up and my parent's house is right next to a section of the Appalachian Trail. I grew up knowing, “That's the longest marked trail in the United States,” and all that. I hiked the sections of it nearby. I then branched out from there. There are some pretty nice and interesting trails not far from where I live. Where is that? New York. I'm in what's called the Hudson Valley region. I grew up in Garrison, which is the town south of Cold Spring. It has become a hikers town because there are a few challenging trails near there. It's easily accessible from New York City. On the weekends, a lot of hikers come up on the trains because you can easily get off at the Cold Spring Station and travel around and you don't need a car. You can work your way back to the station. Our topic is solo travel. Is that something you've always done or is this something new for you? I pretty much always did solo initially because growing up, it was a small town. I was one of the few who liked adventure travel, so it was only me. I enjoyed it a lot. I always join a group usually. If it’s a tour, there's a group I usually end up joining. If they're not solo, then they are either with a friend or a spouse or whatever. We are there for the same thing. It's a good way to meet new people. What would you consider the pros and cons of solo travel? My best thing is I can pretty much go when I want. I can center around my schedule. There's no coordination. If there are two, three or more people traveling, it's going to be harder to get time off from work, for example. For me, I prefer solo traveling for the most part because it's easy to coordinate with myself. I look at the dates, “This trek is going here and I can go here at this point and I have a certain amount of time off I can take.” I did one adventure trek with my father not too long ago and we do have to coordinate. There was a little more work involved to make sure, “We're going to do this. We both have time off. We can both get there without issue. We’re both fit enough. We both know what we're getting into and all that.” There are pros and cons to each, but for me, I have a set of places I'd like to go, a set number of countries or treks that I'd want to do and want to visit. To me, it's easier. If I don't know anyone else who wants to do it with me, I go ahead and do it. You make an excellent point because not only do you have to coordinate the time schedules but also the physical difficulty rating is consistent for both parties and all parties. At the time, my father had some knee problems at the moment, but at the time, he was okay. It was a not too challenging trip, at least graded three. We always look at the gradings of the trip with a grain of salt. You have to know what you can and can't do. It's better to read the descriptions rather than just reading by the number they give. The company we were with, they assigned numbers one through six, six being the hardest and this one is graded two. Afterward, I say, “This was more like a three,” and it was because we were in Scotland. There are a few sections where there was no trail, it was pretty much bushwhacking and it was muddy. Walking through that section was quite difficult more so than it was. Even our leaders said that. You have to be careful. Make sure everyone can do it and make sure you know what you're getting into. Female solo travelers have a few different concerns than males. Can you talk about safety as a solo traveler from the male perspective? I personally have never been worried about my safety, but it is always a consideration. My first big travel was to New Zealand, which is generally a country more on the safe side. My next travel was in Peru, which is a developing country. I read up quite a bit on it. What vaccines do I need to get? What is the crime rate? I always read up on the countries I'm visiting, although you also have to take those with a bit of a grain of salt. A website I usually go to at least at first to check out the country I'm visiting is the US State Department website because it gives descriptions on visa requirements and any vaccines that are recommended. I always try to look that up. It also tells what the crime is. However, it is over-exaggerated to a degree. You always read about the bad things and I also look at what they say of the crime is. However, it tends to be over-exaggerated sometimes because you will only read about the bad things. They'll always say there are very high crimes and there are police corruptions or there's this or there's that. You’ve got to be aware of your surroundings is what I always do. When I was growing up because I lived close to New York City but not in it, going to New York City, I was always told like, “Put everything in your front pocket, not your back pocket. Watch out for muggers. Watch out for this or that, anyone who tries to bump into you.” You've got to be diligent and to do that. As a solo traveler, the first time where I was there ahead of when the official tour, I was joining started was in Peru in Cusco. I want to go there. I was worried about acclimatizing to the altitude and so I got there a day ahead of the main tour and walked around. I was feeling winded at least at first. I ended up adjusting perfectly fine. I was looking in all directions and making sure there were a lot of people around. No one ever came up and I never felt unsafe, but I was extra careful. The thing I do is a lot of the pants I wear for general walking around have zippers on them. I don't know if that helps or hurts. My biggest concern is my passport or my wallet getting stolen. Let's talk a little bit about what you feel when you're doing an adventure, whether it's hiking, paddling, cycling, and you do it solo. There's the possibility that you get hurt and there's nobody around to help you. Do you have any concerns about that or is that one reason that you do group travel? I experienced that personally. A couple of years ago, I was hiking in Acadia National Park in Maine. I ended up slipping and falling and not able to stand. I was traveling solo at that point. I had to take out my cell phone and I dialed 911. There were a few trekkers who walked by. This was a day hike. I wasn't backpacking or anything like that, but still, it was a very rugged terrain. A couple of hikers nearby stopped and said, “We'll wait until people come and get you.” They had to carry me off and that was a humbling experience. I kept thinking, “I'm not going to fall or this isn't going to happen. I'm still within civilization. I'm not in another country.” I can only imagine what would have happened if I was on the Inca Trail, where you have to hike for three days. What would have happened if that happened? Having a group and having a leader there who at least always had a radio or a cell phone to contact whoever that is, it’s quite comforting and more so now than it was many years ago. I did an episode on safetyon adventure travel and also another interesting story is the episode Part Two of the Kilimanjaroseries where our guest had to go down the mountain on a stretcher. It's a very interesting episode in that regard. Let's move on from the scary things and let's talk about how do you choose where you want to go next. When I first started this back in the early 2000s, I had a bucket list. The main two were I want to visit New Zealand, I want to hike there, and I want to hike the Inca trail. I was reading about how beautiful the trail is, how it's a great payoff ending up in Machu Picchu, which is also beautiful. After that, I started making a list of countries and places I wanted to visit and then looking at, “I want to visit here. I want to do this. Where's this located?” My biggest goal after making the Inca Trail was Kilimanjaro. I said, “Where is that? That's in Tanzania. That's in Africa.” I went from there. “What else is there?” Choosing that trip, there are a lot of tour companies that do Kilimanjaro and the one I ended up picking with was one that was doing a specific route up the mountain. It had extra days. It was more expensive, unfortunately, but it had extra days while climbing and it did a specific way. It did the Western Breach if you're aware of that trail, which most companies do the other way. This one, we did the Western Breach. We stayed in the Crater Camp, which is also rare for that, but I figured that was good for getting used to the altitude. That's why I ended up going with that tour company. Beyond that, there's a list of countries I'd like to visit. The main ones were Kilimanjaro, Galapagos was one, and the next one that I haven't done yet is the Alps, which is on my bucket list. Basically, I said, “Where can I hike that I haven't hiked before?” I started looking at the companies I've gone with before and a few other notable ones. I look at what they offer to see if it's financially feasible, if time-wise it's feasible. I pretty much go from there. I have a semi-life goal to visit every country in the world. I don't think I'm going to get there, but I want to visit and hike everywhere I can. I go with the ones I want to the most and I've done quite a few of them but there's still quite a few left. Have you found that solo travel has changed you in any way? Initially, I don't know if I felt different. I enjoy it like that's my vacation. That's how I get away from it. My first few trips, I wouldn't even take my cell phone with me. I'd leave it at home and that was my disconnection from the everyday hustle and bustle. As far as changing me, I don't know if I have an answer for you. It's helped me grow a certain way like enjoying because I live alone. I'm single and pretty much live alone. To me, it's a great way to meet new people because even if you're not with a group, you're always going to meet someone on the trail most likely. That's the way I interact with people, my fellow hikers. I don't know if it changed me in any way other than that. It's just something that drives me to continue going. I have places to visit. I want to keep going. Have you kept up with any of the people you've met on the trails? A few but not too many. There are a few like with Kilimanjaro because that was such a small group and that was a long track. It was a long trip. The whole trip was eighteen days, but to trek up the mountain was nine days total. We got to know each other well. We still communicate through email every once in a while. It’s usually around the anniversary, which is late January. We usually send emails saying, “It's been five years, it's been six years, how is everybody doing?” There are two people who I do send a Christmas card to because they send one to me each year. We write down what treks we've done or what we're planning on doing. They sent me one a few years ago and they said, “We finally made the Inca Trail that you talked about. It was as you described it. It was great.” I always write down what I did. “I did the Galapagos. I did Nepal and all that.” A lot of people, when they find out that I'm going to be traveling solo, say, "Aren't you scared or don't you get lonely?" What advice would you give somebody that's on the fence and trying to decide whether or not they should try a solo trip? Try to join a group of some kind, an adventure trekking tour where you'll be joined with other people, preferably a smaller group. A nice number would be between eight, twelve, fourteen people is probably ideal because then it's not too big and it's not too small. Do that. Try to look up an organized tour of an area where you want to visit, whether it's Machu Picchu or somewhere in Europe, wherever. See if you can find a tour company that has a group that you can join because of the way I see it, everyone is there to do what you're doing. We're here to hike this trail. We're here to visit this landmark or whatever it is. That's going to be a thing you have in common. Every trip I've been to, I'm nervous when I step off the airplane, especially if it's a country where English isn't the first language. I made it through passport control. I handed them my passport. They stamped and I went through. I'm like, “Where's the meetup point?” I'm always worried that I'm going to miss the meetup. It's never been a problem. Usually, they always say, “The leader is going to either hold a sign or they're going to be wearing a brand of shirt of some kind.” I came back from Ireland and we had to meet in Belfast in a small out of the way bus station. There was a bus station and the train station and they're both connected by a hallway. I was walking back and forth a couple of times through it because the leader was late by five to ten minutes. I was worried like, “Am I missing this tour? What's going on?” I ended up seeing, “There she is.” She ended up walking through and she was trying to find parking because parking was limited in that station. Everyone nearby walked up and said, “I'm part of this group.” I get nervous for the meetup, but once the meetup is done, we all say hello, and we're all like, “Let’s go. Let's do this.” By the end of the trip, we're all saying our goodbyes and saying, “It was a pleasure to meet you and this was fun,” and everything. If you're worried about traveling solo, to sum it up, it's good because you're going to be with other people who are like-minded, possibly other solo travelers, and you don't have to worry too much about the organization. Everything's planned out for you. You just got to get to the location. You make a good point. When you use a tour company, they pretty much take you by the hand. You don't have to worry about the logistics of getting to the different places, which can be quite complicated, particularly if you're traveling solo and you can't juggle cars or whatnot. It makes it a lot easier for you, plus you're solo but with company. In certain countries like I'm about to take an Italy trip. I was going to take a few days ahead of the tour to visit some of the cities and I sat and planned. That was fun now because I can quickly look up, “I can take the train from Rome to Venice. That sounds good.” What hotels are nearby and whatever? I'll just join. My whole plan is I've got to get to where I meet the tour in Venice. After that, all I’ve got to care about is my flight home is the day they drop us off like, “That's it, done. I don't have to plan anymore.” If you're new to the program, I do a Travel Planner for each of the destinations that we cover on the show.You can download these for free by going to the page for each corresponding destinationor go to the directory page and click on the destination and get it from there. If you sign up for my monthly newsletter, you will get them automatically for free. It's my way to help you plan your adventures with confidence. It will have weather information, safety information, recommended tour companies and suggested itineraries. Everything on a handy, usually a two-page printer-friendly with active links document so that you have on one piece of paper everything you need to know and do to plan your adventure. How about we finish up with you sharing some of your favorite stories from your trips. When I name off some of the adventures I know you've taken, can you tell us your favorite go-to story when you think about that destination? Let's start with Annapurna, which is one of my most popular episodes. For those unfamiliar with Annapurna, it's in Nepal. I wanted to see the Himalayas. I didn't want to do Everest because I had already done Kilimanjaro. I was climbing so high to see altitude for the sake of saying I climbed it. That's not on my bucket list anymore. Annapurna, that whole circuit was very beautiful. You see a lot of mountains one after the other. Each one beautiful and the highlight was completing it, getting to Annapurna base camp. I forget the altitude offhand, but that was actually a trek. We had pretty good weather and we got up early one day and saw the sunrise over. I got some great photos of the sunrise over the Himalayas and that was probably the best. It was maybe not of the hiking part, but it was interesting being in the city of Kathmandu, the capital city. It was quite interesting that it was organized chaos on the roads. The section where we went, the Thamel area, where there are a lot of trekkers. The roads are very narrow and everyone was walking around. It was quite a cultural experience to see how people every day get up and do this, but from a hiking standpoint, every day had more beautiful views than the next. What about your first adventure trip to New Zealand? My favorite location, I enjoyed the area where we went to Milford Sound. It was very beautiful. It rained that morning and then it stopped. Our guide had told us this is perfect. When it rains there will be a lot more waterfalls that you'll see because a lot of them just trickle or whatever while it's sunny out. When it rains and after the rain, you'll see a lot. That was beautiful walking around that area. I also enjoyed Mount Aspiring National Park. That one we walked in and we camped in a hut for a night. It snowed that night. On the way back it was snow covered. It’s not a lot. It was maybe an inch or two, but it was cool to have pictures going one way where it's all green grass and clear, and coming back, everything was snow covered. It was beautiful. How about your Galapagos adventure? Did you do just the Galapagos or did you also do mainland Ecuador? I did both. In terms of hiking, I enjoyed the mainland better without a doubt. I can't remember the town we were in, but it was a town down in the jungle. We did what was called reverse canyoning, which is climbing up waterfalls. These waterfalls aren't like the raging waterfall. They are not the Niagara Falls type waterfalls. It was an awesome and challenging, but not too challenging, hike through the rainforest. They told us ahead of time, “You're going to get wet. If your camera isn't waterproof, don't bring it.” It was nice. It was a three-hour hike to where we were going through rivers and up the waterfalls and whatever. It was an hour or two off the trail that was dry to get back to where we were. The Galapagos itself, honestly, the best thing was snorkeling and Kicker Rock. We came up close with hammerhead sharks and they said, “You don't need to worry.” There were quite a few times where I was like, "Are you sure we don't need to worry?" Swimming and seeing, I saw at least three types of sharks. There's a Galapagos shark. The whitetip reef was the other one. We saw quite a lot. There were tons of wildlife in this little area snorkeling. We spotted eagle rays. They are beautiful, that’s another thing. I can't say enough how awesome the sea turtles looked. Everyone that I saw was beautiful. Whether it was sitting still in the areas where we saw them resting or whether they're swimming. The Galapagos, hands down. It was the snorkeling. We did hike a couple of spots, but these hikes were nothing compared to the mainland. You've made some killer trips. How about Patagonia? The biggest accomplishment with Patagonia was definitely the W Trek. That was difficult. It was the second hardest trek I've been on because the way we did it was the first day we go up to Torres del Paine or The Towers of Blue. That was twenty kilometers total round trip. That was the first day and by the end of the day, everything was hurting. I was like, “We've got four more days of this? What did I sign up for?” After that, the next day was only eleven kilometers and it was mostly flat. That was a joke there. They always would say mostly flat. It was never properly flat. It was always ups and downs all over the place. That’s the whole completing the W Trek. After the second day, I was like, “This wasn't too bad. I'm going to do this.” I've never backed down from a hike before. “I'm doing this.” The very last day was beautiful viewpoints over the huge Grey Glacier. That was the biggest accomplishment and the best hike of the Patagonia trip. When is your next adventure? I'm going to Italy and hiking the Dolomites. It's my first trekking in mainland Europe. I've trekked in Ireland and I've trekked in Scotland, but I've never trekked in mainland Europe. It's been on my bucket list and I'm doing it. I'm sure you're going to enjoy that. Annie who I interviewed on the Dolomites, who has traveled the world and done amazing adventures all over the world, said that was the perfect trip. It was the perfect mix of culture, food, hiking people, everything. She said it's marvelous. I'm looking forward to it for that reason. Do you have any final thoughts for our readers? The only thing I can think of is if you're worried about solo traveling, just do it. Go with a tour company. You don't have to organize it completely by yourself. That sounds like a daunting task even for me now. Do it. You won't regret it. I agree because you can plan regular travel on your own but trying to plan the logistics for adventure travel is super difficult. I always recommend using a small group tour company. Seeing some of the trips I've been on, there's no way I would've been able to know to do some of these things or been able to organize it. There are a lot of logistics going on there with fees and permits and all that. Not only is planning an adventure trip logistically difficult oftentimes, particularly in foreign countries, but it can also save you money by using a small group tour company. You don't have to rent all the different vehicles and hire different guides in different places. It's all planned for you and you have the benefit of having other people help share that expense. It's been great having Jackie, Jason and Monica on the program to help share their insights in solo travel. I'd like to share with you some of the rules that I've made for myself now that I'm doing solo travel. These are in no particular order and many don't apply if you're with a small group tour because all this is taken care for you. If I'm truly traveling solo, here are some of my rules. I want to know where I'm staying that night by noon. I don't mind winging it and figuring out my itinerary and such when I get to a place, but I want to know where I'm going to rest my head. I'll make sure I book something at least by noon of the day that I'm going to be staying somewhere. I make sure I arrived before dark, in case I get lost or run into some other complication. I always keep my eyes on my food and drink, making sure they don't leave my sight. I don't go to the restroom and leave my drink on the table so I don't have to worry about somebody slipping a drug into it. I'm careful of overly friendly locals, particularly if they have no reason to be overly helpful. You might find somebody on a bus or a train that says, “Let's share a cab,” or they're all of a sudden your best friend. Often that could be a setup for a con that it's their partner in crime that you're “sharing the cab” with. Be a little bit cautious about that. Get your hotel to call you a taxi or take the ride share programs like Uber or Lyft and use somebody that's got multiple stars. When you get to an area, ask the locals about the area. Show them a paper map and have them circle areas that you should avoid. When traveling, always be aware and keep mindful of your situation. Be aware of who's around you and if the hairs rise in the back of your neck, your subconscious has seen something that you may not even be aware of. Take action and don't be afraid to make noise telling somebody to back off or make a scene. I know we're raised to be polite, but that is not the time to be polite. That’s the time for you to make a commotion. When you're in an area particularly if you don't know, always have an exit plan. Figure out how do you get out of the situation should something arise. Make sure somebody knows where you're going to be and what time you should be there and at what time they should raise the red alert. If you're traveling internationally and don't want to use up your data, still periodically turn on your phone so that your phone registers the GPS of your last known location. If you're not sure if solo travel is for you, try doing what I call doing the plus one. Wherever you are in your comfort zone, push it a little bit so that way you stretch your boundaries. Build up your courage, build up your self-confidence, and get the benefits that I keep talking about by doing this travel. You're not going to regret it. If you've never taken a trip by yourself, why don't you try going for a weekend? It doesn't have to be some big exotic place. Go someplace by yourself for a weekend and see what it's like. Maybe after that, you'll have the courage to try a week and then perhaps after that you might try going on some international trip. Each time you do it, push yourself just a little bit more outside of your comfort zone. In all the times I've traveled and all the places I've gone, I truly have never had an incident that I can even relay to a problem. You heard the same thing from our guests, particularly Jackie who has been everywhere, has never had an incident and she's been doing this for many years. We also talked about a whole bunch of destinations. You can go to the directory page and click on any of the different destinations and see all the cool places we've covered on this program. Finally, I'd like to ask you, as I'm planning the adventures that we're going to be doing, can you reach out to me? I don't care if it's email at Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com, via Facebookor our Facebook group, at Twitter @Kit_Parks, on Instagram, @Parks.Kit. Let me know where you do want to go so I can put together the programs that you need to plan your next big adventure. I will be back with another great adventure. Until then, this is Kit Parks, adventure on. Important Links: Traveling Jackie The Budget-Minded Traveler Travelling Jackie blog CouchSurfing Active Adventures Cotswold Way– Past episode Galapagos– Past episode Mont Blanc– Past episode Dolomite– Past episode Safety– Past episode Kilimanjaro– Past episode Directory Page– Active Travel Adventures Annapurna– Past episode Patagonia– Past episode Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com Facebook– Active Travel Adventures Facebook group- Active Travel Adventures Closed Group @Kit_Parks- Twitter @Parks.Kit- Instagram Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Active Travel Adventures Community: activetraveladventures.com Active Travel Adventures Facebook Page Active Travel Adventures Facebook Group Active Travel Adventures Twitter Active Travel Adventures Instagram Active Travel Adventures YouTube Kit Parks LinkedIn

In his 42nd episode, Allen hops into the twitter debate to compare who has the better chicken sandwich between Popeyes and Chick-fil-A, asks whether or not people care what music is played in lyfts & ubers, reviews Snoh Aalegra's album & the hit show Euphoria, gives an update on the SF Giants' playoff push, and his newest segment of "Please Stop".

We are reviewing Festa da Bola, talking about finding places to stay on trips, and Ubers and Lyfts. Also, all the regular shenanagins you know and love   If you'd like to listen to the rest of this episode, you can find it on our Patreon page calaabocashow.com/support    As a Patron, you will receive Extended CAB Gabs, as well as bonus episodes, bonus Era Uma Vez stories, and a lot of other goodies exclusive to our supporters.     Connect With Us: • Email feedback@calaabocashow.com • Subscribe to the Cala A Boca Show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and iHeart Radio • Follow us on FB, Instagram and Twitter @calaabocashow • Visit our website calaabocashow.com

Firefly, a startup that allows ridehail drivers to make money from advertising, has raised $30 million in Series A funding. The company is about to launch in New York City, where it's also acquiring the digital operations of advertising company Strong Outdoor. Co-founder and CEO Kaan Gunay said this will allow Firefly to start working with traditional taxis in a big way.

The range of transportation options at the fingertips of contemporary urban commuters is both astonishing and at times, overwhelming. For the Luddites, filling up your car with petroleum, sitting in a car for an hour and a half to complete a 15-mile trip and then spending a week's worth of salary on parking is still an option. For those that don't want to drive into the office, there is the option of public transportation, a mode of transport that depending on the city can range from clean and convenient to inefficient and unsafe. For the technophiles, there are ride sharing and micro-mobility solutions that have dramatically changed the urban landscape: dockless e-scooters and e-bikes, traditional bikes, and Ubers and Lyfts. Depending on the weather, your athletic profile and risk tolerance, there is an option to help you navigate our cities in a fashion that is often better for the environment, reduces congestion and can be economically more affordable. So who is managing all of this and is there a way to have all of the different options on one easy to use interface that compares and contrasts by price, modality, accessibility and even environmental impact as measured by fuel type? On this episode of Raising Your Antenna, we speak with Scott Shepard, Chief Commercial Officer of Free2Move, a Berlin-based company that has developed a solution to managing the puzzle that is the new urban transportation environment. In addition to discussing the consumer-facing app, Scott and I will delve into the role of cities in facilitating the transformation of their streets and highways and how Free2Move is partnering with said cities to deliver the data to manage the demand, trip patterns and utilization of these emerging transportation options. Tune in as we talk about: -Scott’s professional journey and his role as Chief Commercial Officer at Free2Move -Free2Move as a subsidiary of Group PSA, which owns Peugeot, Citroen and Opel car brands. -How Free2Move is different from other companies that are in the business of aggregating new mobility options. -The challenges that are facing cities, both large and mid-size, in incorporating new mobility options. -Scott and Free2Move’s role in making sure that the emergence of private sector solutions and the MSPS (manages solutions providers) play nicely in the sandbox with public transportation options. -The differences between the U.S. and European mobility models ...and more

Get Developing Your Idea Before Someone Else Steals It So, you've got this cool, wicked-awesome idea or service that you want to see come into fruition and actually help change people's lives. For the sake of the conversation, regardless if it's a product or a service, let's just call it a product or an idea, just for now. So, you've got this cool idea, you know it's going to be amazing and you've written everything down. You've got your SWOT analysis done. You've gone, "This is going to go gangbusters. It's going to go nuts." Super-exciting stuff. Now, you're really worried that someone's going to steal your idea. This is something so many people stress about. Some of you don't even talk about their idea, because they think someone's going to steal it. They're too worried. They want people to sign documents, and they're generally people who don't have any money to go and patent it or do anything like that. And they don't want someone to steal the idea. Read what to do and what not to do when you have a business idea: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/348-get-developing-your-idea-before-someone-steals-it Bad News I've got some bad news for you. If you've gone through the process, and you've done all the analysis, and you can see that, yes, this can be developed, it's within your capacity. It's most likely going to be developed before someone else develops something similar. You get it out to market, and you've got your patent, and everything is all sweet. There's a very real possibility that someone will pick up what you've done, and develop it again, and create the Lyft to what is Uber. Lyft does very well for itself; they're more profitable than Uber. They weren't the first that's out there, and the technology has no way near that needs to be reinvested, because their end goals aren't like Uber's; Uber's end goal is to have autonomous vehicles. Lyft's aren't. Lyfts use Google Maps, and don't record any of the useless, or not as of this recording, record any of the useless crap, such as the acceleration, stop times, and everything else, because their end goal is the product they've created, for now at least. That means that they're able to make super-duper, crazy cash. But, they just ripped off another app. They're the Hungry Jack's to what is McDonald's, yet they're still doing really well. If you're wanting to be Uber or McDonald's in this story, know that people will rip off your idea; it's inevitable. No matter how much red tape, patents, legal mumbo jumbo and stuff you try and write into a document, and have it shown that this is yours and only yours forever, I can guarantee it won't hold up in a court of law if their solicitor is more expensive than yours. Unless you've got a huge legal team behind you, you're up shit creek. So, what I suggest is, look at the adoption curve for new elements and new things that come in. Innovators and Early Adopters There's the early adopters, and they're great people to test whatever it is you've developed. They're the people that go out and they buy all the latest gizmos and gadgets. The early adopters get all their ideas, and take that on from the innovators. So, if you're one of the innovators, or you're one of these core people that have created this, or this core product and you've got a group of other innovators, your innovators are probably going to be your first test network. Once you've gone through the innovators, it's then the earlier adopters. The innovators take up about 2.5%, generally speaking, of any market. The early adopters, on the other hand, sit more around the 13.5%. Early Majority Now, the next step, this is the important one, the early majority. Now, the early majority is anyone from the early adopters, all the way up to the half point. It's half of everyone that's ever going to be interested in your product. The early majority hold 34%. Now, the early majority is normally when you get these people that mirror your product. They love you so much, they see what you've done is so cool, that they've jumped in and they've mirrored it. Normally if this happens they will contact you and offer to give you a bit of coin to get the product developed and created. Now, sometimes they're silent and they just go ahead. But, what you need to know is, that's 34% of the first 50%. If you can make the money on the first 16% of people that use your product, and you can make enough money on the first 16%, by the time the other people start developing it and go to market, you're already worlds ahead of them, and they're not going to blow you out of the water. Sell or Keep Going? You don't want to be MySpace when Facebook comes along; that's terrible. But, if you made enough money to either consider selling it and cashing out, or to reinvest it back into the business and create that next step in the agile development process, then the other company's always going to be chasing their tail. You're always going to be in front, at the cost of reinvesting and not pulling the money out. So, you need to think about what it is that you want to achieve, and how you're going to get there, why you're going there. What is the driving motivator? Do you want to just have money, make something bit, cash out? Maybe someone comes along and buys it. Maybe you made Siri in your garage, and Apple comes along and says, "This is pretty cool. Can we grab that?" "Yeah. No worries." Or maybe you made Siri with the intention of making something else even bigger and better. But, you need to think about what your focus is, keep the end in mind, and then work out all the steps from the end back to the start. Patents Just Aren’t Worth It If you do that when you go through and develop, at least you'll know where you're going with it all. Patents aren't worth the material they're written on. I hope that was clear with this whole conversation. You can go out and comfortably spend $20 thousand to protect yourself in one country, and then someone comes along and releases it in another country, changes the name slightly, and you're stuffed. So, I would strongly suggest that money would be better off being spend in the development and the release and marketing of the product, and have that up your sleeve. Just know that people will steal your idea. But, most people will have an idea, and they won't do anything with it anyway. If you've got a great idea and it's just sitting in your head, just give it to someone who's going to do something with it. Don't stress. Don't be like, "Oh, I need 50% of that. You got my idea and you ran with it." The Final Word An idea is an idea; it only becomes something useful when it's written down and you start working out if it's going to be something that's profitable and beneficial to the country, the world, and yourself. I hope you've enjoyed this, and it's given you a bit of insight into what to do and what not to do when it comes to telling people about your idea. Stay good.  

#Mayochella, babies in Lyfts, and Facebook crackdowns. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Episode #32 Uber IPO, Lyfts stock plummets, and much more hilarity. Oh we also got our first troll on the livestream! Thanks so much for listening. We appreciate each and everyone of you! Please email us with any questions at team@grrideshareadventures.com Grideshareadventures.com Follow us on Facebook Subscribe on Youtube Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Get GR Rideshare Gear! Merch store Join us on Telegram! Love the show? You now have the opportunity to support the show with some great rewards by becoming a patron. The camera we recommend: Vanture N2 Pro Want to up your income while you drive? Octopus is a mobile entertainment tablet for your riders. Earn 100.00 per month for having the tablet in your car! No cost for the driver! Octopus Tablet Entertainment Cargo is a mobile vending service for your car. No cost to the driver check it out! Get Cargo! Drive for Uber! Drive for Lyft! Show articles and videos: Lyft driver found passed out from an overdose of drugs: https://www.abc-7.com/story/40241815/lyft-driver-discovered-passed-out-in-car-with-narcotics Video on xsplit   Person said he was a rideshare driver and the sexually assaulted a woman: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/05/us/rideshare-impersonator-arrest-sexual-assault/index.html?utm_source=fbCNNi&utm_content=2019-04-06T04%3A15%3A05&utm_term=link&utm_medium=social  Lyft and Uber driver shares his secrets(nope lol): https://6abc.com/traffic/master-lyft-and-uber-driver-shares-secrets-to-making-money/5235486/  Uber IPO, they warn that drivers will be even less happy. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-12/uber-ipo-filing-warns-that-drivers-will-be-even-less-happy?fbclid=IwAR09T8A9HLYvRLNoGL8O1uRm0r3_lyop6nFFbvw4SJ3aHAPrC6AfSD0jQhw  Driver refuses to take woman to a abortion clinic. https://www.indy100.com/article/woman-uber-driver-abortion-clinic-planned-parenthood-8869226 No video This is a video about the driver that robbed the passengers house after he picked them up from their home and dropped them off. https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article228991309.html?fbclid=IwAR2hFzluBu4KesoigHCCPqmfM9QQW6Y7ZPEqimQcVR5NM_8oDPiN955MxGM    Tip Time: Be sure to always check the tread on your tires. Uneven wear means there is a bigger problem, and if caught early enough you will not have to replace the tires. You will void the warranty on the tires if there is a suspension issue and it goes on for to long.   Vantrue: https://amzn.to/2WGQUtP  

EP007 - Executive Editor at Bobit Business Media, Chris Brown http://www.vehicle2.getspiffy.com Episode 7 is an interview with Chris Brown, Executive Editor at Bobit Business Media; recorded on Friday, April 5th, 2019. Chris and Scot discuss a variety of topics, including: Chris’ journey to being the editor of three publications and producer of two tradeshows. The impact of car and ridesharing on the car rental industry. Weighing the changing ownership models for an idea of potential winners with consumers. How electric and autonomous vehicles will affect car rentals and auctions alike. What the future holds for the existing dealership and OEM framework. The road for convenient in-app connectivity to simplify the car rental process. Be sure to follow Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn! If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review on iTunes! The four pillars of Vehicle 2.0 are electrification, connectivity, autonomy, and changing ownership models. In the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast, we will look at the future of the auto industry through guest expert interviews, deep dives into specific topics, news coverage, and hot takes with instant analysis on what the latest breaking news means for today and in time to come. This episode was produced and sound engineered by Jackson Balling, and hosted by Scot Wingo.   Transcript:   Scot: [00:51] Welcome to the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast! This is episode seven and it's being recorded Friday, April 5th, 2019. Welcome back, Vehicle 2.0 listeners! As I've been personally learning all I can about the changing ownership models for cars and how the real car industry works, I found the content from auto rental news to be really important and awesome. My favorite items are the blog posts from the executive editor, Chris Brown, who we're excited to have on the show. Auto rental news is owned by Bobit Bbusiness Media and they have over 20 publications and trade shows that cover fleets, rentals, dealers, and oddly enough salons. Chris Brown is executive editor of business fleet, auto rental news and fleet forward and he also produces the international car rental show and the fleet forward conference. Chris, welcome to the show. Chris: [01:46] Thanks for having me Scott. Scot: [01:48] With all those responsibilities that you must be extremely busy, so we really appreciate you taking time to talk to us about your view of the future of your vehicles. Chris: [01:59] Sure. Well, my position kind of affords me having my fingers in a whole bunch of different pies and where transportation is going and yeah, we're just a little busy over here. Scot: [02:11] I have to ask what's the intersection? Was Salons, I was super curious about that. Chris: [02:15] You know, it, it's basically was a diversification strategy. In typical B2B media company fashion, not our eggs are in the transportation basket. And two of our biggest magazines in the company are a modern salon and nails magazine. Scot: [02:35] Cool. You get to, you get to learn all about, if you get burned out on cars, you can go learn about a whole other topic. Chris: [02:41] There's plenty of nail polish around for us to take advantage of. Scot: [02:47] Cool. I definitely want to jump into, you've, you got a lot of really good views on where we're going in the car industry, but before we jump into that, would love to give listeners a little bit of background on how you got to where you are? Chris: [02:59] Sure. Well I joined Bobit over 15 years ago, jumped in as the editor of Business Fleet magazine, which is goes out to small commercial fleets. soon after that, I took control editorially of auto rental news and, between the intersection of auto world news and business fleet can kind of triangulate what's going on and different parts of the transportation space. And along with the auto world news comes, you know, managing the international car rental show, which is convening and a week and a half. So that's been a huge part of what I do. And then, as well, we're really getting into how fleets are looking at new mobility solutions and, we have the fleet forward conference in that regard. That's happening in November in San Jose and we will be launching a brand, a website fleetforward.com in May. Scot: [04:08] Oh Wow. I look forward to seeing what you, what you guys put on there. Yeah. So, so to give listeners an idea of kind of the, the scope of, of your reach there, how many readers, and if there's anything you don't feel comfortable sharing, obviously that's, that's fine. But, you know, how many readers do you guys have on the publications and how many folks come to the conferences? Chris: [04:29] Well, you know, the, the best way to look at Bobit that is that we're the largest fleet publisher and authority and have been for over 50 years. Perhaps in the world actually. We reached over 250,000 commercial and government fleets and small business fleets and work trucks and heavy duty trucks. Heavy duty trucking being, our, our largest publication. And the whole universe, ends up to be 18 million vehicles. And, you know, in typical B2B fashion, we do that through news industry trends, market intelligence, you know, events, great articles and you know, the car rental show is you only show specific to the the auto rental industry in its entirety. And we'll get over 800 people this year, in April, April 14th through 16th in Vegas. And we draw folks from all over the world. Fleet forward is really just kind of a baby right now. We'll get 200 plus in its second year, come, come November in San Jose. And that's really a for the forward looking fleets that is commercial and government fleets that are looking at, you know, new mobility solutions to implement their fleets. Scot: [05:47] Very cool. So definitely encourage listeners to check those out. I know a full disclosure, we're going to be exhibiting at the show next week, so we're excited to be first time at that. Chris: [05:58] Yeah, well we're attendance is looking great. There's a ton of energy. I'm really glad that we've kind of both a really a great show for for 2019. Scot: [06:08] Awesome. So thanks for the background. I think that really helps set the stage for the main discussion. and a here on the podcast we look at a framework that we call vehicle 2.0 where we look at kind of these four ways of innovation that are kind of sloshing through the industry, connectivity, new ownership models, electrification and automation. and you've written a lot of really great content lately around the changing ownership models and I know that's near and dear to your heart. we'd love to start there. so when we look at the rental car industry, when I talked to folks I spend a lot of time talking to venture capitalists and stuff. I think they have this intuition that rental cars would be down like 10, 20, 30%, but they're actually up. why do you think that is? People assume it's down because they think Uber and Lyft are taking pretty serious share from the rental car companies. but apparently, you know, is that happening and why are the rental car sales up? Chris: [07:05] Well, I think we have to look at the market and say that Uber and Lyft have definitely taken a bite out of the rental car market, but, it's mostly in certain certain areas that we'll talk about. And, and also, it certain rental lengths, the shorter rental lengths, like the one day rentals is more where it's affected. and those are the least profitable, rentals as you can imagine, just because you have to turn over a car for a one day rental like you do for a five day rental and all the attendant costs there. You know, urban markets have certainly been affected, as well. That being said, I mean we did see, a strong demand that led to a record year for car rental, last year in the USeclipsing 30 billion in total revenues. And that was done on a overall fleet size. Chris: [08:10] That is, means that there was more revenue per unit, which is a really good sign for rental to, you know, I mean the, the, the more traditional rentals of, you know, multiple people have family, you know, needing, needing access to, you know, places that are more than 40 miles away, and, and of triplink's that are greater than a day is still very real and still very growing. It's growing with a good economy. So, I think that's really what's keeping the rental industry afloat in terms of the demand side. Now let me add one more thing. certainly, where, you know, if you can't beat them, join them. there is an insatiable need for Uber and Lyft drivers to have reliable transportation and rental has been playing a part there in, in renting cars to Uber and Lyft drivers. and that's, it's a growing segment as well. Scot: [09:17] Interesting. Do you know, do you happen to know, so 30 billion is pretty impressive. Do you know the year over year growth rate of that is kind of like GDP and that three to 4% range or is it kind of different? Chris: [09:28] So the growth rate, I know that the growth rate is accelerated, believe it or not, over the growth rate from 2017 to 16 and 2017 to 2018 so that's healthy. In other words, I had sort of intuitively a expected a growth rate to, to shrink there and you know, I do know it at what, what percentage? I don't know off the top of my head, but I do know that that was a slight acceleration over previous years. Recently. Scot: [10:02] Yeah. Accelerating growth and improved, unit profits is kind of the, that's the sweet spot. So that's good for the industry. Yeah, it certainly is. Cool. So, appreciate your perspective on that. And if we kind of go to the 30,000 foot view around ownership, do you have a point of view where you think ownership around vehicles is going to go in the next five to 10 years? Chris: [10:23] Well, really it's, it's really a tale of environments, I think. I mean, you look at major cities compared to suburban, rural ex urban environments. And you know, it's no secret that the changes are coming in in cities a lot quicker. you know, every major us city is having these conversations right now around smart transportation planning. And I think this is really kind of accelerating the change in cities in 10 years from now, in suburban environments. and certainly rural environments. I don't see really much change in terms of ownership. Yeah. We could talk perhaps a growth of a subscription model that, that may change in those areas, but I don't see people giving up their cars. although I do see, I was actually surprised that some reports that have said that car ownership and cities in particular, haven't changed as much as we thought in terms of asset light households, certain in certain cities it has in others like Los Angeles, it really hasn't, not yet. Scot: [11:44] Interesting. So if we, if we peel the onion on that, there's all these different flavors of, of some of these new ownership models. There's you kind of mentioned subscription, there's obviously rental. there's the car shares where you have like Zipcar and then, we had a guest on the show that talked about an ungated car share where, you know, you can kind of pick it up and drop it off wherever we've got the Lyft Uber ride sharing. We've got kind of the Airbnb model, like person to person like Toro and get around. Do you think there's kind of a winner in there or do you think it's going to be, you know, a mix of those kind of based on what people want to do and, and the length of rental for example? Chris: [12:23] Well, I think we are moving into a mode or a way of thinking where use the acid that's best suited for that type of exactly what you want to do with it. And, I mean, I can see benefits and issues with each one of those models. I mean, we can really look at what's going on in each one. And, I mean, I, I, I, I don't think that we've seen the, end of penetration for ride sharing. I think that is still going to grow. I think that P2P car sharing is on a definite growth curve. I think in terms of, the, the Zipcar model of car sharing it, I would probably say that we're not seeing quite as much of an acceleration and those in the car sharing community would really point to, you know, an ungated, model as being, better for, or easier to access to vehicles and you know, car subscription has issues as well. And one of the main issues is, is coming up with a price point that that works for everyone. And also, how soon you can flip the cars, you know, if you want to get in a car rental, we can certainly get into that too. But I really see there's a lot of growth still happening in ride share, in peer to peer. Scot: [13:59] Yeah. And the rental car companies are, are pretty active in all these spaces. Maybe. I'm, I think I have a pretty good handle on it because I've been reading a lot of your content, but maybe for listeners, highlight what hertz and Avis have done kind of around the areas of, you know, or what we know them for their traditional rental car, but they're all very active in some of these other models. Chris: [14:21] Well, certainly Avis. but Zipcar, gosh, must be nine years ago at this point. And that's really where the sort of, we'll call it traditional car share has a hold. you know, Hertz, the funny thing about car sharing and the rental traditional rental companies, the large rental companies, they're sort of pulled back. I mean, enterprise car share still exists on college campuses. A in Zipcar is, it's growing incrementally and Avis is growing in incrementally. Works, has pulled back essentially from car share divisions. Let's say if you want to talk Europe, a Europe cars, doing some, some cool things with mobility. and six test, some mobility programs to, you know, one other thing to mention with car sharing and that is should it or real growth potential for car sharing is gated. I mean, I, well let me back up there. a real growth potential for car sharing is in specific programs that would be offered, say as an amenity in, various properties, you know, on various corporate campuses or in, in, residential buildings. that is, that is a growth area, but car rental per se is, you know, zipcars where it's at, in terms of the majors in the u s Scot: [15:58] Cool. And then, I think some of the programs, some of the big guys, they, they have relationships with like the Ubers and Lyfts, right? Where they're, they're providing cars into the ride sharing market. that works. Chris: [16:11] Hertz in particular is playing a really big part in this market right now. I mean, their growth in that market is, has been substantial year of year. I think they've got 40,000 cars that they're putting into, into the ride share market. And, I know it's driven a 300 million to their, and this is public figures, 300 million to their bottom line revenue and they expect to grow it even further. And you know, we started with trying to understand what the model is to rent to Uber and Lyft drivers. Like what is that, what is a model that is profitable? And I think the market has come to the conclusion that it's not a new car, to rent to these guys. It, it's, I say it's not for the faint of heart because it's high mileage. you know, a lot of scrapes and dings on these cars, but you know, where it really works, at least where it really works for her is you get out of a Toyota Camry at 40,000 miles in the rental fleet and that's flipped to the Uber drivers for 30,000 miles. And then they, they take those cars out at 70,000 miles, hurts does, and they can run them through auctions or even run them through their, their used car lots. And that's a very attractive price point for used car buyer. So they've had success with that and they're kind of leading the charge there. Scot: [17:47] Cool. Is it like formal partnership with Uber or they just kind of advertised Uber drivers on their own? Chris: [17:54] I believe it's a formal, I mean they do have, you know, I, I, I, I don't know the answer to that question definitively to be honest with you. I want to say, and you know, probably in the editing we can figure this out, but I want to say that they do have an, at least an informal agreement, but they do, I know they definitely rent to both Uber and Lyft drivers. Scot: [18:19] Got It. Very cool. So it, one argument, you know, with Lyft going public, this is top of mind because their valuation is so high. It's kind of interesting. You could almost like, you know, invest in some of the rental car companies and as kind of a secondary, you know, if you'd believe in car riding as a cheaper way to almost invest in the trends, oddly enough, I don't, I don't think people connect those two things. But it's interesting to think about that. Chris: [18:39] Well, the whole idea of providing wheels to Uber and Lyft drivers has become one of the biggest industry trends and challenges. And Uber certainly saw this challenge with their leasing division that they essentially failed miserably at and lost a lot of money, it per car, an astounding amount per vehicle before they shuttered the their program and sold that off, which really speaks to the core competency of fleet managers of, of basically how to manage an asset. And I think the world is kind of waking up to, how fleet can do that and, and also how it can leverage this advantage and the, the, these environments moving forward on their way to autonomy. Scot: [19:31] Very cool. one thing that's near and dear to our heart at spiffy that when everyone gets excited about all these new ownership models, but what they forget about is more, more drivers, more riders, more miles means more services. and I know you've written a fair amount about this kind of fleet management as a service, which is, , you know, Kudos on a cool name there. were, where do you think that's going? It seems like the rental car companies have, they're kind of coming into it. it seems like the dealers may want to come into it and it feels like there's this collision course with a lot of different players, you know, so for example, Cox has an initiative to do this. so who's going to own this fleet management aspect of things? Chris: [20:16] Yeah. And you know, I'll, I'll go ahead and just take credit for f Mohs right now. I mean, I know, , you know, we had all had Sarah from Avis budget, at our fleet forward conference talking about fleet management as a service. But, but you, you know, it's, it's a budding, discipline, whatever you want to call it, but it is under the heading of, as assets get utilized more than 5% percent. They're going to have to be serviced in ways that are mobile and, you know, around the clock. And that's why, you know, we've seen spiffy and some really cool new outfits coming in that, you know, also perhaps lead us down this path to autonomy. when, you know, autonomous vehicles are going to have to be serviced at some point at night. Car rental really does see a future here as a service provider. Chris: [21:22] And you know, let's make sure, you know, this is separate from being the, the, the, the provider of the service of the vehicle to the end user, but more of the back end servicing of the vehicle. they, they will have competition from the fleet management companies, which are really kind of unknown or the consumers. But fleet management companies know how to, they know depreciation, they know how to manage vehicles, for commercial fleets equally as well as car rental companies. So I see, potential, you know, a potential, a little war here happening about who's going to win there. And then of course, like you said, I mean, you know, Cox Automotive owns Manheim, the largest auction in the US and, and if there's another area of disruption, it's going to be a auctions and, Cox certainly knows how to service vehicles and they're looking to leverage that position and in their fleet management of vehicles as well. Scot: [22:33] Cool. so let's pull on that thread a little bit. Why you think so auctions will be disrupted because you think they go online or you think just less cars we're going to turn over in this, this new world or why, why will they get disruptive? Chris: [22:46] Yeah, so, you know, the car rental companies right now are making no bones about the fact that they want to sell those vehicles upstream, directs whether it's direct to the consumer directed dealers and, they're enjoying better margins by doing that, and are willing to put together the effort, in terms of the infrastructure. So that's, that's happening now. The auction market is really needing the, the, the, the movement that time to sale is critical. You know, because a car depreciates, you can look at it at a daily depreciation of a car and it takes time to move a car to auction, run it through the auction at a certain day, get it to the end user and be done with it and get paid. auctions know this and they've certainly, they have their hand in, in online auctions, virtual auctions too. Chris: [23:51] So, but there are also diversifying. Now if we look at a world that is autonomous world, well that world looks a lot different and it looks a lot different for everyone, obviously including auctions. we expect much fewer vehicles, you know, potential, hopefully more, more, less vehicles on the road than there are today. And, and hopefully there, there'll be shared, but those vehicles, they're not going to get in accidents. I mean, that's the idea. And their, their length of service, they're going to be electric vehicles. Generally. Their length of service is going to be three times as long and with, with cars not turning over as much, that's just a lot less cars through auction lanes. Interesting. Scot: [24:43] Cool. so that's been good to get your view on ownership. Let's, let's kind of move into the connectivity side of things. I always come at it from a consumer perspective where there's all this cool stuff. I'm I'm a Tesla driver, so you know, being connected gives me real time maps and traffic and streaming and a lot of things in the cabin for the consumer. but you've done a lot of really interesting, riding around how rental cars are going to leverage the rental car companies are going to leverage connectivity. What are you seeing there? Chris: [25:13] Yeah, sure. And that's a huge area of driving efficiencies for a rental car. Companies and commercial fleets have been enjoying the benefits of telematics. that, penetration is, has come sooner for commercial fleets and it has for rental. One of the issues for rental has been, you know, the rental vehicle is turned over a lot quicker. And at this point we are still most, of what this play is right now is telematics and it's an aftermarket install. Oh, of course. That's changing. we're, we're moving into a OEM partnerships with telematics companies at the factories that make this a lot easier and hopefully, and in three years, maybe it'll be standardized, where all we're doing is, is pulling data off cars and we won't need to install black boxes anywhere in the car and we can pull this data off of, vehicles no matter what the manufacturer. Chris: [26:23] Now, in terms of the, the benefits of connectivity, at least for a rental companies, simple fleet management, fleet movement, understanding that your a rental vehicle has been impounded for some reason you can't get of the renter if you can get notification at that vehicle is found in an impound yard by locating it, using gps tracking. If you save a day on that, I mean that, that's times how many days of rental vehicles you find an important yards. That's a very tangible example, but just fleet movements in general, you can inform heat maps in terms of, so where am I, where are these rental renters going in aggregate? You know, it turns out that most of them are, are, are going to the shore. in October, we'll, gosh, what's that all about? You know, and these, these answers may not be quite apparent as well. Chris: [27:26] There's a festival there, but these, these micro movements and even even looking at, the ability of a rental company to know that the renter who's supposed to have the vehicle backed by five is nowhere near the rental office. So that vehicle won't be available to next renter. They can make arrangements right away at either put that the next renter and another vehicle or make sure another rental office can transfer a vehicle. So those are just some of the efficiencies, but you know, telemetry in the car is going to be big. you know, right now I'm measuring fuel is a thorn in the side of rental companies, but now being able to measure fuel precisely would allow, the rental company to, you know, charge a renter for the exact amount of fuel that's that they don't have in the tank from when they started the rental and, and possibly have an upcharge on it. Chris: [28:27] as a convenience. I mean, that's going to be a big one. And then we also have to look at, you know, geo located push notifications around, marketing opportunities. I mean, there's, certainly, you know, off mentioned one where you're driving by a Starbucks and then Starbucks coupon punches up, you know, on your head unit. So those are just some of the things where, connectivity is really going to play a major role on coronal. And this is not even a talking about say V2X like vehicle to infrastructure technology and, and that gets into some that's coming as well. And that gets into some really cool, you know, futuristic stuff where Avis has a pilot program with Kansas City where they're sharing data with, with the city. and the, the city itself is using that data to, you know, plan, you know, events better, to understand movements in and out of different areas of the city. and of course there's a safety aspect to all this too, whether it's telematics, simply understanding that an accident has occurred right away. And is the, is the renters safe to a vehicle to infrastructure play that little bit later out where, you know, vehicles talk to each other and can tell where were an accident this happened and alert other vehicles, that type of thing. Scot: [30:03] Cool. You said V2X, is that kind of the slang that you use for vehicle to infrastructure? Chris: [30:09] That's good. It certainly, yeah, it is. That is exactly it. You could say V2I or I've heard V2X. Scot: [30:17] Okay, cool. I also, whenever I read your stuff, I learned a whole new set of acronyms, so it's always helpful, right? Yeah. Though when you go from industry to industry, you have to learn all the different lingo. Chris: [30:29] Oh yeah. Tell me about it. Yeah. Scot: [30:31] Yeah. Speaking in acronyms, electric vehicles or EVs, they're starting to make a dent in certain segments of new car sales. Like the model three has kind of taken over it's category a. And then if we look at China and some of the Nordic countries, it's starting to be pretty material percentage of those sales. but yet, you know, when I go run a car, I don't see any electric vehicles there. Do you think we're gonna see EVs kind of available at Reynolds at some point and then, you know, we'll, there it seems like there'd be a huge amount of infrastructure they're going to have to have around charging. And you know, what happens to me if I get beyond my range, all that kind of stuff. Chris: [31:06] Yeah, you're absolutely right. The infrastructure issue is the major issue for a car rental when it comes to electric vehicles. where you're seeing the penetration right now is in car sharing schemes. You know, General Motors, a division Maven, has, various schemes that this is a prominent place for, General Motors to, you know, offer a Chevy bolt to potentially new buyers through their maven car sharing scheme. And, you know, we see this certainly offered in, in cities. It's where Maven as is found mostly in cities, would have a greater infrastructure. you know, in along with car sharing, you know, we've got a company here in La called envoy, in envoy is, offering cars as amenities in their electric vehicles. in, in, you know, real estate, situations, whether they're corporate campuses are buildings and they're all electric vehicles and they come back to, you know, they're good to go out for, you know, half a day and then come back to a parking lot where they can charge. I would see, really when the infrastructural rollout is more prevalent in terms of public charging, because obviously Evie renters, you know, right, right now Evie buyers charge mostly at home, but renters wouldn't necessarily have the rental that the infrastructure at their house. so they'd need it essentially solely to either charge it there at the rental place, which they don't want to be at. They're going to be doing some or, or out in the field. so that's probably the major issue for penetration of EVs in traditional rental right now. Scot: [33:14] Do you think the range has to increase? So like, you know, the volts, the leafs and those kinds of guys have about a hundred mile range, which is probably way too small for rentals. But the Teslas are getting up kind of around 300, which is about, you know, I would guess that's well within the daily range that rental car companies have. Chris: [33:32] Yeah. So the, the bolt, the bolt actually, has over 200 mile range, which is actually pretty good. And, and the leaf, the next generation leaf as well. And I think, it, the coming soon, you know, we do have an onslaught of Evie models and I think the benchmark really at this point is 200 mile range there. There's one other factor which is often overlooked when it comes to, whether it's in commercial fleets or in rental fleets. And that is the x factor when it comes to depreciation and how much that vehicle is going to be worth when you take it out of the fleet. And we're just starting to wrap our heads around some numbers that allow for, what those vehicles are going to be valued and sold that. And the secondary market. And these are, the, the main total cost of ownership is the main issue. Chris: [34:32] so we can't discount that at that point. so if a rental company, if ava spies 500 Chevy bolts, they're going to have them in their fleet for, traditionally, like less than 18 months, what can those Chevy bolts be sold for in the aftermarket? Right now? That's enough of a question mark that would, they wouldn't, would they avoid a flooding up in addition to the infrastructure issue? Of course, as in chicken and egg fashion, we build more infrastructure. we get more people buying them and more wholesale values. so more comfort with a total cost of ownership. Scot: [35:16] Cool. Yeah. I know like a Prius is, for example, the most of these things, the lithium ion batteries have a defined life, right? And then it has to be replaced and that probably throws the whole, the valuation of the depreciation and to, chaos versus an internal combustion engine. Chris: [35:33] Well, you know, and here's the, here's the funny thing about that. And, so there was a company called test loop out here in California, which, you know, great concept that they shuttered. but it was essentially a shuttle service between various points. La in San Diego, in La and in Palm Springs, La and Vegas. And you would essentially rent a seat in a shuttle and it would pick you up at a certain point and it would take you at a certain point. So famously they had a Tesla model last the Hawk or whatever that I actually wrote in and that was high mileage in four years. They put on over 400,000 miles and the battery life held up pretty well. So I think we're getting to a point where we're seeing that these batteries and let's not discount the issue with batteries and the environmental issues of what we do with those batteries after the vehicle is gone. But the batteries hold up a lot better than expected. And you know, battery degradation is being solved, thankfully. So I, I think, I don't think we're looking at like, oh, this electric vehicles is just going to fail on us in, in three years and we're going to have to spend $15,000 on a new battery. I think there's a lot more that, this is probably still an issue, but I think the comfort level is a lot better on that point today than it was. Scot: [37:10] Cool. and then, the last kind of leg of the stool we haven't talked about is autonomous vehicles. And you touched on it a little bit. what, what's your prediction on, on AVs is this, a lot of people are pretty aggressive with kind of 10 years away if, you know, I kind of get the feeling you think it's a little bit further out. Chris: [37:29] Well, you know, people ask me where, when are we to see autonomous vehicles? In my answer is like, well, where really it's going to be where cause we're going to see penetration in different areas a lot sooner than we'll see. Just sort of general consumer penetration. And, we are starting to see a closed campus, trials. and, that's pretty obvious. You know, like the shuttles, local motors has has a shuttle and closed campus seems like it is certainly a natural deliveries without a passengers in them. They're still like a lot less of a liability issue. And I think you'll see a autonomous delivery shuttles for goods and services being rolled out quicker. and then in Geo fenced areas and cities, a very defined area in Manhattan that allows for autonomous vehicles and we can kind of keep an eye on them, they're a lot easier, and kind of manage them, you know, those that. Chris: [38:41] So, so the third leg would be that sort of Geo fence thing. And I could see that coming to pass within five years and then a pretty long tail before the world is autonomous. and we see, you know, just mass adoption of autonomous vehicles say to just to get to work. Now, one other thing we can look at perhaps is dedicated lanes on freeways where we see big trucks that would run a autonomous, where they, what would have been a driver and is now like a load manager in an autonomous truck, running cross country that goes into driver mode when they get off an exit essentially. But that long stretch could even be maybe even be a dedicated lane. I mean, I can see that going to pass within seven or eight years, but you know, full autonomy, it's going to be need based and and, and, and certainly, you know, the, I think that the regulatory environment, that I know is really not formed yet. So outside of these geo fenced areas, I think that that's one barrier. And so 2030 is sort of a boogie man. I mean, I, I, we really don't know. It seems like a signpost, you know, but I think it's anyone's gas. Scot: [40:21] Yeah. Let, let's say it's 20 something. 20 X. Oh yeah. And, and we have, you know, a fair number of these autonomous vehicles around. Who Do you think is owning them and news taking care of them? Chris: [40:35] Yeah, that's a really good question. Who has the right to win? There are, I mean, obviously the Uber wants to have that right to win. I can tell you that some interesting data and looking at, and, disengagements in California testing of autonomous vehicles is really interesting. First data points that are coming out about who's further along at the very least, who's further along with the technology. and, it's, so disengagements are essentially like in the testing in California, this has to be reported to the Department of motor vehicles, which, which, how many times does the driver have to grab the steering wheel is called a disengagement. And Google's Waymo, and GMS, Cruz, General Motors, autonomous unit crews are way ahead of any other company. Tesla's not even on the map because test is not really doing autonomous vehicle testing. Chris: [41:49] I mean they're testing, you know, through there, through consumer use there they're testing sort of level two autonomy and going on a level three autonomy. But I found that really interesting that the amount of miles traveled and the amount of disengagement, the percentages are a Waymo and Cruz are absolutely the best and they have half of all the autonomous miles travel. This is just in California. I mean, but we do have some serious testing here now. So who wins in terms of being the provider? it's going to be partnerships. I mean, I think that the, jury is still out of rental is going to be, if you're going to open up your app and it's going to say Avis and then you're going to get a VUS is going to be the provider, but GM you know, a cruise vehicle is going to show up at your door. Chris: [42:47] is it going to be Uber? you know, I think we, we have to consider Uber as a player, but then like, so, you know, Waymo how is Waymo going to rollout there? Their system, you know, how are they going to roll out the retail experience, retail consumer experience? we don't know. Are they going to seek partners? It's still up in the air now. I think General Motors, we have to consider that General Motors is going to be there. they're the producer of the vehicle and they have their maven unit is, essentially their test ground for these types of things only with internal combustion engine. So they're going to be a player for it as well. I mean, I think Ford's behind Waymo in terms of autonomous testing, but they are certainly actively looking at how ecosystems are forming or on autonomous vehicles. Scot: [43:50] Yeah. And, I come from the ecommerce world and you know, when I, when it kind of look at the landscape, the, in the ecommerce world, the companies that were the least nimble, we're the ones that kinda couldn't really get it out of what we call the innovator's dilemma. And it sometimes feels like the kind of the dealer framework we have today is so antiquated and, you know, Tesla's showing how quickly they can disrupt it. do you think those guys kind of have a place in the future or do you think though eoms kind of have to start going around them or, or are they essentially the service bureau? How does that shake out? Chris: [44:21] Well, there's one thing, powerful thing that we can't really discount when it comes to the world of dealerships. And that is that there, you know, the dealer lobby is a very powerful force in Washington and the OEMs are not ready to say anything except give hugs and kisses to their franchise dealers. and it's been a good relationship and you're right that, a more efficient model ultimately wins out. But the dealerships can change in ways that I think will for sure see more consolidation after 2009 and the, the recession, you know, we've seen a consolidation of dealers to sort of mega dealerships that will continue, but the alerts are sitting on some very valuable real estate within cities. And we are seeing right now that they're becoming hubs in interesting ways, in their, becoming hubs for a ride ride sharing where, it's a place for them to pick up a car for a ride hailing drivers to come and pick up a car for Uber and Lyft and, even a potential sale at this point. Chris: [45:49] I know the few dealerships are actually creating hubs for ride share drivers to come and get a car and they're creating almost like, you know, in the showroom carving out a part of a showroom that's the specific to ride hailing. So that's and you know, as as as a hub for servicing, you know, a lot of these, it perhaps even for autonomous vehicles, as a hub for servicing. I think dealers you don't want to play in that. In that world the servicing will be a lot different. Obviously it will be less about repairs and you know, the, the brain gets scrambled trying to think of, you know exactly what that entails. But I think that their dealerships are hubs for market intelligence and vehicle intelligence right now. And the smart ones will be able to hold on to that advantage in the future. Scot: [46:52] Cool. Yeah. I think the only thing we can guarantee is there's going to be more changed than, than there ever has been coming up. Chris: [46:58] Yeah, absolutely. I mean it certainly car rental, is has faces similar challenges in terms of having to reinvent their, their business model, but I even read reinvented, but make it just make it more efficient to poise itself for the future. Scot: [47:15] Yeah. Any, we're running up against time and I want to be cognizant of, of your time. were any other thoughts of where we're going to be, around either rental car ownership or any of these topics in five to 10 years that you want to close on? Chris: [47:28] Well, I, that we are finally coming to a spot that we've been talking about for years with car rental and that is a, a, a much more efficient car rental process that is app based, that involves a direct access to a vehicle. the first shoot green shoots of that would be, you know, avoiding a car won't align at the airport. I mean that process as it stands today of getting off a plane, getting on a shuttle, going to a physical location, accessing a car, waiting in line for 20 minutes and then getting your car, it just doesn't work for today's transportation needs. So the first step there is to put the ability to lock and unlock the car, and in access to car essentially through an APP. And that, that is happening now. I think you'll see a completely connected car rental fleet of the major colonel companies, within three years. Chris: [48:29] It's sooner for most of the vehicles. The next step from that I think would be, and this is a harder step, frankly, that is to decentralize the fleet, but I think that that is going to happen with strong partnerships that need to be made. And we'll call it kind of like the, the Starbucks Starbucks suffocation of, of transportation modes where there's not one central hub. But you know, we find Starbucks in airports and in city centers and in hotels. so cars will be let's say strategically placed in that way and access through an APP. I think that will finally happen. And you know, like I said, I mean this is what's going to happen in the cities is going to happen a lot quicker than what's going to happen in the suburbs. I think 10 years from now will outside of city centers, I think people will still own their pickup trucks and, and they'll still be internal combustion engines for the most part. Scot: [49:34] Cool. One last question for listeners. I follow you closely on auto rental news.com and I recommend everyone subscribed to that. aside from that, are you a frequent Twitter, Instagram or snap chatter link dinner, where, where can people find you? Chris: [49:48] Let's put it on Twitter. You can find me @fleetchrisbrown and I am always priding myself. I need a tweet more so, but a fleet, Chris Brown is where you can find me on Twitter and linkedin. Just look up Chris Brown, Bobit business media. And I, I post most of my blogs there and certainly, go to fleetforwardconference.com, for info about our upcoming shell. And as you said, auto weren't all news. You can find us online autoworldnews.com and if you're into this small commercial fleet world businessfleet.com awesome. Pretty much covers it. Scot: [50:26] Cool. Well we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule, running all these shows and putting out all these publications, and sometimes tweeting. So really appreciate you coming on the podcast. Chris: [50:38] Yeah, not a problem. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Scott.

Seven Reasons to Solo Travel There are lots of reasons you might travel solo: Maybe youcan't find anyone to travel where you want to go, when you want to go.  If you want to go, but aren't comfortable going completely on your own, considersmall group travel.  Be aware of any single supplements and look for companies that pair you with someone if you don't want to pay extra to travel alone. ATA affiliate, Active Adventures,is one such company. You need some time to yourself to just THINK!If you need to figure some things out in your life, consider taking a long distance hike or cycling trip.  You'll have all day to yourself, but will meet people along the way for when you could use a little company.  Check out my West Highland Wayand Cottswold Waylong distance walking holiday adventures for some inspiration.  You want to develop your'Grit Bone' or what Jackie calls her"Courage Muscles". There's nothing like adventure travel, and in particular, solo travel to test your mettle and to expand what you think possible for yourself!  It's a great way to boost your self esteem and self reliance, too!  If you want to feel empowered, try adventure travel, and in particular SOLO Adventure Travel!  It's easier to meet new people when you travel solo.  Locals are more likely to come up to introduce themselves when they see you alone, so you'll havemore local interaction.  You'lldevelop better problem solving skills.  When it's just you, YOU have to figure out what to do when something goes awry.  You'll learn that you are quite good at finding a solution, no matter how clumsy it is, when you know that you simply HAVE to!  You'll discover what you really like and dislike:  when your schedule is completely your own, you have to make ALL the decisions, from what time to wake up, to what, when and where to eat, to how to spend your time, etc.  If you go someplace and decide you've had enough, you can simply leave without conferring with travel mates, or you can spend all day in a museum that rocks your boat, but would bore your normal partner.  Traveling solo can sometimes be lonely, soeven introverts learn how to strike up a conversation (my go to questions is,"So how was your day?"  You'll always find other solo travelers at the bar next to a hostel, so head there at cocktail hour to find others that would love to chat.  For that matter, consider even staying in a hostel so you can meet folks in the common areas.  Many offer single rooms so you don't have to sleep dorm style.   Alternately, stay at an Airbnb where the people live there as well and the comments from previous guest indicate that the hosts like to be social with guests.  Consider Couchsurfing.  Also sign up to do a Walking Tour or other group activity to meet others.  See if there are any interesting Meetupsgoing on while you're in town and reach out to the group organizer to attend. Solo Travel Tips and Rules I've been traveling solo for five years now and I've come up with some rules that help keep me safe and reduce stress (in no particular order): When 'winging it' while traveling, I make sure that I know where I am going to sleep before noon. Whenever possible, I make sure that I arrive at the night's accommodations before dark. When out, I never leave my food or drink unattended. Don't drink too much or do any drugs.  Get back to your room at a reasonable hour. Be careful of overly cautious locals who might be setting you up... does someone on the bus or train act like your best friend and rush to try to share a cab with you?  This could be a setup: the cabbie could be a partner in crime.  Check theUS State Dept Travel advisoryfor the country you are visiting to see what the current local scams are.  Register your trip with theSmart Traveler Program. Ask your hotel to call you a cab or take highly ratedUber or Lyfts to avoid rogue cabbies.   Ask a local to circle bad areas on a paper map.  Be mindful of your surroundings at all times and have an exit plan.   Hold onto your luggage, going so far as to bike lock it to yourself should you be on a long train or bus where you might sleep.  Make sure someone knows where you are supposed to be and what time you are supposed to arrive AND when to sound an alarm should he or she not hear from you.  Episodes Mentioned in this Show: Galapagos Dolomites Kilimanjaro Part I Kilimanjaro Part II Machu Picchu Annapurna Travel Safety Tips   Tour Company Mentioned in this Show:   Active Adventures Active does NOT require that you pay a Single Supplement.  If you want, they will try to match you with a same sex roommate, but if they can’t, you are not required to pay the supplement, so may end up with a single room anyway.  However, if you want to make sure you have your own room you CAN pay a supplement to ensure it.   Active Adventures, while a similar name to Active Travel Adventures, is a completely different company, although as an affiliate, I highly recommend them and may receive a small commission or discounted travel if you use my links - at NO additional cost to you.  Using my links is a great no-cost way to help support the show - Thanks!  Kit   Budget Minded Traveler Podcasts and Posts: Budget Minded Traveler Website BMT Solo:  https://www.thebudgetmindedtraveler.com/find-your-courage-through-solo-travel/ BMT Solo Women:  https://www.thebudgetmindedtraveler.com/solo-female-travel-a-dangerous-business-with-amanda-williams/ BMT Cycle Danube Solo: https://www.thebudgetmindedtraveler.com/danube-bike-path/   Traveling Jackie: On Loneliness: https://travelingjackie.com/even-superwoman-gets-lonely/   Connect with Jackie:  Community - Podcast - Instagram   Connecting with Kit and the Active Travel Adventures Community:   When you get back from your solo adventure (or indeed any adventure), be sure to post some of your pics in our Active Travel Adventures Facebook group so others can be inspired and live vicariously through you!  I look forward to getting to know you in the Facebook group. I'd love to learn more about what you’re looking for when you travel or any other insights as to how I can offer you more help at Active Travel Adventures (podcast and website). Email me or tag me and reach out on your favorite social channel. Thanks and never hesitate to email me if I can help in any way. Adventure On!  Kit www.ActiveTravelAdventures.com Host of the Active Travel Adventures podcast   Twitter@Kit_Parks Facebook Group:  Active Travel Adventures Instagram:  parks.kit        

Gaming at Work In this episode: We talk about gaming and geeking out at work!  And Toots! Weekly Geekery Beej got around to watching The Defenders and liked it more than he thought he would. Void started watching shows and movies around World War II, killed some time playing MergePlane, and is experimenting with Mastodon. Be sure to subscribe to the Geek to Geek Podcast your favorite podcast app, drop a review so we know how we’re doing, and feel free contact us via email at geektogeekcast@gmail.com or @geektogeekcast on Twitter with any comments, questions, or suggestions for the show. Thanks for listening, and we can’t wait to hear from you! Geek Offer of the Week: audibletrial.com/geektogeekcast Subscribe: iTunes Overcast Pocket Casts Google Play Music RSS Feed Geek to Geek Podcast Network: Geek to Geek RunningShoes.tv The Comic Box Geektitude Tea Time with Katie and Chelsea Music by CarboHydroM

One month down in NYC and your strugglebus captain has cracked thr code! Bathroom update +bookers+ zzzquil+ more. Mentions zzzquil l zzzquil.com Kenny Garcia l iamkennygarcia.com

We try SO HARD every episode to make you tinkle. This one is no exception as we talk HARD-HITTING questions like: is it wrong to change your gender to save money on insurance? Should a burger have any meat? How soon can we do away with roads completely? Do you EVER want your massage therapist to talk to you? What's wrong with paying your bill in change? And should libraries be replaced by Amazon?

We made it to Episode 10, y’all! That’s a wrap on Season 1! Who better to close out our first season than an engineer, entrepreneur, and general superstar we’ve loved for, like, a full decade? Yep, our guest today is Leah Culver, the co-founder and CTO of Breaker, a social podcast app that we’ve all just started using (if you have an iPhone, check it out. Android is coming soon). > I can only do the things I can do. I can keep trying to get better, but I can’t beat myself up about not being like someone else. I just have to sort of be myself and work with what I have and take it to that—that next step. > —Leah Culver, CTO, Breaker But Breaker’s not the first startup Leah’s co-founded—in fact, Jenn fell hard for her very first company, Pownce, a microblogging platform that launched way back in 2007. We talk about that journey, plus: The future of podcasting—like Chompers, a podcast on Alexa kids can brush their teeth to. Women in tech, women in podcasting, and the fact that more women than ever are listening to podcasts, according to the 2017 podcast consumer report from Edison Research. Financing a new laptop as a young programmer by selling laser-etched advertising on it back in 2006. Getting into Y Combinator, an accelerator program for early-stage startups. What Leah’s listening to right now (it’s Modern Love, which you can get on Breaker, of course). Interviewing for 30 jobs, what a company’s snacks say about its culture, and why Leah wants you to stop judging her love for Diet Coke. Also on the agenda: letting people carry things for you (literally and figuratively), peeing with your therapist (no, really), and all the “tiny revelations” we’ve had this season. Thanks so much for joining us for Season 1! We’re taking a couple weeks off, but we’ll be back strong with Season 2 starting April 17. In the meantime, make sure to sign up for the new NYG Newsletter, coming April 20. Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a diverse, intelligent, and motivated team—and they  want to apply to you. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. _WordPress—the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. WordPress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. _   _CodePen—a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases, and find inspiration. _ Transcript Katel LeDû Shopify is on a mission to make commerce better for everyone. In fact, they’re the leading global commerce for entrepreneurs. And did you know that they’re hiring? That’s right! And they don’t just want you to apply to them, they want to apply to you. Join a diverse, intelligent, and motivated team where you’ll get shit done. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. Jenn Lukas Welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. KL I’m Katel LeDû. Sara Wachter-Boettcher And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. JL Hey! It’s Season 1 finale time! How did we make it through 10 episodes? Well it certainly helps to be working on something that we all love. That concept’s no stranger to our guest today, founder Leah Culver, currently CTO of Breaker, a social podcast app. We’ll also talk about tech today versus 10 years ago, using an accelerator application to let you know if you’re ready to leave your job for your startup idea, and the importance and difficulties of self-evaluation. Dun dun dun. But first! How about we check in with ourselves? How y’all doin’, ladies? KL Doing alright. Doing good. How about you? JL I’m—do you ever feel like sometimes you just sigh? But you know what? I read a study one time that sighing is actually healthy for you, so that’s ok. I’m doing ok. I’m doing ok. SWB It was funny, my husband was just telling me that his barber that you shouldn’t sigh because a monk told her not to once. And so I think about that sometimes when I let out a big sigh but I’ve been sighing a lot recently. Like, in fact, kind of a bummer couple of weeks, you know? I uh I tore my ACL which is a little unpleasant. And Jenn and Katel know this because they’re constantly offering to like carry things for me up the stairs such as like glasses of wine, my laptop— JL But we only barely know this because Sara would try as much as she can to hide this fact from most of us. You could barely tell based on your attitude and uh go—go-get-em-ness. KL Yeah and in fact I think we ran on your bad ACL a couple times. So. SWB Actually, they think my ACL has been torn for 14 months and I didn’t know it until I uh twisted something and actually injured myself because the ACL was unstable. And so it’s probably a little bit more torn now. And you know, it really took me out there for a couple of days and then for the past couple of weeks I’ve just been adjusting to what’s essentially like a long-term pre-op lifestyle. Like I have to get surgery. It’s probably not going to happen until September because of a lot of other stuff going on in the meantime—and so I’m at this place where it’s like I’m ok but I can’t do certain things. And some of those are things that are—are really bumming me out. Like I can’t run. And that is a major way that I organize my weeks and think about my time and so I’m kind of adjusting to a lifestyle where I—you know, have to be very careful about certain stuff and I have to wear a brace when I’m out walking for any length of time or trying to do anything physical. And I have to just kind of accept a slower pace, like literally a slower pace! [Mm hmm] And the kinds of stuff that I thought I could do really quickly like, “Oh I’m just going to pop downstairs in between these conference and grab something to drink,” is no longer so quick feeling. And like that is very difficult for me. And I’ve been thinking about like, “Damn. This is going to make me learn some lessons, huh?” Like not just the lessons of, you know, like trying not to injure yourself but the lessons of like, “It’s ok to move more slowly,” and like, “It’s ok to have people help you.” I don’t want to. I don’t want to learn any of those lessons! I’m sorry I don’t want to, I’m sorry I don’t want to learn them at all. They just suck! JL It’s hard, you know, we’ve talked about this on the show before but asking for help is—is really difficult. And even, you know, just something like, “Hey, could you carry this for me?” A few days before I found out I was pregnant, I was in a bike accident and broke my elbow and my ribs, and uh so I had broken ribs, broken elbow, pregnant, and I had to be like, “Hey, can you carry my laptop?” Like everywhere I went because I couldn’t pick up anything. And it was really difficult but I mean I was at the point where, you know, Sutter had to wash my hair because both my elbows… and so I mean you know it’s like—I had not choice but to ask for help. You know, there’s a lot of things as like, you know, generally able-bodied women that, you know, you—you don’t think about. And, you know, you go through life, you’re going, ok, you know, “I’m brushing I’m teeth. I’m able to brush my teeth.” And then all of a sudden you can’t. And it’s so hard! I’ve read a lot about how people with disabilities live their day-to-day lives and go through routines of things that, often, you know, we don’t think about. And when you’re faced with a temporary physical state in which, you know, you can’t do things as fast as you want to. You know, all of a sudden, your world is sort of like turned upside down. You can’t really figure out what’s what and how to get through your day. [5:07] SWB And I feel like, you know, and I mean it’s also, change is just hard for anybody. And I think that what you realize is both how badass people are who, like, figure out how to get through stuff that’s really hard, whether it’s physical or otherwise, and then you also think about how adaptable, in a lot of ways, people are. Right? Like you really can adapt to a lot that you didn’t necessarily realize you could adapt to. And, you know, something that—that I’ve also really been thinking a ton about is the way that—we have talked about sort of like the highs and lows or the peaks and valleys of work and of life, but like, that often that those things are happening at the same time. Like this has been a really good year so far in some ways, for me at least. Where it’s like I’ve got this fucking podcast and it’s going really well and I’m excited about a lot of the stuff that I’m working on and—and at the same time, like not only did I tear my ACL, like I had a pet die earlier this year and it was really hard. Like it was crushingly difficult for me, and I wanted to talk about it on the show, but it was like such a tremendous fresh wound, I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t do it in any way where I could like get through it and out the other end into something anybody would want to listen to. I mean, 45 minutes of ugly crying is fun, I guess, for some people, but like I didn’t—I didn’t want to subject people to that, especially not, like, Episode 2. KL I think it’s really helpful to hear both of you talk about just kind of figuring out how you’re going to move around these things that, you know, become a challenge, right? Or just completely throw you off the way that you think you’re going to get through a day. And I feel like, I mean I’ve struggled with depression my entire life and, I think, over the last year I’ve gone through sort of peaks and valleys, just in that alone, you know? Along with sort of day to day life stuff. And sometimes I—I worry because I feel like not being able to cope, let’s say, on a certain day because of, you know, something that is—just isn’t working right in my brain chemistry or I, you know, just haven’t been able to—to rally around the thing I’m supposed to do that day, is—is really difficult to kind of put a structure around that and to say, “I just need some help today,” or, “I just need to like find a different way to do this because it’s so intangible.” JL And—and it’s interesting like when you hear, you know, “I just need some help today.” Or like Sara, you know, there’s times where like the few times you’ve let us help you carry [chuckling] things up the stairs, on my end, like, it feels good to help. Like [KL absolutely] I want to help. And I think that’s the thing that we sort of have to think of, like the times that I mean you both have helped me on countless situations, I mean like … it feels good to help your friends and, I think, sometimes that makes it easier for me to ask for help [KL definitely]. So think about the fact that like we want to be there and support each other. KL Yeah. And I think that is—that is ultimately—that is the absolute silver lining because I think about everything we’ve just been talking about and the fact that like, Jenn, when you were, you know, saying we want to help Sara carry stuff up the stairs. I’m like, “Oh my gosh! This is all I want to do!” Right? I’m like, “If she needs help doing stuff because she tore her ACL,” I’m like, “You better tell me when you need something because I’ll be at your house the next day.” And I think that we all feel that way. And we all have a lot more people in our lives that—that are willing to do that than we think. And we just have to accept that and ask, you know? JL And I think even like, you know, there’s big things like I—I couldn’t type for a little bit so I had people that would have to like dictate for if we were trying to get stuff done. SWB Would people dictate—like you would dictate code to people?! JL It was like the most intense pair programming. KL You’re like, “Div—no, div!” JL So I mean, you know, but there were small things too like I would be really thirsty and I couldn’t carry like a container of water and like my coworker was like, “Let me get that water for you,” you know? It wasn’t like I was like, “Buy me water!” I just needed someone to just— KL “Just, like, hand it to me!” JL —carry it. KL It’s silly the things that we, you know, don’t think about asking for help or think are too small or whatever. I mean just today, this morning, I was uh at therapy and I was sitting there and I had been thinking for the last five minutes how badly I had to pee and I had the thought, “You can just get through it for the next half hour, it’ll be fine. Like, don’t bother anyone.” JL Half an hour!!! KL I know! And then I was like, “No, I can’t—I can’t even concentrate like this is—this is so dumb. I’m like—I’m not going to get out what I need to get out of the session just because I have to pee.” So I finally, said, “I’m so sorry, I just—I really have to pee all of a sudden. You know, do you mind if I just go?” And she was like, “Oh yeah, you know, of course!” And she kind of paused and she’s like, “Do you mind if I go with you?” And I was like, “Of—of course. Sure!” And she was like, “I’m so sorry. I really have to pee too.” And we just both felt so overwhelmingly like, you know, embarrassed but also relieved and so we did and we moved on and it was great. We both like came back to the session. We were like, “Ahhh!” [10:30] SWB I mean it’s funny though because it’s like there’s little things and that’s—I mean I feel like that could be a metaphor for a lot of parts of life where these little things that sometimes you deny yourself because you’re worried that, I don’t know, you’ll make somebody else like think something weird about you or that somehow it’s more important that you pretend like you’re this perfect … stoic, non-peeing person. I don’t know what that means but— KL Or that you—right, that you can just do everything and carry everything and— SWB Right and like that you never have to make space for your own needs, right? That you can always sandwich your needs into like some other time nobody cares about and that whenever you have to like be like, “Actually, I’m going to raise my hand and say, ‘I need a thing right now,’” that’s uncomfortable and, I don’t know, like uh I think that you should be able to pee when you want to. JL I used to feel that way a lot, too, about like personal things. I would be like, “Well,” I think it’s because I was—I was an on-site consultant for so long that I had to keep my personal stuff a little bit away and now I’m full-time at Urban and I think one of the things is I still felt like, “Oh I can’t tell you what’s going on.” And last week, my son had to have surgery for um—it’s a common surgery, it’s ear tubes, but, you know, he’s a year and it’s anesthesia and there’s a lot of risks and it was scary. And normally I would never tell the to anyone. I would keep that inside, and keep that anxiety and nerves, and like to myself and then I—I’ve been trying something new recently which is where I tell people these things when I’m thinking like, “What’s going on?” And so you know, I’d just be like, “Oh I won’t be here on Friday.” I would just leave it at that. And now I’m like, “My son’s having surgery.” And like not because like I want people’s pity, or I want them—and I think that’s sort of why I never really said anything because it’s like, “Oh, you know, feel bad and worry for me!” It was like, “No, I just want you to know what’s going on in my life because, you know, I’m not going to be able to answer emails because my mind is someplace else right now.” KL Right. And you care deeply about this thing that’s happening and the people you’re telling probably do too because they care about you. SWB And also like you’re a person working with other people. And I think—I think there’s a lot about work culture that encourages us to not come to work as humans and to come to work as workers. And I’ve realized that that doesn’t serve anybody very well. And like I’m still a person when I’m working and—and I even like I’m a consultant still and I—I find myself being much more kind of open about who I am and things I care about. Obviously, you know, you put boundaries around stuff, for sure, but I, you know, like I was talking to a client today about like, “Yup, ACL is torn!” And I was describing like, you know, “I’m really bummed about not being able to run. But, you know, here we are.” And—and then, you know, this client started talking to me about how they just had MRI as well, they have a different knee problem, and it’s like—it’s kind of nice to—you know, you don’t want to necessarily say everything about everything but to be able to bring more of yourself to work. I mean we talked to Stevie last week, I think that was one of the things that they really were communicating was like how wonderful it is when you find a place that wants you to bring more of yourself to work. And that recognizes that there is value in being a human at work. And I think it is valuable to think about like, “Yeah, real people have kids who have to go through surgery like all the time. It happens to people.” And it’s ok. And you’re still awesome at your job. [14:00] JL So I’m really glad you said that about how our workplace, you know, isn’t just about us being workers, it’s about us being people. And I think that our guest today has a lot of great things to say about that. Not just as being the founder of a company like Breaker and a CTO but also as someone who hires for the company and has interviewed at a lot of places, and has had a lot of thoughts about what it’s like to find a good culture fit, and being comfortable at where you work. So I’m really excited to get to our interview with Leah. [Music fades in.] Sponsors JL Today’s show is brought to you by CodePen, a social development environment for frontend designers and developers. Ever want a place to share code with co-workers? Maybe even a potential employer? Your profile on CodePen is like your front end development portfolio. And if you love it like I do, be sure to check out CodePen Pro. With a Pro account you can upload assets like images to use in your code, you can create private Pens, and you can even see changes as you build them with Live View. That’s soooo awesome! There’s also a really cool professor mode for teaching and working real time with your students. Pro accounts start at just nine dollars a month. Learn more at codepen.io. That’s C-O-D-E-P-E-N-dot-i-o. [15:10] SWB Did you know that nearly 30 percent of all websites run on WordPress? True story. And that includes our site, noyougoshow.com. We love WordPress because it’s easy to set up, has great support, and allows us to create pretty much whatever we want. Whether you’d like to build a personal blog, a business site, or both, creating your website on wordrpress.com helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. Plans start at just four dollars a month, and 24/7 support is always available. Start building your website today. Go to wordpress.com/noyougo for 15 percent off any new plan purchase. That’s wordpress.com/noyyougo for 15 percent off your brand-new website. Interview: Leah Culver JL I first became familiar with Leah Culver around 10 years ago when she brilliantly financed her new MacBook by selling ad space laser etched on it. I then became a super fan when she co-founded the social media site Pownce. Those who knew me then know how much I loved the micro-blogging platform and one thing I thought was so, so cool about it was that one of the founders was a woman and she was an engineer. As a developer, it was inspiring to see the awesome projects Leah was creating. Since then, she’s authored the OAuth and OEmbed API specifications and has gone onto found Convor and Grove, real time chat programs, and is now the CTO of Breaker, a social app for listening to podcasts. I’m thrilled to have her here to talk with us today. Welcome to the show, Leah. Leah Culver Hi! Thank you so much for having me, Jenn. JL Yeah, as I mentioned, it’s like such an honor for us to have you here. I’m a big fan of the work that you’ve done so far which, speaking of, I’d love if you tell us a little bit about Breaker, how it came to be, and what makes it so awesome. LC Sure! And I’m actually a fan of yours too. So this is—this is a pretty fun interview to do. JL Ah thanks! Podcast high five! LC Awesome! The idea behind Breaker was really—I started to get into podcasting a couple years ago um when Serial came out. I don’t know if you guys all listened to Serial. JL Yup, definitely. LC The biggest podcast to ever come out, right? As basically the “hit show” of podcasting. But I hadn’t really been into podcasts before that. I had maybe listened to an episode or two on my computer when someone sent me something. But it wasn’t like I was a regular podcast listener. But I started listening to Serial and I was run—I was training for a marathon at the same time. So, I would listen to episodes when I was training, and I wouldn’t let myself listen to any episodes when I wasn’t running, so it like actually kind of motivated me to get my butt out the door. JL That’s awesome. LC —and do my running. Yeah. So it was great but then when the season ended, I didn’t really know what else to listen to. Or I wanted to listen to other things that were like Serial. Like high-quality podcasts as opposed to, you know, two people chatting and the audio quality being bad and things like that. I was like, “Where can I find really great podcasts?” So I tried like the Apple charts. So I was using the Apple Podcast app on my phone. And I tried looking at the charts, and I didn’t have a ton of success because I didn’t really know how—like I knew that someone picked these shows and these episodes but I didn’t really know how. You know? Like what they caught their eye and like what about them was good. JL Yeah. LC So that’s how I kind of got the idea behind like, “Hey, there could be something better here.” Like I wanted a player where I could also see like—like similar to like Spotify or YouTube. Like how many people are liking this thing? What are the comments on it? You know sort of what’s going on around this content. And that was the idea behind Breaker. JL I love that you found an interest in something and were like, “Well, there’s a gap, there’s something missing that I want.” And instead of just being like, “Well, this sucks. This doesn’t exist,” you created it. LC Yeah! I think that’s the power of being a developer, a designer, or someone that makes things is when you find something in a space that you’re like, “Hey, this thing should exist,” and then the next thought might be like, “Oh. I can make that exist.” JL That’s so cool. So how has it been like has the shift in focusing on podcasting, are you now finding yourself completely involved, not just in running the company of Breaker, but like the podcasting culture? LC Yeah, it’s —it’s been super weird. I’m trying to keep like my Twitter feed non-podcast people so I have like a good sense of how popular podcasting is and it seems like it’s on the rise, even amongst people who haven’t been in the industry a long time, but it’s also getting into that podcasting use has been really interesting. It’s a really old medium, right? Like podcasting has been around since there was—probably like forever, if you think radio. But sort of in its current incarnation of like mobile devices and sort of since the iPod, 2006. But I think it was so difficult then to sort of have like a podcast app or to make it easy to listen, like you had to like download files on your phone and things—that really there was this big opportunity to make things better and I don’t think it’s changed a ton since then. I mean only within probably the past year or two, maybe three years, had there been any new companies in the space. JL Yeah, speaking of the last few years, there’s been quite a few articles that have come out about the lack of diversity in podcasting. Have you found the numbers for women and other minorities in podcasts to be growing? [19:59] LC Yeah! Well, I hope so. I’m pretty optimistic about it. I do see a lot of podcasts and a lot of them still are, you know, two guys discussing a topic. And, actually, that’s my favorite search term to use to get like a lot of results is like podcasts called “Two Guys” dot, dot, dot. But you know I think there are many more women podcasters and I think there is a desire in our culture to hear from voices that aren’t, you know, straight white men, right? So I think there’s a desire for that content. And so I think those are actually like the hottest areas of podcasts to go into. And I wanted to bring it up just because it’s recent news: Edison published The Podcast Consumer 2017 and it’s about podcast listeners, specifically, not podcasters and, overall, the monthly podcast listening for men has not grown at all in—from 2017 to 2018 but podcast listening from women has gone from 21 percent to 24 percent of women listening to a podcast every month. So all of the recent growth in podcasting, you could say, has been attributed to women which I think is great. JL Wow. LC Yeah. JL Yeah that’s amazing. LC Yeah in terms of listenership and I think in terms of content production, we’re seeing the same thing as well. JL What do you hope to see happen in the podcasting industry over the next year or two years or five years? LC Yeah, I just want to see more good content, more great shows. I think it’s still really early days and so there’s a lot of opportunity to really build amazing quality content on a sort of new platform in a sense. And I don’t think that all the experimentation has been done yet, right? So there’s things like smart devices, for example, Gimlet which is a podcast producer, just came out with a new show for the Alexa. Like a show specifically made for that device [hmm] and it’s—the idea is like to get kids to brush their teeth. So it’s like a two-minute long podcast and you say, like, “Alexa, you know, play this podcast.” And it’s such a—I don’t have kids so I haven’t even tried it yet but it’s such like a interesting concept that, you know, we have these new devices that can do things with audio that we couldn’t do before. So I’m—I’m curious about that. I’m curious about audio in cars. Headphones. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on in the technology space, in like the hardware space that makes podcasting really exciting. JL Yeah wow that is—that is so cool. My son’s one, so we are now brushing but eventually, I think that’s a brilliant idea. LC But yeah, yeah so there’s a lot of—I think there’s a lot of opportunity driven also by the hardware that’s—that’s coming up now and sort of how we’re thinking about our daily activities and how we interact with media. JL That’s so neat, I think a lot of times people get discouraged to try something new like a podcast or writing or anything because they think everything’s been before. So I love this idea of looking at it in a completely new way. LC Oh no. It’s still so early days for podcasting. You—I mean, I feel like back in the day it was like, “Let’s start a blog for this topic,” or, “You should start a Tumblr on this topic.” And now it’s like, “Oh you should do a podcast!” JL Yeah. I’d love to know your opinion is on like podcasting versus vlogging or any sort of video news. LC Uh so I’m actually not much of a video watcher myself. I always like to be doing things and be on the move. Like it’s hard for me to like focus on even watching like a TV show or a movie. Like I listen to podcasts when I’m doing something else, right? So I’ll be cleaning my house, or going for a run, or walking someplace. Like I don’t drive but I would listen—I do listen to podcasts when I do ride in the car which is very rarely. For me it’s about the ability to be like multitasking. So that’s why I’m a little I guess biased against vlogs or video podcasts is I just feel that they don’t feed the same need for me, personally. JL Yeah that makes sense. Yeah I listen to them sometimes when I’m in Lyfts, sometimes because I’m really into something, or sometimes just to avoid awkward driver conversation, but and then also, yeah, when I’m doing stuff around the house. So I’m totally with you on that. So with Breaker, you started that at Y Combinator, along with Convore, can you give our listeners an overview of Y Combinator and what that is and how it helped you get started? LC Sure! Uh so Breaker was my second time doing the Y Combinator program. They offer a three month program twice a year to entrepreneurs, you apply, and hopefully get accepted, and then get to go to Mountain View for three months, and work with the partners there who are a team of really, really smart people. And I was lucky enough to do it back in 2011, for my second startup, and then I purposely sort of applied again for my third startup because I thought it was such a good experience, I think all the partners are really smart, and it’s really nice to have a connection with a lot of founders. It really is like a good network. I think that’s the—the thing that’s most surprising after joining Y Combinator is how much of the value of the program is more from the network than anything else. JL What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about applying but unsure if they should, you know, go all in with their idea for a program like that? [24:48] LC So an interesting thing lately is Y Combinator has been a little more intern—they look for smart founders but they also kind of look for commitment to ideas. So I’d maybe wait til you were pretty sure that you wanted to do it as a startup. We were kind of at the point where we switching from Breaker being a side project and a hobby project, which we actually ran it as a hobby project for about nine months. And then switched over to being full-time just before we were accepted to Y Combinator, we kind of both quit our jobs. So, lucky we got in. But we probably would’ve done it anyways. And I think that’s sort of what they’re looking for is like, “Hey! It’s something I’m really excited about and committed to,” because if you end up doing a startup, you end up kind of doing it for life. But beyond that, it’s good to just fill out the application with yourself and your cofounders because there are a lot of questions in there, in the application itself, that are very clarifying. Like they ask, “What is your equity split?” And they ask things like, “Where will you live?” And then more complex questions like, “Who are your competitors?” And, “What are you afraid of?” And sort of really gets into all sorts of aspects of really early stage startups that are—you know it’s valuable to ask yourself those questions, even if you don’t end up submitting the application. I’d encourage anyone just to fill it out, submit the application, it never hurts, like nothing bad happens if—if it doesn’t get accepted. It doesn’t mean anything. There are so many great companies that are rejected from Y Combinator, because they get thousands of applicants, right? Like they can’t give every single great company—and oftentimes they’ll see a company apply in a year and not get accepted and then they’ll be accepted the next year or the next—in the next six months, you know? JL Yeah, I love that. I think that people are so scared of rejection sometimes that it’s really—it makes it hard to put yourself out there. LC Yeah, I agree and what’s funny is being on the other side of it. So running a startup now I’m hiring people and for me that’s weird because I’m like, “Oh! Sometimes the hiring decision—” that we’re like, “Oh! We’re not hiring right now.” Or, “Oh! You’re not right—quite the right fit.” Really has nothing to do with them as a person. It could just be like the stage our company is at or, you know, something totally out of their control that has nothing to do with the quality of their work. Or the quality of them as a person. So it’s like it’s been very comforting to me, knowing that—so the last time I applied for a job, I applied for 30 different jobs [oh wow!] which is a pretty—yeah it was actually great but I didn’t have that fear of rejection and I actually rejected companies. I actually went in—I actually walked out of two interviews. JL Yeah. Wow. Good for you! LC Because I just—I, you know, I did it because I wanted to save their engineers time. Like they were interviewing me and it was, you know, I didn’t want to waste their time if I didn’t think it was a good fit for me. And I think a lot of the times getting into the company, like visiting their space, having lunch with the team, things like that, really get you that really quick, “Hey, is this the right place for me?” And in this particular case—when I just remember I went in and talked to someone on their product team and I was like, “I just don’t really feel this product vision.” And I was like, “You know I don’t think if I feel the product vision I could be into working here.” Um so it was nothing personal, it was just like, “Uh, I don’t think this is the right fit for me.” JL I love this idea of, you know, I people are like, “Oh I don’t know if I can apply to this job.” And it’s like, “Well, why apply for one? Apply for 30”. LC Yeah definitely! JL I mean I love—I love it. LC And then if you don’t get it, if you don’t get one, it doesn’t really matter because you have 29 more! KL I love that too and the idea that, you know, there is—there is actually room to interview the company that’s hiring. I mean I think a lot of people just don’t even think that that’s a thing that they can do and it absolutely is. It’s something that you should do when you’re trying to feel out what you’re going to do next. It’s like—it’s a big change. LC Yeah and oftentimes in a interview, the interviewer will ask you, “Hey! Do you have any questions about this company?” And like you should have questions, you know, and hard questions. I don’t think anyone gets offended if you’re really evaluating them as well. You’re right. You’re totally right. JL Do you have any favorite questions that you like to ask? Well I mean when you were interviewing, now you’re doing the interview on the other side. LC This is going to sound so petty, but I always wanted to know what their food situation was like because I thought it said a lot about the culture. So I’m a Diet Coke addict, I absolutely love Diet Coke. And it’s super unhealthy, right? Like no one’s going to be like, “Oh yeah, Diet Coke should be in every corporate office.” But I did judge companies based on whether they stocked Diet Coke or not because I would go to interview at some place and they’d be like, “Oh we only do healthy snacks.” But they’d have like really sugary like fruit bars and stuff. And I was like, “Really?” Like snacks are just, you know, such like a privilege anyways. It’s just such like a silly—a silly thing to look at a company for but because of that I think it really is telling in how—how much independence they believe you have as sort of an employee. JL Yeah. I think that’s—I think it’s really neat. I think snacks, the office space, the office space, and like how people are set up and where they’re—like their seating situation. There’s just a lot you can tell with like things you might not think of. Are there windows? LC Yes! Yes! I went to an interview at a major company, I will not tell you which one, and I walked in—and it was for a role that was not like one of their core products. And I walked in and the room—it was freezing cold, there was no windows, and everyone was working in tiny offices like all sectioned off from each other and I knew immediately. I was like, “This is not the job for me.” So yeah I think it all matters. [30:07] JL We mentioned that Breaker was your third startup. Your first was Pownce, which you founded soon after college. What was it like to have big early success like that and, you know, eventually you were acquired by Six Apart. So what was it like to have that success and then letting go of what you made with your first big—big product? LC So I started when I was 24, fresh out of college. I had worked a couple programming jobs in the Bay Area before then. I had moved to the Bay Area because I didn’t like Minnesota winters but also just to have this new opportunity. To be away—none of my family lives in the Bay Area, I didn’t know anyone, it was a chance to be doing something new. And I loved programming. I wanted to do the best I could do. And I felt like that was in the Bay Area and what happened was I met my co-founders Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka and they said, “Hey, we’re thinking about doing this project but we need someone to build it.” Kevin’s a business guy and Daniel’s a designer, and they wanted someone to write the code and I had never built anything of substantial or like a completed app or anything like that. And I just said, “Ok. I’ll do it.” And I think that—I actually remember exactly where I was when I said, “Yeah I’ll do it,” I was in a cafe in Potrero. And I remember saying like, “Yeah, I can do this,” and being like, “I don’t know that I can actually do this.” But I did! I just built it and everything I didn’t know how to do, I looked up on the internet or asked someone else for help. It’s so funny because I was asking all these Django developer—this was the early days of the Django web framework in Python and all these Django developers, I was asking them questions, I was asking them the weirdest questions. Like, “How do I do this like very particular thing?” And they’re like, “I don’t think you need to do that unless you’re building like, I don’t know, like some big site. Like what are you—you know like why do you need to know how to do this crazy, you know, social networking concept?” Like at the time there was really only like Facebook. So it’s like, “Why do you need to know how to do this?” And it’s funny to look back later and I ran into someone and they were like, “Oh, that’s so funny that you said that.” And I ended up building Pownce and I was way in over my head, I had no idea what I was doing, and because Kevin was so popular, he was running Digg at the time. So he was a founder of Digg. He had a ton of followers and people paying attention to him and so he announced, “Hey! Here’s my new project,” and we got hundreds of thousands of new users instantly. And we had an invite-only system and people were selling invites on eBay, and like the whole thing was just weird. And the whole invite—like I had written the whole invite system, so I was thinking, like, they’re selling something on eBay that’s my code, you know? It’s so weird. It was so weird to me but it was such a great experience. What’s funny is I think it has really shaped my whole career in terms of—since then I’ve always been someone who just loves to ship things and get things done and figure it out as I go and I don’t think that would’ve been the case if I hadn’t done Pownce. I probably would’ve followed a more traditional engineering path. JL We’ve talked about this a little bit with Katel, with her role at A Book Apart and sort of saying yes to things even if you’re like, “Well, I haven’t done it before but I’m pretty sure I can do it.” KL And then you’re like, “What the hell?” LC Yeah! Yeah but then you’re like, “Well I could really do anything.” JL Yeah. LC You know? Like once you do the thing, you’re like, “Oh! Well that wasn’t so bad.” KL Yeah. Totally. It’s true. I feel like you—you learn a lot about yourself in a very short amount of time, and I—I definitely wasn’t expecting that. So, I mean, that was a great outcome. LC That’s amazing. JL I love that too like the um—like the retrospect of it in that like, “Well, if—if I went through this, I can do anything.” I was thinking today, I was like, “Ugh, you know I haven’t had much sleep,” and I was like, “Ah I gotta do this podcasting thing,” and I was like, “Well, you know, I also got thrown up by my—by my one-year-old all last night, and if I can do that, I’m pretty sure I can do anything.” KL You survived it! LC This is way less disgusting I hope! Much less! JL Yes. It is much less. So thank you. So Pownce was acquired by Six Apart, what was that like? LC It was an interesting time. I think it was sort of during the sort of tech downturn in 2009. A lot of companies were being acquired or shutting down, and I—when we were acquired I didn’t know they were going to shut down Pownce but they ended up closing down the site, which for me was pretty sad, but I didn’t feel… I was so—I wish I had then felt like I had more control over it. I didn’t feel like I had a ton of control over the acquisition or what happened. I had two co-founders, I was a little bit in over my head, and I think things are much different now. One of the things I’m starting to learn is that a company is more about the longevity. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint” is probably the cliche way to say it, but yeah if companies—I draw a lot of inspiration from companies like VenMo, where the company had been around for years and years with no success or with little success and then managed to blow up and become a whole thing and a household name and things like that. And to realize that success isn’t instant and at Pownce I felt very lucky that we did have a lot of success but we didn’t have enough instantly for I think our team to really—to raise money and to feel like it was going some place, and there were a lot of other pressures going on, and I wish I had had the confidence then in what I know now is like, “Oh, hang in there. Keep going.” Then I learned a little bit more with my second startup as well. I was way in over my head, I was the only person working there, and I didn’t feel like I could fundraise. I didn’t feel like I could raise money, even though the product was making money, I didn’t know how to hire, I didn’t know how to do all these things. So, with Breaker, I feel like I’m really getting that third chance but I feel much—I think this time I have that patience and that commitment to sticking through with it for a long time, which before, I think, when you’re an engineer, you’re just like, “Ah! I’ll just move on to the next project or do the next thing,” is very tempting. [36:02] JL Yeah that’s such a—it is such like a complete mindshift as like you mentioned that I can say, and I think that’s one of the things that I always love about being a developer is I have uh started and abandoned many a projects. I have—I own many domain names and then I’m like, “Well, I’ll just let that one go.” So I love it that like you have to make this shift and to run a startup you have to really see it through. LC Yeah and I think the moment that we ended up, you know, really converting it to a company as opposed to a side project for Breaker was the moment it was like, “Ok this is really happening. We’re going to be in this for a long time.” And I feel so lucky because it’s so nice to make a podcast listening app, like, it really is enjoyable. It’s not a painful product to work on, it’s really great. Like I use the product all the time. So it’s really easy. JL So what you’re saying is make something that you love, if you’re going to do it. LC Oh, absolutely. Or something that you care about. You know if it’s a—a cause that you’re passionate about, or if it’s an area that you’re very knowledgeable in, I mean it doesn’t have to be—I’m partial to social networks and communication. So anything about media, communication, social networks is really my wheelhouse. But I think each founder has their own like passion and the thing that they love to do. JL So you are also an author of the OAuth and OEmbed API specifications, which I just think is so cool. So I’d love if you could talk to us a little bit about that and sort of explain to our listeners what that is. LC Sure! So OAuth, the easy way to explain it is: if you every click “Connect with Facebook” to login with a site or “Connect with Twitter,” you’re using OAuth, that’s the backend technology for it. I got involved with helping to build it—it’s actually like, I was one of the original like 12 authors, something like that, of the first specification and I got involved through working on Pownce. We needed a way to authenticate and authorize users to use our API. And through that it’s just become something almost completely different from what it was intended for. It was really intended for API access and now it’s just sort of been this defacto way to like quickly login on the web which I think is fantastic. It’s really cool. It’s like a really interesting turn and one of the things I’m most proud of is helping to come up with like sort of that user interface flow that really I think enable it to become this huge thing. So if you’re going to talk about like, “Oh it’s like the coolest thing that you probably like worked on that, you know, people would actually know,” it’s probably, you know, “Login with Facebook.” My dad said recently, he was like, “Oh you always wanted to be an inventor when you grew up, what happened to that?” And I was like, “Have you ever clicked ‘Login with Facebook’ on a website?!” Yeah but it’s so cool. It’s such a little thing, too, in the whole scheme of the web, it’s so cool to think that like developers have these small like little claims to fame on the web, that’s something that like outlives you and continues on is pretty cool, and I just feel so lucky to be like such a small part of that history. JL That’s really neat. I love that. And then, you know, I also like—I feel like if your—if your dad was like, “Oh yeah, wait! I’ve clicked that!” And then I don’t know, it’s such like, it’s a feel good moment. LC Yeah, yeah. That was pretty funny. JL So before Pownce and before OAuth, one of the things that I think was so cool that you did is similar to, if those that remember the million-dollar website where people had sold pixel space for an advertisement, or some people sold tattoos on their body for funding, but what you did was a lot smarter! I’d like to say, in that you raised money for a new laptop by selling advertising space on it. And I just remember thinking that was so cool and such like an innovative way to use the internet and get social funding for your new laptop. And one of the things I was looking at when I was just researching is that I found some of the articles from then and some of them were like, “Cute Girl Sells Laser-etched Macbook Advertising.” And I was like, wow! I was like, I forgot that that existed. [39:49] LC Yeah, the internet was a different—it was a different time and a different place back then. What’s really interesting is I got started in that project because the company I was working for at the time is Instructables and they had a laser etcher and so the idea was—So I had a really old computer and all of the people that worked at, you know, Squid Labs and Instructables at the time had these like newer laptops and they were all etching them with this laser etcher but I didn’t even have a laptop. So that—the idea came pretty easily. It was like, “Oh! I don’t have a laptop but I have a laser etcher and everyone is etching stuff onto their laptop,” so it really was not like the most genius plan. It was sort of a circumstantial thing but I mean it was really an interesting exercise in marketing more than anything else. I had never really done any marketing on the internet or really been out there at all. I don’t even think I had a blog. I had like no internet presence. There was no such thing as Instagram and Twitter. So really I wasn’t on the web at all and I think what you brought up about sort of the way the media portrayed it is so different than how it would be done today. It’s so—it’s so funny. Like, “Young Cute Girl Does Something on the Internet” like you’d never see that anymore. JL Oh, thankfully. LC It’s probably a good thing. Yeah. Yeah yeah but it wasn’t just that, there were like these “Sexiest Geeks” lists and things like that, and it just would not fly nowadays. JL I mean—I know that we still have like a lot more work to do in terms of, you know, equal pay and equal representation but at least we have made it past some of these. LC Yeah. One of the things I’m actually kind of bothered by recently is I—I’m all for the #metoo movement, but I think what’s kind of slightly disturbing to me about is that we want—I think there’s this desire to talk about workplace inequality and the fact that it kind of gets turned into something sexual or has like this focus on sexual assault. It’s like, “Well, can we make the conversation a little broader?” Like can we talk about power dynamics and women in leadership? And we do but I think it’s less salacious and it doesn’t get as much media attention. And so I’m a little disappointed in that angle of it but hopefully we’ll get there. JL Yeah it’s like there are so many battles—there are so many battles to fight. LC Yeah! Which one? Yeah you know? JL I know it’s like I can—I can like only laugh at it because otherwise I just like, my sighs, sometimes my sighs are so loud. But I just like what are we— LC Yeah so it’s—you’re right. I think maybe it is good to just focus on one bat—one battle at a time but also to have like tangible goals. Like what is the tangible goal of a certain movement? And I think movements are most effective when they have like a piece of legislation you can pass or you know some rules that companies now enact. I think people want simple solutions for complex problems and I think bridging that gap is something that’s really difficult to do. JL Yeah, that is a hundred percent accurate. I think sometimes when we can’t find those solutions, then we feel a little hopeless and I think hopefully though the more that—more people put their heads together about it, the more that those solutions will come. LC And everything changes, and everything gets better. I just listened to an episode of The Modern Love podcast, reading an essay from 2012, which I totally recommend people go check out the latest episode of Modern Love podcast. But it was basically a father talking about his gay son and his gay son’s desire to marry his partner and the essay just feels dated. And it’s not that old. You know? And I think that’s so shocking: how fast things change. And for the better. I mean it’s a good thing. It made me sad and hopeful at the same time. JL So, speaking of getting along and, you know, optimism and productivity, before your role now at Breaker, you were an engineer at Dropbox working on engineer productivity and happiness, which I think just sounds amazing. Can you tell us more about your role there? LC So at Dropbox I ended up working on the engineering product design team, helping—basically helping engineers and designers throughout their lifecycle at Dropbox. So from the time they first joined Dropbox in their first day through moving around between teams or moving up to become a manager or they’re at sort of the exit interview, if they left Dropbox. And it was pretty interesting. So I ended up on that team because I helped build an internal tool for Dropbox, actually a framework for hosting internal tools called AppBox. And I built it sort of during Hack Week, we had these—Dropbox has these like Hack—Hack Weeks where you can work on anything you want and a lot of the times what people work on is stuff for Dropbox. So, you know, a lunch menu, or a seating chart, or all these tools that people at Dropbox use all the time that aren’t, you know, readily available. So their priority tools are—you want to build with like a special sort of like internal company feel to them. So I built this platform for building new tools on top of and then recruited engineers during these Hack Weeks to like build new tools on top of it. So that’s actually what most of what I did was run that project so I can talk about internal too—we didn’t have like an internal tools team, we had like an internal developer tools, sort of more focused on build process and things like that. But what I was working on was more social, and so it didn’t quite fit into that space. So I ended up on this team that worked on the entire engineer’s life cycle which was super interesting. It’s like an interesting problem to think about. [45:10] JL Yeah, I love that. We are constantly trying to figure out how, I mean day one of someone starting new I feel like is one of the most difficult things to work with, starting from like, “Ok, let’s make sure we—they have a computer.” So you’re actually joining us today from New Zealand and you were recently a judge at Webstock. Was that totally awesome? LC Yes! It was so fun. I loved Webstock. It was great. It was the first one I’d ever been able to go to because it’s in New Zealand. And I basically said, “Hey! I’m going to be in New Zealand. I didn’t know Webstock was happening at the time, is there anything I can do to help?” And they were like, “Oh, come be a judge for our startup competition.” I thought that was so great and such an honor. It was really fun. JL Is it hard as a judge to give feedback to others about their products? LC Absolutely. I think it’s hard because I see it from their side, right? Like I’ve done three startups. I’ve done startup competitions. You know, I’ve gone to hackathons and competed and submitted my projects before judges. And, like I said, I think on the hiring side of things it applies here as well, on the judging side, it’s like I think so many of the decisions are just arbitrary. Like you happen to answer a question in the particular right way that the judge wanted to hear, you had like a good looking slide that got people’s attention. Like it seems—it just all seems so arbitrary and all of the competitors this year at Webstock and the BNZ startup competition were all just fantastic. And so it was really hard to say like, “This company is better than another company,” because it’s just—that’s not the way it is. They are just very different. And, like I said, they were all really good. JL So for something like that, what do you find the best way for feedback—like do you find like the line it’s hard to like discourage people because like their project is great but they can’t all win? LC Yeah! I actually went up to most—I tried to make a point to go up to most of the folks who didn’t win and talk with them about their projects just to, you know, I think what matters when you’re building a company is it’s always nice to see someone who cares, who paid attention, and knows what you’re doing, and has follow-up questions, and—and I saw this as well with the other panelists and judges they actually offered to help companies. Like, “Hey, you know, BNZ you didn’t win the competition but how can we help you? Who can we connect you with to take you to that next step?” Because startups, it’s not like you win or lose, it’s like always a constant journey, right? Like even—even when you’re a giant company, you’re not always winning. It’s this constant process. So I think a lot of it is asking those startups, “Hey, how can we help and how can we take you to that next level?” And sometimes that pride of winning the prize matters and sometimes it doesn’t. One of the judges actually lost the same competition she had entered years before and had lost and came back as a judge and has a successful startup here in New Zealand. So— JL I think it’s so important, again, you know we’ve talked about this a lot is like how to keep going with these like products that you obviously love because you’re working on them and putting your heart into and so just wrapping up here: I’d love to hear more about your approach at looking at your work and looking back and saying, “What am I doing right? What are things I wish I’m doing differently?” And like how—how you handle that. LC I actually spend a lot of time doing self-evaluation. And I think mostly because I’m kind of someone who worries a lot. So I’m always sort of thinking about, “Hey, could I be doing this better?” And sometimes I have to sort of almost take that pressure off of myself. One of the things I struggle with personally is that I don’t feel like I act or look like other founders, especially in my attitudes around building product, getting users, things like that. I don’t think I’m completely like your typical startup founder and I have to sort of talk myself into, “You can only be the best person you can be.” And this is like kind of the thing I get pumped up about. I’m like, ok, I can only do the things I can do. I can keep trying to get better, but I can’t beat myself up about not being like someone else. I just have to sort of be myself and work with what I have and take it to that—that next step. So that’s—that’s sort of what I’m always thinking about in terms of self-improvement. And there are definitely things I’m working on right now. I’m working on giving better feedback. That’s something I’m always working on is how can I give feedback well and really help other people as opposed to just like saying what I think which I think is always a struggle. KL Yeah. We’re dying to know. JL That’s great. When you find an answer, please let us know. [49:35] LC I think—yeah I don’t know. I don’t know. I think one of the things I’ve learned is like give feedback in—or, give criticism in private, give praise in public. Really work on how to articulate how I feel about something or think about something. A lot of times I just assume other people think the same way I do which is not true at all, right? Like we think everyone’s like us and our reaction to something is going to be the same reaction that everyone has to that thing and that’s not true. So it’s like how to explain like—like just today I gave feedback on like sort of an unread count of something and I had to say, “Hey, I’m the kind of person where I see an unread number and it makes me anxious and x, y, and z and blah blah blah blah.” And I wasn’t actually complaining about the teacher, I think the teacher’s great, but it was like, “How can we make this a comfortable process for people who are—people who like to check things off their inbox and have everything be done versus someone who just kind of lets things go and doesn’t really care about that. I think those are two very different personality types and so I think a lot of the struggle is like realizing what type of personality I am and how to express that as a user and then looking at other personality types. Like how do users who care about personal stats treat like a product? So I’m not someone who cares about every single stat, about what episodes I listen to or like, or things like that. Like they’re kind of fun to me, I’m like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” There’s some people who are like—coming at this whole game like, “Hey, I want to listen to more episodes of a podcast this week than I did last week.” And so how do put myself in their shoes or like understand that we have users that are—have different mindsets than myself. So that’s—I’m kind of working on that as well. JL That’s awesome. I think those people would not like my 35,000 unread email messages bubble. That’s the thing. LC As long as you’re ok with it. As long as you personally— JL Thank you! It does not bother me. LC I’m so glad I don’t work on email. That’s like the one communication tool I’m like, I say this now, and like say in 20 years, we forget about email. It’ll just be like, “Oh god, ok yeah.” JL Well, I hope we get to have you back on the show then to talk about your new email project so— LC Oh my god no. JL Leah, anything else you’d like to share with our listeners uh today? LC I guess what I’d like to say is definitely check out Breaker, let me know what you think. I actually read every single feedback email people send us, I may not reply personally, but I definitely read them. So if you have feedback uh let us know, we’ve actually really worked hard to create a company based on user feedback because we understand that not everyone is like ourselves. So you could listen to the next episode of this podcast on Breaker. Let us know what you think. JL Well, Leah, thank you so much for joining us today. It was super awesome. LC Thank you so much for having me. Fuck Yeah of the Season: Tiny Revelations SWB So usually, right before we wrap up, we have our Fuck Yeah of the Week. And that’s something or someone we’re super hyped about during that given week. But here we are, this is Episode 10, and we’re taking a couple weeks off after this. And so I think it’s appropriate to not just have a Fuck Yeah of the Week, but to have a Fuck Yeah of the Season because it’s been kind of a badass season for us here at No, You Go. So I’d like to give a big Fuck Yeah to all of the people who have shared their ideas with us and have been so generous with their time and so many of them have given me what I’m calling, like, tiny revelations where they said something kind of off the cuff, they said this one little sentence, and I find it, like, sticking in my brain and I think about over and over and over again and I think we should take a couple of minutes and talk about what some of those are. Katel, what’s your tiny revelation? KL Yeah. Gosh. I think a really recent episode we did with Stevie where they talked about the sentiment of the practice of allyship, has just stuck with me so much and just the idea that we can constantly be working on this, that we can constantly practice being better to each other, being better supporters of each other, and just that it’s a work in progress. I think that that is so important and something that we can all think about and do in very little ways that amount to something much bigger. JL Yeah, that was a great one. Oh, there are so many great ones. One of the ones that really sticks with me is I loved Sara Chipps’ interview. And one of the things Sara said was, “Everyone has a good idea, right? But how do you—how do you get that started?” And she said, “Ideas are worthless unless it’s something that gets made.” So you know if it’s going to take a thousand baby steps then if you start today you’ll only have 999 left. But if you don’t, then it’s never going to happen. And I love that. You know I’ve talked about this before, I’m a really big fan of the—of, you know, the getting things done method and how you go from idea to really getting it somewhere and we talked about that with Leah today and I also loved so many things that Leah said about this, because I feel like I always have so many ideas in my head and I want to be able to take them from that into something tangible and so I loved the advice that Sara had about how to get your product out and running. I just think it’s so cool. KL Sara, what about you? [54:30] SWB It’s really hard to pick because there’s so many things that I find myself returning to but one of the ones that has sort of lodged itself in my brain where like sometimes I’ll literally be in the middle of working on something, or I’ll be like getting ready for bed, brushing my teeth, whatever, and I find myself thinking it is what Eileen Webb said way back in episode two. She said, “Why should my work get all of my best brain?” And I think what made me really get stuck on that was how much it upended assumptions that I had that I didn’t know that I had about work. Like, that I’d always sort of assumed that spending my best brain, like the—the—the parts of the day where I feel the smartest and most competent, spending the bulk of my time on my work was like inherently good. And an inherently like

On this episode I speak on Lyft and its new monthly service plan and how it is going to benefit those passengers who use Lyft daily. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/techandbusiness/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/techandbusiness/support

Today’s rapidly evolving technology has already led to the disruption of a number of industries. News and entertainment has become far more interactive, movies have gone from the big screen megaplex to the personal 6-inch pocket screen, and the taxi industry has been gutted by the Ubers and Lyfts of the world. Next up for change is the securities transfer industry. On this episode Seth gives shareholders the answer to their troubles in getting a medallion signature guarantee STAMP when they need to transfer securities. What’s a medallion guarantee? How can online ID verification make your life easier? How can an online platform save you from going to the bank? Get answers!

Uber was in the news a lot this past week. First, they made positive headlines when they announced that they were expanding their partnerships with health care providers to offer patients rides to doctors' offices (at the doctor office expense). Then they made negative headlines when MIT reported that most ride-sharing drivers make less than minimum wage when you deduct their cost of insurance, maintenance, and fuel.  Finally, Uber announced that they were testing autonomous semi trucks in Arizona. This trucks may give Tesla a run for their money.  in all, a very busy week for the Uber public relations office. And of course, we can't forget the guy in West Virginia who called an Uber after a night of partying. He asked the Uber to take him home and then passed out. Too bad his home was 300 miles away in New Jersey. I'm sure he was surprised when he woke up to a $1,600 bill. All of these Uber stories offer some very interesting insight into human sociology. However, the doctor's story is probably the most interesting. For decades, passengers have been paying for taxis and more recent ride-sharing services. Autonomous cars may flip this business model. In the future, mobility will probably become more like the Google search engine model. Most of us do not pay to use Google search engines. It is a free service for consumers. Google makes their money by charging businesses for advertising. The businesses that pay the most for advertising get premier access to customer attention; they show up first in the search results. Driverless cars will significantly reduce the cost of rideshare services. Once that happens, more businesses will begin to pay the Ubers and Lyfts for business. As an example, downtown restaurants will pay Uber and Lyft rides for customers who go to their restaurants for brunch. As a customer, when you decide to leave your house, you will be given a few different free options for brunch destinations. Most of us will be more included to select a free ride to a brunch spot than pay a premium price to go to the restaurant of our choosing. This is the future of mobility and it has serious implications for small businesses and our society.

Chris Frates in studio! Plus... lying, fake vomit, Black Mirror, Lyfts... and a brand new picture.

DC Hits on Ray Jay and Princess expecting their first child, how the expiration date on food maybe misleading, and parking going away for UBER and Lyfts.

DC Hits on Ray Jay and Princess expecting their first child, how the expiration date on food maybe misleading, and parking going away for UBER and Lyfts.

On-demand services have changed the game for consumers. And now even companies like UPS and FedEx are learning a thing or two from the Ubers and Lyfts of the world. Particularly when it comes to surge pricing -- you know, that cost multiplier that comes into effect when demand is high and supply is low. In this episode, Matt Gunn and Guy Courtin discuss how business services are changing, and why supply chain visibility and demand planning are more important than ever.

We take on Taxis, the City of Austin, and Protectionism in general in this one. (33:50)For show notes and more, please visit: http://www.readrothbard.com/episode-2-uber-lyfts-out-of-austin

We Talk with Roger Ver about Concensys as well as Cody Wilson, Chris Odom, Christopher David, Brian Deery and Cliff Baltzley about ride sharing in Austin and the ridiculous Austin city council draconian 1984 style of forcing Uber and Lyfts hand. Christopher David explains Arcade City and it's plans to fill the void of Uber and Lyft.